Be Excellent To Each Other

Just throwing this out there. I was think about new articles for the site. Perhaps the kind of retro stuff nobody would touch with a bargepole.

There's one prolific games publisher from the mid eighties who released more games in 3 years than many publishers release in 10. Barring a couple of exceptions all these games were for a single format. Yet this publisher is all but forgotten about.

Note I keep on saying "publisher". These guys just published the games, they didn't write them. And they vanished once their work was done.

Is this Ocean? US Gold? Codemasters? No, it's Amsoft.

Am I bonkers? Perhaps! But Amsofts back catalogue is a microcosm of mid 80's gaming. From utter rubbish like 3D invaiders to the sublime like Spy Hunter and Sorcery+, Amsoft published the lot.

They had one aim, to get as many games out there for the CPC as possible to establish the format. Quality didn't matter, quantity did. In fact some of the early games were written on prototype CPC's in literally a couple of weeks so that there was a stock of launch titles.

Sure much of their catalogue was forgettable rubbish, but there's also some gems in there. I want to take a look at that back catalogue, and I want YOU to help.

What I'd aim to do is provide a download link with a selection of games. You get to play them and anyone who wants can do a quick review. Not even as long as our top 50 reviews. I'm thinking the kind of length (Linda Barker - Ed) did for the YS Top 100.

Some of these games are very obscure, some are very well known. If there's enough interest I can start compiling a zip file. I want to take a look at a cross section of games from this forgotten publisher and ask if Amsoft really did push the CPC on it's way.

I think it would be fun and would give the site something a little "special".

Good idea/bad idea and is anyone interested?

I'd be interested. About my only experience of a CPC was around a friend's house playing Rampage, so I'd like to see what else was on the system.

When I first read the title, I instinctively thought Ocean somehow. Okay, so they were notorious for churning out movie licenses like they were salted peanuts, but they seemed to have that "style" about them that I liked a lot back in the day. A style nobody else seems to exhibit in this day and age.

To me there can only be one.

http://www.mastertronic.com/

They had my pocket money every couple of weeks and provided me with some cracking titles over the years.

Alternative, natch. Postman Pat!

You are aware that's not the same Mastertronic of yesteryear, yes?

They don't even sell Spectrum games !

I wasn't aware no. Mostly because it's called Mastertronic and there is MAD on the site.

if it had come from a non-amstradoholic i might have fallen for this..

but now, it is clearly Epyx, or pre-madden EA, or Image Works

Spy Hunter was my favourite game on my Atari 800XL. That's not saying much though.

So is that a vote for US Gold or Sega ?

(cant find an image of the atari cover but US Gold released all of the versions of it over here )



Or for the originators of the game (Bally / Midway)

I think thats one of the problems - just using that as a 20 year old example there are at least 4 or 5 'companies' associated with it.

It's a vote for Spy Hunter

/not answering question

This version

EA

Mastertronic

Also: Firebird (BT owned weren't they?)

Yeah another vote for Speccy-era Mastertronic here.

I realise there is appeal of other software houses, but their remit was much wider over a longer period. The bulk of Amsofts titles came out in 1984 and 1985, with only a handful of games coming out in the following years. You have pretty much the entire gaming spectrum of that period condensed into the output of a single publisher.

This is an incomplete list of titles:

http://uk.gamespot.com/games.html?type=company&mode=75250

You even have Lords Of Midnight in there.

Amsoft have one of the most diverse catalogues of any publisher. If you were a software company not quite sure if you should take the plunge with the CPC then Amsoft would take the risk for you and publish the games and then pay you a royalty. Even the likes of US Gold and Virgin were using Amsoft for their first CPC titles.

Did Amsoft rebadge many games? I know Roland on the Ropes was originally a Spanish game called Fred (which was released under that name on the Spectrum), but where there (m)any others?

By failing to provide any information on Amsoft's back catalogue listing in your post, YOU HAVE FORFEITED MY INTEREST.

There is a link up there with a incomplete listing in it!!!!

I've been trying (with no success) to find my Winter 1985 Amsoft catalogue. Yes such a thing did exist!

Bullshit. There wasn't a winter in 1985.

Roland in the Caves was another Spanish game that was called (I think) Flea. I saw Roland Goes Digging as a budget game on the Atari XL under another name that escapes me.

Ah, here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugaboo_(The_Flea)

Roland Ahoy was ported to the Speccy and renamed for the Spectrum software pack.

Most of the other Amsoft titles were either exclusive games or ported from other formats.

Amsoft 1984 catalogue:

http://www.trickynz.com/Amstrad%20Downloads_files/Amsoft%20Catalogue%201984.pdf

If you search for "Amsoft Catalogue" this thread comes up as the fourth entry! Crivens!

Edit: That was a slow download, but wow, there's games on there that even I didn't know existed and had already been deleted by late '85!

Mastertronic did seem pretty cool for a budget label. Firebird had some quality as well like Rebelstar. Can't deny Codemasters had some pretty impressive output at budget price for a long time. Until they decided that the same (or lesser) quality was worth several times the price.

There's a good reason the Darlings set up their own software house and gave their coders very good deals and that's because they'd been working for Mastertronic and watching them walk away with the majority of the cash.

I will give Mastertronic the credit for putting CPC and Speccy games on the same tape. It was a money saving exercise but was a real boon for me as a joint CPC and Speccy owner.

As the thread is titled 'The greatest software house of all time', then I should mention Cult. Not because they were the greatest by any means, but they did 'Software House' which was indeed the greatest 'Software House' of all time. It wasn't a bad little game, except the charts seemed a little erratic and your popular new game would suddenly disappear from the charts seemingly for no reason.

Kevin Toms, he of Football Manager, wrote a game called "Software Star" where you ran a software house.

It's top now

I wonder if the game at No. 13 is Silicon Jugs?

A better list (and as far as I can see complete) list of Amsoft games here:
http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/companies/companies.php?company=6&title=Amsoft

105 titles. That's quite some output considering 80%+ of those were released in 1984 and 1985.

OK, I've collected together 25 Amsoft games which represents a wide selection of their catalogue. In fact it covers 25% of their output in under 500k!

The games are:

3D Stunt Rider - Do an Eddie Kidd impression
3D Boxing - Boxing. Never played it.
3D Invaders - Space invaders in isometric 3D
Blagger - Think this is a platformer
Doors Of Doom - Platformer
Electro Freddy - Arcade style game
Glen Hoddles Soccer - Football game
Harrier Attack - It's Harrier Attack dammit!
Haunted Hedges - Pacman clone
Mutant Monty - Platformer?
Oh Mummy - It's Oh Mummy dammit!
Punchy - Hunchback knock off
Qabbalah - No idea
Quack A Jack - Think this a platformer by the same guy who wrote Spindizzy
Roland On The Ropes - The Speccy game known as "Fred"
Roland Goes Square Bashing - Puzzler
Roland In Time - Platformer
Roland Goes Digging - Platformer/arcade
Sorcery + - CPC exclusive and enhanced version of Sorcery
Splat - The Speccy classic
Spy Hunter - It's Spy Hunter dammit!
Gems Of Stradus - Graphic adventure
Sultans Maze - Slow 3D Maze game. Terrified me as a kid
Tapper - See Spy Hunter
Mr Wongs Loopy Laundry - No idea!


If any of those sound like you'd give them a try, download the zip file and fire up your emulator:



Let me know what you think of any games you try in about 30-50 words + any impressions of the overall Amsoft catalogue.

Any problems loading games or running emulators please ask here. Thanks.

I had no idea Tapper and Spy Hunter were Amsoft. I had them on a double pack tape on my Speccy and they got more play than almost anything else I owned.

Only for the CPC version. Remember Amsoft were just the publisher. It looks like the US Gold logo has been scrubbed from the loading screen.

Amsoft was there to encourage the publishers to develop for the CPC. Chances are US Gold did the work and Amsoft just published it.

On the speccy, Haunted Hedges wasn't bad, but on the other side of the tape was Waxworks, a rather good (well, from what I can remember) text adventure.

I had pretty much all the roland games, oh mummy and harrier attack!

I might do Harrier Attack.

If I can find the time.

If someone else beats me to it then so be it, but, consider me pencilled in (very lightly and with a rubber poised - not that sort of rubber you filthy minded beast!)

<Malc>

If there's games on that list I posted that aren't in the zip file that people want to do then that's cool.

I've just been playing through them. Fascinating insight into that era of gaming but sadly many of the games are forgettable. Electro Freddy would make a great Iphone game though.

I also noticed that the main character in Doors of Doom looks very simaler to the last two Roland games (also by GEM software). I wonder if it was intended to be a Roland game at one stage?

Am beavering away on this.

Meanwhile, child that I am, this amused me:

Can someone remind me how the Up To Jump rating system works?

Cheers.

Oh, lots of bananas.

I'm glad someone appreciated that the picture wasn't a quick Photoshop job but involved 2 minutes of recoding the standard Amsoft loader.

S A B C D E.

Cheers. Do we know how to link the ratings into each article? I will need many ratings in my article.

Details are here:

http://uptojump.co.uk/?p=99

Not actually convinced you can have more than one rating in a single article.

Do you all see now why the banana system is an infinitely better system?

Not being able to rate each game on an individual basis might make me so angry I'll write another 2500 words. Be warned!

Why not give each game a banana rating and then an overall UTJ score? You could use the banana system for 'retro' games

I offered up the patented Banana system at the start of the site but it was thrown back in my face like a dirty teatowel by those who knew better.

A score out of 1000 makes far more sense than some arbitrary letter scheme which is why ACE has gone on to become the most successful computer magazine of all time (subs please check).