Mastertronic Added Dimension | Code Like It's 198x

In November 1985 Computer Gamer reported that Mastertronic, the company that had made £1.99 the price of a cheap game, had “launched a new imprint called Mastertronic Added Dimension or MAD games for short”. The idea, the magazine explained, was to sell “top quality games at a higher price” while the £1.99 range carried on. The higher price was £2.99. Within weeks MAD had released Spellbound, and CRASH told its readers that “for £2.99 you’d be MAD not to buy it”.

Fast facts

Launched: late 1985, as a second label inside Mastertronic.
Price: £2.99 on cassette, against the parent label’s £1.99.
Best-known games: David Jones’s Magic Knight games Spellbound, Knight Tyme and Stormbringer; Binary Design’s Amaurote; Jeff Minter’s Revenge of the Mutant Camels II.
Best CRASH scores: Spellbound 95%, Knight Tyme 94%, Amaurote 92%.
Later life: in 1988 Mastertronic used the MAD name for its 16-bit games, at £9.95.

A pound more

Computer Gamer said the first range would be seven games “written by existing Mastertronic authors, such as the team that wrote Chiller and the authors of Stunt Biker and Finders Keepers”. The author of Finders Keepers was David Jones, and his next game was the label’s first hit. Spellbound came out for Christmas 1985, “part of the new Mad Games range”, as CRASH put it, and took 95% and a Smash. It looked like a platform game until the player pressed fire and a window of commands opened over it, through which Magic Knight could examine objects, cast spells and give orders to the other characters trapped in the castle with him.

The extra pound was the point. Looking back in 2006, Retro Gamer reported that Spellbound sold fewer than half as many copies as Finders Keepers, but that the higher price still made it “a considerable success”.

Jones wrote two more Magic Knight games for the label. Knight Tyme (1986), written first for the new 128K Spectrum, scored 94% in CRASH, and Stormbringer (1987) 86%. Your Sinclair called Stormbringer “the fourth ‘Windimation’ arcade adventure from Mastertronic Added Dimension Games”. CRASH readers kept the three MAD games in their adventure chart for years: in September 1987 Spellbound was number 1, Knight Tyme number 3 and Stormbringer number 6.

What else £2.99 bought

MAD was not only Magic Knight. In May 1987 CRASH reviewed Amaurote, an isometric game by Binary Design, credited to “Producer: MAD” at £2.99, and gave it 92%; one reviewer “almost fell off my chair” on hearing that it was a budget game. In October 1987 ZZAP!64 reviewed Revenge of the Mutant Camels II, “the third chapter of the Camels series” by Jeff Minter, at £2.99 under the MAD name, and ended its verdict: “Minter has certainly come up with the goods again and at a price that everyone can afford.”

The label sold sports games too. ZZAP!64 reviewed the darts game 180 from “Mastertronic Added Dimension, £2.99” in December 1986, and Your Computer, reviewing the Amstrad Five-a-side Soccer, said that “MAD Games, otherwise known as Mastertronic Added Dimension, has managed to maintain a surprisingly high quality for the products released”.

Not every MAD game earned the higher price. ZZAP!64 gave the Star Wars licence Droids, a MAD release at £2.99, 36% in August 1988. In 1987 and 1988 CRASH reviewed a run of Spectrum MAD games, among them Plexar, Motos (licensed from a Namco arcade game), Flash Gordon, U.C.M. and Grand Prix Tennis, and gave the last of these 67%. The label also reissued older games: a 1989 mail-order list in CRASH has Manic Miner on MAD at £2.99.

Inside Mastertronic

MAD was a brand, not a separate company. By 1987 Mastertronic also sold games as Bulldog, Entertainment USA and Ricochet, and when it bought Melbourne House that year, CRASH began calling MAD “Melbourne House’s budget sister”. The magazine’s review of 1987 picked out the label: Mastertronic “had come a long way since the days when their budget range was really cheap rubbish. But with labels like M.A.D. and Bulldog they were often putting out quality games at still very low prices.”

In October 1988 ST Action reported that MAD was “what Mastertronic have decided to call their 16-bit software label”. Its review of the sports game Vectorball, at £9.95, asked what “this added dimension that the ex-budget boys profess to put in their software” was. The magazines say little about the label after that; Mastertronic itself became Virgin Mastertronic in 1988.

Two David Joneses

The Magic Knight author is not the Dave Jones who founded DMA Design in Dundee and made Lemmings. The confusion is old. In December 1986 Your Sinclair gave away Magic Knight T-shirts from “David ‘Spellbound/Knight Tyme’ Jones” in a competition called “Will The Real David Jones Please Stand Up”, which asked readers which David Jones was “now a Thin White Duke”.

Sources

Computer Gamer issue 8, November 1985: news, “It’s a Mad Mad World” (launch of Mastertronic Added Dimension; “top quality games at a higher price”; seven games by existing authors).
CRASH issue 24, Christmas Special 1985: Spellbound review (“Part of the new Mad Games range”; £2.99; 95%).
CRASH issue 29, June 1986: Knight Tyme review (94%). Issue 42, July 1987: Stormbringer review (“Producer: M.A.D.”, £2.99; 86%). Issue 43, August 1987: Flash Gordon review (M.A.D., £2.99). Issue 44, September 1987: readers’ adventure chart (Spellbound number 1). Issue 45, October 1987: Plexar and Motos reviews (M.A.D., £2.99; Motos licensed from Namco). Issue 47, December 1987: U.C.M. review (M.A.D., £2.99).
CRASH issue 40, May 1987: Amaurote review (“Producer: MAD”, £2.99, author Binary; 92%).
CRASH issue 48, January 1988: review of 1987 (“labels like M.A.D. and Bulldog”). Issue 49, February 1988: adventure chart (“Melbourne House’s budget sister M.A.D.”). Issue 51, April 1988: Grand Prix Tennis review (M.A.D., £2.99; 67%). Issue 64, May 1989: mail-order list (Manic Miner, MAD, £2.99).
Your Sinclair issue 12, December 1986, p. 6: Frontlines (David Jones’s T-shirts; “Will The Real David Jones Please Stand Up”).
Your Sinclair issue 19, July 1987: Stormbringer review (“the fourth ‘Windimation’ arcade adventure from Mastertronic Added Dimension Games”).
ZZAP!64 issue 20, December 1986: 180 review (Mastertronic Added Dimension, £2.99). Issue 30, October 1987: Revenge of the Mutant Camels II review (MAD, £2.99). Issue 40, August 1988: Star Wars Droids review (MAD, £2.99; 36%).
Your Computer, November 1986: Five-a-side Soccer review (“MAD Games, otherwise known as Mastertronic Added Dimension”).
ST Action vol. 1 no. 6, October 1988: contents page and Vectorball review (MAD as Mastertronic’s 16-bit label; £9.95).
Retro Gamer issue 27, 2006: Magic Knight retrospective (Spellbound launched in October 1985 on the new MAD label; sales against Finders Keepers).