New Mastertronic Slideshow

[SimonPlumbe]

Linking in with our website, we've just uploaded a new Mastertronic slideshow to our YouTube channel putting the Spectrum up against the other 8-bit systems showcasing a lot of its Mastertronic loading screens and comparing sales figures for a lot of their games. Some interesting differences with the artwork and stats as well.



Enjoy!

[R-Tape]

Both the Speccy and the C64 have their share of turkeys and exceptional screens. The Amstrad ones are mostly okay, with nothing really standing out either - must be the curse of the port.

I do like the C64's stylish grey Bruce Lee one (Sorry FD Thorpe!),and the C64 Zub is brilliant - just edging out the Speccy.

The Speccy wins quite a few too of course. I got a pleasant surprise with Invasion, not a game I was familiar with. The Speccy came last in the queue, and after seeing the high colour, high detail CPC and C64 ones I was readying myself for a Speccy howler, and it was the best of the 3!

Cool video thanks.

[tubs74]

The sales figures were interesting

Finders Keepers - 1985 130,000+
Spellbound - 1986 - 60,000+
Storm Bringer - 1987 -30,000

[SimonPlumbe]

One thing I found interesting with the sales figures is that some games benefited from the earlier releases on other platforms giving them a boost, others were hindered by it. It was also clear looking across even more systems that figures varied even more... Formula 1 Simulator sold even better on the Commodore 16 than any other system, and almost double that of the C64. And the Spectrum and Amstrad versions of the game were totally different to the Commodore ones!

All the Magic Knight games seemed to perform better on the Spectrum as well sales wise, but with the other versions following later the initial appeal and press coverage from mutliformat mags may have worn off.

Something that did come up and an approach Mastertronic took in later years was the introduction of the "Flippy". Sales of Amstrad games were dwindling so they opted to bundle these with the Spectrum releases (hence the higher sales for Dan Dare II). If these hadn't happened, I have a feeling the Amstrad may have been dropped or scaled back much more by that point leaving just the Spectrum and C64 to dominate things before the 16-bit market really kicked in for them.

[SimonPlumbe]

The sales figures were interesting

Finders Keepers - 1985 130,000+
Spellbound - 1986 - 60,000+
Storm Bringer - 1987 -30,000

I deliberately left out the 128k versions from the totals as they were recorded separately, but in terms of figures Spellbound 128k sold 2,301 copies and Stormbringer 128k sold 5,400 copies.