The great Oli Frey created the cover for Zzap!64 issue 68, 1990. It was the last picture in the Zzap!64 2022 calendar. It celebrated the release of Chase HQ 2. I don’t remember playing that game, but I must have. I definitely played the first game and it wasn’t great. Here’s a play through of it. Are those Dick Tracy adverts at the side of the road? Oh dear!
Time to put the calendar away but I guess I can use it again in 2033, 2039, 2050, 2061, 2067, 2078, 2089, 2095, 2101, 2107, and 2118. I wonder if people will still use paper calendars in 2118?
Back in the day, magazines were a huge part of the computer scene. Each machine had a dedicated magazine, and if you were lucky, more than one.
I bought my Commodore 64 in 1989, but I had a Speccy 48K before that. A company called Newsfield published a magazine called Crash that catered to the interests of the Speccy, and also one called Zzap!64 for the C64. The transition from Speccy to C64 meant moving from one magazine to another of course. One constant in both worlds was Oliver Frey’s amazing artwork that graced the covers of both magazines.
My favourite is probably the cover of issue 50 of Zzap!64, the first issue of that magazine I ever bought, but he painted so many others it’s hard to choose.
Choose I did however, as I bought a number of prints off his website in late 2021. I bought the Speedball print featured above, as well as the Retrograde and Elite covers. I’m awful for hoarding things and I still have the tube the prints came in with what is probably Oliver’s writing on it, or maybe his partner, Roger’s, who knows?
All this is to say I’m a huge fan and admirer of Oli’s work. So it was with great sadness that I read that he passed away at 7:55 this morning. He was only 74. Thank you for the art, Oli. My condolences to your partner, family and friends.
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