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What did you think of Alternative Software?

jdanddietjdanddiet
edited October 2011 in Games
The speccy software house that is, not games that were a bit, um, different.

I remember them for re-issues, starting off with Henry's Hoard and then Howzat and River Rescue before becoming more synonymous with cartoon licenses a la Hi-Tec.

They had a full price label apparently called "again again" and even got into a bit of a tiz with Bruce Everiss over codies "Inferior Alternatives" advert lol

Yet seems they were very successful and amazingly, still going strong today.
Post edited by jdanddiet on

Comments

  • mermanmerman
    edited October 2011
    Not a bad company, I did like some of their budget compilations (4 Most, 4 games for 4 quid). But in all honesty a lot of their original games were very derivative.
  • the_hawkthe_hawk
    edited October 2011
    From memory a lot of their original games were fairly cheap & nasty (BMX Ninja anyone?)

    I think I'm right in saying that a lot of the old Don Priestley games were re-released through Alternative so that's good.

    Then of course there are all the cartoon games towards the end of the Speccy's life, Count Duckula, Playdays, Postman Pat, Popeye that sort of thing.
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  • fogfog
    edited October 2011
    they had other companies also, errm "summit" and "winner" were another 2.. the again again thing , had a lot of screen 7 or something releases?

    bruce ex director of imagine ? given his track record he is hardly one to comment.

    code masters put out some utter crud as well. regardless of the biased "it's great" inlay notes by one of it's owners..lol

    I'd rather other companies / developers were around instead if I'm totally honest. e.g. sensi soft (who codies own) , ultimate , grafgold to name but 3.

    like all the budget houses they put out some decent things and some crud... they re-released skool daze 1 and 2 , sam cruise , wheelie, the don priestly stuff oh and pheenix :)
    I think the mantra with a lot of these companies was.... put out ONE decent version of a game, so C+VG etc will give it a big hit.. or in the playground everyone is talking about it.. and put "so so" versions out on other machines. kikstart 2 being an example.

    notice how some companies PURPOSELY avoided getting mag reviews.

    I do remember the alternative being at a commodore show when they'd just started
  • mermanmerman
    edited October 2011
    I don't know if the budget companies necessarily avoided sending out review copies (although that did seem to happen with Atlantis quite a bit)... it's more a case of the magazines decided to devote less space to budget reviews (causing quite a controversy in the letters pages of Crash and ZZAP! at the time), prompted at least in part because the budget companies did not take out much advertising.

    And as for conversions to other formats, it depended on who the company had available to do the converting. Codemasters for example seemed to have a lot of Spectrum coders at the top of their game, but less C64 experts (except Gavin Raeburn, who could churn out the titles).
  • zeropolis79zeropolis79
    edited October 2011
    To be quite honest, besides Dalek Attack, I never played an Alternative game..

    As for reviews - Amstrad Action reviewed Alternative games a lot.. One title even got a two page review (August 1992).
  • JuanF. RamirezJuanF. Ramirez
    edited October 2011
    I've not played many games (I'm referring to original Alt games, no re-releases), only Count Duckula (not bad) and an interesting one I found recently: Revolver, an isometric game in the far-west.

    Revolver.gif

    Having a search in infoseek I discovered a never-released game about two of my fave cartoon characters when I was a child: Pixie and Dixie... pity!
  • zx1zx1
    edited October 2011
    I've still got quite a lot of Alternative games, mostly reissues such as Back to school, the rocky horror show, turbo bike girl, game over 1&2 and the happiest days of your life. I even got a bundle of 20 games in 1994 for something like a tenner after i wrote to them asking if they had any spectrum tapes.
    I'm not sure if they're still around today, but i liked them.
    The trouble with tribbles is.......
  • jdanddietjdanddiet
    edited October 2011
    oh they are definitely still around
  • zx1zx1
    edited October 2011
    I didn't know that! One of the few software houses from the 8 bit era still around!
    Wonder if they still make Spectrum games?:smile:
    The trouble with tribbles is.......
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