Posted By
Chris
on 2012-09-14
04:11:34
|  Interesting Mastertronic fact
I've been reading the latest issue of Retro Gamer and found a very interesting fact within an article on Kane.
Quote " Mastertronic's single best-selling title was not a Commodore 64 or Spectrum game, but actually the Commodore 16 version of Formula 1 Simulator with sales of 173,498".
Had a warm and fuzzy feeling reading that fact.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2012-09-14
04:28:10
 | Re: Interesting Mastertronic fact
So, let's add this in the page's introduction of the game 
Apropos: see the Mastertronic C16's releases stats and compare'em with our Mastertronic releases page. There are several discrepancies per year, and the total number of releases does not match :v
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-09-14
17:08:36
 | Re: Interesting Mastertronic fact
I thought it was common knowledge some of the Mastertronic C16/Plus4 title sold more than any Commodore 64 or Spectrum title. Although I think the real fact is that C64 & Spectrum gamers were spoiled for choice more than anything with many software houses trying to obtain a slice of the budget cut.
In the later years I would of said Codemaster were king and then the likes of Hit Squad, Encore and Kixx started to release many of the of the systems best ever full price titles at a cheaper price and maybe why Mastertronic had to step it up a gear releasing the likes of Jet Set Willy, Aliens and stuff after they had given up on us. 
Why Retro Gamer is talking about Kane is beyond me too... Not that I've seen the article. Kane is not exactly classed as one of the better games for our system from Masterronic and many more that are. Is that the press gone mad again not knowing jack all about our machine or just something that they can relate too from another?  
Edit:
Luca, that first site is a bit messed up! They claim BMX Racers: "Best of the early titles by the Darling brothers". Haha, proper big mistake there as they were Codemasters BMX Simulator. I think what Retro Gamer is covering is stuff that was printed in computer mags of the time... I'm sure I have seen this before where C16/Plus4 games were top of the charts with Mastertronic stuff. ;)
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Posted By
retroscener
on 2012-09-14
15:58:40
 | Re: Interesting Mastertronic fact
That really doesn't surprise me in the least tbh. Well, early in the lifespan too which must be a reason for higher sales at the time, tbh.
But it's not like we were that spoiled for choice, and I reckon everyone (including me) bought F1 Simulator at the time 
And even the speccy didn't sell too well in the USA. Hardly made that a failure either.
And they all reckon that the C16 and Plus4 were both commercial failures?
Our systems sold reasonably great in Europe to be far from a fail, especially if you compare releases from the link Luca just gave us.
Mastertronic released more for us than for the 16bit machines.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2012-09-14
17:24:34
| Re: Interesting Mastertronic fact
Almost a joke isn't it Sixteen Plus, Commodore Plus/4's are being sold and bought every week on ebay.co.uk! Soon as one goes up that is not some stupid £100 over priced then people will bid straight away. The numbers are out there but not here...
Maybe it's C64 gamers having a nose. Also less games are being bought for C16/Plus4 in general so I wonder if these SD2IEC 1541 Emulation Drives have opened up a whole new world to some people and they fancy a look at 264's now as it's that easy to copy stuff over.
But yeah Plus/4's are going as quick as they are put up at the moment lol.
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Posted By
TMR
on 2012-09-17
12:19:54
 | Re: Interesting Mastertronic fact
"Why Retro Gamer is talking about Kane is beyond me too... Not that I've seen the article. Kane is not exactly classed as one of the better games for our system from Masterronic and many more that are."
It's an article about Kane and Kane 2 across all platforms (along with getting in touch with the original designer) so they're talking about the C16 version of Kane as part of that. Had they left it out, people here would've complained as well so RG are damned either way it seems...
That Mastertronic site calling BMX Racers the "best of the early titles by the Darling brothers" is, as a multi-platform list, referring to the earlier C64 version of the game which was part of the first block of C64 games they produced that were built around tweaks of the same basic engine. BMX Simulator isn't generally considered one of their early games in that context because they'd been going for a couple of years and moved on to bespoke code for each game by that point.
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