Earlier this week we sadly lost Roger Kean, co-founder of legendary Crash and Zzap!64 among many other magazines. If you want to learn more about Crash’s legacy, Graeme detailed that story in 2017.
Like the death of his friend, colleague, and partner Oliver Frey, Roger Keane’s death was expected, but not too sad.
Along with Frey and his brother Franco, Keane founded Newsfield Publishing in 1983. This experience was a crash course in the publishing process, using CRTronic typesetting, photomechanical tint, rotary drum laser scanning, etc., all of which would be invaluable as he later launched Newsfield. It has been proven.
As 1982 came to a close, Franco Frey suggested to Keane and his brother that a mail-order business selling ZX Spectrum games could be a profitable business. Throughout 1983, the trio built their business and promoted their games in slim print catalogs. When the UK computer game scene exploded in 1983, Kean and Freys happened to be at the center of it. Frey’s art had already graced the covers and pages of the catalog. WH Smith News The idea for an actual magazine dedicated to the Spectrum gaming scene was born when he spotted it by a buyer. So did Crash Magazine.
Written and edited almost entirely by Keane (often under his moniker Lloyd Mangrum), Clash was a huge success and soon inspired Commodore 64’s sister publication, Zzap!64. Keane wasn’t a gamer himself, but he understood how to create magazines and connect with readers. A key early decision was to have local Ludlow schoolchildren review the game at Crash, slowly bringing better and more dedicated writers to the fold of Newsfield.
As editor, Keane enthusiastically supported his young charges. When 16-year-old Crash reviewer Ben Stone conducted an unenthusiastic analysis that angered his PR department at one company, the result was a significant loss of advertising revenue. Despite the financial impact, Keane favored a visibly distressed Stone and the score held. Crash’s editors were acutely aware that this was the key to Crash’s and Newsfield’s success. The reviews were trustworthy. And it wasn’t just journalists who adored Keane and his fellow Newsfield founders. recalls Dennis Roberts, mail order and subscription manager, one of Newsfield’s first full-time employees. “Roger gave me the nickname ‘Dennis Will,’ which was short for ‘Dennis Will Do It.’ It made a great joke. I still laughed when I called
Still, it was in the editorial department where Keen’s influence was felt most. Zzap!64 alum Julian Rignall said on his Twitter: It’s the key to creating publications that resonate with your readers. Newsfield, driven largely by Keane, also championed the use of technology, paving the way for new printing methods and word processing to replace typewriters. After spending most of his years creating Zzap!64, he was terrified of going back to his typewriter.
Full of the necessary talent and skill, it was definitely “the right place, the right time” for Keane and Newsfield. Players relied on monthly magazines for game news, reviews, and tips. Crash, Zzap!64, and his short-lived Amstrad magazine Amtix all focused on these aspects, avoiding type-in his listings and detailed hardware his reviews featured on rival pages . By 1988, Newsfield had his 80-plus full-time staff in the Ludlow office and owned its own software, his label Thalamus. Though nominally still involved, Keane gradually moved away from the roles he loved: editing, writing, and creating magazines.
Fortunately, in recent years, after the demise of Newsfield in the early ’90s and a subsequent stint at Thalamus Publishing, Kean has rediscovered these roles thanks to a renewed interest in retro gaming in the mid-’00s. . When Fusion Retro Books founder Chris Wilkins first spoke with his Kean in 2005, he asked Kean to write a book about the rise and fall of Manchester software company Ocean.
“He was very well educated and knew everything,” Wilkins told me. “Any topic we discussed, he always seemed to know more about it than I did. Any way I could pick it up.” , in 2020, I got pure joy from working with the rebooted Crash Magazine. His last job at Fusion was designing and writing for the year 2021 He Zzap!64. Keen, who had already been diagnosed with motor neuron disease, a dangerous condition that would take his life, imbued the editorial with his trademark wisdom and warmth.
And those two traits are perhaps the ones that describe him best. I was a Crash subscriber at the time, so reading the magazine made me feel like part of the family. Each issue began with Keane’s editorial, a combination of deep knowledge of the industry and a kind-hearted tone that categorically refuses to patronize its readers. Keen’s mission to write like young adults for teenage readers has led Crush and Zap!64 to create more lifestyle magazines than specialty magazines.
Six years ago, when I finally met Keane at a retrogaming event, I might have shed a tear by boring him and Frey. Not a chance. Like all fans eager to share their nostalgic memories with the guys who made them come true, Kean met me with a smile and enthusiasm. Those of us lucky enough to meet him will miss his words, his charm and his personality. Still, as with his great friend and fellow artist, at least he now knows how much we appreciate it.
