| Posted By
Waz
on 2024-02-14
14:00:27
|  Novaload Serial Number Field for Games Table
Hi folks,
With, as @Luca mentioned, a number of games have different Novaload serials and versions depending on their original release and/or compilation, I'm wondering whether it may make sense to have a field in the Games table for Novaload Serial, where this can be entered. It'd keep the Notes free for other things and then also be searchable in an advanced search.
I'm more than happy to check through my originals on my Plus/4 and provide some of these and I'm sure there's a few of us who could do the same, and at least then have a good database of them by the time we're done. What do you think?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2024-02-14
14:26:16
 | Re: Novaload Serial Number Field for Games Table
Well, it sounds as a good idea, but Novaload is not a fixed characteristic of a standard C16 or Plus/4 game, and forcing a specific tag looks like "folding the whole archive to our current guilty pleasure", if I'm able to form a picture of this into your minds 
Briefly, I guess the notes field is actually perfect for this kind of things. Also, I started to add the Novaload serials to the Game/Compilation entries only, for the reason I explained few days ago: in all the compilations we tested, the same Novaload licence has been used to repack a game which was previously released as single product. This means that we can have a chance to recognise and finally correctly replace the bunch of TAPs which source we didn't distinguished before. Smart move! 
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Posted By
Waz
on 2024-02-15
04:05:08
| Re: Novaload Serial Number Field for Games Table
That's all very fair points and well explained, thank you @Luca.
I've got some compilations myself, so willl do some loading on my Plus/4 next week (away this weekend) to see if any of them are different Novaload serials from the originals. I do suspect some remastering has gone on (I added the Novaload serial to 10 Computer Hits 3 for that reason as you mentined) and notable why the software companies did that and didn't use all the original masters.
I say that due to my experience of noting all the loading systems The Hit Squad used for their C64 releases - I've spoken in some length to Paul Hughes (Ocean Freeload creator) and basically the first Hit Squad ones used HitLoad, with a premise that Ocean were going to use cheaper quality tape so needed loading to be slower. However, it looked like it was actually cheaper to where possible use the original masters instead of remastering it, so that plan went by the wayside. I've got a sheet somewhere where I've been tracking these compared to the original releases.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2024-02-15
05:21:31
| Re: Novaload Serial Number Field for Games Table
And now we have the mistery of the different Novaload TAPs for Voidrunner, although the Novaload serials are the same. Brand new riddles, mates!
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Posted By
MIK
on 2024-02-16
16:36:49
 | Re: Novaload Serial Number Field for Games Table
Gremlin Graphics omnibus collections, the 2 Xargon games were broken. I used to wonder did they do it on purpose as those 10 games might of cost £60-£80 in total if you bought the originals and now they were giving you 10 games for £10.
And talking of mess on C64, Hit Squad Last Ninja 2 does not contain the full game, I recall it only has the first 3 levels. And Kixx Last Ninja 3, if you watch the intro in full the game never loads, press fire before the end of the intro and all is fine. Of all the games why these 2? Lol
Possible reason, kids working for the companies compiled the master copies of re-releases.
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