My letter to "Santa" in 1988/89: 2 CPC games and the board game "Run, Yeti, Run"

[cwpab]

Dear Magi.
Since I'm very old already and I have
behaved very well this year, (ALMOST) I only
want to ask you three things:
- The computer game: Batman.
- The computer game: La guerra de las vajillas ("Plates and Glasses Wars").
- The board game: Corre, yeti, corre ("Run, yeti, run").
Merry Christmas and happy new year:
i. e.:
HAPPY 1989!
Signed:

The 3 Magi are like a second Santa Claus that's only observed in some countries, mostly Spanish speaking ones.

For the full experience, I recommend checking this toy catalog (same country, same mall chain) from the previous christmas.

Now let's go through each of my wishes:

- Corre, Yeti, Corre ("Run, Yeti, Run") is a spectacular Spanish board game with not so spectacular gameplay (basically dice throws and advancing, but with some keys and locks). The actual fun of this was the drawings and the assembling. It looks like I saw this TV ad and decided I wanted the thing.

- La guerra de las vajillas ("Plates and Glasses Wars") is one of the most famous Spanish text adventures, mostly because it parodies Star Wars. As a kid I didn't get too far, but some years ago I finished the first part (but didn't know what to do in part 2).

- "The Batman videogame" needs to be more specific, and this is why it was the only one I didn't receive. There were 2 Batman games up to this point ("The Movie" would came out a year later), so I don't know if I wanted the Ritman one or The Caped Crusader. In any case, my parents didn't find any Batman game and bought the A Toda Máquina ("Full Power") Ocean pack including Robocop, Dragon Ninja, Rambo 3, Afterburner... and Jon Ritman's Batman (I remember being disappointed with this because I probably had a copy of this one already).

So there are a few mysteries here:

1) What Batman game did I want? I guess it has to be The Caped Crusader because it came out exactly that Christmas, and I remember not being happy with the Ritman one as I already had it or something.

2) How did I learn about these 2 CPC games? Until my mother sent me this image, I always assumed I started buying Micromania magazines in early 89, but now I don't know anymore. Perhaps some friends told me about them at school, because I distinctively remember one conversation where a friend mentioned "The Caped Crusader" (pronounced in Spanish), and I can definitely see me and my 8 year old friends talking about La guerra de las vajillas.

3) Why only 3 items? I have my sister's letter from the same year and she also has for 3 things only. She's 2 years younger, and in her case 2/3 items are Playmobil toys: "the king" and "the dilligence". Not bad! So... Yes, it seems that our parents artificially limited the number of toys you could ask for. Wasted chance to ask for an Amiga computer, a big foosball table and some cheating item like "what the kid has in this image". 

[cwpab]

I can't edit the first message anymore, so here's a free link for the toy catalog from the previous year, including what looks like a redesigned version of the Atari 2600. No 8 bit computers, though.

[lmimmfn]

It's really lovely to read others memories of the CPC from back in the day. 
Thanks for sharing.

[XeNoMoRPH]

On eBay that card is worth at least €288   

[cwpab]

My conclussion is that my dad gave me his Amstrad CPC 6128 with color monitor at some point during 1988, probably after buying his new 8086 PC. He probably had the CPC from 85 to 88. He had several Amstrad User magazines (Spanish version) from Spring 1987.

I remember a period where the most exciting game you could play in my room was Bustout ("Rebotes"), as the alternatives were Animal, Vegetal, Mineral and TimeMan One. But then one day in Autumn 1988, we visited a friend of my dad and spend the evening copying more than 50 CPC games, including simple ones like Haunted Hedges or Electro Freddy and hits like Matchday 2 or both Saboteurs.

If you look at the game listings from shops in magazines, there are many more games available on tape than disk. And disk games are also more expensive. This probably was the reason why several Christmas and Birthdays, they "suprised" me with games I had not asked: Astérix and the Magic Carpet (beautiful but terrible), Megacorp+Don Quijote (very lucky there as the good game was Megacorp, but they clearly bought it for the literary connection) and the TNT pack (my fault as I explained, as I asked for "the game with the dynamite" hoping to receive Dynamite Dux, and instead got terrible games and Hard Drivin', which finished off my disk drive with the corrupted loading).

Since I'm writing this, I wanted to take the chance to let you guys know that when I was playing Tank Command as a kid, my sister was usually behind me drawing a map. But sadly we have no screenshots of that.

[Shaun M. Neary]

That must have been The Caped Crusader game... that was heavily advertised across all the video game magazines, and it was essentially two games in one as there was a mission with The Penguin and The Joker (The Joker one was quite difficult too!)

Great game though!

[cwpab]

I'd like to report 2 errors:

- Firstly, it looks like I wrote "felizes" instead of "felices" (merry, plural) on the letter... Too bad, 8 year old me! (Spanish uses "c" when the "soft" sound is between 2 vowels, but "z" for the same sound at the end of a word).

- Most interestingly, page 45 of the toy catalog has a big, big, big edition error: they included a board game in the middle of the Matchbox style "crazy loop" tracks! The reason was probably the name of the board game, "Strike", being very similar to one of the loop tracks toys, "Streak Racing". Strangely enough, the board game is about "people buying Uri Geller spoon collections and getting rich". Seriously? Whoa.

About The Caped Crusader, I tried it in the early emulator era and was very disappointed. I should have asked for Rick Dangerous 1 and 2, which I never even tried as a kid!

[Shaun M. Neary]

About The Caped Crusader, I tried it in the early emulator era and was very disappointed. I should have asked for Rick Dangerous 1 and 2, which I never even tried as a kid!

It's kinda akin to the Dizzy series. Tasks need to be performed in a certain order for progression. It can be frustrating to play but very rewarding once you finish it.

I finished A Bird In The Hand back in the day when I was 15, but it took me until my early 40s before I eventually finished A Fete Worse Than Death.

The comic book flip screen effect was nice too, I thought.