Your Sinclair appeared not to be perturbed by Crash's compilations and continued to release one game per month with issue 36’s double cassettes a rare exception. Sinclair User’s better efforts included the superb Magic Knight Trilogy with issue 81 (December ‘88) and Beach-Head 1 and 2 with issue 82; these two rivals kept the page count generally around the one-hundred mark but a 50% price increase to cover the cost of the cassettes was now standard: the February 1988 issue of SU was just £1.00; ten months later the price had swollen to £1.60. YS was in line with this, except when two tapes featured and a pocket-money busting £1.95 was levied. Things calmed down temporarily and there were some great classics to be had for a time. Your Sinclair scored big with a brace of classic Julian Gollop strategy titles, Rebelstar 2 and Chaos. However, even they succumbed to compilation fever in 1990 with issue 58 which contained three excellent games (Feud, Tau Ceti and Rebel) as well as a demo of Ivan Iron Man’s Off Road Racing. Sinclair User offered a break from all the gaming with a tape containing arcade soundtracks with issue 92 from November 1989, but as they moved from their self-titled Double Hits – of which Terra Cresta coupled with Flashpoint was a highlight – to “Six of the Best”, the quality began to dip as the quantity began to rise.
Meanwhile, Crash had continued to publish its Crash Presents tapes, which unfortunately tended to disappoint more often than not as the initial wave of excellent games faded out. Issue 70 from November 1989 was particularly poor featuring Ocean’s ancient Q*bert clone Pogo, Gremlin Graphics’ slightly more modern but no better Sam Stoat, Mastertronic’s unplayable Chiller and an awful game-designer shooter called Action Farce 2. The next issue improved considerably on this with Ocean’s Cosmic Wartoad and Codemaster’s Super Stuntman amongst others, but overall after the promise of their first compilation cassette from issue 65, Crash’s reliance on creaking titles and old Mastertronic games contributed to the disillusion that was slowly beginning to creep in to readers of the famous magazine.
With the onset of the compilations, the first homebrew games began to appear thanks mainly to necessity and external pressure from ELSPA who were understandably concerned regarding the impact that all these “free” games would have on software sales. Whilst in theory homebrew games were a good idea as it gave young programmers a chance to show off their work, generally these titles were poor, sub-commercial efforts, usually produced on limiting game designer software. There were exceptions, of course, with a young Jonathan Cauldwell and the first of his Egghead games well worth playing. And on that note...
The Best Original Covertape games*
*as voted for by the World of Spectrum forumites
5.Egghead (Crash)
Egghead was written in four weeks by a young Jonathan Cauldwell in November 1989. He had originally intended to sell the game via mail-order but on a whim decided to submit it to Crash Magazine instead. Editor Richard Eddy liked what he saw and subject to Jonathan completing a written declaration that the game was 100% his own work, bought it there and then for a future covertape. It’s a nifty, playable little game and an interesting pre-cursor Jonathan’s consistently playable later efforts. Incidentally, Newsfield were late paying the author for his work: a reminder letter from Jonathan promising a sequel soon sorted that! (thanks to JC)
4.Moley Christmas (Your Sinclair)
The Monty Mole games were famous for being of high quality yet rock-hard, and this six-screen bonus Christmas special, written by the original Gremlin team for Your Sinclair, was no exception.
DM_Boozefreek: I loved the Monty games so this was one of the best games that YS gave away for me.
3.Earth Shaker
Boulderdash games have always been popular, and Earth Shaker was a super clone from Your Sinclair and author Michael Batty.
Dave_Fountain: Earthshaker was top notch.
2.Hyper Active
The dearly-missed Jonathan “Joffa” Smith coded several famous titles for the speccy including Green Beret, Cobra and Hypersports and this was another quality game.
Greencard: I'm gonna have to go with Hyper Active, played it loads back in the day.
1.Batty (Your Sinclair)
Neat, clear graphics, an interesting two-player co-op mode and a professional piece of work that set a benchmark Your Sinclair never quite lived up to.
Chop983: Of course, Batty is the greatest covertape ever.
NickH: The best Breakout game you'll find on the Spectrum – and it was free! (not quite – JD)
Monday: Game Over for the mags...but not the Speccy!
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