All Things Codemasters

Batch 5 : Lets go to Miami and visit Frankie !

2012-02-26T02:48:00.000-08:00

I hadn't forgotten about it, I was just getting around to it. Bah ! Enough excuses and onto two additions. A nice cartoony arcade adventure and something similar to Miami Vice ?

Frankenstein Jnr. is jolly colourful game with some short, if a little repetitive, well heard music. The game is part of Codemasters " Cartoon Time " range, which were styled, ironically just like cartoons. Miami Chase is great game with really cool graphics and music, but I found the control mechanism a little bit difficult to master at times. When playing it, I did get the feel for the Ocean version of Miami Vice.

Codemasters ::
Frankenstein Jnr. and Miami Chase.

Total collected so far ... 14 out of 100 !

Until the next batch ...

Batch 4 : Dizzy and on the cheap !

2012-01-14T05:15:00.000-08:00

What a bargain ! I am dizzy with pleasure ! Being that anything connected with Dizzy maybe a nice little earner or people will be taking advantage of the fact that it's making a comeback. I bet the Oliver Twins never thought it to be possible, a loved game character from the late 1980's, earlier 1990's would be hitting the scene again.

What makes this addition so special, it only cost me one pound and a penny for both the game and postage / packing. No bad, perhaps not as good as it being free, but still worth it.

Codemasters ::
Dizzy : Fantasy World

Hopefully over the next few months the Codemasters collection will continue to grow and any Dizzy titles will be easily obtained and not radically priced by over zealous sellers. We've seen it all before haven't we ?

Batch 3 : Simulate this !

2011-12-24T11:24:00.000-08:00

Let's simulate ourselves into a frenzy ! This is one thing that I love about Codemasters, they had the passion to do a simulator for almost any type of genre or thing. However, I never saw a cooking one. Perhaps a Gordon Ramsey simulator would have been fun ? Having a good curse or two would of cost you points and mastering your dishes with extreme passion could well rack up some big bonuses.

This fun batch has a shoot'em up, a platformer and a few sporting ones. Including one called, 4 Soccer Simulators. A nice collection, but a number, if not all the games use the music from Professional BMX Simulator by Matt Gray. That last time I remember this happening with a game, was when Ocean used the music from Comic Bakery by Martin Galway in the game Top Gun. Shocking really !

Codemasters ::
4 Soccer Simulators, Arcade Flight Simulator, Bigfoot, BMX Freestyle, Cosmonut, Professional Boxing Simulator, Professional Skateboard Simulator and Professional Ski Simulator.

This batch adds to the total of ... 11 ! So, there is around 90'ish to go. I wonder if 2012 will bring the collection to a completed state ? Let's see !

Batch 2 : Creations ... Where it all started !

2011-12-11T08:32:00.000-08:00

We all remember the earlier games from Mastertronic, the ones specifically designed by David and Richard Darling. There seemed to be only one level, that would seem to get faster and faster when you moved onto the next level ? Yes ! I did say that !

I bet some of you wondered how they managed to create so many games and in such a short time. Well, one answer would be and in this case, a Game Maker Utility. All of the elements that form a game, Sprites, Objects, Backgrounds and Sounds. With all this onboard and standalone feature enabled, many a project could be created. Nowadays, most modern game making programs are more flexible and powerful. For example : GameMaker by YoYo Games and Construc by Scirra.

Creations or The Games Creator ( first released by Mirrorsoft ) is, despite it's limitations a good way to learn how a game is made and works. The Commodore 64 also had the Shoot'em up Construction Kit by Outlaw ( Published by Palace Software ), which was limited to Shoot'em ups.

Despite any misgivings to the use of programs that defer the use of real programming, it does at least one simple thing, it promotes creativity ! Its the one thing we all need for our ideas to flourish.

Batch 01 - A Trip to Virgin Megastore ...

2011-11-27T09:24:00.000-08:00

All Things Codemasters ! A sort of tenious link to the - " All Things Mastertronic Blog ", with some of the earlier titles that David and Richard Darling created. In the begining with the likes of BMX Racers and Magic Carpet. However, this blog will be dedicated to a mission with collecting all the Commodore 64 Titles by Codemasters and by chance we have two, to start off with.

BMX Simulator was my first Codemasters purchase from Virgin Megastore in Oxford, way back in mid-to-late 1980's. Not only did it have a cracking tune by none other than David Whittaker, but it also had some really cool graphics and it was themed around BMX Racing. I played this game for hours on end and it had the additional option so a friend could compete with you either on Keyboard or Joystick. The game was also designed by Richard Darling.

Red Max was a later purchase with the same passion of playing it, as The Last V8, which ia ironically by David Darling. Again, the game is accompanied by a great David Whittaker tune.

So, a journey onward with a smaller volume to gather, I esitimated around 100 ? This is considerably less than the Mastertronic label and of course, it will be a case of checking a list getting whats not on it. Simple really !