Back in the 1990’s when most of the Commodore 64 magazines had withered away and died, or were in the process of doing so, a small fanzine appeared in the UK. Called ‘Commodore Zone’ it was only available by mail (obviously) and was printed entirely in black and white except for the cover which was still monochrome but printed on a different colour of card each issue.
Box cover art
We take it for granted these days, but colour printing was an expensive luxury back then – it certainly was for me at any rate. I made do with a black and white Canon Bubble Jet (a BJ10 – I think) which I used with my Amiga 4000 right up until the millennium when I finally moved over to the Dark Side and bought a Windows 98 PC and an Epson Colour Inkjet to go with it.
Back of the box
Anyhooo, getting back to the original Commodore Zone mag – the highlight of each issue for me used to be the 5.25″ floppy ‘coverdisk’ it came with that contained all manner of entertaining stuff including games, demos, music and so on.
An original Commodore Zone coverdisk alongside the issue it came with.
I’ve still got all my original issues along with the cover disks but I couldn’t resist picking this ‘complete collection’ up. It was just too good to pass up as it contains digital versions of all the disks, enhanced colour editions of each magazine and a whole raft of other Commodore Zone goodies, all packaged up in a luxuriously glossy box.
What you see when you open the box up
The main event is the USB ‘cassette’ tape which is tucked safely away within a foam inlay at the bottom of the box.
Commodore Zone ‘Cassette’
It certainly looks like a cassette tape when you first get your hands on it.
Could be any old C64 action game on cassette at first glance….
The jewel case looks just like any other…
Something missing there…
As does the J card inlay…
USB Flash drive
It’s only when you get the cassette out of the box that you can see what it really is with a little flip-out USB flash drive where the tape would normally be!
Loads of goodies
But what about all those extras? Well there’s a Commodore Zone badge and keyring along with a bunch of cool Ferris stickers (the little guy with the propeller hat) plus an awesome sticker featuring the Star Wars: A New Hope artwork taken from the Spring 1998 cover.
Enhanced colour covers
There’s also a fantastic little 16 page booklet that contains all of the past front covers of the magazine, tastefully enhanced in glorious colour, as we’ve never seen them before.
Enhanced colour cover vs original B&W cover.
As you can see in the comparison photo above, the enhanced cover is very similar to the original, just shifted around a little to make way for a slightly flashier and more modern Masthead and Cover Lines.
My edition is number 11 out of a grand total of 200 copies. Noice!
As this collection is limited each box has been numbered out of 200. Sadly I didn’t get the first box to roll off the Psytronik production line but number 11 is still a pretty low number. 🙂
Commodore Zone Sampler CD
The Commodore Zone ‘Sampler CD’ is pretty awesome too and is presented as a vinyl record. Not really sure why I keep calling them that nowadays as we always used to just call them records back then.
Groovy!
The record grooves are just for show of course as the data side of the disc is smooth, just like a PS1 CD, but it looks really cool and successfully triggered the old nostalgia receptors in my brain.
Track listing
There’s loads of great tracks on this disc and it’s well worth a listen if you are a fan of C64 music.
Contents of the USB ‘Cassette’
The USB flash drive is packed with an impressive 11.4GB of content for you to rummage through.
11.4GB of Commodore Zone Goodness
All the stuff is sorted neatly into directories so you can go straight to the material that interests you.
Contents of the USB
Included are:
- D64 images of all the past coverdisks.
- Digital copies of both the ‘classic’, ‘enhanced’ and the one-off ‘anniversary’ editions of the magazine in both PDF and JPEG format.
Enhanced (right) and Classic (left) digital versions of the mag covers.
- If that isn’t enough Commodore Zone goodness for you there’s even scans of each and every mag included too as JPEG images.
- Digital version of the sampler CD in MP3 and FLAC format.
- Bunch of other great SID music CD’s in both MP3 and FLAC format.
Enhanced (left) and Classic (right) digital versions of the mag.
- Loads of D64 images of PD demos
- Directory full of retro music videos accompanied by some stonking SID music tacks.
- Web Book version of the ‘restored’ Issue 1 edition of the magazine that you can explore on your desktop.
Basically there’s a mountain of stuff on here for you to browse through – enough to keep you entertained for many hours, days even. Takes me back to the days when I used to order a bunch of PD disks without really knowing exactly what would be on them and then spending a Sunday afternoon just exploring everything that was on them, listening to SID tunes, watching demos. playing PD games or whatever. Good times.
The first batch of 200 units are sold out now but if you fancy getting yourself a copy then Psytronik will have another batch of them over on their website https://www.psytronik.net at the beginning of February 2025.
