Codemaster Memories

Started by zapiy, June 08, 2020, 09:19:35 AM

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zapiy

Codemasters have to be, for me, the best publishers of original budget games back in the day.

What are some of your favourite memories of them?

One of my first ones is Advanced Pinball Simulator on the Spectrum. It was the first ever video game version of pinball I had played and ever since then I have been addicted to them and own every pinball released for the consoles I owned. It had really nice colourful graphics, addictive gameplay and digitised speech on the 128k machines too!


Own: Jaguar, Lynx, Dreamcast, Saturn, MegaDrive, MegaCD, 32X, GameGear, PS3, PS, PSP, Wii, GameCube, N64, DS, GBA, GBC, GBP, GB,  Xbox, 3DO, CDi,  WonderSwan, WonderSwan Colour NGPC

TrekMD


Going to the final frontier, gaming...


Ryuhi

I personally think of Micro machines for the megadrive and their infamous j cart which had controller ports in the cartridge. How this technology was not used in more games than it was is beyond me.

Shadowrunner

Codemasters weren't as well known in North America but I did play a couple of their Dizzy games on the NES.

davyk

Codemasters were able to churn out high volumes of playable games. The UK 8bit micro scene was awash with indie devs but Codemasters games really stuck out. They weren't "big" games but they were well designed and played to the hardware's capabilities mostly. Cheap too!

They created a series of "simulator" games that were anything but - however they were fun.....a few I remember:

Grand Prix Simulator was a top down racing game in the Super Sprint vein.

3D Starfighter was a first person space shooter with a loose mission based narrative that kept you playing.

Fruit Machine Simulator - recreated the UK style of slot machine with nudges , holds, skill stops, feature trails etc. Was really well done even though it was quite a niche game.

They released some 4-in-1 compilations too that were good value.One compilation I had featured the first Dizzy game but I wasn't really a fan of that series.

davyk

US gamers probably have no idea about UK slots.....here's a video showing the sequel to the game I mention above..These machine are far more complex than Vegas slots - they have a lot of interactivity and different modes. They still take all your money though!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6nfD66JQmc


davyk