There are quite a few demos from covertapes I played as much as full games, to be honest... for example, World Class Rugby.
I've heard quite a few stories from the inside about the homebrew programmers being given a raw deal when it came to payment for their covertape efforts...
I may be mixing up my tapes/games a little but I remember when tapes had like two games on them only. Two classics coming up that I only discovered through covertapes.
CHAOS (backed with that decent Qix clone)
CYCLONE (backed with a dodgy type-in adventure... Portals of P'thaal or something)
Slightly related: Moley Xmas was great. A bite-sized, beatable platformer. Less of a slog than the full versions I guess.
Hey JC I still have a copy of the CRASH! tape with Egghead on it back in England :p
One of me fave freebies that was, my best bud from school at the time said it was sh*te, but that's cos' he couldn't do the first screen........gaylord! :lol:
I finished it, do I win a big gold and jewel encrusted sword? Or a grands worth of software from Boots or WHSmith (If not some of that there homebrew of yours will do, and I want the special reserve as well)? ;)
Very well done, I'm afraid I could only manage about 25 screens or so playing it through from the start. You're not the first to claim to have finished it though, that honour goes to Simon Owen who sent me proof by letter a few months after it was published. Curiously, in the same letter he also mentioned a POKE he'd discovered which meant he only had to press 'B' to access the built-in trainer. Naturally, his discovering the trainer and completing the game were two entirely unconnected events...
I personally loved the cover tape wars. My collection of games expanded tons during that period and some of those games were pretty good! I remember that my copy Batty didn't load so I missed out on that one until I found this site :(Play For Your Life was a very good game IMO and I playe that loads. I also loved Bear a Grudge and there were a couple of boxing gmaes that, again, I loved (Out For The Count I think one was called)
Some of the demo's were fantastic too. I loved the Ikai Warriors one and played that to death (I never managed to get a copy of the full game back then). The Bubble Bobble demo was also well played. I even knew how to activate all it's secrets (fill the first room full of diamonds etc), but again, I never managed to get a copy of the full game :(
I never really knew how many people really didn't like it until a while back, I couldn't understand the hatred for it. OK it's not amazing, but I thought it was a pretty good game. I played it loads back when I was a kid. I used to like almost completely ignoring the ball/s and trying to either beat the other guy to death with my bat, or knock the scenery into him instead. There were a few instances where I purposely managed to win by scoring goals, but it wasn't exactly easy to do that on purpose every time.
I did revisit this game a few years ago, the speed seems to have suffered over time somewhat, and it seems to be even easier than I remembered it, I played for what seemed like hours, and it never ended, and there seemed to be no signs of me losing anytime soon so I switched it off.
Hehe...I really liked Action Farce 2! But then I probably spent more time playing it than most, as it was only the 4th Covertape I ever had, and so probably about the 10th game I played on the Speccy, not including the lightgun games...:D
I certainly enjoyed it - a reasonable, mature way to look to a phenomenon that made up for some debate at the time (I guess, since I did not know anyone other than me who bought British Spectrum magazines), but on the whole had a positive impact and made us enjoy our beloved machines a little more.
(By the way, my favorite covertape was the December 1988 SU Megatape, with the three Magic Knight games on it! Countless afternoons spent playing them.)
What a great article. I had completely forgotten about Road Race. What's amazing is that when I was playing Road Race my cousins were very annoying yound lads of about 4 and 6 years old!!! In July of this year I was stood in a field watching them play at a Festival in the Long Mynd!!! How time flies :-)
Thanks for that article, very entertaining. It brought back a lot of memories of getting YS from my local newsagents and running home to play the latest covertape. Among my favorites was Rebel, The famous five, Total Eclipse, Movie, Dustin and Southern Belle.
Towards the end, the YS tapes weren't as good, they were sometimes filled with PD demos and perhaps an ancient game but more often or not there would be the odd gem to be found.
I can remember collecting all the cover tapes like many others and didnt care about how good or bad the games was. It was more to boast on the play yard that i had the mag and the tape.
You always got the snotty kids though who subbed to the mag so they got it early.
What an excellent non-bias look at the covertapes. Makes me want to get as many as I can, just for the playabe demos.
I used to use YS to predict what Amstrad Action put on the covertapes, but the thing is, YS got better stuff than AA tapes - one issue for instance, had Forbidden Planet and a demo of Addams Family which was 128k only. But the next issue made up for it with a Lemmings demo along with Dragontorg plus a PD Desktop publishing program which had to be transfered to disc.
When crash was on its last legs or so to speak. The covertapes where a massive selling point for them. They needed to get the costs down as much as physically possible. Every 1 min of duplication tape ran the bill up.
Hence I got tasked with compressing all the tapes, removing the loading screens. Turboloading them thats how tight Crash got with its cover tapes.
Su then asked for a password, sorry my fault each month on them as the star game call our premium rate number to play the game. Made them a chunk of money.
Most games didnt have the original loaders or saving schemes for them. So I was getting sent su`s cover tape to do and also Crashes cover tape to do, to master each month. This was via Duplidata in Corby for both mags. This is a 48k program load in 48k mode etc. Or I had to recreate firebird mastering programs beep beep. Alcatraz savers, as in Most cases the original masters had gone as it was year or more since they had come out.
Theo devil used to get paid a massive ?100 quid per game for Su, Sometimes a whole ?200. I got paid a whopping ?100 for Pokemania and ?100 for doing all the tapes per mag of duplication. All done about 1 month in advance of each issue.
Amstrad Action was like that. Originally, they used the CPC's block loader so they could be tranfered to disc but when they reached the Action Packs (from issue 67), they got some bloke to write a turbo loader with menu. There were no loading screens on these either except for Lemmings and Famous Five which were their own original loaders.
Good job I didn't have a Speccy at the time - if I got a magazine which needed a call to a premium rate number to play a gaem on the tape, my mother would have made a series of very angry phone calls to the SU office - she made one when Amstrad Action put on How to Be a Complete ******* on the tape and then she binned it (the rest of the tape was crap (Predator 2 demo and Biggles) so no big loss there then).
Looking at YS, I did wonder why they didn't offer a disc to those who sent off for it. But I theorised that a disc option might not be possible.
Comments
Also, how many people had to make do WITH the demos over the full games?
I've heard quite a few stories from the inside about the homebrew programmers being given a raw deal when it came to payment for their covertape efforts...
CHAOS (backed with that decent Qix clone)
CYCLONE (backed with a dodgy type-in adventure... Portals of P'thaal or something)
Slightly related: Moley Xmas was great. A bite-sized, beatable platformer. Less of a slog than the full versions I guess.
Why do I remember this?
Because I never bothered playing Zythum :smile:
oh! And Zolyx (the game I was thinking of) was apparantly backed by... The Gordello Incident.
What the hell is that?
Very well done, I'm afraid I could only manage about 25 screens or so playing it through from the start. You're not the first to claim to have finished it though, that honour goes to Simon Owen who sent me proof by letter a few months after it was published. Curiously, in the same letter he also mentioned a POKE he'd discovered which meant he only had to press 'B' to access the built-in trainer. Naturally, his discovering the trainer and completing the game were two entirely unconnected events...
Egghead Website
Arcade Game Designer
My itch.io page
Some of the demo's were fantastic too. I loved the Ikai Warriors one and played that to death (I never managed to get a copy of the full game back then). The Bubble Bobble demo was also well played. I even knew how to activate all it's secrets (fill the first room full of diamonds etc), but again, I never managed to get a copy of the full game :(
I never really knew how many people really didn't like it until a while back, I couldn't understand the hatred for it. OK it's not amazing, but I thought it was a pretty good game. I played it loads back when I was a kid. I used to like almost completely ignoring the ball/s and trying to either beat the other guy to death with my bat, or knock the scenery into him instead. There were a few instances where I purposely managed to win by scoring goals, but it wasn't exactly easy to do that on purpose every time.
I did revisit this game a few years ago, the speed seems to have suffered over time somewhat, and it seems to be even easier than I remembered it, I played for what seemed like hours, and it never ended, and there seemed to be no signs of me losing anytime soon so I switched it off.
For what came free, star raiders 2... ys gave it away, played it to death:)
Ikari warriors, another one here who played that over, and over:)
Cover tapes were great, and sony sold the playstation on me with that demo1 disc.
Part 3
Ooh, part 3! :smile:
I loved that game, used to play that tons way back when! :-)
Hope everyone enjoyed this.
(By the way, my favorite covertape was the December 1988 SU Megatape, with the three Magic Knight games on it! Countless afternoons spent playing them.)
Towards the end, the YS tapes weren't as good, they were sometimes filled with PD demos and perhaps an ancient game but more often or not there would be the odd gem to be found.
You always got the snotty kids though who subbed to the mag so they got it early.
Yes and now they're doing it with Retrogamer and boasting on Wos!
I used to use YS to predict what Amstrad Action put on the covertapes, but the thing is, YS got better stuff than AA tapes - one issue for instance, had Forbidden Planet and a demo of Addams Family which was 128k only. But the next issue made up for it with a Lemmings demo along with Dragontorg plus a PD Desktop publishing program which had to be transfered to disc.
Hence I got tasked with compressing all the tapes, removing the loading screens. Turboloading them thats how tight Crash got with its cover tapes.
Su then asked for a password, sorry my fault each month on them as the star game call our premium rate number to play the game. Made them a chunk of money.
Most games didnt have the original loaders or saving schemes for them. So I was getting sent su`s cover tape to do and also Crashes cover tape to do, to master each month. This was via Duplidata in Corby for both mags. This is a 48k program load in 48k mode etc. Or I had to recreate firebird mastering programs beep beep. Alcatraz savers, as in Most cases the original masters had gone as it was year or more since they had come out.
Theo devil used to get paid a massive ?100 quid per game for Su, Sometimes a whole ?200. I got paid a whopping ?100 for Pokemania and ?100 for doing all the tapes per mag of duplication. All done about 1 month in advance of each issue.
Good job I didn't have a Speccy at the time - if I got a magazine which needed a call to a premium rate number to play a gaem on the tape, my mother would have made a series of very angry phone calls to the SU office - she made one when Amstrad Action put on How to Be a Complete ******* on the tape and then she binned it (the rest of the tape was crap (Predator 2 demo and Biggles) so no big loss there then).
Looking at YS, I did wonder why they didn't offer a disc to those who sent off for it. But I theorised that a disc option might not be possible.