Be Excellent To Each Other

Remember the in the 8-bit and 16-bit of software when publishers issued compilations? These days compilations are emulated games from the past on a single disc, like the Mega Drive Ultimate Collection on the PS3 and Xbox for example, but in the old days you'd get a larger-than-usual cardboard boxed filled with cassettes or floppy disks containing three or more games a year or two old, often with some kind of interconnecting theme. (Like the games were all originally published by the same company, for example.)

My favourite compilation was the Magnificent Seven compilation for the Speccy. Head Over Heels was the best thing on there of course, but apart from the crap Speccy conversion of Wizball, the rest were all playable and entertaining, with respect going to proto-point & click adventure Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and the engrossing WWII antics of The Great Escape.

One of my favourites was Gremlin's 'Ten Great Games' which had Avenger, Future Knight, Krakout, Bounder, Footballer Of The Year, Trailblazer, Highway Encounter, Monty On The Run, West Bank and Jack The Nipper. It came in a huge box and inside was a double cassette box surrounded by polystyrene.

Still, Krakout, Bounder, FOTY, Trailblazer, West Bank and Jack the Nipper took up huge amounts of my time.

I had that magnificent 7 pack.

Which explains how I had Yie Ar Kung Fu.

And also why I think it's utter shit.

I had Ten Great Games and Mag7 also. Ace!

My first Speccy purchase was They Sold A Million - JSW (great), Sabre Wulf (gash), Beach Head (hated it for years and then liked it) and Daley (yay!)

Other faves;

Konami Coin-op Hits - Mikie (oddly excellent), Ping Pong (should be gash but isn't), Green Bert (I love you), Hyper Sports (unfuckwittable) and Yie Ar Kung Fu (not that bad).

We Are The Champions - Renegade (yay!), Rampage (rubbish), Barbarian (pretty good), Super Sprint (good), IK+ (thought it was good but in hindsight it was gash)

I also had the Magnificent 7 pack. Short Circuit was crap and Frankie was an impossible-to-finish mindfuck

Superior Software's compliations on the BBC were called 'Play it again, Sam'. Even at such a young age, I knew it was a misquote*




* Possibly a lie, but it did make it want to watch 'Casablanca'.

Kern's BBC is Skynet!

Wasn't there some sort of scandal involving one of these compilations, that was for charity. SoftAid or something?

Another favourite of mine - 6-Pak:

Scooby Doo - I remember playing enjoying this, but I can't remember much about it at all
1942 - Decent conversion of an average shooter
Duet - Two-player Commando-type fun.
Jet Set Willy II - I used to load this up just to explore and see how far I could get, rather than collecting anything
The Sacred Armour of Antiriad - Brilliant platform adventure type thing.
Fighting Warrior - The duffer of the pack.
Split Personalities - Still one of the best puzzlers ever.

There was also "Wheels of Fire" on the Amiga which had Chase HQ, Powerdrift and a couple of other things.

I don't remember the scandal but I remember the games pack cos it had 3D Ant Attack on it and that was awesome. Can't remember much else about it apart from Band Aid's single being on the tape and Kokotoni Wilf being on there. Oh and Gilligan's Gold which was a coin-op conv of some game with a totally different name.



Another good comp. Duet was exclusive to the pack as well. JSW2 - that's exactly how I played it.

Can you imagine Split Personalities on the DS/iPhone! How good would that be?

I vaguely remember a follow up pack to that with Batty on it. Eagles Nest as well I think.

I had both of those too. Which means I must;ve had Yie ar kung fu twice. What did I ever do to deserve that?

My ST came with the Power Pack, it had:

Afterburner
Black Lamp
Bomb Jack
Bombuzal
Double Dragon
Eliminator
Gauntlet II
Nebulus
Outrun
Overlander
Pacmania
Predator
R-Type
Space Harrier
Star Goose
Star Ray
Starglider
Super Hang-On
Super Huey
Xenon

Which meant I was more or less sorted for games for a while.

I consider Magnum 4 to be the worst compilation I've ever owned. Two completely crap coin-op conversions (Afterburner and Double Dragon), a mediocre one (Operation Wolf), and Batman: the Caped Crusader, which would've been quite good if it wasn't rendered virtually unplayable by some gameplay flaws.

My original Amiga came with the Batman Pack, which was good. OK, the Batman game was a just-about-competant Bionic Commando clone with some vehicle-based levels for variety, but New Zealand Story was one of the best arcade conversions for the Amiga, F-18 Interceptor really opened my eyes to what 16-bit computers could do, and Deluxe Paint II is still one of my favourite pieces of software ever.

Big shout for Codemasters and the "Quattro" series. 4 previously released budget games for the price of a budget game. Not quite buy 1 get 3 free given by this time budget games were £2.99 and latterly £3.99 and most of the games included were £1.99 games, but still great value.




In France, the land where the CPC ruled supreme, they didn't have a budget market. Instead games were re-relased on compilations, most of which were never seen on these shores. I picked up a 30 game compilation in the Paris Virgin Megastore that contained all of Durrells back catalogue as well as some other titles.

I had that.

It also had Yie Ar Kung Fu 2, which is the kind of game that haunts Mr Dave in his nightmares.

Jackal was also on there. Slightly shit version of Ikari Warriors.

And of course Jailbreak!

A great compilation.

Do you want to be (b)oy or (g)irl

I had completely forgotten about these packs, and seem to have bought all of the speccy ones mentioned so far as my brain cranks into gear.

Kokotini Wilf was fucking epic!

The Amiga Beau Jolly compilation had Canon Fodder, The Chaos Engine and The Settlers, which were all amazing games. It also had Terminator: The Arcade Game, but the less said about that one the better.

What were the flaws? The Spectrum version was brilliant at least.

Ah, you had the later one. I remember that. My comp only had five games but I remember the later release.

Jackal and Jailbreak were a bit sketchy from what I remember. Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 was awful!

There was a series of packs called Five Star Games. I can't remember what was on each one but I had all three packs (there may have been more) and it was a bunch of odd games like Cauldron 2, Aliens UK and some wierd isometric black-ops/SAS game.

Ok ladies, prepare to wet yourselves. I've just been to the cupboard next to my office:




Some compilations, yesterday.



The Konami compilation I was talking about. Has to be one of the top compilations of all time.


The games on my French CPC compilation. In fact there were some extras as well!

I seem to remember Yi Ar Kung Fu 2 being a weird platform / beat 'em up hybrid.

I had a (I think) Ocean Compilation with Yi Ar Kung Fu, Yi Ar Kung Fu 2, Short Circuit, Game Over and Army Moves on it. Possibly Arknoid, too. Can't think what it was called.

Konami Ping Pong was ace.

Could only find 4 Quattro's but I know I have at least 2 C64 versions as well so they are probably at home.

I was playing table tennis on the Wii* at the weekend and lamenting how much better Ping Pong was. It's a game I still play occasionally and sadly forgot about for the 8 Bit Challenge.

* Yes I had my first go on a Wii at the weekend. More soon!

I thought Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 was more of the same? Are you thinking of Shao-lins Road?

No - I'm sure you had to walk along to the left for a few screens before meeting a bad'un.

Aha, yes:



Maybe it was just the CPC version.

That looks... really really bad.

It was terrible. Worst game on the compilation by a mile.

The constantly-decreasing life bar with limited meads to replenish it, the hoards of indestructible enemies, the lack of map.

I wanted to like the game, as it looked good, had a sense of humour and I'd enjoyed playing a Crash! playable demo back in my Speccy days, but it was not to be.

I had it on the CPC and have a feeling I completed the Penguin version. Good game but easy to get lost.

That was another problem, definitely.

Loved the 'comic book' style of the game, incidentally. Still do, really. When I saw the Crash! covertape demo, presenting a game in that way with the limited graphics of the Speccy really impressed my young mind. IIRC I can't think of any games that followed the 'comic book' style apart from Comix Zone on the Mega Drive, but I may be wrong.

The first Dan Dare IIRC.

There were some awful comps too.

I had one, can't remember the name, that was really bad. The standout game was Denis Through The Drinking Glass. A text adventure about Denis Thatcher (I kid you not) that had the worst parser ever and ended the game after ten turns. One of the hardest games I've ever played.

There was also Moon Patrol (a Moon Buggy clone), Pool (functional), Spectres (a really bad Pac-Man clone) and a bunch of stuff I've forgotten.

I had a domark one that started with A View To A Kill, then Friday the 13th..... after that you lose the will to continue.

Oh! I think I had that. Did it have Pyramid on it? A sort of single screen shooter like Jet Pac?

A View to a Kill - Not bad. The best bit was the Impossible Mission-style bit.
Friday 13th - I used to just go around killing everyone
Code Name Mat 2 - Simplified Elite type shooter but pretty good all the same
Pyramid - As Blucey said. You started at the top and worked your way down the pyramid so you could choose your route down.
Test Match Cricket - The only cricket game for years, it seemed. All choice driven "Run? Y/N"
Beaky and the Egg Snatchers - I can't remember much about this, but I remember liking it.

Ooh, I liked the codename Mat game!
View to a kill - I never got beyond the car bit...mind you i didn't have a clue what you were meant to do and i was only about 8....

Think Beaky was a joust type game?

I seem to remember Beaky being alright.

There was a tv and movie tie-in compilation that I remember. That was awful as it had Street Hawk, Highlander, Knight Rider and maybe a Miami Vice game on there. Pretty hideous.

The oddest comps were the ones that came out with unreleased games on there. I had an Elite one with Great Gurianos (which, infamously, couldn't be completed as the programmer deliberately made the last boss unbeatable), Airwolf 2 (nasty side-scrolling shooter that at least wasn't as bollocks hard as the original) and 3DC which was an isometric adventure that I really liked (odd, as I hated those sort of things normally).

Also, Ocean (I think) did one with Typhoon, Guerilla Wars (?) and Op. Wolf (possibly). The first two titles hadn't been released yet. GW was terrible but Typhoon was playable enough.

Cascade 50 being the worst for me. Only one of the games took more than a few seconds to load (Cypher - a Mastermind clone) and were pretty much all crap. My 'favourite' was The Race (I think), in which you placed bets on 100m runners.

I remember the 'Platinum' compilation from US Gold: Ghouls n Ghosts, Strider, Black Tiger, Led Storm amongst the games on it. Pretty good!

Cassette 50 by Cascade.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_50

Did you get your free watch?

Nope, but that was because I actually rented the game from my local video shop.

You got off lightly then!

That advert used to look so tempting but the names of the games gave it away. They all sounded like BASIC type-ins and in fact were!

Although actually I guess Cassette 50 was an early example of crowd sourcing. If I understood what crowd sourcing was.

That reminds me of another compilation. I think it was called 'PCW Games Collection' and was a book of type-in listings and a tape with all the games on them. Ideally, you'd play the tape first, see how poor the games were and then realise you could've spent all that time typing just to play that crap.

Remember kids, we're currently playing compilation stalwart Yie Ar Kung Fu in the 8 Bit Challenge.

From 6pm Friday it's Uradium which I believe may have also been on a compilation.

A good example from my Amiga stuff...

Zardoz's mention of APB reminded me of TNT, a Domark complilation, featuring -

Xybots - Not bad. Bit rough-looking on the Speccy
Toobin' - I enjoyed this one a lot at the time, but I've a feeling it won't have aged all that well.
APB - Very good conversion.
Dragon Spirit - Decent enough shooter, although with the limited palette, bullets got lost a bit sometimes.
Hard Drivin' - Rather over-ambitious trying to get the Speccy to play this at any decent speed, but it was a faithful conversion. I only ever bothered with the stunt track though

Hard Drivin was enormous fun on the CPC (and therefore also the Speccy) if you had a mate to play with. The car was hard to control on your own but the space bar would centre the steering. So you'd have the joystick and as soon as the car was in the right direction your made could press space to centre the steering. The second person could also do the acceleration and braking as well.

Toobin' gave some entertainment and had a catchy tune. It was later ripped off for Dizzy Down The Rapids.