Outlandish claims on Spectrum games adverts!

Mark R. Jones · February 2009

I was flicking through The 'CRASH' Xmas special today (yes, I was on the loo at the time) from 1984/85 and it made me giggle some of the claims software companies put on their adverts, that blatantly weren't true, in order to get us to buy their games. For instance:

BOULDERDASH (FRONT RUNNER): Yeah, it is a great game but the advert claims, in an ad that specifically was made for the Spectrum:

"Superb scrolling routine, described by experts as one of the best pieces of Spectrum programming ever!"

What? I would have said the scrolling was the worst part. You can go off the side of the screen and you have to wait for the scrolling to catch you up! And it's not exactly smooth scrolling!

GIFT FROM THE GODS (OCEAN): The ad says "Number 1 blockbuster from the MEGA TEAM"

Where was this EVER a number one? Blockbuster? Mmmmm. It also claims:

"INTELLIGENT controls allow Orestes to perform an astonishing repertoire of feats from the command of joystick or keyboard"

Mmmm, yeah, up, down, left and right you mean? How is this different to any other game? What a load of tosh!

PROJECT FUTURE (MICROMANIA):
"256 screens of the most amazing high resolution graphics ever seen on the Spectrum."

Ay? When was this game ever applauded as having the best ever Speccy graphics (up to that time). It was never!

BRISTLES (STATE SOFT):
"outrageous graphics, full animated characters.....beautiful graphics"

I had never seen this game. I was wondering why, if the graphics were as good as the advert said, why wasn't there any screen shots on the ad itself? So I fired it up on an emualtor............Gulp! Need I say more?

In the same issue, on page 56, there's a hilarious interview with ROMIK. In it their publicity manager, Mike Anderiesz, goes on about how their claims will be 'less-ferocious' then goes on about how ROMIK are ready to implement the '4th generation' of computer games. The 1st being 'PacMan' style games, the 2nd, games like 'Time Gate' and 3rd being games like 'Manic Miner'. He says:

"Romik intend to be the first company to bring out 4th generation games, and these will be a considerable extension.....Now that time has come. I'm convinced it was well worth waiting for."

What a pile of cack. What did ROMIK bring out the could even have been close to what he was blabbering on about? The whole interview is a contradiction of his statement that their claims to the press will be 'less-ferocious'.

Anyway, can anyone come up with any more hilarious claims that the software companies tried to fool us with?

The Starglider · February 2009

Mark R Jones wrote: »

PROJECT FUTURE (MICROMANIA):
"256 screens of the most amazing high resolution graphics ever seen on the Spectrum."

Ay? When was this game ever applauded as having the best ever Speccy graphics (up to that time). It was never!

Hey! I loved that game, I thought it looked utterly fantastic when I first played it!

ADJB · February 2009

The Imagine "megagames" adverts must come high on the BS list.

Collie · February 2009

Not entirely on the same track, but when it comes to outlandish claims, usually anything said by those not at all biased Darling brothers on the cassette inlays of their Codemasters games. How many Grannies did those chaps fool with their claims when it came to buying the grandchildren a new game for Christmas? Poor little Tommy gets another duffer of a game, many tears are shed, Grandma is stabbed in the eye with a fork, Star Wars isn't on the TV, Christmas is ruined. Bloody Darlings.

def chris · February 2009

first of all LOL, I was chuckling to myself just reading that post.

secondly...

Mark R Jones wrote: »

GIFT FROM THE GODS (OCEAN): The ad says "Number 1 blockbuster from the MEGA TEAM"

Where was this EVER a number one? Blockbuster? Mmmmm.

me and my mate used to get at something similar to this but not exactly the same - it would be about 'quotes' from mag reviews that would be printed on the front covers of games, i.e. "...game of the year..." (CRASH! Magazine) - in which the use of "..." could have been crucial, for example the review could have been "This is undoubtedly the worst game of the year so far.". I'm sure there were many examples of that happening, if not quite as blatant.

Dave_C · February 2009

ZOIDS advert: "Blahblahblah.... GAME ...blaah."

Game?! What f*cking game? :???:

dm_boozefreek · February 2009

def chris wrote: »

first of all LOL, I was chuckling to myself just reading that post.

secondly...

me and my mate used to get at something similar to this but not exactly the same - it would be about 'quotes' from mag reviews that would be printed on the front covers of games, i.e. "...game of the year..." (CRASH! Magazine) - in which the use of "..." could have been crucial, for example the review could have been "This is undoubtedly the worst game of the year so far.". I'm sure there were many examples of that happening, if not quite as blatant.

Classic example of this :lol:

Mutant Fortress a.k.a Mutants stole my truck.

"........The biggest and best thing Players have ever done, apparently. Looking at the screenshots we almost feel inclined to agree"

The amusing thing is this is a genuine SU quote, but it was actually printed from the preview, the review of the game said something quite different.

So how many games did this and gave the Speccy mags a bad name :lol:

MrCheese · February 2009

I liked Boulder Dash on the spectrum and thought the ability to go off screen was fantastic - it added atmosphere. Once you knew routes you could really charge ahead and improve your times.

Rainbird Rich · February 2009

Dave_C wrote: »

ZOIDS advert: "Blahblahblah.... GAME ...blaah."

Game?! What f*cking game? :???:

I recently played Zoids on the Spectrum again for the first time in about 20 years. It's not as good as the C64 version, but I didn't find it anywhere near as bad as some people would have me believe either.

Perseverence and a bit of patience in regards to what you have to do to make progress in the game is the key.

psj3809 · February 2009

Might not be too bad a game but i dont think it was worthy of a Crash Smash. Played it a few times and never got into it, so glad i didnt buy it full price back in the day because of the Crash review.

Didnt seem the worst game ever but no way a crash smash

Dave_C · February 2009

Rainbird Rich wrote: »

I recently played Zoids on the Spectrum again for the first time in about 20 years. It's not as good as the C64 version, but I didn't find it anywhere near as bad as some people would have me believe either.

Yeah? And you not having payed £8 for it probably helps too. ;)

Zoffy · February 2009

"State-of -the-art graphics take you on the adventure of a lifetime"

Yup.

j00ce · February 2009

Dave_C wrote: »

Yeah? And you not having payed ?8 for it probably helps too. ;)

Heh :)

Zoids is great, though it does seem to be more prone to crashing under emulators than on The Real Thing. There's something about giant mecha and 1980's military-wireframe graphics that makes me feel all warm inside.

That, plus you get to lob nukes at things :D

I spent a fair bit of time replaying it recently so I could review it for my website, and it's probably best described as a stealth game: being detected generally leads to a large, radioactive puddle of molten metal where your zoid used to be. An important point is that cities can't produce new Zoids if you take out the Zoidar mine[*]: if you target this first, then it's possible to create gaps in the patrols (via the aforementioned nukes) and make life a lot easier for yourself.

S'far from perfect: it's far too easy to get overwhelmed by incoming missile fire, and the HUD is prone to getting out of sync (what you click on may not be there). It's an interesting experiment however and it would have been nice to see how it would have looked on a more powerful platform (e.g. the 128k Spectrum, or even the Amiga).

Back to the thread's main topic, and Kokotoni Wilf was guilty of a fair amount of hyperbole in it's efforts to dethrone JSW:

Kokotoni Wilf [...] is to steal the title of 'best arcade adventure game bar none' from Jet Set Willy [...] each of the game's 60 plus screens is genuinely high resolution, as opposed to pseudo hi-res [...] the characters are of cartoon quality and exhibit their own personalities.

I mean: the ZX Spectrum has a fixed resolution - I suppose you could argue the toss about the use of character-based graphics, but even then, this affects movement fidelity much more than graphical resolution. As for the personalities of the characters...
:-P

[*] Well, they can, but at a much slower rate!

Mark R. Jones · February 2009

Zoffy wrote: »

"State-of -the-art graphics take you on the adventure of a lifetime"

Yup.

Haha! Very good! :)

def chris · February 2009

^ to be honest, the term "state-of-the-art" does actually apply to that type of graphics. in 1987 or whenever that was released, that actually was 'state-of-the-art'. its only now we can laugh at that sort of thing. 'Hindsight Is Always 20/20', as they say, etc...

The Starglider · February 2009

def chris wrote: »

^ to be honest, the term "state-of-the-art" does actually apply to that type of graphics. in 1987 or whenever that was released, that actually was 'state-of-the-art'. its only now we can laugh at that sort of thing. 'Hindsight Is Always 20/20', as they say, etc...

Not when you consider that in the same year, you had games like Cybernoid out, which let's be honest, looked waaaaaay better!

Jumping Stack · February 2009

The Starglider wrote: »

Not when you consider that in the same year, you had games like Cybernoid out, which let's be honest, looked waaaaaay better!

Yeah, I hope the guy who did those Vindicator graphics was strung up. I hope he never got to represent Ocean again in any forum...

def chris · February 2009

The Starglider wrote: »

Not when you consider that in the same year, you had games like Cybernoid out, which let's be honest, looked waaaaaay better!

ah okay maybe im wrong then, lol. I dont know either game tbh

Zoffy · February 2009

Heh, I was only teasing! Never played Vindicator so maybe the graphics look better in motion.

I thought The Great Space Race would be a shoe-in for this thread, but the adverts only text is the game title ;)

ASH-II · February 2009

SCHIZOIDS: NOT JUST A GAME, BUT A STATE OF MIND.
SCHIZOIDS features real-time animated 3D graphics for a breathtaking visual experience,:cry:

C&VG Issue 17 P47

I bought this........:-(

ASH-II

Mark R. Jones · February 2009

Zoffy wrote: »

Heh, I was only teasing! Never played Vindicator so maybe the graphics look better in motion.

Ha, no its ok I agree with you. I didn't even realize they'd put that on the advert till you pointed it out!

deadpan666 · February 2009

ASH-II wrote: »

SCHIZOIDS: NOT JUST A GAME, BUT A STATE OF MIND.
SCHIZOIDS features real-time animated 3D graphics for a breathtaking visual experience,:cry:

C&VG Issue 17 P47

I bought this........:-(

ASH-II

Yes..but have you played it in the right state of mind, mahn!?!?!?

ASH-II · February 2009

deadpan666 wrote: »

Yes..but have you played it in the right state of mind, mahn!?!?!?

If state of mind is utter disappointment and the loss of £5.99 on a game that just involved shunting flickery graphics into a central flickery anus then
YEH MAHN FAR OUT.....Sigh. :(:(:(

zx1 · February 2009

Didn't Clive Sinclair claim at one time that a 48k spectrum could run a power station or something?? That is just way to silly!

chop983 · February 2009

zx1 wrote: »

Didn't Clive Sinclair claim at one time that a 48k spectrum could run a power station or something?? That is just way to silly!

No he didn't he said a zx81 could and it's not silly at all, that's like saying Yoda can't lift an X-Wing because it's 25 times bigger than him.

rich_chandler · February 2009

chop983 wrote: »

No he didn't he said a zx81 could and it's not silly at all, that's like saying Yoda can't lift an X-Wing because it's 25 times bigger than him.

He needs CGI to do it though...

Matt_B · February 2009

Mark R Jones wrote: »

GIFT FROM THE GODS (OCEAN): The ad says "Number 1 blockbuster from the MEGA TEAM"

Where was this EVER a number one? Blockbuster? Mmmmm. It also claims:

I guess it could mean number one in the sense that it was their first game, although that's not much of a selling point.

"INTELLIGENT controls allow Orestes to perform an astonishing repertoire of feats from the command of joystick or keyboard"

Mmmm, yeah, up, down, left and right you mean? How is this different to any other game? What a load of tosh!

Actually you can do quite a lot of things with just the basic controls such as picking up and dropping objects, doing a few swordfighting moves, going through doors, etc.

The problem with the game is that 99% of the time all you're doing is wandering around through an enormous and convoluted maze using the very basic movements that you describe.

The Starglider · February 2009

karingal wrote: »

He needs CGI to do it though...

[pedant mode]
I think you'll find that no CGI was used in the movement of the X-Wing from the swamp!
[/pedant mode]

rich_chandler · February 2009

The Starglider wrote: »

[pedant mode]
I think you'll find that no CGI was used in the movement of the X-Wing from the swamp!
[/pedant mode]

I'm not so sad as to know something like that...

chop983 · February 2009

karingal wrote: »

I'm not so sad as to know something like that...

You mean not cool enough. :p

rich_chandler · February 2009

chop983 wrote: »

You mean not cool enough. :p

LOL, no I meant what I said...

Outlandish claims on Spectrum games adverts!

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