I wrote some of these - Basketball, Motorway, Bowls, Raiders, Field, Fishing Mission and Mystical Diamonds. Was about 13 at the time, wrote them on a Spectrum in my bedroom with a pencil and graph paper to sketch out the 8x8 pixel "graphics". Got £10 for them, and £20 for Mystical Diamonds, which seemed like a lot of money back then. I actually did go fishing on occasion so that game was based on experience to some extent but the others are I suppose what you'd imagine a 13 year old from the Isle of Wight with limited Basic programming skills could come up with in an afternoon. I never saw the full Cassette 50 but someone in my class bought it and let me know how bad mine and the other games were. And his watch broke after a few days.
hehe - I like the idea behind motorway. Anyone who chooses to walk on the motorway deserves it. Reminds me of the original Death Race arcade game that caused a fuss in the 70s
Mate... this is an amazing find... I'm 46 and I me and my best buddy still joke about Fishing Mission. No matter how bad or good it was we still remember it after all these years.... loved watching the footage back. "You fall over and lose 1 hooks". Classic. Amazing to find you were only 13 when you developed it. I'm still waiting for Fishing Mission 2... I'd probably buy it, and the tshirt! Thankyou!
+Kim Justice Do you know what teh worst thing about Cassette 50 was? The ports to other Micros... We had as I was growing up an Amstrad CPC 464 and a Spectrum 48K... Now my Sisters (The 48K girls) were lucky to avoid Cassette 50... We had it with the bundle we bought from a friend but I recorded over it with some nice music from the charts at the time (Remember those days?) I was not so lucky! Before we got the Speccy - I joined BCA to get some cheaper games... In my first order I bought Gauntlet and the Deeper Dungeons... A nice Amstrad Compilation that had Operation Wolf on it (What a game!!!),, and about 3 others that I cannot remember... And there was a FREE MYSTERY GIFT! That Mystery Gift was CASSETTE 50 for the CPC.... There were believe it or not a few changes to the bundled games... About 5 I think... But what was worse - At least Half of them DID NOT BLOODY WORK!!!!
Do you happen to remember a city bomber game (a red plane that dropped stars onto blue buildings), which came on a compilation with 2 other games? I think in one game, you had drive along a busy road avoiding other cars & the other game was set in a maze, where you had to collect weapons to get past the monsters & reach the centre of the maze?
Don't think I've been this early on a vid of your's Kim! Well done. As a Canadian who grew up on Consoles, its so awesome to hear about the stories of the Micros in the UK and Europe. You're one of the stars of this kind of info, and I appreciate your hard work and effort.
Ah found memories of this. A friend and I did a bit of editing / re-writing of #14 Motorway. We blanked out the oncoming cars, changed the falling man into some lady parts and changed your car into some male parts. The end of games comments changed into some classic lines such as 'You must have a sore bellend' The minds of young teenage boys... I actually found our edited version on tape when I was loading up random tapes on my Spectrum Next. Thanks for reminding me Kim!
Great video as I had this tape when I was about 7-10 years old, which my dad got me in the 80s, and I have to say this tape and the Usborne 80s computer books I got from the library taught me how to program.
Excellent video. Loved looking back and remember some of these games. Still in the memory after all these years, unlike the watch that I got with it. Thankyou.... good commentary - and honest!
I mean hey, at least the cassette's as sound as any other when it comes to using the thing. Action 52's greatest sin may very well be how poorly engineered the cartridge is, to the point where we're only starting to see flashcarts able to properly emulate its catastrophe of a mapper (marked as Mapper 228, if you're wondering).
I had this cassette for ZX Spectrum back in the day and, bizarrely enough, actually enjoyed a few of the games! However that doesn't change the fact that it's like Action 52 and the POP Station had a baby...
Excellent. I have a soft spot for Cassette 50. I grew up with the C64 version, which had such delights as instruction screens in unreadable colour combinations, and ones where you had to hit run/stop as you didn't get time to read them. It did have some gems that got played a lot though, the version of Blitz, and a Snoopy game oddly called 'Black Hole'.
Personally I remember the Assassins Ultimate Games CDs that had 100+ games on them for the Amiga, I recall browsing them but don't remember how many I actively played, but I do recall one where you would cling to ceilings and walls while shooting stuff fondly.
Back in the 80's I visited a friend who didn't own a computer, but his dad did - some old CP/M machine with an 8" disk drive. The only game I remember playing was a variation of "City Bomber", so it might've been one of those early 70's basic games...
that was great Kim! Here in NZ, we had nothing like that for sale - noting most magazine ads and comics (I'm looking at you 2000AD) did NOT allow mail-orders from New Zealand! My favourite comp. I actually bought new and paid sooo much for = SOFTAID. Far out a load of great games!
Had the Acorn Electron version & remember how cheated I felt as a kid .. I must've thought time after time "maybe the next one will be ok" .. Right until the last, they were all SHIT :D
I was desperate for a copy for my Vic 20. I eventually got a tape for £1 (no watch though) from my local computer shop. I used it along with a bunch of Usborne books that I stole from my school library to learn lots of BASIC tricks. I pretty much used the tape as a collection of things I could improve. Kinda like todays Unity Engine assets... Bad games but good times. :)
All the Basic games on Cassette 50 was great for looking at differences in the Basics (and there were many!) on different machines of the era. Only time I ever found this tape useful.
For the guys and gals who think they've been around because they've reviewed Action 52: Trust me, you got off easy. For a year of my life, the only video games I owned were Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and Action 52. I'd had the SMB/DH -cart for about a year already before getting the A52. Kinda had my fill of that already at the time... So it was pretty much a year of Action 52 for me. Not my fondest memories in gaming. And no my parents didn't buy me a game worth 200USD. This was around 1994, so they were probably desperate to get rid of the carts. We just were among the last (I hope) suckers that got fooled by the advert. I've been soo curious about this one ever since I saw the cover for a frame or two in Guru Larry's (I think it was his) video. Super happy to finally learn what the dealie was all about.
i think one good thing about this was the code was able to be read and gave you a chance to examine what it did i wonder if anyone has ever reprogrammed them to improve them
Cassette 50 was the first tape I had for my 48k and I only had a black and white TV to play it on. This brings back fond memories of dark grey against darker grey basketball games and deliberately getting the answers wrong on Crusher.
I'd be interested to know where UTS fits into all of this. Most of the Spectrum 'games' were taken from an earlier UTS release, and are branded as such on the tape. But the UTS tape also contained other games (of similar quality) which didn't make it into the Cascade release, so were these licenced/bought by Cascade or was UTS an earlier name for Cascade?
Nah, various comics of the mid-80's to mid-90's (though one of the fuckers hung around until 2006) that ripped off Viz were doing that sort of thing back then. One called Ziggy was a particularly infamous example, they thought mocking a celebrity who had had a miscarriage would be "biting, witty satire", and got sued into the ground.
Great video! Having to go through them all and try to play them was funny! The games weren't up to commercial quality, but what I did enjoy as a kid was seeing how they were made , as they were all BASIC.
I think this is the second time I've watched this video. Reminds me very much of the day I borrowed this off a mate. I wasted a long time that day..and towards the end, depression was definitely kicking in. I just had to reach the end...maybe there was going to be a killer-game on there. Sadly, as the video reminds me, that game never came.
Oddly i never got my hands on the Amstrad version back in the day. Probably wouldnt have minded getting it either in those early days as in the beginning all i (and most others) had was just a few games to pick from and Type-in books/mags that often had to be somewhat translated as well. Of cause quality dont hold up for the later years that is for sure :D
Sorry about being late to the party :) Only just come across your channel ( have now subscribed and also done the Patreon thing. Also only just got into retro gaming, just checked my list and have this tape for the Spectrum and Electron ... Just have to get round to playing with them :) Keep up the good work.
Nothing says "bad quality" more than a games compilation. You still see it now, only the amount of supposed games you get is ridiculous. 50,000 games for PC, on one CD. Horrendous shovelware, nowhere near the advertised figure. Irony is, if someone had actually produced a half-decent games compendium during the 8-bit and 16-bit era, charged a reasonable price for it, and every game had been something you actually enjoyed playing, it would probably have been one of the best selling titles of the day. Okay, so absolute top end games take way more development than is plausible for shoving dozens of such quality onto one cassette or cartridge. You were never going to get 50, or however many, games up to the standards of your Mario, Sonic or Street Fighter and whatnot. But if you took the principle behind Cassette 50 and Action 52 and actually provided a professionally made compendium of classic arcade clones, for the same price as the average single game of the day, it would surely have been a must-have title to kick-start anyone's collection. Especially for the consoles. I know some quality compilations did hit the market, some by top software companies peddling out their hit back-catalogue. But if one big collection, 50, 100 or whatever, had hit the scene and ensured unwavering quality, it could have been a huge hit. Particularly if they managed to get some licensed big name games on-board to push the marketing. Like I say, think of a quality product. Not your usual ropey 50-in-1.
I saw straight through the lingo used in the ads "user defined graphics" "scrolling", seriously all I thought was "shitty home made games written in BASIC."
I will say though that after playing both the Speccy and C64 versions of Cassette 50, the Spectrum version is the better one (and that's not a compliment as both are overall shite)
Fair play Kim, I had this on the CPC464, even in period these games were shite, I never got any further than about 4 games in before putting it aside, on a bright note I believe I used the cassette to bag myself a playground copy of Renegade for my CPC.
I'm sad I just missed that era where you could write games in BASIC and earn a few bob. I probably made about 50 games in BASIC but not until the late 80s early 90s, and I couldn't understand how to make games in machine code.
I sent some games to this company when I was a kid and got 50 quid for them. I think they were looking for another 50 game sequel but as far as I know it didn't appear. There was an address to send games to if I'm remembering correctly. 50 quid was A LOT of money in those days too, but I didn't end up getting it because I teamed up with a mate of mine and he ripped me off!!!
Another top vid. Excellent work, Kim. Had this on speccy 48k. It's funny how sometimes you remember games being much better quality than they actually were. Not this time though. These all look just as shite as a I remember.
I remember seeing this advertised *everywhere*. I was sceptical. Although aged only 10 at the time, I remember consulting my dad to ask if he felt it was too good to be true, as he'd be writing any cheque for mail order. I remember thinking "Say it's on a C60. That's about 1 minute per game. Decent game takes 2-5 minutes to load on the Speccy". We concluded together that with no reviews available, it was probably crap. In the end I found it on WOS and even "won" a real copy in the crap games competition a few years ago. It strikes me that some of these are copies of the old ICL/Sinclair "super programs" released for the ZX81 in 1981. Martian KO and Skittles are just colourised versions of those 1K ZX81 games and I think one of the maze games apes "Daylight Robbery" from ICL. The rest are the sort of quality you got from type in listings. Which would be fine if I were typing in from a magazine that cost 95p. The better games would have been flagship type-in listings. I still wonder if Cassette 50 might have been better if they'd taken 10 decent games such as the ones you mentioned as being playable. But it did give us the crap games competition and did allow Cascade to fill their coffers and write some half decent games.
Does anyone know another compilation of 25 games? I haven't seen it on World of Spectrum.. I remember one game scrolled some sort of code across the screen.
The only game I remember from my time with this is Manhatten Blitz...and (don't judge me!) I quite enjoyed it. I was maybe 9 years old at the time and didn't appreciate the 'dark side' of this game. Anyway, great video Kim!
Was there a game on this one based on dam busters / op. Chastise / 617 squadron. Side scrolling single screen over mountains , shoot a few fighters, dodge flak fire from a tower turret and the end citadel turret, and then drop a bomb that has a parabolic arc based on your movement to fling this bomb over the citadel and hit a dam at various heights behind it ? I think I got it as part of 75 game collection that came on a 5.25" floppy . The shop gave it as a pack in when I brought my CG4 - 1541 floppy drive
The fact that cassette 50 was never reviewed shows the corruption of the gaming press. They were happy to take the money from Cascade but not to risk revenue by delivering the only honest verdict on it.
Ahh, the Legendary Action 52 and the absolutely amazing Cheetamen soundtrack. And nowadays we can make our own with everdrives. And instead of a bunch if rubbish, we can fill them with the finest a platform has to offer.
Voyager is a simplified version of another Spectrum game called Transversion. In Boggle, the computer always wins. In Mystical Diamonds, the next screen is avoid the guard behind 1 of 3 doors. Then the end is the diamonds fall down and you have to move under them to collect them. Cavern is just a worse version of an old Spectrum game called Ground Attack. Manhattan Blitz will get the conspiracy theorists talking!
You should do one on 1985 (ish) released compilation Soft Aid on the Speccy and C64, the games weren't that bad and it went to a good caused with some links to Band Aid and all that Bob Geldoff money raising to aid famine stricken people in Africa.
Yeah I forgot about the B side having the "Feed The World" single or "Do They Know It's Christmas time at all" (can't remember the title). Thing is that I don't think video games tend to do big charity things these days ... Ronald Reagan and greed prevail.. mentioning no names ... no names whatsoever, ... *coughs* Ubisoft, EA .. DLC *coughs* micro transactions.
mate, that video was brilliant, I laughed out loud so many times about your comic commentary about some of the sh1t games. I remember seeing the ads for this back in the day, but remember thinking the games must be sooooooooooo bad as there were 50 games. for once, I was actually right. Anyway, thanks again for an entertaining video. Cheers, Phil.
Oh God! I had banished this awful folly from my memory... why Kim? Why! Even worse - I remember playing ALL these on a black & white monitor back in the day! Aargh! I need a therapist! :-)
They should have sold this as part of a "Learn to program computer games" book. There was a market for these basic games, I remember typing in programs out of magazines and having hours of fun tweaking the code to see what happens. One of the games I played for ages was a simple king kong throw bananas at the other playing by inputting the trajectory and force. There was just something magical about tweaking the code on these, maybe it's just me, I'm the sort of guy who would drive to the edge of the world in need for speed, or spend the entire time looking for glitches in FPS shooters to hide in as opposed to actually playing the game!
bluebull399 Yes, I pretty much got my grounding in programming from the old Interface books on the VIC20... Very useful material. Problem was the Cassette 50 titles were mostly horrendous programs from a programming perspective as well.
Alien Attack is virtually impossible? It’s not that hard. You judge which of the 10 rows the Alien appears in & press the corresponding key. It’s just a test of reflexes.
Somehow I got the Cassette 50 game, but didnt get the free watch - maybe my dad got it? Although im pretty sure my parents werent reading the speccy magazines to know to buy it - so buggered if i know how they got it
I think "Fishing Mission" would look ace now on a 4K tv. So tempted to get all the kit again. It just captured it all about being sat on the side of a lake on a sunny day. The developer was 13 at the time! Respect!
These are the ZX Spectrum games I had (all better than the games on the Cassette 50! And no, I don't ever recall seeing that tape!): Well to start off I had the Soft 888 pack (getting a ZX Spectrum 128k +2 on Christmas 1987): Alien Destroyer Crazy Golf Disco Dan Mr. Punchy Oh Mummy! Treasure Island (although I have no memory of ever playing it!) And then there's these (the only ones I truly remember with any clarity): Bargain Basement Daley Thompson's Decathlon Every Second Counts Footballer of the Year Mickey Mouse: The Computer Game And several Codemasters titles and compilations: Big Nose's American Adventure Fast Food Kwik Snax Miami Chase Moto X Simulator Panic Dizzy Paris to Dakar Quattro Arcade Quattro Fantastic Quattro Power Quattro Racers Quattro Sports Quattro Super Hits Sky High Stuntman Street Gang Football Wacky Darts Wizard Willy
This was called Disk 50 on the Amstrad CPC and while 99% of them were garbage I must have played the game called Truckin' for weeks on end. A really simple trading and management game but at the time I loved it.
Normally I'm all for archiving things but in this case: Grab a huge magnet and you'll have a blank cassette. If you don't have a tape deck, send it to me and I'll record some music on it for you, any style of music you want.
There was a tribute to the the old cassette 50 a few years back made by a bunch of game devs: retroremakes.com/nostalgia/the-videogame-50/ It even comes with a digital watch.