13 Apr
2012
13 Apr
'12
12:23 a.m.
On 13 April 2012 00:04, Jason T <silent700 at gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 4:54 PM, Liam Proven
<lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
I really don't know.
Did anyone else enjoy both the Stranglers'
album /Aural Sculpture/
*and* the Spectrum adventure game the cassette included, /Aural
Quest/? :?)
Sounds like another UK only release? Wouldn't make much sense to
release a Speccy tape in the US?
I guess not, although games written with The Quill had no sound or
graphics and might have worked on a TS2068.
But - perhaps it's me - reading between the lines of your comment, you
seem to be making the point that the game was for a minority machine,
one that was not significant in the USA? Or so I misunderstand?
If so, I'd challenge it. The Sinclair Spectrum was one of the most
successful home computers ever made - they sold pretty well across
much of Europe, I believe; certainly the later Spectrum 128 model was
designed in Spain by Investronica, not Sinclair Research itself.
At the time, the Commodore 64 was the only machine that outsold it,
and I think that when they were new, the C64 was well over twice the
price of the Spectrum. The Speccy was an affordable machine for the
masses, whereas the C64 - when new - was an elite, expensive machine
for the serious gamer. The even-more-rich who did not want their
children to have fun bought BBC Micros. :?)
I don't know of any hard sales figures, but the Spectrum sold several
million units, I think. It was *absolutely* the most logical machine
for a UK band to release a bonus game for; it was *the* dominant home
computer of the UK (and I suspect Europe) in the early 1980s. It was
quite widely cloned behind the Iron Curtain, too.
There's mention of the game on the Wikipedia article about the album:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aural_Sculpture
Only remotely related example I can offer up here was
the Information
Society CD that came with a CD+G track. ?All 10 or so people with CD+G
capable devices were treated to a band bio and a low-res graphics show
:)
(I viewed it many years after its release on a Magnavox CDI. ?I think
the C= CDTV could play them, too?)
Oh, yes, I heard of them. I don't think I ever saw a player, though -
excepting fairly rare exotica such as an Amiga CD32 or a 3DO console.
--
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