I have a friend - a wonderful friend I'd say - and his name is Gordon Houghton. One day he came to my cave and we met, then we ended up teaming together in the Zzap!64 magazine staff.

Well I have to admit it was me to suggest him as a rewiewer and offer him with that job... I already understood he was a talented and skilled guy! We immediately became good friends and he even became my chief-editor for almost a year!!! Well, I'll speak about him today.
 

I begin telling you that he's an authentic English guy: he was born in the middle of Lancashire in 1965, and life has smiled at him since. Before joining the Zzap!64 staff in April 1988 (issue No. 36) he studied English literature at the Magdalen College, Oxford (well, this helps us understand his great passion for writing reviews and novels), then he met me and his life has changed completely!

It was a cloudy March afternoon when he came to our workplace for the first time, and I noticed his "shape" was quite... peculiar and "oversize" indeed! He looked much like the roundy rocks I use to see inside of my cave: this might be the reason why it took me a while to fall in love with him... he looked so familiar heh! Luckily enough his low size didn't match such incredible skills in writing and playing videogames: small size, great performances!

Beside working together, which took us most of the time and strenght, I pleasantly recollect of lots of afternoons spent in my cave. He took his favourite joystick (was it a SpeedKing? don't remember...) and challenged me to play Tetris, Paradroid and Thrust. Well needless to say that but... well I was born inside of a videogame, so I've always been better than him in playing videogames hehehe! But there were two games he was really skilled with: The Sentinel and Scarabaeus. He was able to challenge me for hours without letting me win... but well you know I'm not very familiar with 3D videogames and worlds!

We also sometimes spent hours watching TV, or he took B-movies videotapes at me. He once showed me one of his best favourite movies: Monsieur Hulot's Holiday... never seen such horrible thing, and I immediately shouted at him and kicked him out of my cave. But well, he knew me very well, and was always able to make me accept him again: he knew I love science-fiction movies, so he took me to the cinema to see such masterpieces as Alien, Star Trek and Star Wars, and got me become quiet and friendly in a while.

Three months after Gordon joining the staff, my good old friend Julian Rignall left us, and Gordon was chosen as new chief-editor... it was a triumph and I was soooo happy for him - though I was also sorry because I knew we'd have less time to spend together, as we did in the past... but what I really couldn't stand it was his new "friendship" with that masked idiot, Lloyd Mangram, who was always hanging around Gordon's office from dawn till dusk. He stood there waiting for Gordon to arrive and started chatting over and over about all the letters he received: maybe he thought he worked for the Daily Mirror, not Zzap!64 heh! And he even fooled me and told me I was shorter than a tin of Coke... hey idiot, why don't you leave that stupid wizard-looking cap and see who's really short?

Beside those small "family life" problems, the whole staff and I enjoyed working with Gordon very much. Even Paul Glancey liked him... need I to say more than this? And we even worked together last year, after about eight years of silence, when we joined one more time and published Zzap!64 issue No. 107... it was so exciting being back on those colourful and flat pages again, and following my friend again...
 

My friend is 38 now, he's got kids, a relaxing life, he's a successful gothic novels author, and he also contributed the videogaming publishing world as a reviewer for PC Gaming World for a while. His passion for videogames never estinguished: on the contrary, being a mature guy, he now appreciates both the superb gameplay of old C64 classics, and the power of next-gen consoles as GameCube.

Well done man, wish you great luck!

Yours,
Rockford