Most of my favourite C64 games were £1.99 / £2.99 Codemasters or Mastertronic games from John Menzies or WH Smith. Speedking was a great racer, Paul Ricard track was my fav and the music was good too.
Another great video OSG. I remember some of these but my local Boots store didn't stock a big selection. Spent hours on Action Biker wondering how many things I needed to collect for the big race. Never got that far., though. Kane would be my favourite of this list.
The one Mastertronic game I can remember playing a lot in the late eighties was 'Street Surfer'. Bit of a road racer, just a skateboarder on the road trying to avoid getting hit by cars, hitting other occasional road hazards, collecting coke bottles offered by some drivers and depositing the empties at recycling spots as you went. No goal or finish line as far as I recall (or at least I never got that far). Bit like chase the dragon from the south park guitar hero episode, I found it soothing.
i used to be into trials bike riding, i was like 12 year old and had a Fantic 250 and a Bultaco 350, i actually went to Kickstart with my brother a few times ...but was never good enough to get on
As a kid I used to pop over to a local electronics store in the mid 80s every few weeks with £1.99 in copper (1p and 2p coins) and choose a budget game. I remember Ninja, kickstart and spellbound very well. i don't remember if these were mastertronic too, but my favourite budget games were magic carpet and chiller
old style gaming I think Paula on the Amiga was capable of greatness in the right hands (David Whittaker, Chris Huelsbeck, Tim Wright, etc.). But there was also so much garbage. The output on the SID was maybe more consistently excellent.
Some good choices there. Speed King was a re-release of an old Digital Integrations game though. One of my fave Mastertronic titles was The Captive, it was quite different for the time.
so much fun in a £1.99 cassette box. no dlc, season passes, micro-transactions or 2 day long downloads of updates 💖😊great times😊💖 lovely video - great selection of games. be firing up the C64 emulator later had a speccy growing up but as an adult I've been loving the huge selection of amazing c64 games i never played back in the day.
awesome vid OSG - during the 80's here in Australia you could get the budget games for between 6 to 10 aussie dollars back in the day on disk. probably the most expensive game i got was 'the untouchables' when that came out for 30 dollarydoos then
The good so called name games were around that mark I remember as well, alot chores I had to do get the original game, until we figured out..... well how to make "Backups"
@@oldstylegaming roughly back then $30 AUS would be around 12-14 Pounds, great when had family come over from England one year as bought over heap of C64 games.
Big Mac was amazing value for money, it was like Manic Miners little brother! :) Kickstart was very addictive. LMAO, you're right, Ninja's were sellers!! :D Finders Keepers was great back then, not today. Spellbound, the same. Another great video. Without Mastertronic, some of us would have had hardly any games. Nice one.
Fantastic. Kikstart was one of my faves, even with that flighty music. And Master of Magic ... still one of my all-time favourite 8-bit scores. A Hubbard masterpiece and a fun little fantasy game to boot. Ninja was fun enough (until The Last Ninja series arrived...)
Loved it, what a trip down memory lane, had a few of these games myself back in the day. Mastertronic were king of the budget games with Firebird coming in a close second IMO.
I had a negative impression of Mastertronic after seeing a 2-page ad in one of the magazines with a bunch of really primitive looking games. They had better games later, but that early ad forever colored my opinion of the company. Sport of Kings - Never had this, but the graphics look amazing for a C64 game. Not really something I was interested in, but I probably would have played it from time to time just for the graphics. 3D Pinball - I wish I'd had this back then, but I didn't learn about it until many years later.
Shaun Southern gets a lot of love from me from the quality games he wrote. Also, 8-bit Show and Tell just did a video recently about Ninja, and the "Minus World" in the game.
It's funny, back in my 64 days I drooled over all the offerings at the local computer shops, in the end though I'd grab a couple titles on the "budget" rack, many were in fact MASTERTRONIC😆 I'd also buy some blank discs I'd give a friend to load up with......er....copies of the popular stuff. Anyway, I arrived here on this video just now as I was trying desperately to recall the name of those budget titles and after some googling and searching budget titles I finally seen an image of that MASTERTRONIC logo and here I am. I can tell you though the brand was even a budget brand here in Canada !
so glad you mentioned panther as i had never heard of it and it looks and sounds great, from what i just saw there, so quick ebay and got it the original red case release for just over 3 quid nice one, gave you a sub too as this is a new channel im subbed on one of my others but not this channel
'Panther' is an incredible game indeed... I have played several iterations, and the soundtrack is fantastic, but the Atari 8 bit pokey machines in particular blasted it out.
Mastertronic was one of my favorite game companies for Commodore, and yet I didn't know most of those, and the ones I didn't know looked horrible. My favorites were Captain ZZap, Nonterraqueous, Knight Games, Double Dragon, Hunter Patrol, One Man and His Droid (which also had the best song ever), 1985, Kane, Ninja, and, my favorite C64 game, The Human Race.
Mastertronic games were my pocket money spend nearly every week £2.99 in my local toy shop. Very few bad games. Thanks for doing a video brought back great memories
There were LOTS of bad games, but I generally avoided ones like Bionic Granny, Mind Control, and Dark Star. LOL. Plus I often used to pirate games just to see if they were worth buying or not. So I generally knew which ones to avoid. In fact, the only game I actually bought and regretted said purchase was Bosconian '87. I learned my lesson from that purchase.
lol yeah well i have to use Window capture as a lot of games you get corrupt sid tunes if you directly record the emu i have found and then someone always wants to message or something lol
Panther has to be the only game where you're controlling a flying bathtub! Played so much Kikstart 2 with my best friend back in the day. I'd completely forgotten about Big Mac which I owned.
Great list m8, proper trip down memory lane that. Stand outs for me are Action Biker, Kikstart, Finders Keepers and Panther. Budget games were great! especially for a skint teenager like me, my wage was only about £50 PW so I had to be real careful when I bought a full price game. I didn't mind if I spent £1.99 on a turkey and there was plenty! apart from these diamonds in the rough :)
Had a few off this list back in the day. Speed King was great, as was Ninja but Kane (and Kane II imo) were on another level for the time and the price. Still play the 2 Kane games as they were so good.
hi from up the Road! Another cracking video mate, really look forward to these every week, the memories just come sweeping back. Don't know about you, but sometimes I used to buy these budget games just for the music alone from musicians such as Rob Hubbard, Jeroen Tel, David Whittaker, Chris Hulsbeck, Ben Dalglish, Martin Galway etc., as soon as you seen these names on the box it was like "must have" lol! And as a side note when you referenced Zzap! 64, my god, how good was that magazine with Julian Rignall and Gary Penn (wonder what they are doing now). I used to be a write for a much lesser known games mag (TV Gamer) and was always a bit jealous of their resources :) Keep the vids coming mate!!
on game that defo falls into the bought for the music is The Last V8 ...music class...graphics not to bad...controls...WTF lol. Wow you used to write for a gaming magazine thats great mate. Zzap was great but sometimes they got it very wrong
These games where (sometime) indeed worth the money just for the music alone. Especially those from Hubbard and Galway. Unfortunately Hulsbeck's imho best work is largely forgotten, it's the musuc game: To be on Top. Imho the best music he every did (well and of course rainbow Arts, not Mastertronic).
Kane! Couldn't remember what that was called and I'm dying to play it again. The city shootout is ace. Gonna go find that right now on my console. Cheers OSG.
Can't believe I haven't watched this one already!! Being a speccy owner back in the day that was where I saw most of these games but the games that came out on the speccy look so much better on the c64 and more like full price releases what with the music and graphics. Definitely worth checking some of these out that seemed pretty average on the Speccy.
The Mastertronic C64 game I remember the most is Phantom of the Asteroids. My mate would load it up just to listen to the music. Yup, it was Rob Hubbard!
Dear god man they was the days. Every saturday me an me mates would walk in to town with one goal 'games'. An if we didn't get the £9.99 full price game we would hit woolies (Woolworths) and hit the budget section and come home with 2 or 3 games :-). The good old days :-)
True just the anticipation of having the money to buy a game going to town or shopping center not knowing what you would find was part of the experience then imagining on the way home what this game is like reading every bit of text it had to offer examining every screenshot getting yourself so hyped. The world was fun back then now it's gone to crap with all this identity politics bullshit.
Ninja was actually the first game I bought when I got my 1541 back in the day. I remember buying that game, as well as the C64 conversion of Spy Hunter.
Of the Mastertronic games I have in box are: "Ninja" - As you said, not all that bad "Slam Dunk" - Can't remember much about it "Knight Games" - Pretty good and the music is great! "Megaplay Volume 1" featuring: Street Beat, Rapid Fire, Cage Match, Agent X II (LOVE the 1st level tune!), Pipeline II and Destructo Also, "Panther" is everything you said it was - I hum that tune to this day and I could have swore I had that boxed as well - I'll keep digging! Bonus: Virgin Mastertronic "Overlord" or as you may know as "Supremacy" boxed for C64 and Amiga and epic games!
@@jackburton8352 North Americans mostly had their games on disk, since most of us did have 1541s. Truthfully, cassette software kind of faded out in popularity here around 1984ish... And yes, Mastertronic were one of the few European companies that did export to the US/Canada without having someone else publish their games.
You showed the 1990 Virgin Mastertronic version of "Sport of Kings" and not the 1986 MAD version. Still, A nice selection of classics you've showcased. Cheers!
Man, the Kikstart games were freakin' HARD! It's gotta be a rough list to pick for, IMO it's seriously missing a few - namely, Boulder Dash & One Man and His Droid. Still, great vid mate!
@@oldstylegaming Yeah... my bad on that one. It didn't feel right, but I said "Oh, well, heck, if Boulder Dash is Mastertronic, then it goes on the list!" Didn't even stop to verify.
@@oldstylegaming As I recall, a sequel game to Boulderdash called Rockford was converted from the arcade to home systems, and published by Mastertronic. I think the conversion was done by Melbourne House, who Mastertronic had bought up, which gave them first dibs on budget releases of classics like Exploding Fist.
Hi, Speed King I am pretty sure is a re-release from Digital Integration originally. The other Mastertronic games I have fond memories of are 180 Darts, Flash Gordan, and the Last V8, but this is your list :-).
hmm looks like it was but its on the Mastertronic label not the Ricochet label so its in. Last V8 i have a full game completion on my channel..the music is great ...the controls are terrible
This list is missing Mastertronic's by FAR best game: Bosconian '87 an excellent port of the Namco arcade. Panther is nice, but Bosconian 87 is in every aspect superior. also: where is: The last V8 ? And if it s just for the music. BTW, Motos is also a port of a Namco arcade game (like Bosconian and Gaplus). The grid-style centipede was prior used in Jeff Minter's Gridrunner (which was a port from the Vic 20) and the even better sequel: Matrix, both by Llamasoft. Especially Matrix is great, one of the most action packed games on the system. A game, similar to Master of Magic (and imho even better, as it is far longer, than the rather short MoM) is Gateway to Apshai from Epyx. Probably the best Roguelike adventure game on the C64. BTW, I never knew, that Mastertronic changed the game music when re-releasing Virgin's Ghettoblaster (which had pretty good music and which I liked a lot).
I believe Master of Magic was the ONLY turn-based RPG/ action-type Dungeon Crawler w/ graphics on ANY home system at the time of its release and for quite awhile after.....
Thank you for Speed King. It was my favorite game from my childhood, I couldn't remember its name all this time :) I think Speed King is the best motoracing game on the platform.
Another great list of games that were all very affordable AND playable. I liked One Man and his Droid but none of my friends did. Was Spore a Mastertronic game? I am sure it was and I loved that.
@@oldstylegaming Hmmm, didnt know that. I enjoyed One Man and his Droid too but I dont know anyone else who did. My nephew liked Chiller but I thought it was garbage
@@oldstylegaming I dont remember the music being the same as MJs. You had to collect flashing crosses if memory serves me. There were several areas including a cinema so I guess that is similar to Thriller and maybe a cemetery but cant think how it could threaten Jacksons IP. I might have to try it again
Text Adventure were great for £1:99 and £2:99. Scumball - That looks great and a lot of fun Speed King - The sound effects for the bikes would get annoying fast Motos - It looks like fast frenetic fun Big Mac - Another of the D.I.Y. based games that there was a lot of in the 8bit era Action Biker - That fun for a short time Kane - The 3D effect looks good 3D Pinball - It looks like a good 8bit Pinball game Kikstart - i didn't play this but I played Kikstart II Ninja - I haven't played it P.O.D. - Another I haven't played Gaplus - It was an enjoyable shoot 'em up Street B/Ghetto Blaster - I haven't played either Finders Keepers - I haven't played it enough to get a proper idea of it Hero Of The Golden Talisman - Another I haven't played but there's a nice big main character sprite. Spellbound - What a great great game, it kept me hooked. While I didn't complete it it was great fun Master Of Magic - I only vaguely remember this but I remember thinking it was great to get on the Commodore Kikstart II - Aaaah yes, flying over the handlebars fun, (that's what I spent most of the time doing). A good list, thanks for this. Yes Mastertronic and Codemastes had some great budget titles. Thanks for the reminder.
The only one i had or played was Ninja, and i agree....it was above average for C64 games. And there's a few of these listed games i wish i had (even though i had around 100, mostly pirated, C64 games...i guess i somehow missed all but one of these).
We had a decent-sized news agents in my village and they had a carousel with £1.99 games on it. My sister used to buy me five for Christmas or birthdays when I was a kid. So exciting to get something new to play and sometimes they played great but looked and sounded crap. I didn't care.
Just found your great video c16 was my first computer and my local video shop in halesowen long gone had the games one man and his droid was a favourite I had kick start Kane big Mac prospect Pete Mr puniyverse liked pod rock man one and two
Mastertronic was the best budget label for the C64. Quality games most of the times for next to nothing. It looks like it was a very well managed company as they achieved things like buying renowned Melbourne House, working directly in the US, making arcade machines and even distributing the Master System! They also pioneered the legal distribution of videogames in Italy, in a time when the country was litterally ridden with piracy.
I don't usually use the words "Mastertronic" and "best" in the same sentance, burt then again I'm more familiar with their Amstrad CPC library which were mostly garbadge. At least they were better than *shudders* Alternative Software!
There's no d in garbage. Just saying. But yeah, the Mastertronic CPC library was mostly complete dross. Island of Doctor Destructo and Sorcery were pretty good though But you're also right about Alternative Software. Dear God, what horrible games. And don't get me started on CRL...aside from the Tau Ceti series, most of their games were utter shite.
Remembering owning most of these, they were very good value, in Australia they were around $5-20 mark, there's alot good B "grade" type of games and alot of just crap.
I spent alot of time on Kane and fruit machine.. jockey Wilson darts was brilliant ...ATV was class spikey harrald was really good but bloody hard I moved on too dizzy the egg amazing game ... WHSmith up stairs was paper round money heaven
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Thank you for this. Very good value from this company for an eight year old just starting out in gaming in the early eighties.
Curse Of Sherwood was my favourite. Took me over 25 years to finish it though - had to use save states on an emulator to get past the swamp bit.
Most of my favourite C64 games were £1.99 / £2.99 Codemasters or Mastertronic games from John Menzies or WH Smith. Speedking was a great racer, Paul Ricard track was my fav and the music was good too.
Great video with lots of games that bring back some fond memories for me and a few games that (35 years on) I really ought to give a go!
Another great video OSG. I remember some of these but my local Boots store didn't stock a big selection. Spent hours on Action Biker wondering how many things I needed to collect for the big race. Never got that far., though. Kane would be my favourite of this list.
Kane is a classic a2nd even now although I've played it through loads of times I would gladly pick up and do it again
I had Ninja as a kiddo... was among my fav & most played games. :)
The 'Jumping up Jump Kick' move was OP. :P
The one Mastertronic game I can remember playing a lot in the late eighties was 'Street Surfer'. Bit of a road racer, just a skateboarder on the road trying to avoid getting hit by cars, hitting other occasional road hazards, collecting coke bottles offered by some drivers and depositing the empties at recycling spots as you went. No goal or finish line as far as I recall (or at least I never got that far).
Bit like chase the dragon from the south park guitar hero episode, I found it soothing.
Kickstart is a classic remember the old show on TV and Dougie lampkin.
i used to be into trials bike riding, i was like 12 year old and had a Fantic 250 and a Bultaco 350, i actually went to Kickstart with my brother a few times ...but was never good enough to get on
@@oldstylegaming + my brother used to watch it all the time. First thing my old man says if you mention kickstart is Dougie lampkin 😂
Was a great show! They were brilliant for their age.
Absolutely some clasics here! 'Action Biker' is the one I played the most. I still have the cassette edition.
Ninja! The best £2.99 I ever spent! Still play it now!
Had a bunch of these back in the day. Seeing Mastertronic on the front of the cassette in that font was usually a good buy
Except when I bought Kentilla; major disappointment that it was a graphic adventure, not an action platform game...
As a kid I used to pop over to a local electronics store in the mid 80s every few weeks with £1.99 in copper (1p and 2p coins) and choose a budget game. I remember Ninja, kickstart and spellbound very well. i don't remember if these were mastertronic too, but my favourite budget games were magic carpet and chiller
That Ocean loader music you put in the background was my favourite! I would load games only to listen to that music. Oh the memories!
i love the SID tunes that simmer at the start and then kick in, there is no other system with tunes as good as the C64 in my opinion
old style gaming I think Paula on the Amiga was capable of greatness in the right hands (David Whittaker, Chris Huelsbeck, Tim Wright, etc.). But there was also so much garbage. The output on the SID was maybe more consistently excellent.
Kickstart 2, Ninja... ah the memories!!!! The music from them both!!! Good times-thank you for reminding me!!
Superb collection. The only one I thought was missing was Chiller. Mainly because it was the Mastertronic game that took them to the next level!
It also took them to court I think lol
@@oldstylegaming ha ha you're right. Trying a bit too hard to copy MJ
Great to see Kane in there. I was totally hooked on that one. It was a fantastic game, especially for it's £1.99 price.
Street Surfer was a pretty good one too, with really nice music from David Whittaker as well
I remember that getting fairly poor reviews, but I quite enjoyed it.
Some good choices there. Speed King was a re-release of an old Digital Integrations game though. One of my fave Mastertronic titles was The Captive, it was quite different for the time.
so much fun in a £1.99 cassette box.
no dlc, season passes, micro-transactions or 2 day long downloads of updates
💖😊great times😊💖
lovely video - great selection of games. be firing up the C64 emulator later
had a speccy growing up but as an adult I've been loving the huge selection of amazing c64 games i never played back in the day.
Saturday with the C64.... Great choice mate :-)
Great video! The cassette covers were a big part of those titles for me, so I would have liked to see them as well, but that's just me. Thanks!
I'll take that on board for future lists
Always knew if I saw that Masteronic logo the game was going to be pretty good. Especially here in the states where we only seemed to get their best.
Action Biker remains a classic. Great music! I remember completing it as a kid - the final bit is anti-climactic!
awesome vid OSG - during the 80's here in Australia you could get the budget games for between 6 to 10 aussie dollars back in the day on disk. probably the most expensive game i got was 'the untouchables' when that came out for 30 dollarydoos then
great game...but not sure its worth 30 dollars...what would that have been in english money?
The good so called name games were around that mark I remember as well, alot chores I had to do get the original game, until we figured out..... well how to make "Backups"
@@oldstylegaming roughly back then $30 AUS would be around 12-14 Pounds, great when had family come over from England one year as bought over heap of C64 games.
Big Mac was amazing value for money, it was like Manic Miners little brother! :)
Kickstart was very addictive.
LMAO, you're right, Ninja's were sellers!! :D
Finders Keepers was great back then, not today. Spellbound, the same.
Another great video. Without Mastertronic, some of us would have had hardly any games.
Nice one.
Big Mac is a good game...It's also a pretty good game on the C16/Plus4. The Plus 4 version even has added levels
Love the list. Mainly because half of them are unknown to me. It is always nice to know new games to try
Which ones did you not know that you are gonna try out?
Some really great budget games in that list, along with a few games I haven't seen or played in years. Thanks 👍🏻
No probs thanks for watching :-)
Fantastic. Kikstart was one of my faves, even with that flighty music. And Master of Magic ... still one of my all-time favourite 8-bit scores. A Hubbard masterpiece and a fun little fantasy game to boot. Ninja was fun enough (until The Last Ninja series arrived...)
Yeah no other ninja game compares to last ninja 2
Loved it, what a trip down memory lane, had a few of these games myself back in the day. Mastertronic were king of the budget games with Firebird coming in a close second IMO.
Codemasters for me but ill cover them all in this series , Codemasters, Firebird, RackIt etc
I had a negative impression of Mastertronic after seeing a 2-page ad in one of the magazines with a bunch of really primitive looking games. They had better games later, but that early ad forever colored my opinion of the company.
Sport of Kings - Never had this, but the graphics look amazing for a C64 game. Not really something I was interested in, but I probably would have played it from time to time just for the graphics.
3D Pinball - I wish I'd had this back then, but I didn't learn about it until many years later.
I've only just discovered your videos. They are fantastic and such a great trip down memory lane. Thanks a lot.
Thanks mate
Shaun Southern gets a lot of love from me from the quality games he wrote. Also, 8-bit Show and Tell just did a video recently about Ninja, and the "Minus World" in the game.
And of course he went on to do some Amiga game called 'Lotus Turbo Challenge', or something... :)
HURRAY FOR KICKSTART 2, loved it still love it and that sound track and the whoooooooo when you fell off your bike.
It's funny, back in my 64 days I drooled over all the offerings at the local computer shops, in the end though I'd grab a couple titles on the "budget" rack, many were in fact MASTERTRONIC😆 I'd also buy some blank discs I'd give a friend to load up with......er....copies of the popular stuff. Anyway, I arrived here on this video just now as I was trying desperately to recall the name of those budget titles and after some googling and searching budget titles I finally seen an image of that MASTERTRONIC logo and here I am. I can tell you though the brand was even a budget brand here in Canada !
i absolutly loved panther, loads of nostalgia for it, class video mate
so glad you mentioned panther as i had never heard of it and it looks and sounds great, from what i just saw there, so quick ebay and got it the original red case release for just over 3 quid nice one, gave you a sub too as this is a new channel im subbed on one of my others but not this channel
Thanks mate
Some memories here like Finder Keepers Street Beat and Kickstart 1& 2
ninja.... that's the one i was on about when you did that live stream on c64 fighting games :D
I loved Alcazar, Werewolves of London and Cure of Sherwood.
'Panther' is an incredible game indeed... I have played several iterations, and the soundtrack is fantastic, but the Atari 8 bit pokey machines in particular blasted it out.
Mastertronic was one of my favorite game companies for Commodore, and yet I didn't know most of those, and the ones I didn't know looked horrible. My favorites were Captain ZZap, Nonterraqueous, Knight Games, Double Dragon, Hunter Patrol, One Man and His Droid (which also had the best song ever), 1985, Kane, Ninja, and, my favorite C64 game, The Human Race.
I used to love Kane one of my all time faves, and kickstart and the sequel were played to death by my older bro and myself, great memories
Mastertronic games were my pocket money spend nearly every week £2.99 in my local toy shop. Very few bad games. Thanks for doing a video brought back great memories
No probs thanks for watching:-)
There were LOTS of bad games, but I generally avoided ones like Bionic Granny, Mind Control, and Dark Star. LOL. Plus I often used to pirate games just to see if they were worth buying or not. So I generally knew which ones to avoid. In fact, the only game I actually bought and regretted said purchase was Bosconian '87. I learned my lesson from that purchase.
"The Music is one that you will either Love or Hate - I personally Like it." - classic :D
@2:02 I hate when it happens while I'm recording a footage!!
lol yeah well i have to use Window capture as a lot of games you get corrupt sid tunes if you directly record the emu i have found and then someone always wants to message or something lol
Panther has to be the only game where you're controlling a flying bathtub!
Played so much Kikstart 2 with my best friend back in the day. I'd completely forgotten about Big Mac which I owned.
Really enjoyed a lot of these games :-D
We got so good at Kikstart and I personally loved Kikstart II so much; was everything a sequel should be.
True that
Great list m8, proper trip down memory lane that. Stand outs for me are Action Biker, Kikstart, Finders Keepers and Panther. Budget games were great! especially for a skint teenager like me, my wage was only about £50 PW so I had to be real careful when I bought a full price game. I didn't mind if I spent £1.99 on a turkey and there was plenty! apart from these diamonds in the rough :)
Yeah there were some shite but as you say 2 quid wasn't as much of a kick in the teeth
Talisman was one of my favs , would play it into the small hours 👍
Had a few off this list back in the day. Speed King was great, as was Ninja but Kane (and Kane II imo) were on another level for the time and the price. Still play the 2 Kane games as they were so good.
Awesome list, I had completely forgotten Ninja. I remember playing it quite a bit but was too young to know what to do
lol just go along pick up everything...fight some people, jump up through holes.....end hahaha thats my tactic
hi from up the Road! Another cracking video mate, really look forward to these every week, the memories just come sweeping back. Don't know about you, but sometimes I used to buy these budget games just for the music alone from musicians such as Rob Hubbard, Jeroen Tel, David Whittaker, Chris Hulsbeck, Ben Dalglish, Martin Galway etc., as soon as you seen these names on the box it was like "must have" lol! And as a side note when you referenced Zzap! 64, my god, how good was that magazine with Julian Rignall and Gary Penn (wonder what they are doing now). I used to be a write for a much lesser known games mag (TV Gamer) and was always a bit jealous of their resources :) Keep the vids coming mate!!
on game that defo falls into the bought for the music is The Last V8 ...music class...graphics not to bad...controls...WTF lol. Wow you used to write for a gaming magazine thats great mate. Zzap was great but sometimes they got it very wrong
These games where (sometime) indeed worth the money just for the music alone. Especially those from Hubbard and Galway. Unfortunately Hulsbeck's imho best work is largely forgotten, it's the musuc game: To be on Top. Imho the best music he every did (well and of course rainbow Arts, not Mastertronic).
Great list OSG 👍 Kickstart was my favourite too 👌🇬🇧
Kane! Couldn't remember what that was called and I'm dying to play it again. The city shootout is ace. Gonna go find that right now on my console. Cheers OSG.
no probs have a good time
Can't believe I haven't watched this one already!! Being a speccy owner back in the day that was where I saw most of these games but the games that came out on the speccy look so much better on the c64 and more like full price releases what with the music and graphics. Definitely worth checking some of these out that seemed pretty average on the Speccy.
The Mastertronic C64 game I remember the most is Phantom of the Asteroids. My mate would load it up just to listen to the music. Yup, it was Rob Hubbard!
Its surprising how good the music was on these budget games
Me too. I've had a few games that made the list but when I think of Mastertronic, Phantom of the Asteroids is the first game that comes to mind.
Oh, remember Action Biker; just brilliant - but agree Kickstart II was the best budget game....👍
2 Mastertronic games I loved as a kid were L.A. SWAT and Agent X 2 (I always wondered what happened to the first Agent X game, lol).
Action Biker was brilliant. Many hours spent playing that!
Great Countdown! I would have included Phantom of the Asteroids, Chiller and The Last V8 in the Top 20
Last V8 was shit. The only decent thing about it was the music. When the gameplay area takes up less than a QUARTER of the screen, it's bound to suck
Dear god man they was the days. Every saturday me an me mates would walk in to town with one goal 'games'. An if we didn't get the £9.99 full price game we would hit woolies (Woolworths) and hit the budget section and come home with 2 or 3 games :-). The good old days :-)
best days ever...i miss them so much
@@oldstylegaming aye tell me about it and now games look to go up even more :-(
True just the anticipation of having the money to buy a game going to town or shopping center not knowing what you would find was part of the experience then imagining on the way home what this game is like reading every bit of text it had to offer examining every screenshot getting yourself so hyped. The world was fun back then now it's gone to crap with all this identity politics bullshit.
defo
Lost so many hours playing Ninja and i dont regret it for a second. So many great games here. Another great video OSG
yeah Ninja needs the love it deserves
Ninja was actually the first game I bought when I got my 1541 back in the day. I remember buying that game, as well as the C64 conversion of Spy Hunter.
Of the Mastertronic games I have in box are:
"Ninja"
- As you said, not all that bad
"Slam Dunk"
- Can't remember much about it
"Knight Games" - Pretty good and the music is great!
"Megaplay Volume 1" featuring: Street Beat, Rapid Fire, Cage Match, Agent X II (LOVE the 1st level tune!), Pipeline II and Destructo
Also, "Panther" is everything you said it was - I hum that tune to this day and I could have swore I had that boxed as well - I'll keep digging!
Bonus: Virgin Mastertronic "Overlord" or as you may know as "Supremacy" boxed for C64 and Amiga and epic games!
Mastertronic games never came boxed just in a plastic cassette holder with inlay.
@@jackburton8352 I should have mentioned that I'm in America and all of them [Still looking for Panther] are in box and disk. My bad.
@@jackburton8352 North Americans mostly had their games on disk, since most of us did have 1541s. Truthfully, cassette software kind of faded out in popularity here around 1984ish...
And yes, Mastertronic were one of the few European companies that did export to the US/Canada without having someone else publish their games.
Bloody hell - Scumball! Had that one for the ZX Spectrum. Great game iirc.
Kentilla - great adventure but never finished it! Hubbard soundtrack is awesome!
I absolutely love Scout. The music in particular.
I had forgotten some of these great games 👍
These Kikstart games reminds me a lot of ATV Simulator.
You showed the 1990 Virgin Mastertronic version of "Sport of Kings" and not the 1986 MAD version. Still, A nice selection of classics you've showcased. Cheers!
Nice panther I was looking for that game. could not remember the title, was LA Swat a mastertronic game?
yeah it was
My gods, the fun I had on the Kikstart games...
Ninja....Absolute classic on the 800xl
Man, the Kikstart games were freakin' HARD! It's gotta be a rough list to pick for, IMO it's seriously missing a few - namely, Boulder Dash & One Man and His Droid. Still, great vid mate!
Was boulderdash by mastertronic?
It was according to Wikipedia, but I think it's got it wrong. Actually, it looks like Mastertronic did one of the arcade ports. huh
I always cross check wiki as it often gets things partly right
@@oldstylegaming Yeah... my bad on that one. It didn't feel right, but I said "Oh, well, heck, if Boulder Dash is Mastertronic, then it goes on the list!" Didn't even stop to verify.
@@oldstylegaming As I recall, a sequel game to Boulderdash called Rockford was converted from the arcade to home systems, and published by Mastertronic. I think the conversion was done by Melbourne House, who Mastertronic had bought up, which gave them first dibs on budget releases of classics like Exploding Fist.
I love these hidden gems.
Hi, Speed King I am pretty sure is a re-release from Digital Integration originally. The other Mastertronic games I have fond memories of are 180 Darts, Flash Gordan, and the Last V8, but this is your list :-).
hmm looks like it was but its on the Mastertronic label not the Ricochet label so its in. Last V8 i have a full game completion on my channel..the music is great ...the controls are terrible
Last V8 was only good for the music. The controls were awful, and a gameplay screen shot take up at LEAST 3 quarters of the screen
This list is missing Mastertronic's by FAR best game: Bosconian '87 an excellent port of the Namco arcade. Panther is nice, but Bosconian 87 is in every aspect superior. also: where is: The last V8 ? And if it s just for the music. BTW, Motos is also a port of a Namco arcade game (like Bosconian and Gaplus). The grid-style centipede was prior used in Jeff Minter's Gridrunner (which was a port from the Vic 20) and the even better sequel: Matrix, both by Llamasoft. Especially Matrix is great, one of the most action packed games on the system.
A game, similar to Master of Magic (and imho even better, as it is far longer, than the rather short MoM) is Gateway to Apshai from Epyx. Probably the best Roguelike adventure game on the C64.
BTW, I never knew, that Mastertronic changed the game music when re-releasing Virgin's Ghettoblaster (which had pretty good music and which I liked a lot).
Hey you know what would be a nice accompaniment? I'd like to see the old box (case) art. Obviously your house, your rules.
Kik start 2 was fun. What do you do in action biker? Is there a goal or you just ride around..
I believe Master of Magic was the ONLY turn-based RPG/ action-type Dungeon Crawler w/ graphics on ANY home system at the time of its release and for quite awhile after.....
its a great game..i think quite before its time
It's basically the old Apshai games from Epyx but turned up like 20 notches
Kikstart 2 was by Andrew Morris who later went onto magnetic fields and the amazing lotus challenge series
Thank you for Speed King. It was my favorite game from my childhood, I couldn't remember its name all this time :) I think Speed King is the best motoracing game on the platform.
the more i got used to the controls the better it became, kind of strange with the none centering control though
@@oldstylegaming it was definitely hard. I remember 'selling' this game to my friends as the 'real racing simulator' haha
Another great list of games that were all very affordable AND playable. I liked One Man and his Droid but none of my friends did. Was Spore a Mastertronic game? I am sure it was and I loved that.
i think its a weird one, its got links to Mastertronic but was a Bulldog release
@@oldstylegaming
Hmmm, didnt know that. I enjoyed One Man and his Droid too but I dont know anyone else who did. My nephew liked Chiller but I thought it was garbage
chiller got took down and changed i think due to the music and the similarities to Michael Jackson Thriller
@@oldstylegaming
I dont remember the music being the same as MJs. You had to collect flashing crosses if memory serves me. There were several areas including a cinema so I guess that is similar to Thriller and maybe a cemetery but cant think how it could threaten Jacksons IP. I might have to try it again
@@geoffreyjohnstone5465 Yeah you must have had the redone one
Luved kick start on my c16 and even more so kick start 2 on my c64
Text Adventure were great for £1:99 and £2:99.
Scumball - That looks great and a lot of fun
Speed King - The sound effects for the bikes would get annoying fast
Motos - It looks like fast frenetic fun
Big Mac - Another of the D.I.Y. based games that there was a lot of in the 8bit era
Action Biker - That fun for a short time
Kane - The 3D effect looks good
3D Pinball - It looks like a good 8bit Pinball game
Kikstart - i didn't play this but I played Kikstart II
Ninja - I haven't played it
P.O.D. - Another I haven't played
Gaplus - It was an enjoyable shoot 'em up
Street B/Ghetto Blaster - I haven't played either
Finders Keepers - I haven't played it enough to get a proper idea of it
Hero Of The Golden Talisman - Another I haven't played but there's a nice big main character sprite.
Spellbound - What a great great game, it kept me hooked. While I didn't complete it it was great fun
Master Of Magic - I only vaguely remember this but I remember thinking it was great to get on the Commodore
Kikstart II - Aaaah yes, flying over the handlebars fun, (that's what I spent most of the time doing).
A good list, thanks for this. Yes Mastertronic and Codemastes had some great budget titles. Thanks for the reminder.
The only one i had or played was Ninja, and i agree....it was above average for C64 games.
And there's a few of these listed games i wish i had (even though i had around 100, mostly pirated, C64 games...i guess i somehow missed all but one of these).
We had a decent-sized news agents in my village and they had a carousel with £1.99 games on it. My sister used to buy me five for Christmas or birthdays when I was a kid. So exciting to get something new to play and sometimes they played great but looked and sounded crap. I didn't care.
for that price you didnt mind
'Latht V8...Weturn to bayth IMMEDIATELY!'
Speed King looks well made for a C64 game, Like an 8 bit version of Road Rash
yeah its a hard game to get used to...but with some patience is good
At least Kane made your list... Pretty disappointed that Hunter Patrol isn't on it; should be in the top 3!!!
Just found your great video c16 was my first computer and my local video shop in halesowen long gone had the games one man and his droid was a favourite I had kick start Kane big Mac prospect Pete Mr puniyverse liked pod rock man one and two
Wasn't the game PastFinder a Mastertronic release? Seem to remember a bonus audio track on side B of the cassette.
Mastertronic was the best budget label for the C64. Quality games most of the times for next to nothing. It looks like it was a very well managed company as they achieved things like buying renowned Melbourne House, working directly in the US, making arcade machines and even distributing the Master System! They also pioneered the legal distribution of videogames in Italy, in a time when the country was litterally ridden with piracy.
Yeah i read a lot of stuff when making this that i didnt know especially the Master System thing
I agree, although there were some good games on the Hewson Rack-It label as well.
Hunter Patrol was one of my favourites
i spent many an hour on these classic games so addictive they where..............
I don't usually use the words "Mastertronic" and "best" in the same sentance, burt then again I'm more familiar with their Amstrad CPC library which were mostly garbadge. At least they were better than *shudders* Alternative Software!
There's no d in garbage. Just saying.
But yeah, the Mastertronic CPC library was mostly complete dross. Island of Doctor Destructo and Sorcery were pretty good though
But you're also right about Alternative Software. Dear God, what horrible games. And don't get me started on CRL...aside from the Tau Ceti series, most of their games were utter shite.
Remembering owning most of these, they were very good value, in Australia they were around $5-20 mark, there's alot good B "grade" type of games and alot of just crap.
Yeah with a catalogue as big as what the c64 s is you gotta take the rough with the smooth
Shame I didn’t have any of these.. I played ‘BMX racers’ a lot.. Very fast-paced game and also very frustrating, although a bit too short
im sure you will have some of the codemasters ones when i do that video as BMX was high up on their priorities i think with the BMX simulator games
@@oldstylegaming I remember BMX simulator well from back in the day! Two player head to head fun with a mate.
Is there a Top 20 WORST C64 Mastertronic Countdown? That will certainly provide entertainment in the same way as the X Factor auditionees would! 😂😂😂
Maybe ill do some more worst games videos
Aahh the days when £3 was a fortune...in the sweet shop😁
I spent alot of time on Kane and fruit machine.. jockey Wilson darts was brilliant ...ATV was class spikey harrald was really good but bloody hard I moved on too dizzy the egg amazing game ... WHSmith up stairs was paper round money heaven
Dizzy will be in the codemasters video
P.O.D of Lotus Esprit fame.