AA Cover Tapes

[EgoTrip]

Which were the best AA (or other magazine) cover tapes/programs? Which got the most use?


Ranarama got loads of play from me, as did the Dizzy special edition. I think the tape with Anarchy, GPaint and Croco Magneto though was the best all-round tape which got the most use.


Other mentions I knew the first level of Turrican 2 inside out and played to death the Switchblade and Stryker demos.


I cannot include Spindizzy, Chuckie Egg or Fantasy World Dizzy as I already had those previous to getting the AA tape, but I would do otherwise.


There were some really bad programs on the tapes but lets keep this topic positive, and if someone wants to start another thread to diss the dross then go ahead.

[chinnyhill10]

The hacked version of Lost Caves on the Christmas tape as it meant you could actually see some of the game! Transferred it to 3.5 inch disk and it was a game I kept on going back to. Mind you I never completed ANY of the levels IIRC!



ChinnyVision - Episode 23 - Lost Caves - Amstrad CPC - YouTube

[Carnivius]

Ranarama got loads of play from me, as did the Dizzy special edition.

I was never sure what the hell I was meant to be doing in Ranarama but I kinda enjoyed it.  Dizzy was always a game I liked.

I think the tape with Anarchy, GPaint and Croco Magneto though was the best all-round tape which got the most use.

I agree.  Good games and good graphic software.  GPaint eventually replacing Smart as my graphics software of choice on CPC.

Other mentions I knew the first level of Turrican 2 inside out and played to death the Switchblade and Stryker demos.

Never had the SwitchBlade demo tape but I got the full game anyways and loved it though it don't count here.  Stryker I certainly played a lot.  And the Turrican 2 demo I nearly wore out the tape.  Played it far too much and I was pretty much OCD about searching everywhere and getting every gem thingy.

Also Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles 2 - The Coin Op demo got a lot of play from me too.

Also I loaded up Glider Rider a hell of a lot.  Sometimes for playing but usually just for the awesome music.  One of my fave 8-bit tunes ever.

(trying to find a list of all the tapes now to see what I might have forgotten).

Was never into 3D stuff back then but I enjoyed Tankbusters.  Something about it felt quite fun and satisfying to play.

I used Graphic Adventure Creator a LOT but I kept making even my first picture in any game, too detailed and it used up all the memory and took ages to draw.

[Bryce]

One of the AA tapes had "The Duct" on it. I played it till the molecules had fallen off!

Bryce.

[chinnyhill10]

One of the AA tapes had "The Duct" on it. I played it till the molecules had fallen off!

Bryce.

That was a game from IIRC Gremln that they never released commercially. Wasn't bad but wasn't good either.


That was ooooh, Christmas '87 AA?

[Gryzor]

The one with Total Eclipse for me. I was mesmerised...

About what Carnivac said:

I was never sure what the hell I was meant to be doing in Ranarama but I kinda enjoyed it

I think we've all been there. I wonder if kids these days get to experience that!

[AMSDOS]

I thought Maze Mania was a great little game and it came with Rana Rama made that a pretty cool tape, but I had little need for the other Serious programs on that tape, but I guess it was one of those tapes that had something for everybody.
On the serious side I liked the AA Toolkit (Monitor) program which came with Spindizzy & Wizard Lair and it got used more & more after AA gave away the Devpac Assembler/Monitor package. Lara was another useful program when I got the 128k computer and I used JL-COPY earlier for speeding up some of those AMSOFT games - I couldn't believe how quick it took to load Harrier Attack!
Game wise I thought Space Crusade was the best Demo Game because it was one of the few Board Style Games I could actually play, I had problems playing the Hero Quest Demo and a few times was able to go out and get the Dreadnought, was extremely handy getting the Master Controls so I could just close the Door on the Beast!    The other freebie game I liked was Seymour Take 1.
I also liked playing Light Force, Shockway Rider, Tankbusters, I cheated a bit at that Defenders of the Earth game, Exolon, Cybernoid II & when the magazine was getting smaller they had Ikari Warriors, Turbo The Tortoise, Titus the Fox & played Spaghetti Western a little bit, which was the last AA Magazine I got.

[Carnivius]

Oh yeah I liked Seymour Take One.
And the Space Crusade demo.  It's weird.   I absolutely loooooathe turn based strategy games (and I have tried some of the modern ones usually when they have been PlayStation Plus freebies) but I'm still happy to load up Space Crusade or Hero Quest and play them for an hour or two.  Don't know why I like them but I do.

[Shaun M. Neary]

I've no idea how many times I played the Shinobi demo on the birthday covertape in 89. I'd a really bad day at school that day and found that attached to a copy of AA on the living room couch when I'd gotten home.

Still remember it like it was yesterday 

[Nich]

Which were the best AA (or other magazine) cover tapes/programs? Which got the most use?

Ooh, this is a trip down memory lane! I remember the excitement of Amstrad Action arriving each month and finding out what was going to be on the covertape.

It's really hard to pick only one favourite, but some of my favourites are:

• AA79 - Rana Rama and Maze Mania. I used to own Rana Rama on the Spectrum a few years before I got this covertape and I was overjoyed to be able to play it again! (By the way, I do know how to play it! ) Maze Mania was good fun as well.
• AA69 - Spindizzy and Wizard's Lair. I already owned Wizard's Lair and I thought it was brilliant, but I became addicted to Spindizzy. I just had to explore every location in that game inside out!
• AA80 - Stryker and the Crypts of Trogan (demo), Anarchy and Croco Magneto. I didn't (and still don't) own a Plus machine, but I thought the graphics were amazing even on a normal CPC. Anarchy and Croco Magneto were both brilliant as well. I loved the music on Croco Magneto.
• AA77 - Seymour: Take One! It was great fun trying to find out how many different ways there were to produce the film sequence! Firelord was also good, even if I kept getting lost.
• AA78 - Space Crusade (demo), Total Eclipse II: The Sphinx Jinx and Shockway Rider. My younger brother played the Space Crusade demo a lot as he was into Games Workshop stuff at the time, although he never bought the full game. I didn't understand how to play it properly. I loved Total Eclipse II and exploring the pyramid. Shockway Rider was fun just to watch the hero being decapitated!
• AA100 - Elite. This was the first time I got to play Elite. I'd often heard about how it was the greatest game ever, and I soon found out why. Later on I would get hold of Elite Plus on the coverdisc of a PC magazine and I spent hours playing it when I should have been studying and revising for my GCSEs!

My younger brother was also addicted to The Famous Five text adventure on the AA84 covertape and he eventually managed to complete it, although it never appealed to me.

The AA88 covertape also deserves a mention for including DMon and JL-COPY - two disc utilities that I still find incredibly useful to this day. It was also great to get so many classic Hewson games like Stormlord, Exolon and Nebulus on some of the later covertapes, although strangely I don't recall playing them all that much at the time.

[dlfrsilver]

That was a game from IIRC Gremln that they never released commercially. Wasn't bad but wasn't good either.


That was ooooh, Christmas '87 AA?

Hi Chris, the game was commercially sold. It can be found in the 10 great games II compilation from Gremlin (and AA cover tape 28).

The game has not been sold a lot (not successful...) We lack the retail tape dump as well as the box package scans.

[Zoe Robinson]

Which were the best AA (or other magazine) cover tapes/programs? Which got the most use?

For me, the most-used program was Graphic Adventure Creator. I wrote all my adventure games using that software - it got so much use that I wore out the disk I transferred it to (I still blame my sister for turning off my CPC while there was a disk in the drive but maybe it was just death from excessive over-use) and had to replace it in the middle of making my last game.


Games-wise, for me it was Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles II: The Coin-Op demo. I loved that game so much (never found it for sale at the time but I did eventually get a version of it from Xbox Live Arcade so hey, I got there in the end).


After that, Terror from the Deep got a lot of play time (I still don't know what I was supposed to actually be doing in that thing but never mind), as did Lost Caves (I drew maps to work out where everything was - it was practically the only way to beat any of the levels) and Space Froggy (which I maintain is not beatable despite its protests to the contrary).


Seymour Take One was a favourite of my friends and my sister, although I remember playing it mostly to see just how much crap you could get into the background of the final film. Still, it was a fun, short game.


I had moved onto the PC by the time they had Elite on the covertape but I lost days, maybe weeks, of my life to Elite Plus on the PC so I have no doubt I would have adored the CPC version if I'd had a chance to play it.

[zeropolis79]

AA82 - Lemmings demo got a LOT of play from me.

AA84 - Famous Five was very popular with me

Titus the Fox was also very popular with me..