A game so bad I took it back to the shop the next day and claimed it did not load. Utter unmitigated rubbish coded and sold by people who just did not care:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmTmy8LVFVM
Quote from: chinnyhill10 on 22:15, 23 November 17
A game so bad I took it back to the shop the next day and claimed it did not load. Utter unmitigated rubbish coded and sold by people who just did not care:
... and yet you still had 15 minutes to devote to making a video... which is probably more time than you spent playing the actual game on it's release! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
I'm sure several readers of this forum will have first played Rik the Roadie on an Amstrad Action covertape (it was issue 97). The memory - and disappointment - of playing it still lingers with me. :( I'm torn between deciding whether Rik the Roadie or Spaghetti Western is the worst commercial game to feature on an AA covertape.
There was a period in 1993 when a lot of the stuff (both games and utilities) on the AA covertapes was rubbish (Syntax, anyone?).
My rating of 2/10 (http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/r/index6.html#rik_the_roadie) on CPC Game Reviews seems rather generous nowadays. :laugh:
For some reason I could never get this to load from the AA covertape, sounds like it was a blessing in disguise....
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 13:32, 24 November 17
... and yet you still had 15 minutes to devote to making a video... which is probably more time than you spent playing the actual game on it's release! :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
15 minutes? I wish! Closer to 4 hours for a video like that.
Quote from: Nich on 22:24, 24 November 17
I'm sure several readers of this forum will have first played Rik the Roadie on an Amstrad Action covertape (it was issue 97). The memory - and disappointment - of playing it still lingers with me. :( I'm torn between deciding whether Rik the Roadie or Spaghetti Western is the worst commercial game to feature on an AA covertape.
Spagettin Western. Didn't even load that one up! I nearly bought that originally as well. As I recall I changed my mind while in the queue and changed it for, I think, TT Racer. TT Racer had a crap cover as its was on some obscure label for re-release.
Not sure why AA had a poor period with tapes. I do know they were a lot of hassle and on an understaffed magazine it may have been easier to go for deals with companies who were easy and cheap to deal.
Quote from: chinnyhill10 on 11:35, 25 November 17
15 minutes? I wish! Closer to 4 hours for a video like that.
I like you dude, but four hours on Rik The Roadie?!, clearly you have too much time on your hands.
:o
(and that's coming from someone who has spent a week working on vitual machines loading up DOS/Win 3.11 up to Windows 8.1!)
Quote from: chinnyhill10 on 11:38, 25 November 17
Not sure why AA had a poor period with tapes. I do know they were a lot of hassle and on an understaffed magazine it may have been easier to go for deals with companies who were easy and cheap to deal.
Nail on the head here, to be honest.
After spending five years in media myself, I can honestly say there is very little money to be made in publications for writers, and even photographers. A lot of people in the last few years of AA were barely getting paid or weren't getting paid at all, they were mostly contributions from fans who didn't want to see the magazine die off.
See it's mostly advertising revenue that keeps magazines going, but after 1991, there was very little to advertise when it came to Amstrad, so from late 91, early 92 onwards, AA would have been a sinking ship with a lot of people taking turns trying to plug the hole. Staff turnaround would have increased because the a good chunk of writers went freelance to write about other fields, for publications that most likely paid. But a lot of passionate writing is actually a labour of love, and also a portfolio building experience.
Likewise with the software that came bundled. There was no way the likes of Ocean or US Gold etc were ever going to release any of their full games to a magazine on a tape, that's what playable demos were for. So magazines would go to the budget labels who already paid for the rights to publish (for buttons from student writers) and already made their money on the games, or games that weren't shifting and said "Here, duplicate that to your hearts content"
I'd say a LOT of strings were pulled, and even money lost to get Elite on the AA100 tape.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 12:04, 25 November 17
I like you dude, but four hours on Rik The Roadie?!, clearly you have too much time on your hands. :o
(and that's coming from someone who has spent a week working on vitual machines loading up DOS/Win 3.11 up to Windows 8.1!)
That's typical for a simpler video like that. Playing the game is but a small part of the process.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 12:12, 25 November 17
I'd say a LOT of strings were pulled, and even money lost to get Elite on the AA100 tape.
They did up their game when they realised the tape was the reason people still purchased the mag. So we got Blues Brothers, North and South and Crazy Cars 3. I think Fantasy World Dizzy also made it. By then the market was dead so the publishers would take a couple of hundred quid for the game as it was essentially money for something they had no commercial use for.
One of the biggest issues was apparently getting the games hacked to work for the tape to disk. In many cases they couldn't offer it but because AA sold disc copies of the tapes for a while, someone still had to hack the game for them to make copies because the publishers were often no help.
I remember the Dizzy AA special edition a year or so earlier where there was a message basically saying that was the only way an Oliver Twins game would be released for free. I'm guessing Fantasy World Dizzy was an exception to a degree as we never saw a Codemasters or Oliver Twins game on a cover tape before or since.
You do make a valid point about the loaders though. They definitely would have needed co-operation with the publisher for that, or whoever had their hands on the master code so it could be unprotected to transfer to disc. But that's a whole other story.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 23:20, 25 November 17
You do make a valid point about the loaders though. They definitely would have needed co-operation with the publisher for that, or whoever had their hands on the master code so it could be unprotected to transfer to disc. But that's a whole other story.
And one which @ChaRleyTroniC (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=16) has documented in an article in issue 3 of
Better than Life (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=8276), entitled 'The AA Covertape Companion'.
Quote from: chinnyhill10That's typical for a simpler video like that. Playing the game is but a small part of the process.
Isn't it just? I'm betting you're even worse on the running time-to-creating time ratio than I am. Would you say a combined total of all the time you put in comes in at around the 30 to 60 minutes production time to every 1 minute of running time for the final video?
I was watching the vid a few days back and (I think) it was also covered in Ashen's second volume of "Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of" (excellent stuff, btw, do buy those books!).
Am I the only one who gets a nostalgic feeling even looking at crap games? I mean, as a small child even the worst of pixels brought me a feeling of awe that creeps back when looking at those screens...
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 23:20, 25 November 17
I remember the Dizzy AA special edition a year or so earlier where there was a message basically saying that was the only way an Oliver Twins game would be released for free. I'm guessing Fantasy World Dizzy was an exception to a degree as we never saw a Codemasters or Oliver Twins game on a cover tape before or since.
You do make a valid point about the loaders though. They definitely would have needed co-operation with the publisher for that, or whoever had their hands on the master code so it could be unprotected to transfer to disc. But that's a whole other story.
They also released the full version of Dizzy on the first regular AA covertape too.
Quote from: Gryzor on 17:48, 14 January 18
I was watching the vid a few days back and (I think) it was also covered in Ashen's second volume of "Terrible Old Games You've Probably Never Heard Of" (excellent stuff, btw, do buy those books!).
Am I the only one who gets a nostalgic feeling even looking at crap games? I mean, as a small child even the worst of pixels brought me a feeling of awe that creeps back when looking at those screens...
As a tape guy, there was always a feeling of awe after you waited two minutes for the loading screen to load. Often enough games came out before AA got their hands on it. I remember being excited seeing the loading screens for Paperboy, Match Day, Forgotten Worlds, especially Outrun. Sadly the latter didn't deliver after the loading screen. But yeah. Those were good times. Hell, I'm going back to my early 90s by transferring a load of games to disk. Loved doing it then, love doing it now.
I remember being highly disappointed when this arrived in my mailbox with my AA subscription :(
This review video gave me a good laugh though at the sheer crappiness of the game. Thanks 8)