I wrote some of these - Basketball, Motorway, Bowls, Raiders, Field, Fishing Mission and Mystical Diamonds. Was about 13 at the time, wrote them on a Spectrum in my bedroom with a pencil and graph paper to sketch out the 8x8 pixel "graphics". Got £10 for them, and £20 for Mystical Diamonds, which seemed like a lot of money back then. I actually did go fishing on occasion so that game was based on experience to some extent but the others are I suppose what you'd imagine a 13 year old from the Isle of Wight with limited Basic programming skills could come up with in an afternoon. I never saw the full Cassette 50 but someone in my class bought it and let me know how bad mine and the other games were. And his watch broke after a few days.

@lydiahale4

6 жыл бұрын

awesome!

@jazzx251

5 жыл бұрын

hehe - I like the idea behind motorway. Anyone who chooses to walk on the motorway deserves it. Reminds me of the original Death Race arcade game that caused a fuss in the 70s

@Labs51Research

5 жыл бұрын

I spent many a day loading games of this cassette.. wrote a game called frantic and had plans of submitting but I never did :(

@stevenclark1973

4 жыл бұрын

Mate... this is an amazing find... I'm 46 and I me and my best buddy still joke about Fishing Mission. No matter how bad or good it was we still remember it after all these years.... loved watching the footage back. "You fall over and lose 1 hooks". Classic. Amazing to find you were only 13 when you developed it. I'm still waiting for Fishing Mission 2... I'd probably buy it, and the tshirt! Thankyou!

@valley_robot

4 жыл бұрын

way better than any of us could have accomplished at 13, I couldn't do this at 50 , well done mate

1984 Christmas day, included with my lovely new Spectrum 48k was this tape - I tried every game on the tape and found none worth playing twice.

I think we need to do a crowd funding campaign, to give Kim a well deserved holiday to recover from having to review this tape!

I remember the agonising wait for this to be delivered, followed by the intense disappointment. Felt truly ripped off.

Ah found memories of this. A friend and I did a bit of editing / re-writing of #14 Motorway. We blanked out the oncoming cars, changed the falling man into some lady parts and changed your car into some male parts. The end of games comments changed into some classic lines such as 'You must have a sore bellend' The minds of young teenage boys... I actually found our edited version on tape when I was loading up random tapes on my Spectrum Next. Thanks for reminding me Kim!

@yoymate6316

Жыл бұрын

oh my god hahahah any chance of dumping this for the world to enjoy?

Those "city bomber" games were really common back in the early 80's. Mastertronic's New York blitz on the VIC 20 is the one I always remember.

@CasperUK31

6 жыл бұрын

Correct, the disbelief with "Omg its a game where you bomb Manhattan". To me It looked like a decent copy of Blitz

@LyingSecret

6 жыл бұрын

My mum's favourite game was Super Blitz on the C64, glad to hear Blitz even mentioned nowadays :D

@MaxSpender

3 жыл бұрын

Do you happen to remember a city bomber game (a red plane that dropped stars onto blue buildings), which came on a compilation with 2 other games? I think in one game, you had drive along a busy road avoiding other cars & the other game was set in a maze, where you had to collect weapons to get past the monsters & reach the centre of the maze?

+Kim Justice Do you know what teh worst thing about Cassette 50 was? The ports to other Micros... We had as I was growing up an Amstrad CPC 464 and a Spectrum 48K... Now my Sisters (The 48K girls) were lucky to avoid Cassette 50... We had it with the bundle we bought from a friend but I recorded over it with some nice music from the charts at the time (Remember those days?) I was not so lucky! Before we got the Speccy - I joined BCA to get some cheaper games... In my first order I bought Gauntlet and the Deeper Dungeons... A nice Amstrad Compilation that had Operation Wolf on it (What a game!!!),, and about 3 others that I cannot remember... And there was a FREE MYSTERY GIFT! That Mystery Gift was CASSETTE 50 for the CPC.... There were believe it or not a few changes to the bundled games... About 5 I think... But what was worse - At least Half of them DID NOT BLOODY WORK!!!!

Great video as I had this tape when I was about 7-10 years old, which my dad got me in the 80s, and I have to say this tape and the Usborne 80s computer books I got from the library taught me how to program.

My favorite Kim Justice video next to the Ocean Software one. Total entertainment!

Don't think I've been this early on a vid of your's Kim! Well done. As a Canadian who grew up on Consoles, its so awesome to hear about the stories of the Micros in the UK and Europe. You're one of the stars of this kind of info, and I appreciate your hard work and effort.

All the Basic games on Cassette 50 was great for looking at differences in the Basics (and there were many!) on different machines of the era. Only time I ever found this tape useful.

"You are a fine fisherman, input your name" no

@satan3959

6 жыл бұрын

Cool, I always wanted to meet a man named No

Excellent video. Loved looking back and remember some of these games. Still in the memory after all these years, unlike the watch that I got with it. Thankyou.... good commentary - and honest!

Personally I remember the Assassins Ultimate Games CDs that had 100+ games on them for the Amiga, I recall browsing them but don't remember how many I actively played, but I do recall one where you would cling to ceilings and walls while shooting stuff fondly.

Back in the 80's I visited a friend who didn't own a computer, but his dad did - some old CP/M machine with an 8" disk drive. The only game I remember playing was a variation of "City Bomber", so it might've been one of those early 70's basic games...

I mean hey, at least the cassette's as sound as any other when it comes to using the thing. Action 52's greatest sin may very well be how poorly engineered the cartridge is, to the point where we're only starting to see flashcarts able to properly emulate its catastrophe of a mapper (marked as Mapper 228, if you're wondering).

I bought this when i was 10. The sheer disappointment was like nothing I had ever experienced.

I was desperate for a copy for my Vic 20. I eventually got a tape for £1 (no watch though) from my local computer shop. I used it along with a bunch of Usborne books that I stole from my school library to learn lots of BASIC tricks. I pretty much used the tape as a collection of things I could improve. Kinda like todays Unity Engine assets... Bad games but good times. :)

Came out on Atari 8bit as well. I have the disc version. (It was called Disk 50)

I had this cassette for ZX Spectrum back in the day and, bizarrely enough, actually enjoyed a few of the games! However that doesn't change the fact that it's like Action 52 and the POP Station had a baby...

that was great Kim! Here in NZ, we had nothing like that for sale - noting most magazine ads and comics (I'm looking at you 2000AD) did NOT allow mail-orders from New Zealand! My favourite comp. I actually bought new and paid sooo much for = SOFTAID. Far out a load of great games!

Cassette 50 was the first tape I had for my 48k and I only had a black and white TV to play it on. This brings back fond memories of dark grey against darker grey basketball games and deliberately getting the answers wrong on Crusher.

For the guys and gals who think they've been around because they've reviewed Action 52: Trust me, you got off easy. For a year of my life, the only video games I owned were Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and Action 52. I'd had the SMB/DH -cart for about a year already before getting the A52. Kinda had my fill of that already at the time... So it was pretty much a year of Action 52 for me. Not my fondest memories in gaming. And no my parents didn't buy me a game worth 200USD. This was around 1994, so they were probably desperate to get rid of the carts. We just were among the last (I hope) suckers that got fooled by the advert. I've been soo curious about this one ever since I saw the cover for a frame or two in Guru Larry's (I think it was his) video. Super happy to finally learn what the dealie was all about.

I love the fishing game "Time passes" The hope and the glory of it.

Great to finally see all these.

I did my own review of this tape as a christmas special and I still felt violated

Excellent. I have a soft spot for Cassette 50. I grew up with the C64 version, which had such delights as instruction screens in unreadable colour combinations, and ones where you had to hit run/stop as you didn't get time to read them. It did have some gems that got played a lot though, the version of Blitz, and a Snoopy game oddly called 'Black Hole'.

Great video! Having to go through them all and try to play them was funny! The games weren't up to commercial quality, but what I did enjoy as a kid was seeing how they were made , as they were all BASIC.

Had the Acorn Electron version & remember how cheated I felt as a kid .. I must've thought time after time "maybe the next one will be ok" .. Right until the last, they were all SHIT :D

@kriszteblade

6 жыл бұрын

akwalek Oh my God.... I died fr9m laughter read8ng your story 😂

"Acne Vasectomy Smut Hitler" that compilation sound like a 21st century internet troll. So ahead of it's time!

@michaelmartin9022

7 жыл бұрын

Nah, various comics of the mid-80's to mid-90's (though one of the fuckers hung around until 2006) that ripped off Viz were doing that sort of thing back then. One called Ziggy was a particularly infamous example, they thought mocking a celebrity who had had a miscarriage would be "biting, witty satire", and got sued into the ground.

Probably the best review of a drawing program ever, laughed quite a bit at that.

i think one good thing about this was the code was able to be read and gave you a chance to examine what it did i wonder if anyone has ever reprogrammed them to improve them

Sorry about being late to the party :) Only just come across your channel ( have now subscribed and also done the Patreon thing. Also only just got into retro gaming, just checked my list and have this tape for the Spectrum and Electron ... Just have to get round to playing with them :) Keep up the good work.

I remember it well. Makes the games on Don't Buy This look like a collection of masterpieces.

Oddly i never got my hands on the Amstrad version back in the day. Probably wouldnt have minded getting it either in those early days as in the beginning all i (and most others) had was just a few games to pick from and Type-in books/mags that often had to be somewhat translated as well. Of cause quality dont hold up for the later years that is for sure :D

"Manhattan Blitz" was a clone of an even older title, "Blitz" that I remember playing on a VIC20.

I laughed incredibly hard at the simple text "you have a fish" in Fishing Mission. Amazing.

@TheSmart-CasualGamer

2 жыл бұрын

That's one of my favourite pieces of text in a video game, drawing with "Crush" from Battle Bull for the Game Boy.

@23Daves

Жыл бұрын

Almost as good as "Oh dear! A bat bit you" off the very bad Shakin' Stevens game.

Does anyone know another compilation of 25 games? I haven't seen it on World of Spectrum.. I remember one game scrolled some sort of code across the screen.

This is a blast from the past! I had Cassette 50 for the Spectrum 48k.

@ooeyb

2 жыл бұрын

Poor you!

The author should have been held to account for this crap. it's alright having a laugh about it now, but this was bleeding daylight robbery.

That frogger clone looks very familiar, I didn't have this but I'm sure that was a type in from a book or magazine we had as a kid.

Kim. Thank you so much for making all your videos. Simply brilliant.

I had this for the ZX81. I don't know who got it for me. I probably blanked them from my memory.

I think this is the second time I've watched this video. Reminds me very much of the day I borrowed this off a mate. I wasted a long time that day..and towards the end, depression was definitely kicking in. I just had to reach the end...maybe there was going to be a killer-game on there. Sadly, as the video reminds me, that game never came.

Another top vid. Excellent work, Kim. Had this on speccy 48k. It's funny how sometimes you remember games being much better quality than they actually were. Not this time though. These all look just as shite as a I remember.

What's the tune that starts at 1:30? I love it.

YESSSS!!! I needed this right now. Thank you Kim.

I'd be interested to know where UTS fits into all of this. Most of the Spectrum 'games' were taken from an earlier UTS release, and are branded as such on the tape. But the UTS tape also contained other games (of similar quality) which didn't make it into the Cascade release, so were these licenced/bought by Cascade or was UTS an earlier name for Cascade?

mate, that video was brilliant, I laughed out loud so many times about your comic commentary about some of the sh1t games. I remember seeing the ads for this back in the day, but remember thinking the games must be sooooooooooo bad as there were 50 games. for once, I was actually right. Anyway, thanks again for an entertaining video. Cheers, Phil.

Fun video. I have this strange desire to use the 'plots' of all these 50 games as elements in a epic science-fiction movie. MAD...

Fair play Kim, I had this on the CPC464, even in period these games were shite, I never got any further than about 4 games in before putting it aside, on a bright note I believe I used the cassette to bag myself a playground copy of Renegade for my CPC.

Great vid! Love your dry humor 😄

Is...is that a Spectrum transposition of one of the songs from Galaxy Force II at the end??

I will say though that after playing both the Speccy and C64 versions of Cassette 50, the Spectrum version is the better one (and that's not a compliment as both are overall shite)

Another brilliant video; some of your comments really made me laugh. I could watch your excellent vids all day.

Anyone know what the music is at 1:20? It's a real bop!

Really didn't want to know about this games compilation, but this turned out to be one of your very best videos. Fuck a doodle do

Awesome, Kim! Thanks for showing ;)

@ kim justice whats the track beginning approx 1:20

The only game I remember from my time with this is Manhatten Blitz...and (don't judge me!) I quite enjoyed it. I was maybe 9 years old at the time and didn't appreciate the 'dark side' of this game. Anyway, great video Kim!

I'm surprised they didnt put any PONG clone on it

great video, and I always wondered what these were like back in the 8 bit days, I'm happy now I held off buying it, not even worth copying

What is song from near to start to about 4:30?

"Rubic's Pube"?! Okay, you HAVE to do that Love And Death compilation.

Main memory is how half the games were written in basic and practically unplayable

I remember having this on speccy...wow i really liked aome of them...maybe 9 yr old me was fucked up but i spent many hrs on fishing mission and a few others. Still 45 out of em were dire beyond belief even back then

Skull and Field, those are the best of games, with the best of names... Excellent video Kim, thank you

Think about this: if Action 52 sold their shite for only a $10 profit, advertised in Gamepro for a few years, and never bothered spending tons of money, it may have worked 🤔🤔🤔🤔

It's strange how many of these are literal guessing games abstracted from whatever the programmer was able to create.

Ahhh, looking forward to this, Kim.

list of songs please

played that Manhattan game on the Vic 20 when I was a lad

There was a tribute to the the old cassette 50 a few years back made by a bunch of game devs: retroremakes.com/nostalgia/the-videogame-50/ It even comes with a digital watch.

You should do one on 1985 (ish) released compilation Soft Aid on the Speccy and C64, the games weren't that bad and it went to a good caused with some links to Band Aid and all that Bob Geldoff money raising to aid famine stricken people in Africa.

@FoxyStoats

7 жыл бұрын

I actually have that cassette for Spectrum, and it actually has the Live Aid single on one side.

@dfernand101

7 жыл бұрын

Yeah I forgot about the B side having the "Feed The World" single or "Do They Know It's Christmas time at all" (can't remember the title). Thing is that I don't think video games tend to do big charity things these days ... Ronald Reagan and greed prevail.. mentioning no names ... no names whatsoever, ... *coughs* Ubisoft, EA .. DLC *coughs* micro transactions.

@markmallone7484

7 жыл бұрын

+David Fernandez The humble bumble gives some of the cash to charity. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Bundle?wprov=sfla1

@lucasoheyze4597

2 жыл бұрын

Actually you say actually too much, actually.

Well, at least it had a free watch...

I sent some games to this company when I was a kid and got 50 quid for them. I think they were looking for another 50 game sequel but as far as I know it didn't appear. There was an address to send games to if I'm remembering correctly. 50 quid was A LOT of money in those days too, but I didn't end up getting it because I teamed up with a mate of mine and he ripped me off!!!

These are the ZX Spectrum games I had (all better than the games on the Cassette 50! And no, I don't ever recall seeing that tape!): Well to start off I had the Soft 888 pack (getting a ZX Spectrum 128k +2 on Christmas 1987): Alien Destroyer Crazy Golf Disco Dan Mr. Punchy Oh Mummy! Treasure Island (although I have no memory of ever playing it!) And then there's these (the only ones I truly remember with any clarity): Bargain Basement Daley Thompson's Decathlon Every Second Counts Footballer of the Year Mickey Mouse: The Computer Game And several Codemasters titles and compilations: Big Nose's American Adventure Fast Food Kwik Snax Miami Chase Moto X Simulator Panic Dizzy Paris to Dakar Quattro Arcade Quattro Fantastic Quattro Power Quattro Racers Quattro Sports Quattro Super Hits Sky High Stuntman Street Gang Football Wacky Darts Wizard Willy

They should have sold this as part of a "Learn to program computer games" book. There was a market for these basic games, I remember typing in programs out of magazines and having hours of fun tweaking the code to see what happens. One of the games I played for ages was a simple king kong throw bananas at the other playing by inputting the trajectory and force. There was just something magical about tweaking the code on these, maybe it's just me, I'm the sort of guy who would drive to the edge of the world in need for speed, or spend the entire time looking for glitches in FPS shooters to hide in as opposed to actually playing the game!

@jasejj

7 жыл бұрын

bluebull399 Yes, I pretty much got my grounding in programming from the old Interface books on the VIC20... Very useful material. Problem was the Cassette 50 titles were mostly horrendous programs from a programming perspective as well.

This was called Disk 50 on the Amstrad CPC and while 99% of them were garbage I must have played the game called Truckin' for weeks on end. A really simple trading and management game but at the time I loved it.

Ahh, the Legendary Action 52 and the absolutely amazing Cheetamen soundtrack. And nowadays we can make our own with everdrives. And instead of a bunch if rubbish, we can fill them with the finest a platform has to offer.

Can we get a video talking about Firebird please?

great work yet again :)

I never owned or played a Spectrum, so it’s not a tape I regret missing.

Manhattan Blitz, There was a Basic listing for that published in Your Computer, circa 1982. I'm sure it was for Acorn Atom.

I remember seeing this advertised *everywhere*. I was sceptical. Although aged only 10 at the time, I remember consulting my dad to ask if he felt it was too good to be true, as he'd be writing any cheque for mail order. I remember thinking "Say it's on a C60. That's about 1 minute per game. Decent game takes 2-5 minutes to load on the Speccy". We concluded together that with no reviews available, it was probably crap. In the end I found it on WOS and even "won" a real copy in the crap games competition a few years ago. It strikes me that some of these are copies of the old ICL/Sinclair "super programs" released for the ZX81 in 1981. Martian KO and Skittles are just colourised versions of those 1K ZX81 games and I think one of the maze games apes "Daylight Robbery" from ICL. The rest are the sort of quality you got from type in listings. Which would be fine if I were typing in from a magazine that cost 95p. The better games would have been flagship type-in listings. I still wonder if Cassette 50 might have been better if they'd taken 10 decent games such as the ones you mentioned as being playable. But it did give us the crap games competition and did allow Cascade to fill their coffers and write some half decent games.

This game inspired Firebird to make their own pack of intentionally bad games called "Don't buy this!".

Is that some Xenon Stage 1 soundtrack around 6 mins? Lovely!

@RobertPayne556

2 жыл бұрын

Yup. Right before the Sentinel sub-bosses. Other Xenites are also available.

I'm sad I just missed that era where you could write games in BASIC and earn a few bob. I probably made about 50 games in BASIC but not until the late 80s early 90s, and I couldn't understand how to make games in machine code.

Didn't Manhattan Blitz start out on the Commodore PET?

I had this on the 48k Speccy. I remember a few of the games like Barrel Jump and that fucking awful Ski Jump!

A highly informative video!

Normally I'm all for archiving things but in this case: Grab a huge magnet and you'll have a blank cassette. If you don't have a tape deck, send it to me and I'll record some music on it for you, any style of music you want.

Used to see the advert all the time in Crash! Kept pestering Mum to get it for me, no she said it was too expensive! Shrewd woman my Mum!

I saw straight through the lingo used in the ads "user defined graphics" "scrolling", seriously all I thought was "shitty home made games written in BASIC."

A calculator watch and a free tape for taping the top-40 for a tenner? Bargain!

Manhattan Blitz is just Bomber from the Amstrad coding manual you got with in the box, albeit it has score and hi score added but its essentialy the same game that my brother and I coded in over a couple of days.

This explains the old cover of one of the early Retro Gamer magazine coverdisks...

Cassette 50: YOU LOSE

Was there a game on this one based on dam busters / op. Chastise / 617 squadron. Side scrolling single screen over mountains , shoot a few fighters, dodge flak fire from a tower turret and the end citadel turret, and then drop a bomb that has a parabolic arc based on your movement to fling this bomb over the citadel and hit a dam at various heights behind it ? I think I got it as part of 75 game collection that came on a 5.25" floppy . The shop gave it as a pack in when I brought my CG4 - 1541 floppy drive

@sos_legio_primus9177

7 жыл бұрын

?????

The text for #33 is Munch again, perhaps fix it with an annotation?