Cassette 50 III
by James 'Jimster' Nation
Page 2 of 5
As well as a bad case of tinitus, the compilation gave me a whole afternoon of gaming displeasure. Some games were just boring, slow, or just completely unplayable. Do you remember the joys of playing Basketball? It's unique side view meant you could only move forward or back and it had the added bonus being a two player game but only able to recognise one key press at a time. This was quality stuff.
There were some jewels amongst the gratuitous byte wastage. Cavern was quite a polished affair for a basic game, flying down a tunnel in your ship shooting boulders and rescuing little men. Crystal Diamond was a little adventure with various mini games, and at least had some point to the game. However, on the Spectrum at least, Voyager was the pinnacle of the tape appearing about half way down through side 2. It had it all; a nifty menu screen, a variety of enemy graphics and constant action to keep the adreneline flowing. It's so good people have even remade it for the PC.
It had such an effect on us in our formative years that over a decade later the internet enabled us to recall our woes of playing the infamous tape. It spawned the Crap Games Competitions where people continue to produce games so shoddy it gives Driv3r something to aspire to. Discussions about the delights of CC50 turned into a fully fledged competition in 1996 which has been run year after year and is still going today. If you feel you can stand the excitement of playing some truly awful Spectrum/C64 games, check out the links on the next page...
Thanks to Codex for the ace parody of the original Cassette 50 advert
view full sized cassette 50 advert
