They later became Rareware, of Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters fame!
How much did games cost for the spectrum/C64/Atari ST /Amiga ?
- Thread starter chaparral
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They later became Rareware, of Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters fame!
Yep, Amstrad CPC premium titles were usually £9.99. Sometimes you'd get £4.99 jobs, and after a few years, games that appeared in the Budget section tended to be £2.99 or even £1.99.
Alternatively, there was a dual-tape-deck discount to be had from friends.
Alternatively, there was a dual-tape-deck discount to be had from friends.
Associate
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Yeah, things were more expensive back then. I remember most Amiga games being £20-25 which is probably about £50 in todays money with inflation, and there weren't any Steam sales or internet shops having price wars. You wanted a game you either stumped up the full amount, tried to copy it with X-Copy or waited to see if it ever got a budget release, which wasn't guaranteed.
Hardware was expensive too. I think i got my Amiga for £399 which is probably £700/800 today. Even the PS1 at £299 in 1995 would be £450 or so now.
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C64 were between £8.99-9.99 for most full price tape games (budget were usually £1.99-2.99). Some disk based or disk only games were up to £29.99 (I paid that for Cinemawares the 3 Stooges in a Tottenham Court Road US imports specialist back in 1989 I think....that was a LOT of money to pay for a C64 game then 
). The average disk was between£14-19.99. Cartridges were between £19-24.99).
Atari ST were around £19-24.99 some as high as £29.99 few were anymore than this.
Amiga were either £24.99,£29.99,£34.99, £39.99 or in the case of the Readysoft games like Dragons Lair, Space Ace etc etc £44.99 which was a huge amount of money back then (I bought all those @ full price back in the day).
Back in those days it was quite a lot of money in relative terms if you do the inflation maths some of the games costs a huge amount of money & the only way to get cheaper was wait until some specialist mail order only shop got them in otherwise full price was the only other way to own most of these.
C64/Amiga were the 2 greatest games systems ever made even to this day they have so many great games all a modern company needs to do is port those onto modern systems with up to date gfx but leave most of the gameplay unchanged=best selling digital download games (System 3 actually bought Epyx games to do this but only managed a few handheld titles they did not bother exploiting it any further or making Last Ninja 4 
).
People still make C64 games & some of those are absolutely stunning there are also a lot of people still making devices using USB & or flash drives or replacement C64 disk drives using flash memory! The C64 is alive & well in 2014
Check out the metal warrior series or how about modern Psytonik Releases on Tape/Disk/Cartridge/Easyflash
http://www.psytronik.net/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=29
). The average disk was between£14-19.99. Cartridges were between £19-24.99).Atari ST were around £19-24.99 some as high as £29.99 few were anymore than this.
Amiga were either £24.99,£29.99,£34.99, £39.99 or in the case of the Readysoft games like Dragons Lair, Space Ace etc etc £44.99 which was a huge amount of money back then (I bought all those @ full price back in the day
).Back in those days it was quite a lot of money in relative terms if you do the inflation maths some of the games costs a huge amount of money & the only way to get cheaper was wait until some specialist mail order only shop got them in otherwise full price was the only other way to own most of these.
C64/Amiga were the 2 greatest games systems ever made even to this day they have so many great games all a modern company needs to do is port those onto modern systems with up to date gfx but leave most of the gameplay unchanged=best selling digital download games
(System 3 actually bought Epyx games to do this but only managed a few handheld titles they did not bother exploiting it any further or making Last Ninja 4 ).People still make C64 games & some of those are absolutely stunning there are also a lot of people still making devices using USB & or flash drives or replacement C64 disk drives using flash memory! The C64 is alive & well in 2014
Check out the metal warrior series
or how about modern Psytonik Releases on Tape/Disk/Cartridge/Easyflash http://www.psytronik.net/main/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49&Itemid=29
Haha X-copy now there is a blast from the past, was great copying pirated games but not retail. Only way to copy retailed diskettes was to use the cyclone device but you needed a secondary external diskdrive.
Here is one here, i actually made my own but you could by them for 25 quid on mail order.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c...bime.net%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D44379;640;480
What this device did was synchronise the 2 drives to the exact speed each so copy protection that was placed on the original disk was in effect copied also.
The only downside was that it took about 2-3 hours per disk but was still great back in the day.
Agree 100%. My favourite computers of alltime along with the PC Engine and Neo Geo.
And here's some Amiga game prices from Issue 27 of Amiga Power (July 1993). Courtesy of the Amiga Magazine Rack:
Thats from 1993....Amiga was kinda coming to its EOL, those games had dropped in price, around 1991 which was Amigas Golden year and finest hour those games woulda been either 19.99 or 24.99.
Take alook at this archive all games were 24.99 from Amiga power 1991.
https://archive.org/stream/Amiga_Po...ssue_00_1991-05_Future_Publishing_GB_djvu.txt
Leaderboard golf comes in at 7.99 but its on the Kixx label which i mentioned earlier (retail to budget after few years)
Some games were 30-35 like Powermonger!
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Here's Dec 1991 from Amiga Power:
These are from here - http://amr.abime.net/ I could read this site all day
These are from here - http://amr.abime.net/ I could read this site all day
Could not do the Readysoft games though I tried to back those up to save the originals & it never worked on Disk 1 with an external disk drive it was because they protected most of the 80 sectors to confuse copiers by varying the drive speed at the duplicators it was the only one you could not copy no matter what. I still have the game to this day along with my old Amiga A500's & C64s could not bear to get rid of themHaha X-copy now there is a blast from the past, was great copying pirated games but not retail. Only way to copy retailed diskettes was to use the cyclone device but you needed a secondary external diskdrive.
Here is one here, i actually made my own but you could by them for 25 quid on mail order.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=c...bime.net%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D44379;640;480
What this device did was synchronise the 2 drives to the exact speed each so copy protection that was placed on the original disk was in effect copied also.
The only downside was that it took about 2-3 hours per disk but was still great back in the day.
but it does not load all the time now as the disk is worn out (why I wanted to back up in the first place!).Here's Dec 1991 from Amiga Power:
These are from here - http://amr.abime.net/ I could read this site all day
Remember mail order was cheaper than Highstreet store.
All those ones for 6.99/7.99 are all on the Kixx label or The Hit Squad, you should be able to google them individually.
Not bad prices though back then, id have bought from there in those days.
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I'm not sure which I have fonder memories of The C64 or The Amiga 500.
Possibly the C64, I remember sifting through the £1.99 or £2.99 pile of games looking to unearth a gem, and you often did. I had far more budget games than I did boxed games.
I remember when I got my Amiga I would still go back to the C64. I eventually sold it to some woman for £80 after I had stopped using it, she got a ton of games with it. But by that time Amiga was the new king.
Copying games on the family hi-fi... lol so hi-tech
Possibly the C64, I remember sifting through the £1.99 or £2.99 pile of games looking to unearth a gem, and you often did. I had far more budget games than I did boxed games.
I remember when I got my Amiga I would still go back to the C64. I eventually sold it to some woman for £80 after I had stopped using it, she got a ton of games with it. But by that time Amiga was the new king.
Copying games on the family hi-fi... lol so hi-tech
Could not do the Readysoft games though I tried to back those up to save the originals & it never worked on Disk 1 with an external disk drive it was because they protected most of the 80 sectors to confuse copiers by varying the drive speed at the duplicators it was the only one you could not copy no matter what. I still have the game to this day along with my old Amiga A500's & C64s could not bear to get rid of them
Haha yeah Kick Off 2 was like that also, although you could take the diskette out of its casing and replace it carefully with a failed cyclone copy. A dab of glue and your good to go.
Return to shop and exchange, i only did this with kick off 2 though.
You mention a lot of Readysoft games and copying, was you part of the Swindon computer mail order club was you by any chance?
Also i take it your talking about these Arcade laser disk conversions to home computer?
I have a surprise for you in my next post!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Laserdisc_video_games
Soldato
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From a primarily Amstrad CPC history.
£1.99 - Budget. I had so many codemasters games... I'd like to add that Dizzy was rubbish, before any insane fan boys turn up.
£4.99 - Premium budget, can only think of a couple of (excellent) codemasters titles that filled this bracket. Though some of those "50 games on double cassette" compilations probably slipped in here too.
£8-9.99 - Full price.
£14.99 may have happened for some of the real big hitters, Expensive licensed titles and compilation stuff from Ocean, US Gold and the like. This happened when buying from random places in the high street, mail order was almost always cheaper.
I noticed an add for Premier Mail order in this thread. I suspect I used them once or twice.
£1.99 - Budget. I had so many codemasters games... I'd like to add that Dizzy was rubbish, before any insane fan boys turn up.
£4.99 - Premium budget, can only think of a couple of (excellent) codemasters titles that filled this bracket. Though some of those "50 games on double cassette" compilations probably slipped in here too.
£8-9.99 - Full price.
£14.99 may have happened for some of the real big hitters, Expensive licensed titles and compilation stuff from Ocean, US Gold and the like. This happened when buying from random places in the high street, mail order was almost always cheaper.
I noticed an add for Premier Mail order in this thread. I suspect I used them once or twice.
I bought all my games brand new on Amiga + C64 must have spent a couple of thousand doing that which was back then a massive amount of money to spend!
ahh..buying C64 Games for £1.99 from my local Computer shop, brings back memories!....
Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga 500....Now a reboot by Sony: http://youtu.be/C0s1AoK4j6M
Turrican I & II soundtrack was amazing!..still sounds good! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z33aRFPntQs
Curse of Monkey Island..awesome!
Hours of fun over friends houses as kids!
How far we've come!..
Shadow of the Beast on the Amiga 500....Now a reboot by Sony: http://youtu.be/C0s1AoK4j6M
Turrican I & II soundtrack was amazing!..still sounds good! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z33aRFPntQs
Curse of Monkey Island..awesome!
Hours of fun over friends houses as kids!
How far we've come!..
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