Thursday 4th December 2008

Retro Gamer and Oliver Frey create the perfect festive cover

Imagine Publishing joins forces with legendary videogame artist to celebrate the upcoming holiday season.

On Thursday 4 December, issue 58 of Retro Gamer goes on sale across the UK and the world with an exclusive new festive cover drawn by the incredibly talented Oliver Frey.

Any gamer who has ever owned a Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum will recognise Frey’s unique and visceral art style, and reprints of his old classic Crash and Zzap64! covers have occasionally featured on the cover of Retro Gamer in the past. It was Frey’s Christmas covers that captured the imagination of gamers all over the UK in the Eighties, and Imagine Publishing is delighted to reveal that the artist has once again picked up his brush and given one of his classic Christmas covers a brand new Retro Gamer revival.

“Initially it was a bit like going back in time,” reveals Frey about the unique opportunity. “You’re suddenly looking at something you know you painted in a traditional way on board way back in 1984, and now you’re re-creating the same thing mostly on computer, while still trying to get a ‘painterly’ effect, which is a strange sensation.”

“The popularity of my images is down to pure nostalgia, I think, but also the fact that the pictures are paintings and not the highly finished, photo-look, wholly computer-generated art you see today – it gives them that personal feel.”

Editor Darran Jones is confident that the readership’s reaction is going to be a positive one. “Readers have been demanding a new Oliver Frey Christmas cover ever since Retro Gamer relaunched. Retro Gamer has always been about doing things that sets it apart from the rest of the videogame market, so it made perfect sense to release an Oliver Frey Christmas cover when everyone else would be adamant on covering the latest big thing. And let’s face it, who doesn’t want to appear on their very own cover?”

Retro Gamer is the UK’s only magazine that is fully dedicated to retro gaming, and is highly respected within both the games industry and the retrogaming community.

Imagine Publishing
01202 586200
www.imagine-publishing.co.uk