What are your memories of the almighty Mastertronic? Any particular highlights or lowlights? Did you ever play any of these Arcadia titles? Have a shout in the comments, and thanks for watching!
Thanks for the shout-out! Mastervision has been an absolute nightmare to track down and collect - we know there are at least 60 in the range but identifying the last 40 has been tough. It's costing me a small fortune now to get them! The common tapes haven't been too bad, but I've spent as much as £90 on the rarer ones! Mastersound is just as bad. We know there were only 9 titles, but we don't know how many made it to vinyl. I've only got one of each but I've not even seen a photo of any other vinyl releases apart from Heat Of Soul. At least I've seen about 5 cassettes! Great video though - really enjoyed it!
Love your stuff Kim been watching since the mega weeviews. I got a c64 late (1993) when loading the tapes was half the experience and in most cases you spent more time loading the game as opposed actually playing it. Your vids on Ocean, Imagine, Ultimate etc. provide valuable insight into an era very close to my heart and one that is rarely covered on this American centric platform.
Thank you for such an in depth (and factually correct) piece on this obscure and unloved system. I've researched the Arcadia (EC MGX) since 2017 and it's great to see someone else has also done their homework on what must be a super niche hardware. I always find that the best stories come from failed systems and their games (Konix?). Another obscure system is the PC based Rasterspeed hardware, responsible for arcade versions of Rise of the Robots amd Zool. So much cool and interesting history exists for this system and the development behind it...
Loved mastertronic games for my c64. Had Kikstart 1&2, F1 simulator and Munch Mania just to name a few off the top of my head. I got a new game pretty much every week as at the time my Mum was working in a shop that sold them.
To Cut a LONG story short I got ripped by OFF by FireFird (Originally meant to be called Firefly) as a 15-year-old kid with a game called One man and his Dog !! (they changed the dog to a robot and called it ONE MAN AND HIS DROID !!
Been a fan for several years, but wanted to finally comment on how much I enjoy your excellent content and fantastic production values. Your videos are always well done and incredibly informative. Keep up the good work. All the best.
Mastertronic were “spectrum games at end of aisle in tesco” for me. As such were basically cheap present fodder. If I had to choose a game for friends birthday, mum would take me to shopping at get me to pick out a good game, make me think it was for me (so i didn’t pick out a crap one for my cousin, etc), then she’d put it in cart, and wrap as a present… I fell for it each time… thinking “today really is the day I’d get a game as reward for going shopping with my mum).
For me they were at a local market stall on a Saturday alongside the Kixx and Codemasters games. It was so exciting having 2 or 3 quid in my Flintstones jeans pockets (in payment for cleaning the bathroom) and heading down there to see what to buy. Happy memories.
I loved Mastertronic games on my Amstrad. Kane, Knight Tyme, Werewolves of London, Spellbound, Colony, Feud...... So many good titles for less than £2!
This'll be a fun watch! I work for Fireshine Games, which used to be Sold Out, which used to be Mastertronic 2.0, so it's nice to study up on the company deep lore - nice one Kim!
I had a Commodore 16 (yes i was poor) and ALL the best games available for it were from Mastertronic: Fingers Malone, Kickstart, Kane, Powerball, One man and his droid, P.O.D. Video Meanies, Prospector pete and my favourite, Bandits at zero. I made the mistake of buying Ghosts and Goblins by Elite Games and it was a complete waste of £10. To this day it's still the worst buyers remorse I've ever had... seriously, take a look, it's dreadful
Looking forward to spending my Friday evening watching this with a couple of drinks. I bought quite a few Mastertronic games back in the day, some of them were OK (such as Chiller, Kobayashi Naru, Rigels Revenge), but most of them were terrible (Cage Match, LA Swat, Ninja). What amazes me is I often bought them based on the box and was always optimistic they were going to be great. Oh the Naivety of youth.
Awesome. I remember buying Booty along with Blue Max and Decathlon on my birthday in 1984. Not all of them were great but what a change from the quite frankly terrible Atari VCS game pricing. Spellbound, One Man and his Droid and Thrust were pretty good. But the real gem was Kikstart... awesome!
Kane and The Human Race were both quality titles and Shogun is one of my top 10 games on the c64 ever! Shogun was absolutely amazing. An open world game in which you could choose to be any of the 60 or so detailed characters. You start as a lord, samurai, priest, thief, lady or a lowly peasant and even Captain Blackthorne. There were a few unique characters like Toranaga, blackthorne and the Zen Master. You can recruit other characters to your side or just kill every single character in the game. Once killed, a character would reincarnate after a bit and could come back as a lord, peasant, thief or samurai. You might encounter a peasant you killed early in the game who has returned as a powerful samurai. There was ONE sword hidden on the map that made you OP and anyone could pick it up. if you didn't get to it first then you would literally have to track down the owner and kill them to retrieve it. You could send followers to assassinate your enemies. The map was gigantic. One game could take hours, days, or weeks. Once you recruited enough followers a timer would begin in which every character in the game became hostile to you. if you could survive the onslaught in time you become the Shogun and win the game. Other character could also get enough followers and win the game forcing you to drop what youre doing and either kill them or kill their followers. The replayability could not be matched as you could try winning the game with every character. A lord was easy as you started with 10 or so followers, money, fighting ability and influence....or a peasant where you start with nothing. The fact this was a budget title is mindblowing to me.
One of my favourite brands for micro games back then after codemasters. I think I used to get mine from my local spar and stars newsagents. I can remember my one store even having new copies on his shelves upto like 1995 😅 . I'd love that store display it looks so 80s 😍
Thought I'd seen everything there was to know about Mastertronic, seems every day is a school day! Thanks for producing another great slice of in-depth retrospective.
This kind of passionate, homegrown content is everything that TH-cam was intended for. As a massive fan of British cultural history in general, keep up the good work!
Oh wow.... can't wait to watch this. That's my viewing sorted for tonight 😊. Unfortunately, my first two Mastertronic games weren't good. I bought the very early games ... A dodgy Pacman clone Gnasher and a totally awful BASIC game BULLSEYE. Fortunately they redeemed themselves after Finders Keepers.
Let's face it, most of the 8bit home comp games from the 80s were about as ropey as Roland - regardless of price. I remember saving up a whopping £9.99 to buy Gazzas Superstar Soccer from some local independent....what a total pile of piss and lesson learnt. £1.99 - £2.99 shelves from then on 😁
I had a game very similar to Destructo for the Atari ST... I am desperately trying to remember what it was called... I know it was a Budget Title! I have very fond memories of Mastertronic... Of course I fell head over heels for teh Magic Knight Games... And spent many hours trying to beat Nonterraqeous... That game had me Enthralled as I could make some progress, but there was one section that always got the better of me and I have never found the solution... (Maybe someone here has the answer, You are introduced to using a Bomb to blow open Force Fields... The first one was Easy, but later you come across a second... Only there is a Platform between you and the floor right next to teh force field! ... Drop the Bomb, You die! But you have to drop the bomb next to the Force Field to blow it open... ) Its hard to think what games I loved of theirs as there were so many, and my main memories are the Magic Knight Series!
Had many a mastertronic and code masters budget game from WH Smith or John Menzies in the 80's. Most of my favourite games were budget titles. Almost every full price game i bought was a dissapointment.
At this point I can literally put these on in the background, like good music... sometimes on loop. Idk what it is but there is just something very calming about these vids. Kim's delivery and level of knowledge, passion for the subject matter is unmatched. Excellent work as always. Got to get you past the 100k subs mark!
Mastertronic is why we never bothered with cartridge-based consoles. Well, the prices in general. Even the expensive micro titles were a third of the price. That gawd for that. It's no surprise that we never had a games 'crash' over in the UK, or Europe, for that matter.
I remember 31:07 New York Warriors. Never known it was for Arcadia. I think it has been the best Run and Gun game for Amiga: lot of sprites, good original graphic and fun post-apocaliptic inspiration. I don't mind for the strafe. There have been only ikari warriors with the strafe in those years and graphic sucked. Guerrilla Wars and Super Contra didn't have yet..while Mercs that became the standard was out just in the same year
My memories as a buyer for a local software shop in Virginia at the time was excitement at what looked like a company committed to actual Amiga games rather than the usual ST ports coming from the UK. I didn’t know anything about the arcade ambitions and of course the final product was an ST-port from the Bitmap Brothers and a bunch of lame games that indicated the developers just didn’t “get” Amiga hardware. That awful Defender-like paled in comparison to its Datastorm contemporary and with great shooters like Hybris it made no sense with the lack of overscan and blitter effects the Arcadia titles arrived in such shoddy condition. NY Warriors was the only one I liked but your calling of the lack of strafing matches my main complaint. The 3-pack (Aaargh, Sidewinder and Xenon if I remember correctly) sold well but I was extremely let down by the line.
I never played these games back in the day, my buddy was the one who gave me games. I have recently been playing classic computers via emulation. This was a great video!
Speaking as a Commodore Plus/4 owner “back in the day” I’d have been screwed without Mastertronic as hardly anyone else published games for it or the C16
I always loved Chiller but had the agonising trial of it failing to load on my C64 about 90% of the time. Out came my little screwdriver (ooer) gave it a twiddle wait 5 minutes for the autostop to kick in, stare at a blank screen, let out a strangled, frustrated gurlgle and try again. The highs and the lows of C64 ownership when being a sprog.
Really interesting video Kim, I heard someone had made an arcade version of the Amiga, but I did not know the details. So this very much scratched an itch for me. I must admit I've been saving this video up, for a time when I could properly pay some attention to it, rather than just having it on in the background.
Blastaball really feels like something you'd see on a small Subspace Continuum server for some reason. Something you'd load into if you ever got tired of the Deathstar or Trench battle servers.
Aah, Mastertronic. As I had a Commodore Plus/4 as a kid, Mastertronic were my main source for games. It felt like they supported that platform more than anyone else.
Very true, I had a lowly C16 and there was nowhere near the choice that C64 and Spectrum owners had, but Mastertronic actually produced some pretty decent stuff. Kickstart and a skiing game that I can't remember the name of were the favourites in our house.
Using a amgia in a arcade machine has been revisited in the last few years. The 8-bit guy made a one off arcade cabinet of his game "Attack of the Petscii Robots", using the Amiga version of the game in it.
From the mid 90s to the early 2000s we would stay for a week during summer at a relative's caravan on a private caravan park just outside Mold. The nearest pub was the Crown Inn in the village of Pantymwyn, and we went there every night we were at the caravan - there was a playground next to the pub, but the pub itself also had a pool table, jukebox and dartboard. It also had an Arcadia machine at one point, I remember playing _Xenon_ on it. I wasn't any good at it though. Sorry for the meandering to get to the point. 😅
Back in the day I picked up a couple budget c64 titles by MASTERTRONIC displayed on a wire rack. I don't recall off the top of my head what the games were so clearly not memorable
Great work, Kim. You must have done a lot of research of your own, as well as drawing very well on the Mastertronic website and you have clearly understood the way that Arcadia got into difficulties. Very enjoyable video.
Thing is, if Mastertronic had gotten smarter, they could've created game engines, where each title could simply swap out the artwork and create new titles, very quickly, cheaply and easily.... Psycho Fox, Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure, Decap Attack, anyone?
Thank you Kim. Really excellent dive into Mastertronic and a nice trip down memory lane. I was an early Spectrum gamer and it was always a mixed bag. Fued, Agent X, Chronos, Finders Keepers, Viper 3 and Jason’s Gem all highlights, but prior to screenshots you had to guess and I was unlucky enough to buy Alien Kill - taken in by the cover. (Clearly written in basic!) I was also gutted to by bought Election - another basic program about politics - just what every 9 year old kid needed! 😂
Before I watch this lets just say, I was a kid in Preston in the 1980s in Lancashire and some of the cheapo Mastertronic £1.99 / £2.99 games were better than some of the full price £10.00. ones for the Commodore 64. All the Mastertronic founders have sadly died now the last one 9 years ago, damn life is short.
46:43 "This absolutely wretched title" 😂😂😂 have to say fantastic video loved every minute you've put so much work/research into this... and I've now rediscovered Caves Of Doom - forgot about this game 😮 will play this on the Speccy Next the weekend.
I played a £1.99 Mastertronic (I think) C64 game. You had to shoot a elephant-like creature with a cross-hair. Music was "Hall of the Mountain Grill" and of course it got faster. Anyone remember the name of this game?
I knew Richard Aplin in Bristol. I lent him my copy of 'Kernel and Hardware Revealed' (which I still have) when he was writing Invadaload. There were a few other demo/game coders around that time (late 80s) who went on to bigger and better things. Sidewinder (Amiga) was one of my favourites, I played that a lot, partly for the awesome David Whittaker soundtrack.
You covered the early days of budget gaming without mentioning Firebird? Happy memories of collecting the £1.99 games though. I quickly discovered that the second-hand shop in Sunderland, "Connie's" on Hylton road, a right grotty dump sold them used for 75p each or three(!) for two quid, so I ended up with quite the collection (it was only 5p for a Transfare bus ticket into town, that was supposed to be used to get a free follow-on bus to another area of town but of course we all used them illegally to get a free return home). Most of the games were sh*t but you still went back for more! I don't think my parents were best pleased though when they realised we were crossing a busy dual carriageway to get there mind...
I was in Mastertronic's target customer base... purchased some great games from the local newsagent for my Commodore 16. Notable mentions to Kikstart, BMX Racers, Video Meanies, Fingers Malone and the fantastic Mr Puniverse!
Great video, thoroughly researched and wonderfully produced. These retrospectives hold so much nostalgia, and it's always interesting to see the earliest incarnations of ideas which are still being used. Would Rocket League exist without Blastaball, or Thumper without Roadwars?! Thanks for another lovely piece of gaming history.
Loved this one! I had no idea that this company existed, I kind of remember the name somehow but... "Arcade" games with Amiga hardware?!!?! Eh eh... Thx Kim 👍
Great stuff as usual. As I had a Speccy back in the eighties/early nineties in Poland where there was no "normal" software market and the games we had were simply copied (and the businesses which traded in games would sell them by full cassettes containing as much as you could fill onto a tape) I have no asociations with the games being more or less expensive. For us the bigger the game was, the more expensive it was because multiload games occupied more space on the tape so for the same money you got fewer games. And the brand itself I found surprisingly forgettable. While I had seen the Mastertronic logo gazillion times I couldn't place it onto a single game. I could easily from the top of my head name at least one game from Psygnosis, Odin, Hewson, Imagine, Taito... Mastertronic? Nothing. Only after seeing the video I had some small revelations "boy, I know this one"...
Absolutely fantastic history lesson again. I was one of those kids that really got into mastertronic games in the speccy. Chiefly down to affording them at 11 yrs old pocket money. So you were bang on as to why the price point was £1.99. Made me chuckle when you said it. Nailed it.
Haha I had Melbourne Draw on my ZX81, Is that possible or was it my 48k speccy - I really can't remember - I did have a bizarre RTTY teletype amateur Radio program that my dad bought on the speccy - i bet it's pretty rare now
Another well produced video Kim. I bought so many Mastertronic games back in the day. One Man and his Droid was the first one back in 1986. My only criticism of this video is you didn’t do a chronological rundown of all Mastertronic games along with their cover art.
I loved Mastertronic and used to buy their games at R S McColl’s a Scottish chain, when CodeMasters was a budget label I used to go to John Menzies, I remember Bullfrog, M A D & Ricochet sub brands on Mastertronic’s stable
Thank you for another great video! Spectipede was my first ever game I played on the zx spectrum. The best mastertonic game for me is Rockman , I absolutely loved it!! The next game is locomotion, I played this alot but for some reason I'm absolutely useless at it now!! lol
Really enjoyed this video, Kim! Had a few of the Mastertronic Commodore 64 games as a kid growing up. Are you going to do a video going over each of the C64 games (or have you already)?
They produced Quest For The Holy Grail, arguably the worst commercially available text adventure of its time. Even by budget text adventure standards it was a rabid dog of a game, and this was during the Charles Sharp era. 😂
Giving how 90% of Amigia programmers were either inept or just lazy, how can anyone in their right mind think that the Arcadia System was going to be successful.. and whats really pathetic, is that the best Arcadia release was an ST port🥴
The take I see is that Amiga graphics were never going to beat dedicated arcade boards. Outrun with its dual 68000s. Atari’s 720° resolution. Most of all the speed. Mastertronic were filling a gap that others didn’t fill because it was a useless gap.
![[FULL] RETROSPECTIVE : Final Fantasy Tactics](/img/n.gif)
What are your memories of the almighty Mastertronic? Any particular highlights or lowlights? Did you ever play any of these Arcadia titles? Have a shout in the comments, and thanks for watching!
None. I'm a Yank.
I remember buying two games from them, and then swearing off paying for games.
Top or bottom?
Ooh, so many memories…Kane sticks out
Ghostbusters on the Spectrum. Their games were pretty much hit and miss from memory.
Thanks for the shout-out! Mastervision has been an absolute nightmare to track down and collect - we know there are at least 60 in the range but identifying the last 40 has been tough. It's costing me a small fortune now to get them! The common tapes haven't been too bad, but I've spent as much as £90 on the rarer ones!
Mastersound is just as bad. We know there were only 9 titles, but we don't know how many made it to vinyl. I've only got one of each but I've not even seen a photo of any other vinyl releases apart from Heat Of Soul. At least I've seen about 5 cassettes!
Great video though - really enjoyed it!
Love your stuff Kim been watching since the mega weeviews. I got a c64 late (1993) when loading the tapes was half the experience and in most cases you spent more time loading the game as opposed actually playing it. Your vids on Ocean, Imagine, Ultimate etc. provide valuable insight into an era very close to my heart and one that is rarely covered on this American centric platform.
Thank you for such an in depth (and factually correct) piece on this obscure and unloved system.
I've researched the Arcadia (EC MGX) since 2017 and it's great to see someone else has also done their homework on what must be a super niche hardware.
I always find that the best stories come from failed systems and their games (Konix?).
Another obscure system is the PC based Rasterspeed hardware, responsible for arcade versions of Rise of the Robots amd Zool.
So much cool and interesting history exists for this system and the development behind it...
Loved mastertronic games for my c64. Had Kikstart 1&2, F1 simulator and Munch Mania just to name a few off the top of my head. I got a new game pretty much every week as at the time my Mum was working in a shop that sold them.
Pharaoh's Match is a version of Shisen-Sho, a very addictive mahjong tile connecting game.
You're missing a big part of the history here - Sega Ozisoft which is deeply connected to Melbourne House and Megazone.
To Cut a LONG story short I got ripped by OFF by FireFird (Originally meant to be called Firefly) as a 15-year-old kid with a game called One man and his Dog !! (they changed the dog to a robot and called it ONE MAN AND HIS DROID !!
As an incredibly indecisive council estate kid, mastertronic are responsible for many hours of deliberation for me, i bloody loved them.
Been a fan for several years, but wanted to finally comment on how much I enjoy your excellent content and fantastic production values. Your videos are always well done and incredibly informative. Keep up the good work. All the best.
He is the best. Criminally underrated.
God I had 100s of games & just got rid of everything. What a waste 😢❤
Mastertronic were “spectrum games at end of aisle in tesco” for me. As such were basically cheap present fodder. If I had to choose a game for friends birthday, mum would take me to shopping at get me to pick out a good game, make me think it was for me (so i didn’t pick out a crap one for my cousin, etc), then she’d put it in cart, and wrap as a present… I fell for it each time… thinking “today really is the day I’d get a game as reward for going shopping with my mum).
Basically the gaming equivalent of Charlie Brown kicking the football.
For me they were at a local market stall on a Saturday alongside the Kixx and Codemasters games. It was so exciting having 2 or 3 quid in my Flintstones jeans pockets (in payment for cleaning the bathroom) and heading down there to see what to buy. Happy memories.
We called them "Master-Chronic", initially. Then relented, when we realized we could buy five Chronic games for the price of one full priced game.
The artwork of the games back then were like nothing else..... Absolutely loved them
I loved Mastertronic games on my Amstrad. Kane, Knight Tyme, Werewolves of London, Spellbound, Colony, Feud...... So many good titles for less than £2!
This'll be a fun watch! I work for Fireshine Games, which used to be Sold Out, which used to be Mastertronic 2.0, so it's nice to study up on the company deep lore - nice one Kim!
Hey Kim, this'll be my Friday evening's viewing sorted! Thank you for all you do. 😊
I had a Commodore 16 (yes i was poor) and ALL the best games available for it were from Mastertronic: Fingers Malone, Kickstart, Kane, Powerball, One man and his droid, P.O.D. Video Meanies, Prospector pete and my favourite, Bandits at zero.
I made the mistake of buying Ghosts and Goblins by Elite Games and it was a complete waste of £10. To this day it's still the worst buyers remorse I've ever had... seriously, take a look, it's dreadful
So happy another phenomenal documentary has been released. Still the best there is Kim!
Damn, i'm Dutch and would've loved buying cheap but great games at our local corner shop! But alas, no such concept existed in The Netherlands...
Could build up a good bundle of games... and have money left for comics/drinks/sweets. childhood in 80s :-)
Spot's Gameboy port has great music. It only plays when you don't touch anything, which makes it a really fun game to play.
Looking forward to spending my Friday evening watching this with a couple of drinks. I bought quite a few Mastertronic games back in the day, some of them were OK (such as Chiller, Kobayashi Naru, Rigels Revenge), but most of them were terrible (Cage Match, LA Swat, Ninja). What amazes me is I often bought them based on the box and was always optimistic they were going to be great. Oh the Naivety of youth.
I'll be joining you for a few drinks and watching this. I bought a lot of Mastertronic stuff for my BBC Master computer back in the 80s.
Awesome. I remember buying Booty along with Blue Max and Decathlon on my birthday in 1984. Not all of them were great but what a change from the quite frankly terrible Atari VCS game pricing.
Spellbound, One Man and his Droid and Thrust were pretty good. But the real gem was Kikstart... awesome!
Kane and The Human Race were both quality titles and Shogun is one of my top 10 games on the c64 ever! Shogun was absolutely amazing. An open world game in which you could choose to be any of the 60 or so detailed characters. You start as a lord, samurai, priest, thief, lady or a lowly peasant and even Captain Blackthorne. There were a few unique characters like Toranaga, blackthorne and the Zen Master. You can recruit other characters to your side or just kill every single character in the game. Once killed, a character would reincarnate after a bit and could come back as a lord, peasant, thief or samurai. You might encounter a peasant you killed early in the game who has returned as a powerful samurai. There was ONE sword hidden on the map that made you OP and anyone could pick it up. if you didn't get to it first then you would literally have to track down the owner and kill them to retrieve it. You could send followers to assassinate your enemies. The map was gigantic. One game could take hours, days, or weeks. Once you recruited enough followers a timer would begin in which every character in the game became hostile to you. if you could survive the onslaught in time you become the Shogun and win the game. Other character could also get enough followers and win the game forcing you to drop what youre doing and either kill them or kill their followers. The replayability could not be matched as you could try winning the game with every character. A lord was easy as you started with 10 or so followers, money, fighting ability and influence....or a peasant where you start with nothing. The fact this was a budget title is mindblowing to me.
One of my favourite brands for micro games back then after codemasters. I think I used to get mine from my local spar and stars newsagents. I can remember my one store even having new copies on his shelves upto like 1995 😅 . I'd love that store display it looks so 80s 😍
Liked , commented and will be watching in full later…thanks again Kim :)
Thought I'd seen everything there was to know about Mastertronic, seems every day is a school day! Thanks for producing another great slice of in-depth retrospective.
This kind of passionate, homegrown content is everything that TH-cam was intended for. As a massive fan of British cultural history in general, keep up the good work!
Couldn't agree more 💛 big up Kim and all quality creatives on this platform ✨️
Oh wow.... can't wait to watch this. That's my viewing sorted for tonight 😊.
Unfortunately, my first two Mastertronic games weren't good. I bought the very early games ... A dodgy Pacman clone Gnasher and a totally awful BASIC game BULLSEYE. Fortunately they redeemed themselves after Finders Keepers.
I loved their games and walking into a shop and seeing a new game. Was an awesome time
Let's face it, most of the 8bit home comp games from the 80s were about as ropey as Roland - regardless of price. I remember saving up a whopping £9.99 to buy Gazzas Superstar Soccer from some local independent....what a total pile of piss and lesson learnt. £1.99 - £2.99 shelves from then on 😁
I had a game very similar to Destructo for the Atari ST... I am desperately trying to remember what it was called... I know it was a Budget Title!
I have very fond memories of Mastertronic... Of course I fell head over heels for teh Magic Knight Games... And spent many hours trying to beat Nonterraqeous... That game had me Enthralled as I could make some progress, but there was one section that always got the better of me and I have never found the solution...
(Maybe someone here has the answer, You are introduced to using a Bomb to blow open Force Fields... The first one was Easy, but later you come across a second... Only there is a Platform between you and the floor right next to teh force field! ... Drop the Bomb, You die! But you have to drop the bomb next to the Force Field to blow it open... )
Its hard to think what games I loved of theirs as there were so many, and my main memories are the Magic Knight Series!
I remember Blasterball as Hyperbowl on the ZX Spectrum. Good times.
Had many a mastertronic and code masters budget game from WH Smith or John Menzies in the 80's. Most of my favourite games were budget titles. Almost every full price game i bought was a dissapointment.
At this point I can literally put these on in the background, like good music... sometimes on loop. Idk what it is but there is just something very calming about these vids. Kim's delivery and level of knowledge, passion for the subject matter is unmatched. Excellent work as always. Got to get you past the 100k subs mark!
Mastertronic is why we never bothered with cartridge-based consoles. Well, the prices in general. Even the expensive micro titles were a third of the price. That gawd for that. It's no surprise that we never had a games 'crash' over in the UK, or Europe, for that matter.
I remember 31:07 New York Warriors. Never known it was for Arcadia. I think it has been the best Run and Gun game for Amiga: lot of sprites, good original graphic and fun post-apocaliptic inspiration. I don't mind for the strafe. There have been only ikari warriors with the strafe in those years and graphic sucked. Guerrilla Wars and Super Contra didn't have yet..while Mercs that became the standard was out just in the same year
mastertronic made some good crap for the commie.
My memories as a buyer for a local software shop in Virginia at the time was excitement at what looked like a company committed to actual Amiga games rather than the usual ST ports coming from the UK. I didn’t know anything about the arcade ambitions and of course the final product was an ST-port from the Bitmap Brothers and a bunch of lame games that indicated the developers just didn’t “get” Amiga hardware. That awful Defender-like paled in comparison to its Datastorm contemporary and with great shooters like Hybris it made no sense with the lack of overscan and blitter effects the Arcadia titles arrived in such shoddy condition. NY Warriors was the only one I liked but your calling of the lack of strafing matches my main complaint. The 3-pack (Aaargh, Sidewinder and Xenon if I remember correctly) sold well but I was extremely let down by the line.
Glad you give some kudos to Caves of Doom. There's nothing to it really, and it kinda shouldn't work, but does.
I like the colorful image you conjured up at the end of details "crawling around in their archives," like some kind of malevolent vermin!
“Hi mum, I’m just going upstairs to play on my ariola “.. what were Sega thinking?
I can't get enough of your videos. The history is a little before me but very interesting none the less :)
I never played these games back in the day, my buddy was the one who gave me games. I have recently been playing classic computers via emulation. This was a great video!
Got 3 of these complete systems- all with the same set of 10 games...
Awfully reminds me of the playchoice 10 and super system in terms of what it sought out to do
We used to call them MasterChronic - but that being said, there were some classics too!
Speaking as a Commodore Plus/4 owner “back in the day” I’d have been screwed without Mastertronic as hardly anyone else published games for it or the C16
That is so true. I had one myself and without them I wouldn't have much of anything to play.
I have to confess to having a bizarre affection for Roadwars as well...
Thank you Kim 🙏 another well informed and presented video. 11/10
WOW WOW WOW bro... You make my day. Great video, fantastic stuff, incredible story. As always - thumbs up
I always loved Chiller but had the agonising trial of it failing to load on my C64 about 90% of the time. Out came my little screwdriver (ooer) gave it a twiddle wait 5 minutes for the autostop to kick in, stare at a blank screen, let out a strangled, frustrated gurlgle and try again. The highs and the lows of C64 ownership when being a sprog.
That James Bond bubblehead was zub
Really interesting video Kim, I heard someone had made an arcade version of the Amiga, but I did not know the details. So this very much scratched an itch for me. I must admit I've been saving this video up, for a time when I could properly pay some attention to it, rather than just having it on in the background.
Blastaball really feels like something you'd see on a small Subspace Continuum server for some reason. Something you'd load into if you ever got tired of the Deathstar or Trench battle servers.
Kim consistently gives us quality content. Thanks Kim
Meticulously researched, entertaining and we'll presented. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐.
Aah, Mastertronic. As I had a Commodore Plus/4 as a kid, Mastertronic were my main source for games. It felt like they supported that platform more than anyone else.
Very true, I had a lowly C16 and there was nowhere near the choice that C64 and Spectrum owners had, but Mastertronic actually produced some pretty decent stuff. Kickstart and a skiing game that I can't remember the name of were the favourites in our house.
Argggh….. take me back to simpler times!
of all the hardware to use for an arcade machine , an amiga is an utterly odd choice due its poor spritehandling abilities
Using a amgia in a arcade machine has been revisited in the last few years. The 8-bit guy made a one off arcade cabinet of his game "Attack of the Petscii Robots", using the Amiga version of the game in it.
Cheers for another top video Kim
From the mid 90s to the early 2000s we would stay for a week during summer at a relative's caravan on a private caravan park just outside Mold. The nearest pub was the Crown Inn in the village of Pantymwyn, and we went there every night we were at the caravan - there was a playground next to the pub, but the pub itself also had a pool table, jukebox and dartboard. It also had an Arcadia machine at one point, I remember playing _Xenon_ on it. I wasn't any good at it though. Sorry for the meandering to get to the point. 😅
omg yes finally someone covers this, thank you for this video!
KimJustice:
The only current TH-cam channel of the 21st century which doesn't have sponsored BS in it!
Thanks, Kim :)!
I'm so excited! I love these videos
Awesome as always, thanks Kim.
Back in the day I picked up a couple budget c64 titles by MASTERTRONIC displayed on a wire rack. I don't recall off the top of my head what the games were so clearly not memorable
SWAT and Ninja were 2 of my favourite games on C64. Still play them now.
Cheers Kim.
going to an arcade alone and settling for the video game version of air hockey because you don't have any friends is the saddest thing i can think of
I always read ZZap first then bought the Mastertronic games that had Rob Hubbard music. That guy is the GOAT.
My new favorite retrogame channel!
And like british accents.
Can't get enough of your stuff!
Great work, Kim. You must have done a lot of research of your own, as well as drawing very well on the Mastertronic website and you have clearly understood the way that Arcadia got into difficulties. Very enjoyable video.
Remember the knight series
Thing is, if Mastertronic had gotten smarter, they could've created game engines, where each title could simply swap out the artwork and create new titles, very quickly, cheaply and easily.... Psycho Fox, Magical Flying Hat Turbo Adventure, Decap Attack, anyone?
Thank you Kim. Really excellent dive into Mastertronic and a nice trip down memory lane. I was an early Spectrum gamer and it was always a mixed bag. Fued, Agent X, Chronos, Finders Keepers, Viper 3 and Jason’s Gem all highlights, but prior to screenshots you had to guess and I was unlucky enough to buy Alien Kill - taken in by the cover. (Clearly written in basic!) I was also gutted to by bought Election - another basic program about politics - just what every 9 year old kid needed! 😂
Before I watch this lets just say, I was a kid in Preston in the 1980s in Lancashire and some of the cheapo Mastertronic £1.99 / £2.99 games were better than some of the full price £10.00. ones for the Commodore 64. All the Mastertronic founders have sadly died now the last one 9 years ago, damn life is short.
46:43 "This absolutely wretched title" 😂😂😂 have to say fantastic video loved every minute you've put so much work/research into this... and I've now rediscovered Caves Of Doom - forgot about this game 😮 will play this on the Speccy Next the weekend.
I played a £1.99 Mastertronic (I think) C64 game. You had to shoot a elephant-like creature with a cross-hair. Music was "Hall of the Mountain Grill" and of course it got faster. Anyone remember the name of this game?
I remember my friend being sooo excited when his mum bought him Alcatraz Harry.
Until we loaded it!
I knew Richard Aplin in Bristol. I lent him my copy of 'Kernel and Hardware Revealed' (which I still have) when he was writing Invadaload.
There were a few other demo/game coders around that time (late 80s) who went on to bigger and better things.
Sidewinder (Amiga) was one of my favourites, I played that a lot, partly for the awesome David Whittaker soundtrack.
You covered the early days of budget gaming without mentioning Firebird?
Happy memories of collecting the £1.99 games though. I quickly discovered that the second-hand shop in Sunderland, "Connie's" on Hylton road, a right grotty dump sold them used for 75p each or three(!) for two quid, so I ended up with quite the collection (it was only 5p for a Transfare bus ticket into town, that was supposed to be used to get a free follow-on bus to another area of town but of course we all used them illegally to get a free return home). Most of the games were sh*t but you still went back for more!
I don't think my parents were best pleased though when they realised we were crossing a busy dual carriageway to get there mind...
I was in Mastertronic's target customer base... purchased some great games from the local newsagent for my Commodore 16. Notable mentions to Kikstart, BMX Racers, Video Meanies, Fingers Malone and the fantastic Mr Puniverse!
I can't quite figure out why but mastertronic are th most important publisher/dev in my life.
Anyway. Back to my hangover.
Oioofffft😊
Great video, thoroughly researched and wonderfully produced. These retrospectives hold so much nostalgia, and it's always interesting to see the earliest incarnations of ideas which are still being used. Would Rocket League exist without Blastaball, or Thumper without Roadwars?! Thanks for another lovely piece of gaming history.
We all love Kikstart
I still play today the 2nd version of BMX Racer
To me the first open world game was Action Biker (KP Skips and Clumsy Colin)
Loved this one! I had no idea that this company existed, I kind of remember the name somehow but... "Arcade" games with Amiga hardware?!!?! Eh eh... Thx Kim 👍
Great stuff as usual.
As I had a Speccy back in the eighties/early nineties in Poland where there was no "normal" software market and the games we had were simply copied (and the businesses which traded in games would sell them by full cassettes containing as much as you could fill onto a tape) I have no asociations with the games being more or less expensive. For us the bigger the game was, the more expensive it was because multiload games occupied more space on the tape so for the same money you got fewer games.
And the brand itself I found surprisingly forgettable. While I had seen the Mastertronic logo gazillion times I couldn't place it onto a single game. I could easily from the top of my head name at least one game from Psygnosis, Odin, Hewson, Imagine, Taito... Mastertronic? Nothing. Only after seeing the video I had some small revelations "boy, I know this one"...
Good lord, this brings back memories! I remember really liking Colony though I was struggling to remember what it was called. Also, Feud obviously:)
Absolutely fantastic history lesson again. I was one of those kids that really got into mastertronic games in the speccy. Chiefly down to affording them at 11 yrs old pocket money. So you were bang on as to why the price point was £1.99. Made me chuckle when you said it. Nailed it.
Haha I had Melbourne Draw on my ZX81, Is that possible or was it my 48k speccy - I really can't remember - I did have a bizarre RTTY teletype amateur Radio program that my dad bought on the speccy - i bet it's pretty rare now
Another well produced video Kim. I bought so many Mastertronic games back in the day. One Man and his Droid was the first one back in 1986. My only criticism of this video is you didn’t do a chronological rundown of all Mastertronic games along with their cover art.
Dragon vs Cyclops in Aaargh!... maybe they got inspiration from the 1958 movie "The 7th voyage of Sinbad"
I loved Mastertronic and used to buy their games at R S McColl’s a Scottish chain, when CodeMasters was a budget label I used to go to John Menzies, I remember Bullfrog, M A D & Ricochet sub brands on Mastertronic’s stable
Thank you for another great video!
Spectipede was my first ever game I played on the zx spectrum. The best mastertonic game for me is Rockman , I absolutely loved it!!
The next game is locomotion, I played this alot but for some reason I'm absolutely useless at it now!! lol
Really enjoyed this video, Kim! Had a few of the Mastertronic Commodore 64 games as a kid growing up. Are you going to do a video going over each of the C64 games (or have you already)?
They produced Quest For The Holy Grail, arguably the worst commercially available text adventure of its time. Even by budget text adventure standards it was a rabid dog of a game, and this was during the Charles Sharp era. 😂
Giving how 90% of Amigia programmers were either inept or just lazy, how can anyone in their right mind think that the Arcadia System was going to be successful.. and whats really pathetic, is that the best Arcadia release was an ST port🥴
The take I see is that Amiga graphics were never going to beat dedicated arcade boards. Outrun with its dual 68000s. Atari’s 720° resolution. Most of all the speed.
Mastertronic were filling a gap that others didn’t fill because it was a useless gap.