The reason why Mastertronic could churn out so many games so cheap was because they were awful. They were ‘programmed’ by 5-8 guys in their bedrooms, and churned out at an incredible rate They were pish, but 8 year old me loved them and I’d love to spend the day with Microprose Soccer again
I wouldn't say they were ALL awful, I mean they did have the occasional hidden gem, like Hero of the Golden Talisman, and really well respected games like Kickstart I and II, however most of their games were utter drivel
Christ. I've long said that Intergalactic Cage Match is the worst game of all time but it's got some serious competition there. I've played Bionic Granny before and that's about 0.5% better than Cage Match but some of the others do look really bad.I actually quite liked The Last V8, although that's not to say it's a good game. The music drove me on and I did complete it a few times in the end.This could run for a while as a series...
Last V8 was good. There was a secret, to cut corners through the trees, saving time. Game was hard, but it was meant to be. For £2.99 it was still a bargain. It's successor was Red Max. Superior in my opinion.
Mamemeister It IS super hard. Strangely, one of the main reasons to load this up was to listen to the speech and music. It was so uncommon and new back then. I think you would like "Red Max" a lot better. All the best.
The Last V8 was really poor. The small play area rendered it far too frustrating. They tried to mask its' failings underneath sampled speech and cool music.
That BMX Racers music was completely different to the music in the version I had back in the day (amazingly I've resisted the urge to review it... and I've reviewed Dick Tracy FFS!)
BMX Racers seems to play like a familar Atari game. Wonder what it could be? Yes, it's River Raid on Bikes done badly of course. Edit: Maybe not as the oil doesn't go in your fuel tank which it should do if it was River Raid done badly.
Bionic Granny (and a few other early Darling brothers games, I want to say BMX Racers here too, Sub Hunt, and evidently by watching it, probably Enter the Ninja!) were made using the package released as "Games Maker" by Mirrorsoft and "Creations" by Codemasters itself. It's pretty basic, but it's an interesting curio for kids wanting to understand game logic and putting something together. Intergalactic Cage Match was a given, Paul has more vitriol for it, but I suffered playing it back in the day as well. That music in Rattler, yeesh! Gertie Goose wasn't a budget game, it was released full price according to the reviews. Robobolt probably should have been in there ;)
The Last V8 programmer's name is of particular interest. It is the co-founder of Codemasters software alongside his brother, Richard Darling. Furthermore, Mark Trotter also coded a rather playable Burger Time clone for Supersoft known as Burger Chase.
What did Virgin see in them to buy them out? Their games for Own Brand/Virgin seem just as rubbish as most of their videos under MasterVision/Kids Cartoon Collection/Parkfeild for InterVision/InterSound to be fair their VHS Tapes were mostly Harmony Golds but beleive it or not Harmony Gold was own brand as they did audio at InterSound/Vision hence why their VHS brand in the UK was MasterVision a combination of InterVision and MasterTronic. Their games are the same rating as their VHS tapes by the look of it of the Poo Gold ratings.
V8 was unplayable and I know a lot of people thought it was impossible to complete. Its scrolling and music were insufficient to redeem it. I actually believed at the time that Mastertronic were incapable of producing a game I could ever enjoy.
I think the control of the car is pretty awesome. I can complete level one but never figured out what level two was all about. I used to spend ages trying to sneak the car through some hedge or other to get outside the normal play area and into some mystical behind-the-scenes place - it was my way of trying to figure out how computers worked. It was one of the few games that had a Commodore 128 enhanced version I think.
Wait, you never enjoyed kickstart I and II? I pretty much liked anything that Shaun Southern put out for the, except for maybe some of his REALLY early stuff like Duck Shoot, which wasn't horrible, but was somewhat mediocre
It's amazing to think the Darling brothers with terrible grammer who wrote some of these like BMX Racers and Bionic Granny with their own game construction kit (think they did 20 games for Mastertronic) went on to become extremely wealthy indeed! Bet their teachers are pissed off lol
Some of those Mastertronic games and others had music that sounded like they were composed by someone who knew absolutely nothing about music composition. In Rattler, they couldn't even get the notes for The Entertainer correct, and sheet music is available for that one! But no matter how bad a game is, I try to keep in mind that somebody somewhere imagined and programmed it, and was proud of it in the end. IMO, even bad games deserve to be remembered.
Rattler wasn't a Mastertronic game though. The company that made it was also the company that made Cops 'n' Robbers. LOL. They did manage to crank out a couple decent titles in the latter years of the company though...Nothing amazing though
Japanese flute hrn pipe doesn't sound that great on the SID especially being done by MasterTronic/Vision. It would have been fun if they made games of their awful Harmony Gold dub films they owned the rights to. A load of them would have hit Top 10 worst if they did especially Brave Frog the game the film I watched part of on RUclips for a bit of fun and I couldn't last 10 minutes before turning off with their bad voice talents. :)
10 of the best and worst on your fave systems. You have another winner here. I wonder what would be your X68000 worst if any are that bad to have a worst list of it. If anything though the worst would more than likely be all Majongs like Strip Fighter 2 the original one which wasn't a fighting game at all.
yeh this is the bmx racers from mastertronic i had ruclips.net/video/C_AZXTD4q-c/видео.html , i liked it when i was very young a good skill/memory test, a lot better than this version, they must have altered//reworked the game much of the layout and bike sprites are the same.
Nice one, Skeletor. I bought an ECP compilation in 1989 that had Poga, Bojo, Electro World and Bert the Bug Bites Back. It was probably the worst product I've ever bought in my life.
Admit it, The Last V8 screencap as video thumbnail - as well as its inclusion on this 'worst' list - is pure clickbait. The game is what I call a 'humble' classic, and its main theme is in every SID lover's playlist. Its main fault is its shortness, but overall it has no place amongst the company you put it in.
@@scottbreon9448 Scott Breon As were "The Last Ninja"'s, "Shadow of the Beast"'s and many others" that were lucky enough to find an audience despite that. "The Last V8" was short, unforgiving and rough around many edges, but had good graphics, a killer music theme and a memorable UI that's almost as iconic as "The Last Ninja"'s. The very fact that we're having this discussion, which was motivated not only by the inclusion of the game in this "worst of" list but also by the choice of having a screenshot from it as the vid's thumbnail sort of proves my point. Unlike the rest of mostly obscure games that accompany it here, "The Last V8" was successfully exported to many foreign markets - foreign to UK, that is; I'm Spaniard, for the record - and is well-known amongst longtime C64 fans despite it being a low budget title that was barely publicized at the time, if at all. TLDR: the vid's author knew fully well what was doing when used a "The Last V8" screen cap as a thumbnail. Polemics sell. There's hundreds, if not thousands, of low budget games that are, objectively speaking, way worse than it - but none of them would've clickbaited people in like TLV8's screencap undoubtedly did.
Oscar Jiménez Garrido The bigger issue with last V8 for me is that the playing area took up less than a quarter of the screen. I do agree with you on the Last Ninja though. Always found that entire series somewhat overrated aside from the music Plus Last V8 got less than 30 percent from Zzap! 64. and only has a 5 out out of 10 on Lemon64.com with 92 votes
@@scottbreon9448 The playable area on TLV8 takes a bit more of one third of the screen, actually - it's right up there for anyone to check. Other games from the era took a similar approach, so it wasn't a rare occurrence at the time. Regarding game ratings, I'd argue that the fact that TLV8 got a bad review from a certain game journalist on a certain UK magazine that the rest of the world didn't get to read is way less relevant that the Lemon64 average rating note that you mentioned yourself - 5 out of 10, which, by all accounts, is indeed an average number and would equate, on academic terms, to a passing grade. Which, statistically speaking, would mean that TLV8 would be best suited for a "10 average C64 budget titles" list than it is for a "10 of the worst" one.
Wow, just...wow. A shower of shite and no mistake. You've _got_ to do a 'Best C64 Budget Games' at some point, Alan, or my eyeballs (and ears) will never forgive you.
The reason why Mastertronic could churn out so many games so cheap was because they were awful.
They were ‘programmed’ by 5-8 guys in their bedrooms, and churned out at an incredible rate
They were pish, but 8 year old me loved them and I’d love to spend the day with Microprose Soccer again
Thankfully the quality did improve fairly quickly and they were some cracking games to be had.
I wouldn't say they were ALL awful, I mean they did have the occasional hidden gem, like Hero of the Golden Talisman, and really well respected games like Kickstart I and II, however most of their games were utter drivel
I remember "The last V8". Had the Amstrad CPC Version. The music was better on this one though the C64 had the better audio chip.
Sub Hunt was basically a glorified Defender clone only in an underwater setting. Not a goof defender clone mind you, but a Defender clone nonetheless
Athens panned Cage Match on his channel too. I don't blame him. My friend actually had that game...LOL
Yeah I've watched that, great video.
Oops, I meant to say Ashens
Watching that Bionic Granny clip and listening to your drole Scottish commentary almost triggered an asthma attack in me as I laughed.
I bought it ..
:D
im happy i grew up with c64. so many good memories even if i didnt spend all day indoor gaming.
Christ. I've long said that Intergalactic Cage Match is the worst game of all time but it's got some serious competition there. I've played Bionic Granny before and that's about 0.5% better than Cage Match but some of the others do look really bad.I actually quite liked The Last V8, although that's not to say it's a good game. The music drove me on and I did complete it a few times in the end.This could run for a while as a series...
Last V8 was good. There was a secret, to cut corners through the trees, saving time. Game was hard, but it was meant to be. For £2.99 it was still a bargain. It's successor was Red Max. Superior in my opinion.
I just never had the skill or patience to persevere with it unfortunately.
Mamemeister It IS super hard. Strangely, one of the main reasons to load this up was to listen to the speech and music. It was so uncommon and new back then. I think you would like "Red Max" a lot better. All the best.
Speech and music were good. Having your car explode because you've rolled at a snails pace into bush? Get tae feck
Which one would you say was the least crappy of this bad batch?
The Last V8 was really poor. The small play area rendered it far too frustrating. They tried to mask its' failings underneath sampled speech and cool music.
I think the balls on Rattler are to try and put you off. Some really shocking games there, thanks for sharing.
That BMX Racers music was completely different to the music in the version I had back in the day (amazingly I've resisted the urge to review it... and I've reviewed Dick Tracy FFS!)
Ooh you like to punish yourself.
There are two completely different versions of BMX Racers....believe it or not Lukozer had the far superior of the two...
BMX Racers seems to play like a familar Atari game. Wonder what it could be? Yes, it's River Raid on Bikes done badly of course.
Edit: Maybe not as the oil doesn't go in your fuel tank which it should do if it was River Raid done badly.
Bionic Granny (and a few other early Darling brothers games, I want to say BMX Racers here too, Sub Hunt, and evidently by watching it, probably Enter the Ninja!) were made using the package released as "Games Maker" by Mirrorsoft and "Creations" by Codemasters itself. It's pretty basic, but it's an interesting curio for kids wanting to understand game logic and putting something together. Intergalactic Cage Match was a given, Paul has more vitriol for it, but I suffered playing it back in the day as well. That music in Rattler, yeesh! Gertie Goose wasn't a budget game, it was released full price according to the reviews. Robobolt probably should have been in there ;)
Actually it was Games Creator. Maybe you're confusing it with Garry Kitchen's Game Maker from Activision.
Brilliant video mate, love your vids
Ah bless ya fella, appreciate your nice comment and delighted to hear you enjoy some of the stuff I put out.
so 'intergalactic cage match' is what sculptured software did before making the snes ports of mortal kombat games then
Others sucked ass but Last V8 was actually a nice little game. What it is doing on the list?
detonator2112 It is a wonderful looking game with great sound but it was virtually unplayable, remember its just my opinion.
Because the controls were HORRIBLE
The Last V8 programmer's name is of particular interest. It is the co-founder of Codemasters software alongside his brother, Richard Darling. Furthermore, Mark Trotter also coded a rather playable Burger Time clone for Supersoft known as Burger Chase.
Thanks for the info fella.
Stuart Vallantine
Funny because according to Gamebase 64 Burger Chase was coded by Nigel Fisher
This screen shot even confirms this...
www.gb64.com/Screenshots/B/Burger_Chase_1.png
What did Virgin see in them to buy them out? Their games for Own Brand/Virgin seem just as rubbish as most of their videos under MasterVision/Kids Cartoon Collection/Parkfeild for InterVision/InterSound to be fair their VHS Tapes were mostly Harmony Golds but beleive it or not Harmony Gold was own brand as they did audio at InterSound/Vision hence why their VHS brand in the UK was MasterVision a combination of InterVision and MasterTronic. Their games are the same rating as their VHS tapes by the look of it of the Poo Gold ratings.
I don't know, they did produce Overlord/Supremacy
I liked Cage Match. There were a load of moves and I went back to it a lot. Didn't know the other games but they do look bad.
Sorry, but that "MUSIC" was some of the worst music I ever heard coming out of the SID chip
V8 was unplayable and I know a lot of people thought it was impossible to complete. Its scrolling and music were insufficient to redeem it. I actually believed at the time that Mastertronic were incapable of producing a game I could ever enjoy.
I think the control of the car is pretty awesome. I can complete level one but never figured out what level two was all about. I used to spend ages trying to sneak the car through some hedge or other to get outside the normal play area and into some mystical behind-the-scenes place - it was my way of trying to figure out how computers worked.
It was one of the few games that had a Commodore 128 enhanced version I think.
Wait, you never enjoyed kickstart I and II? I pretty much liked anything that Shaun Southern put out for the, except for maybe some of his REALLY early stuff like Duck Shoot, which wasn't horrible, but was somewhat mediocre
It's amazing to think the Darling brothers with terrible grammer who wrote some of these like BMX Racers and Bionic Granny with their own game construction kit (think they did 20 games for Mastertronic) went on to become extremely wealthy indeed! Bet their teachers are pissed off lol
Yeah, kudos to them for doing what they've done. Might try and track down one of them for an interview.
It's like if George W. Bush made video games, LOL
Some of those Mastertronic games and others had music that sounded like they were composed by someone who knew absolutely nothing about music composition. In Rattler, they couldn't even get the notes for The Entertainer correct, and sheet music is available for that one! But no matter how bad a game is, I try to keep in mind that somebody somewhere imagined and programmed it, and was proud of it in the end. IMO, even bad games deserve to be remembered.
You're spot on. Were it not for the bad ones we wouldn't have the good ones.
A lot of the tunes were obviously done in BASIC, and you can tell. The Last V8's music was one of the few redeeming qualities about that game
Rattler wasn't a Mastertronic game though. The company that made it was also the company that made Cops 'n' Robbers. LOL. They did manage to crank out a couple decent titles in the latter years of the company though...Nothing amazing though
I thought that V8 RETURN TO BASE IMMEDIATELY bit was cool at first, but hearing that after every crash is a bit much lol
Haha, cool things like that tended to get overused to the point it started to annoy.
At least the music was really, really good...
I have that BMX Racers on the original cassette tape. :)
And you _haven't_ burned it into a pile of plastic mush yet? You've more more self-discipline than me, that's for sure.
Japanese flute hrn pipe doesn't sound that great on the SID especially being done by MasterTronic/Vision. It would have been fun if they made games of their awful Harmony Gold dub films they owned the rights to. A load of them would have hit Top 10 worst if they did especially Brave Frog the game the film I watched part of on RUclips for a bit of fun and I couldn't last 10 minutes before turning off with their bad voice talents. :)
that first one is hilarious as fuck!
Ah Bionic Granny, bionic pish more like!!
10 of the best and worst on your fave systems. You have another winner here. I wonder what would be your X68000 worst if any are that bad to have a worst list of it. If anything though the worst would more than likely be all Majongs like Strip Fighter 2 the original one which wasn't a fighting game at all.
There seems to be two versions of BMX Racers. I've never seen this one before.
www.lemon64.com/?name=bmx+racers
The one in that screenshot was the one I remember, terrible game it is!
yeh this is the bmx racers from mastertronic i had ruclips.net/video/C_AZXTD4q-c/видео.html , i liked it when i was very young a good skill/memory test, a lot better than this version, they must have altered//reworked the game much of the layout and bike sprites are the same.
Jason B Briggs made the worst games for the C64. Nobody else comes close.
Haha, care to share what other games he made?
www.gamebase64.com/search.php?f=3&t=2&s=briggs&b=Go!&d=18&h=1&a=0
Nice one, Skeletor. I bought an ECP compilation in 1989 that had Poga, Bojo, Electro World and Bert the Bug Bites Back. It was probably the worst product I've ever bought in my life.
Also, I played "Crazy Cars II" the other day. It's up there with some of the worst.
Crazy Cars III was the only decent game from that series. Both the original and the second game were awful
"Bionic Granny" Hahaha, sounds like a gay grindcore band!
Hahaha!!!
Or a weird MILF porn parody of The Six Million Dollar Man. LOL
Is it just me or was everyone who owned a C=64 either German or Scottish?
Haha, you might have a point.
This and Der Schmoo
I think it's just you matey.
Back a few years ago, I inspired Richard Bayliss to write the sequel to Bionic Granny! :D
ruclips.net/video/U8IhKx94-VY/видео.html
Admit it, The Last V8 screencap as video thumbnail - as well as its inclusion on this 'worst' list - is pure clickbait. The game is what I call a 'humble' classic, and its main theme is in every SID lover's playlist. Its main fault is its shortness, but overall it has no place amongst the company you put it in.
Just my opinion, nothing else.
No it's not, the CONTROLS were god awful
@@scottbreon9448
Scott Breon
As were "The Last Ninja"'s, "Shadow of the Beast"'s and many others" that were lucky enough to find an audience despite that. "The Last V8" was short, unforgiving and rough around many edges, but had good graphics, a killer music theme and a memorable UI that's almost as iconic as "The Last Ninja"'s. The very fact that we're having this discussion, which was motivated not only by the inclusion of the game in this "worst of" list but also by the choice of having a screenshot from it as the vid's thumbnail sort of proves my point. Unlike the rest of mostly obscure games that accompany it here, "The Last V8" was successfully exported to many foreign markets - foreign to UK, that is; I'm Spaniard, for the record - and is well-known amongst longtime C64 fans despite it being a low budget title that was barely publicized at the time, if at all.
TLDR: the vid's author knew fully well what was doing when used a "The Last V8" screen cap as a thumbnail. Polemics sell. There's hundreds, if not thousands, of low budget games that are, objectively speaking, way worse than it - but none of them would've clickbaited people in like TLV8's screencap undoubtedly did.
Oscar Jiménez Garrido
The bigger issue with last V8 for me is that the playing area took up less than a quarter of the screen. I do agree with you on the Last Ninja though. Always found that entire series somewhat overrated aside from the music
Plus Last V8 got less than 30 percent from Zzap! 64. and only has a 5 out out of 10 on Lemon64.com with 92 votes
@@scottbreon9448
The playable area on TLV8 takes a bit more of one third of the screen, actually - it's right up there for anyone to check. Other games from the era took a similar approach, so it wasn't a rare occurrence at the time.
Regarding game ratings, I'd argue that the fact that TLV8 got a bad review from a certain game journalist on a certain UK magazine that the rest of the world didn't get to read is way less relevant that the Lemon64 average rating note that you mentioned yourself - 5 out of 10, which, by all accounts, is indeed an average number and would equate, on academic terms, to a passing grade. Which, statistically speaking, would mean that TLV8 would be best suited for a "10 average C64 budget titles" list than it is for a "10 of the worst" one.
Connect Four would have been decent if it weren't for the annoying ass music
Hehe, you're not wrong.
That was fun! :-)
Take a loooooook at the rail track from Miami to canadaaaaaa
sub hunt looks fun
it is fun for the first 5 minutes or so, the problem with Sub Hunt is that it gets repetitive VERY quickly
That music didn't half a copyright to begin with though as it's a PD classical era one.
HAVE not HALF
Everyone had both a 33 and 3410 back in the days. They were the high tech half smartphone of it's day before Full Smartphones took over.
Wow, just...wow. A shower of shite and no mistake. You've _got_ to do a 'Best C64 Budget Games' at some point, Alan, or my eyeballs (and ears) will never forgive you.