There actually was a game published which used the shove-this-into-the-speccy-it-makes-it-more-powerful gimmick which was Shadow of the Unicorn. I think it added 16K of RAM (perhaps more) with part of the game on the plug-in and the rest loaded from tape. Despite all this hardware crash-bang-wallop the game is a) rather crap and b) didn't really sell all that well, in fact I think the company went bust afterwards. That would seem to suggest that there wasn't much of a market for expensive peripheral-based games (that or there wasn't a market for boring Tolkienesque cargo cult with lots of locations).
Additionally, weren't Imagine all about hype and creating some sort of buzz? It's more than likely that the "Megagames" were expected to sell on the back of the THIS GAME WILL MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE IT'S SO AMAZING!! hyperbole of the adverts which were clearly aimed at the impressionable young (and not so young). Rise of the Robots still sold despite being an appalling game because of the hype Time Warner surrounded it with but it all but killled-off any franchise because when people got it home they found they'd been conned on just about every level. Chances are the megagames would have been an over-hyped disappointment (even if they were quite good they were never going to deliver on what Imagine would have ended up promising) and that would have stung gamers enough to kill-off the plug-in peripheral gaming idea.
Besides, who needed it when Head over Heels fitted into 48K?
What hapenned to that Bandersnatch add on? I wonder who's got the prototype?
Larry Landfill, I imagine.
I'm surprised if a prototype even got built. I can imagine further teaser-ads with a stylishly half-lit photo of some hulking black peripheral with one of the beardy-big-glasses '80s programmers lurking beside it and "It is this, the Imagine megagame plugin that will allow us to create THE MOST AMAZING GAME EXPERIENCE EVER!" written below it in bold white text only for a bit of investigation to reveal that the photographed thingy was nothing but a dummy made-up of old microdrives and broken kempston interfaces.
I guess a lot of the stuff shown (sp) in the 'docu' was PR shite and didn't really work as (N)intended! It probably was a mock up for the BBC - a Fuller box with twigs stuck on!
When I was round at Dentons, soon after the demise of Imagine - was there most week-ends (actually thursday night at the CAS - (*)Cassablanca Club, all the curry you could eat and a Duke Box full of soul toons!), I talked to the guy that was doing their Sage Dev kit and the guy doing Spy Hunter (Colin?) on the Speccy (whizzing his tit's off) and they didn't know of any super add on!
(*) The CAS (CAZ) was ace! Run by the black Liverpool community and just the bestest place to be - ever! In the summer the roof door (it was on 3 levels anyway - lever level was for eating curry) used to be opened and out on the...etc...we did go!
Steve Blower, the guy in charge of Ocean's artistic output was championing this, which I thought was odd at the time. Blower was working for Ocean and also did all the Imagine artwork and things got strange and ended up in court.
Google him.
I remember him, he's the one I had to see to get the copies of Wakelin's art work for Wizball, Gryzor and Vindicator so I could do my loading screens. (These were the art without any text on them and the sources for the scans I put on WOS, cos I kept them, obviously)
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Additionally, weren't Imagine all about hype and creating some sort of buzz? It's more than likely that the "Megagames" were expected to sell on the back of the THIS GAME WILL MAKE YOUR HEAD EXPLODE IT'S SO AMAZING!! hyperbole of the adverts which were clearly aimed at the impressionable young (and not so young). Rise of the Robots still sold despite being an appalling game because of the hype Time Warner surrounded it with but it all but killled-off any franchise because when people got it home they found they'd been conned on just about every level. Chances are the megagames would have been an over-hyped disappointment (even if they were quite good they were never going to deliver on what Imagine would have ended up promising) and that would have stung gamers enough to kill-off the plug-in peripheral gaming idea.
Besides, who needed it when Head over Heels fitted into 48K?
Larry Landfill, I imagine.
I'm surprised if a prototype even got built. I can imagine further teaser-ads with a stylishly half-lit photo of some hulking black peripheral with one of the beardy-big-glasses '80s programmers lurking beside it and "It is this, the Imagine megagame plugin that will allow us to create THE MOST AMAZING GAME EXPERIENCE EVER!" written below it in bold white text only for a bit of investigation to reveal that the photographed thingy was nothing but a dummy made-up of old microdrives and broken kempston interfaces.
When I was round at Dentons, soon after the demise of Imagine - was there most week-ends (actually thursday night at the CAS - (*)Cassablanca Club, all the curry you could eat and a Duke Box full of soul toons!), I talked to the guy that was doing their Sage Dev kit and the guy doing Spy Hunter (Colin?) on the Speccy (whizzing his tit's off) and they didn't know of any super add on!
(*) The CAS (CAZ) was ace! Run by the black Liverpool community and just the bestest place to be - ever! In the summer the roof door (it was on 3 levels anyway - lever level was for eating curry) used to be opened and out on the...etc...we did go!
Big Dentons/Odin/Thor/me slot of the week!
I remember him, he's the one I had to see to get the copies of Wakelin's art work for Wizball, Gryzor and Vindicator so I could do my loading screens. (These were the art without any text on them and the sources for the scans I put on WOS, cos I kept them, obviously)
Ex-Ocean Software graphic artist -
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