First and final: Mastertronic

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PeteProdge
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First and final: Mastertronic

Post by PeteProdge »

One of the kingpins of pocket-money-priced Spectrum gaming, Mastertronic was established in 1983. All of their output that year was of previously released titles, mostly from the recently-bankrupt Carnell software house. I'll be skipping those and moving straight onto the first original title - which is what 'First and final' is all about.

Vegas Jackpot
With the catalogue number being IS0002, you could be thinking "surely the second Mastertronic game?", which is true from a multiformat perspective. There wasn't 'IS0001'. The 'S' is for Spectrum and the number would rise incrementally regardless of whether there had been a Spectrum version or not. Back in this time, Mastertronic would be putting out titles for the Commodore 64, Vic 20, Commodore 16, BBC, Acorn Electron and of course, the Speccy. For the curious, Duck Shoot was the first original Mastertronic game, it came out for the Commodore 64 (IC0001) and Vic 20 (IV0001), and it was a rip-off of Sega's Carnival arcade game from 1980.

Anyway, concentrating on the first original ZX Spectrum game from Mastertronic, this is quite obviously a fruit machine simulator. These types of games have an affliction imposed on them. The reason people play fruit machines is to win money, and no matter how well you make a computer simulate a fruit machine, there's going to be that feeling of emptiness even if the user does well at playing it. And what is the end goal anyway? You can't really complete these games as such. It's nice to have the money amount going up above the sum you started off with, but that's literally the only satisfaction you can have.

Yes, I'm a prejudiced negatively on the subject of fruit machines. Never been good at them, but hey, like all gambling devices, they are designed to take more money than they pay out. I did quite like Fruit Machine Simulator from Code Masters back in the day, spent a week playing it before realising that imaginary coins aren't that exciting. A short term thrill from being really good at it in that digital universe.

Another thing I don't like about fruit machines is that they've pretty much conquered modern arcades. I've returned to seasides I holidayed in the 1980s, and where you once found yards and yards of amazing video games (Golden Axe, Bubble Bobble, Double Dragon, Wonder Boy, etc), they're long gone and the spaces taken up with hordes of flashing fruit machines, coin pushers and prize grabbers. If you're lucky, there'll be a tiny amount of actual video games (Mario Kart GP is awesome) and a few nods to the retro scene (like a recreated Pac Man or that big screen Space Invaders thing where you point a light gun at the aliens). Oh and everything seems to revolve around spewing out yellow tickets. I've managed to collect quite a load of these things, then you go over to the prize desk and learn that the rainforest's worth of tickets you have in your hands might just get you a 12oz bag of sweets. Other people in the prize queue - who have been playing all day - end up with much better rewards. Sod that.

Ah, I appear to have gone wildly off track. Back to Vegas Jackpot then. Well, it's got the feel of a compiled BASIC game, like much of 1983's output. There is a rather annoying time between spins. It does appear to be a realistic portrayal of the fruit machines back in that time, hence the lack of about ten million flashing things. What deters it from being just the equivalent of dice throwing, is that you occasionally get the opportunity to nudge reels up and down. How many nudges you get, is determined by hitting the button as numbers 1-10 rapidly flash up randomly - which is pretty much left to chance.

Image

It is a pretty spartan game, but hey, it does what it says on the tin. I'm quite surprised it doesn't fit into 16K of memory, as there's not a lot going on. For £1.99, I don't think it can be knocked, but it's not going to be regularly replayed. It's like a glorified magazine type-in. I'd have preferred it if Duck Shoot was made for the Speccy, having had fond memories of Carnival down my local chip shop.

Super Stock Car
One of the cruel things about 'First and final' is that you end up focusing on some truly dire games. Not just the early ones, where it's expected the technology will be primitive, but you get situations like this where a label's swansong certainly isn't about going out on a high. It's a shame because there were many truly outstanding games from Mastertronic in between, like Feud; Zub; 180; Curse Of Sherwood and Kikstart II.

It's September 1990, Mastertronic would no longer see the Spectrum games market as a commercially viable option after this (save for a compilation), and the minimum price is now £2.99. Hence a slight rebrand to 'Mastertronic Plus'. I guess they were busier reaping the rewards from distributing the Sega Master System by this point.

This effort is like no other racing game I've seen on the Spectrum, as it's a top-down view as the screen scrolls around a circuit - very much like the Micro Machines games that Code Masters would release in the 16-bit/console era.

Unfortunately, this is nowhere near as good as Micro Machines. It's rather frustrating and certainly lacks realism. If it had been based on toy cars (yeah, I can't help invoking Micro Machines) then that would at least make sense. Your expectations are high as you're asked to pick your vehicle from this impressive line-up...
  • Lamborghini Countach
  • Ferrari Testarossa
  • Lotus Esprit
  • Porsche 959
...now, I must say Mastertronic's legal counsel must have been on holiday when this was being considered. These world-recognised brand names are presented on screen, pretty much in their respective fonts. I don't think you can just put in real vehicles into a game without a very costly license. (Hence why some reboots of Sega's Out Run tend to use a generic red sports car that certainly doesn't have Ferrari's logo.)

Gran Turismo this is not. The breakthroughs in Spectrum race gaming around this time - I'm thinking of Chase HQ and WEC Le Mans - meant you could have a reasonable stab at resembling high-speed driving in pseudo-3D. This, alas, is a top-down racer, and although it's nice to see full colour graphics flying about, it's simply daft that your car can rotate through the eight different directions without any proper animation. You can bash into corners and other cars, almost with impunity. It's not an easy game, but it's certainly nothing like the amazing racing experience depicted on the inlay cover.

Image

Mastertronic's biggest selling title across all formats was Formula One Simulator, which came out in 1984 - the year they'd issue Vegas Jackpot and other original games. I'd say Super Stock Car is a step down from that.
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Morkin
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Re: First and final: Mastertronic

Post by Morkin »

Never really considered them before, but I guess they had decent staying power throughout the Speccy days.

Re-releases aside, I thought they had some 'good' games (e.g. the Magic Knight ones), certainly a lot were value for money, but I'm not sure I would have classed any as 'outstanding'.
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