The 8-Bit Experience - Compilations: The Definitive Review
They Sold A Million Ten Greatest Hits
In my recent piece on platforming adventure favourite Starquake, I forgot to mention that my first encounter with it was via a compilation. Strictly speaking, this is a lie - I didn’t forget, I merely delayed. You see, I did consider bunging in a paragraph on the compilation it came from, but thought better of that, and better of Starquake, so decided that the glory years of the grand 8-bit compilation were a fitting subject for the following week. Peering closer, let’s start with Beau-Jolly, a label dedicated to compilations across just about every 8-bit format, and where we discover my discovery of Starquake. This was on 10 Computer Hits 4,1 released in 1987. I recall it was a summer purchase for me, allowing me lots of indoor time as the compilation actually contained twelve games thanks to two bonus entries from Electronic Dreams; Gauntlet progenitor Dandy and the wonderful Marble Madness explorative expansion, Paul Shirley’s Spindizzy.2 Also in the package are Andrew Braybrook’s technically superb yet easy-to-cheese futuristic racer Alleykat,3 Jeff Minter’s flawed-by-the-licker-ships Iridis Alpha,4 Stanley Schembri’s Sacred Armour Of Antiriad5 and Ariolasoft’s bonkers robot-based bomb disposal puzzler, Deactivators. Even for 1987, this is a superb package and more than enough to entertain a 12-year old through a summer holiday. And that was the real glory here: the value for money was absolutely immense. As you can probably guess, 10 Computer Hits 4 wasn’t the first of the Beau-Jolly comps. In fact, going back to the first compilations I saw on a friend’s ZX Spectrum reminds me of us discovering the joys of 6 Computer Hits, which has some absolute blinders on it. Durell’s intoxicating treasure-hunt Scuba Dive, the pre-tragedy fun stunting of Eddie Kidd’s Jump Challenge, remarkably fluid 3D space shooter Dark Star and delightful Sir Clive Sinclair vehicle, A Day In The Life.6 And this is alongside a text adventure and a strategy game. As such, I view that set of titles as its own distinct group that I discovered all at the same time. And this is the value of the compilation in experiential terms - you get exposed to a suite of varying experiences in short order, and your horizons can wildly broaden as a result. And, of course, if you don’t like the game you just loaded, there are plenty more to try, immediately. It was quite the package and in tandem with the other Spectrum comp, They Sold A Million,7 set me on the path of seeking out compilations whenever they appeared on the shelves.8
It’s interesting how little love is given to compilations in the 8-bit monomyth. All too often, games are seen as singular, individual releases when the truth is a lot of us players back then would have feasted on curated sets of barely profitable license deals from publisher back catalogues. Much like the budget £1.99 sector, the compilations had a tentative start but soon became de rigueur, with most big publishers outputting their own collections and even revelling in self-indulgent retrospectives.9 I remember the delights of a particular Hewson Consultants four-pack that brought the superb Ranarama into my life, a game which had barely sparked my interest when previously reviewed and skipped over in the magazines. Likewise, Gremlin Graphics’ 10 Great Games dropped the best of its prior two years of releases into my lap, and was where I finally got my mitts on Monty On The Run and Highway Encounter, not to mention plenty of others. Not to be left out, Ocean went hardcore on the compilations during its most prolific periods and I have the fondest memories of The Magnificent Seven, which not only gave me Ritman and Drummond’s landmark isometric adventure Head Over Heels but also Sensible Software’s excellent Wizball, alongside Denton Designs’ fabulous The Great Escape. As an aside, the oldest title on there was another Denton Designs project, the proto-art-game Frankie Goes To Hollywood. An unintended side-effect of The Magnificent Seven was its use of Martin Galway’s sublime SIDtune Ocean Loader 2 for the loading sequences of most of the games, meaning that tune was well and truly burned into my musical synapses. I would forever associate the 8-bit audio staple of the hyperspeed arpeggio chord with Ocean Loader 2 as a result.10
When you consider these comps would cost the same as a single premium release, £9.95, the value is really quite astonishing. From a collecting, cultural perspective, they’re incredibly valuable as archives of a company’s hits and considering nearly every publisher of note would release compilations by the end of 1988, they were a compact and economical means of understanding the sweep of games across a given format. This applies particularly to the golden period from 1984 to 1988, where the maturation of the market, professionalisation of the publishers, the full understanding of the machines and sufficiently large consumer bases led to an incredibly vibrant landscape of releases. In the premium bracket, these would be well beyond the means of the average gaming child and hence the compilation offered a kind of legal democratisation of the grand 8-bit catalogue, bringing lofty gems and unexpected discoveries within the reach of cash-poor kids. For me and my friends, we’d pore over magazines in search of the budget games we’d be able to afford every two weeks, more often than not looking at the full price stuff while wistfully totting up how many months were left until the next familial gifting opportunity. And I certainly remember many a £10 voucher for WH Smiths or Boots going on compilations, but sometimes you’d get lucky and stumble across an independent game shop or market stall where older comps would get discounted pricing. For insatiable omnivores like me, this shit was manna from heaven. Gremlin Graphics’ unreasonably great 4 Zzap Sizzlers was one such bargain I nabbed, I think for a fiver - and what a fucking foursome it is!
My last Commodore 64 compilation, or at least the one I remember as the last I bought, was Beau Jolly’s 20 Chart Busters. This was a far wilder collection than previous entries, spanning licences from Firebird and Mastertronic, CRL and Activision. It had the legendary David Crane Ghostbusters and budget gem Park Patrol from 1984, making them absolute fossils considering they were a whopping four years old at that point. But this was prodded closer to modernity with the two-year-old Thrust and slighter older Tau Ceti. It was a real mix of premium big-boy titles and budget treasure, mixed with a few duds. But it seemed to mark a last hurrah of sorts. Not only for me, but for the tastefully-curated comp. Twenty titles was a total deluge, considering that Beau-Jolly had started off politely offering just five for the same cost, some three years previously. When it came to the 16-bit handover, the comps did continue, but soon dropped off after that. The most notable I remember from 1992 to 2002 was Interplay’s Fallout Collection. Today, we maybe have to thank things like the Humble Bundles for keeping the compilation flame burning, although perhaps less as retrospective archives in the sense that some of the single-publisher sets provided. It’s particularly tragic that this has all been reduced to limited-time deals from publishers on digital storefronts. I suppose some of the HD remasters of the PS3/X360 era would count, particularly for me with the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection and the Hitman HD Trilogy. But of course, the vibe simply isn’t the same.
I really miss companies like Beau-Jolly, for you always knew that if you bought one of its compilations, there’d be enough really good shit on there to justify the price, not to mention that you’d be playing things you’d never have bought as individual releases. And yet, you probably won’t find Beau-Jolly on a list of favourite publishers of the 8-bit era. It’s a thankless task, I suppose, and one that platform holders now seem to bear responsibility for. However I look at the utterly bewildering multiverse of indie games on PC, and feel absolutely awful about how much I’m missing out on and wonder if some curation-and-discount label could rise from the depths clutching grab-bags of the unexpectedly great and the fascinating failures for us to buy at a tenner a pop. Or do I have to accept that I must scour YouTube and Steam for curators that seem to share my sensibilities and do all the hard work myself?
In my own retro collecting, sometimes the compilations of my youth float by at far lower prices than the desirables of my chosen formats and then occasionally, lower than the platform average. I picked up a Spectrum copy of the first They Sold A Million for around £5, I think. I kinda didn’t care about the price - it was a must-own, for the link it gives me back through four decades of gaming is richly valuable. And, of course, to hold the physical item is part of the joy. I think we underestimate our memories of touch, of physical sense, for there’s a definite electricity that comes from holding that double jewel case and sliding out the tapes. It fires up some deeply held memory in the way the corners of the case rest in your hands, or how the front swings open, the learned methodologies for removing the tape in such a way that you can place it in the cassette player with maximum ease. And of course, like its illegal brethren,11 there are the counter numbers for the tapes with more than one game per side. And I think perhaps, like the music album, there’s some essential quality to the videogame compilation that makes it somehow only correct when a physical object. While the videogame comp may not be able to play on the same mixed-media joys of splendid gatefold artwork and illustrated books to accompany the music of concept-heavy prog albums and so on, I do wonder if there’s any merit in perhaps collecting shit together with that approach in mind. A physical UFO 50 would seem to almost demand additional materials, as perhaps should Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (I did try to find evidence of a physical copy and failed). But then again, maybe the compilation is just another relic of an increasingly forgotten age. Much the pity, though, as their model of relatively cheap discovery and density of smiles-per-pound should be a fundamental we can all still enjoy.
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I really must make special mention of https://compilation64.blogspot.com/ for being so comprehensive. Lovely, lovely work.
Spindizzy is a wonderfully haunting space to explore, full of geometric purity and revelling in the psuedo-3D that isometric projection conjures. Being a very straight transplant of Marble Madness mechanics into an isometric explore-em-up, it nonetheless combined a sense of stark isolation with a TRON-like sense of inhabiting an entirely abstract space and having to cope with its angular geography. Certain routes required astonishing feats of bravado to traverse, and all without any option at all to save your game. Yet another superb UK 8-bit title that's sorely unknown to far too many.
In yet another callback to the Starquake piece and very much re: attract modes as a marker of excellence, Alleykat is perhaps the least popular of Braybrook's C64 titles, but it does have an absolutely superb attract mode. Andrew goes all out with colour-cycling and raster effects to give a quite exquisite presentation that, for my money, just outclasses Uridium and Paradroid.
A strangely unaddressed tragedy, Iridis Alpha has the difficulty spike of all difficulty spikes with one enemy that attaches itself to your ship (Gilbey) and drains it of energy. A crying shame, as Iridis Alpha is a stunning evolution of the Defender template. Amazing freneticism and intensity. I always wondered why Jeff didn't patch the game to soften or even delay the licker ships until much later in the game and, sadly, I completely forgot to ask him about this in person. Therefore I am an absolute dick.
I have always dissed Antiriad as being actually quite shit, being a remarkably boring platformer that Starquake shamed into irrelevance. It was fun to see both on the same comp, as this was my first experience with either. I had been hyped up for Antiriad thanks to glowing reviews in both Zzap 64 and Commodore User but I soon found out those reviews weren't so much praising the incredibly dull and unimaginative gameplay but the lovely graphics. These were drawn by one Daniel Malone, yes the same Daniel Malone that went on to utterly define the Bitmap Brothers aesthetic on the 16-bits.
Yes, you play as Sir Clive Sinclair trying to get to work. You are represented as a disembodied head, which is nice.
As referenced in my Jet Set Willy piece. As a footnote, naturally.
I also have to mention Elite's Four-Pak, as the other compilation my friend owned. This brought Bombjack and Commando into my life, both of which were great on the Spectrum.
US Gold and Durell were keen offenders in this regard. Durell went massively over the top with one absurdly lavish set that nonetheless gave you all the good shit they'd ever done up to 1987.
I will likely elaborate on this in a later piece, but there's something about Galway's preference for pure waveforms and bold square-waves that really makes the SID sing.
This is a reference to the pirated C90s full 'o games and their individualised indices of tape counter positions.