I reckon Mastertronic’s budget titles probably accounted for about a decent proportion of my small but perfectly formed Commodore VIC-20 collection by the time they launched their M.A.D. label in 1985. I didn’t get pocket money as such but it was an awful lot easier to ask for a £1.99 every other week than anything full price at any time other than Christmas or birthdays! Looking back at their library just now, of what I think were seventeen games in total they released on there between 1981 and 1985, it looks like I had fifteen of them – I don’t remember Duck Shoot and all, and fruit machines have never interested me, so Vegas Jackpot would have been money better spent elsewhere! And don’t worry, I don’t think this is the place to delve into the games I did have, most of which weren’t great anyway, but let me quickly mention what I reckon are my top five Mastertronic games for the VIC-20, in no special order, just to provide some context for where we’re going…

I’ll start with Psycho Shopper (pictured here), a clever multi-level take on Frogger that ends up like Pac-Man in a supermarket full of mad grannies! It’s exactly what you want from a decent budget title, as is Bullet, offering similar arcade-like variety that has you avoiding cop cars, just like the ancient Sega game Head On, and if you grab all the coins in the maze you’ll then be driving Snake-style to try and rob four banks around the screen. King Tut is probably the most technically impressive of the lot, especially when you consider it was running on the unexpanded 3.5K model! It’s a maze game inspired by Konami’s Tutankham arcade game, with really stunning visuals that were in semi-darkness until you got close with your lamp. Also impressive in its own way, R.I.P. threw up a huge maze made up of many single-screen, mostly horror-themed “mazes” made out of a giant skull and crossbones or a gravestone or similar, and seeing which of those would appear next was almost as fun shooting the monsters and collecting the artifact-thing on each one! I’ll finish with Rockman, which, as well as producing some of the most ear-splitting sounds to ever come out of a home computer, might be Mastertronic’s defining work on the system! It’s a take on Boulder Dash set across twenty levels that would have justified a full-price release, and is one of the VIC’s absolute highlights!

Aside from a few goes on Alcatraz Harry on the ZX Spectrum, this was my entire experience of Mastertronic when I first played The Last V8 on my friend’s brand new Commodore 128 just after Christmas 1985, which I reckon was the first and last game specifically designed for that machine he ever got! Anyway, as fond as I was of all the stuff I’ve just talked about, you can compare the screenshots here – this thing was a whole new level of budget title, and I was simply blown away… At least until I played it! It’s a top-down, post-apocalyptic racer of sorts, with you guiding your car across three levels (or two on the regular Commodore 64) to reach the safety of a nuclear bunker, while avoiding obstacles, running out of fuel or losing your radiation shield. The play area only takes up the top third of the screen but it was all impressive as hell, with that part scrolling in all directions and the rest looking like Knight Rider, and it was by Richard and David Darling right before they created Codemasters, and the music was by the legendary Rob Hubbard, and it even had speech… And it stinks! Your car is virtually impossible to control, and the slightest touch from anything and you’re starting again, so don’t worry about missing levels if you don’t have a C128 because you’ll never see more than ten seconds of the first one regardless!

The Last V8 was the first game to appear on Mastertronic’s new M.A.D. label, launched in 1985 and standing for Mastertronic Added Dimension, which meant they could sell their games at the higher but still budget price of £2.99. Genius! And while £1.99 or £2.99 might not make a huge difference in today’s money, an expectation soon developed for what you were getting from this not-even-halfway house between traditionally budget and full price – while my all-time favourite game, Feud on the ZX Spectrum, only cost £1.99, in general you’d always be taking a gamble at the lower end (and one you’d more often than not never win on the VIC-20!) but at this new price point, you could be pretty confident you were getting a higher level of polish that more than paid for itself, wherever you were playing. And while The Last V8 might not have been the best start, we soon had stuff like 180, Master of Magic, Motos and Zub, as well as the continuation of the wonderful Magic Knight series, with Spellbound, Knight Tyme and Stormbringer. And that was some serious value for a bit more money!

It turned out to be surprisingly hard to put a number on how many games were released under the M.A.D. banner, partly because they’re generally lumped in with everything else by Mastertronic, and partly because they would later resurrect the same name for a new budget-ish rerelease label for games that had sold over 100,000 copies. However, I’m going to take an educated guess of between forty and fifty titles across all 8-bit platforms. Amaurote joined that lineup around March or April in 1987, and as well as the Spectrum version I’ll focus on very shortly, it also came out on the C64, CPC, Atari 8-bit, MSX and the Electronika BK, which I think was a Russian 16-bit machine but until mere seconds ago I don’t think I’d ever heard of it! The game was developed by Binary Design, who’d not only come up with original games such as this or the aforementioned greatest game ever, but also the wonderful Spectrum conversion of another all-time favourite of mine, Elevator Action, and all sorts of other arcade ports like Roadwars, Shinobi and Double Dragon, to mention just a few, on all sorts of systems throughout the eighties.

Amaurote landed right in the middle of what I reckon was the golden age of the ZX Spectrum, and at exactly the same time as Arkanoid, Enduro Racer, Auf Wiedersehen Monty, Ranarama and Fist II. And Mad Nurse, if we’re including bonkers budget competition for your pocket money too! If I remember right though, it was actually another budget title, Agent X, that was its main competition for my attention, and unfortunately for some time it was fighting a losing battle! I reckon that time was the half-term holiday at the end of May in 1987 because I clearly had some money to burn if I was splashing out on even two budget games at once, meaning it was just after my birthday, which was the same birthday I got the aforementioned Enduro Racer, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought either! Anyway, my scene now set, let’s turn out attention to Amaurote’s… “What do you mean you’re frightened of insects? How can you be – you’re an officer in the Royal Army of Amaurote. Someone has to clear the city of these insects and you are by far our most able Officer for the job, well actually you’re the only one left.”

Just to confirm then, Amaurote is the capital city of a place called Paradise that’s been infested by killer insects you need to track down and get rid of, before they get rid of you! The insects have set up colonies in each of this city’s twenty-five districts (apparently spanning 2,500 screens in total), which are all selectable in any order from the map at the start, and once you’ve cleared all the insects from your district of choice, you’ll go back there to move to an adjacent district, so while there is free choice at the outset, there’s also a bit of route planning involved too. It’s all viewed from an isometric perspective, and plays like a methodical top-down-ish shooter, as you use your strangely four-legged armoured car’s scanner, radio and bombs to hunt down The Queen and her insect army, while also making sure that no more than 60% of the current district gets destroyed in the process, or that’s game over too! I’ll come back to all that in a sec but before I go on I can’t not mention the game’s loading screen any longer because it stinks like that C64 game from earlier! Without spoiling too much at this stage, the rest of the game is a stunner, and way beyond its price tag in several respects, but this thing looks like it’s come from someone’s bedroom in 1984 on something like Mastertronic’s own Alcatraz Harry, not a sophisticated M.A.D. release from three years later!

Right, I feel better now! I was talking insects, and you’ve got three types you need to deal with… First you’ve got scouts, who fly around the city looking for potential food sources as well as intruders, just like you! If they spot you and raise the alarm then you’re about to meet the second type, the drones. These are the ones you’ll come across the most regardless because it’s their job to collect all that food, as well as defend the colony, and once they’re onto you they’re relentless, although in your favour they aren’t very clever, they’re apparently very dispensable, and they only do what they’re told by the final type, The Queen, who also has two roles. Firstly, she’s giving orders to the drones based on what the scouts are seeing, and secondly, she’s mating with the drones to produce more of them, so every time you kill one, she’ll come up with another, but the time it takes for her to do so will depend on when she last fed, so maybe you want to slow down that food supply too? What you really want to do, though, is fight your way to her and take her down as a priority, meaning her colony will both descend into chaos and stop replenishing itself, making the rest of your job a lot easier!

Your vehicle’s supply of “anti-everything” bouncing bombs will give you a helping hand too, as long as you don’t go too wild with them, because not only can you only carry a limited amount of them, but when you fire them, they’re travelling in the same direction you are and not stopping until they explode on something, where insect or building, and as we found out earlier, you don’t want to be blowing up buildings! The perimeter fence seems to be able to withstand them though, and sadly so does The Queen, who you’re going to need a “supa-bomb” to destroy, which you need to request one at a time. You do this using another tool at your disposal, the two-way radio, which reveals a menu when you activate it, allowing you to place your order for one of these, more regular bombs, a repair (which depletes the cash reserve you begin with) or a rescue (meaning quit). Any bombs you’ve ordered will be air-lifted to you and dropped somewhere in the city, and that’s where your scanner comes in, guiding you to them with simple arrows. When you’re not looking for supplies, you can also change it’s mode to either point towards the nearest insect or to The Queen.

The three scanner modes all sit on the Z, X and C keys, while you turn on the radio with caps-shift, and the rest is diagonal directional controls (that do take some getting used to if you’re playing on keyboard) or fire to launch a bomb (something to get used to). However, a press of the V key will also change the game’s colours; well, colour to be precise, as it’s all gloriously monochrome! You wouldn’t want it any other way though, and what it loses in colour (at least once you’re past that garish monstrosity of a loading screen!), it more than makes up for in detail, as well as richness of environment, which, just to finish on colours, can be green, yellow or white as you see fit, although it will vary between districts by default too if that all sounds like too much trouble! The play area, which sits in about two-thirds of the screen, is flip-screen but it’s only flipping about half of what you can see, which has the effect of increasing how big each district feels beyond what probably is about a hundred screens each (making the back of the box’s claim of 2,500 in total about right), rather than what could easily have looked like the world’s jerkiest scrolling instead! The city itself seems to be a futuristic, state-enforced utopia, with very well-ordered layouts of agricultural, wooded and more built-up areas (complete with some very sci-fi building designs), all connected by road networks but enclosed by that harsh, militaristic spiked metal barrier all the way around!

I think this variety of layouts (and the changing colours!) do mask an overall lack of variety in the building blocks they’re made up of, which is going to become more apparent the more you play, and given the repetitive nature of the gameplay, is probably going to reduce your motivation to see the whole lot through in the end, although that’s only likely to happen a very long time after you’ve had your £2.99’s worth out of it! I’ll come back to the gameplay in a sec but let’s just stay with the graphics a while longer because they’re really worthy of more praise! There’s a very organic feel about everything, whether organic or otherwise, with heavily textured landscapes (to the point many of them will physically restrict your movement accordingly), which buildings often rest upon on insect limb-like stilts, while other structures of less clear purpose then either blend into, like geometric representations of whatever alien nature is at play here, or could equally be geological. Even more so your armoured car, which trots around like half a spider on cleverly animated legs, while the “cockpit” you’re viewing the action from is a honeycomb containing your scanner’s psychedelic indicators and various inventory and damage readouts. It’s all so cleverly lit too, with shadows everywhere adding further realism to its intricate cartoon art style.

Nothing cartoonish about those insects though – absolutely terrifying, with their nasty flapping wings and all-seeing black bug eyes! And then there’s The Queen, way oversized, and sat in whatever area she’s decided to turn into her distinctive nest, the outer edge of which is going to be the first indication you need to call in that supa-bomb! Which reminds me, land it on her and you’re in for a really cool cutscene as a huge hole is blown into her shell, leaving this dreadful open husk! The opening cutscene is something else that’s way above expectation for a budget game of any level, giving you a proper cartoon animation of your guy running along a platform and diving into the hatch at the top of your vehicle, before it closes and is lowered into play by a helicopter. And I’m not sure if it’s a very early bit of full-motion video or just a clever bit of faux-digitised animation but you’ll also see a couple of expressive close-ups of a real bloke’s face at various time too! It’s all just so impressive whatever the price tag, and I’d even argue it’s among the best-looking examples of this on the system!

I don’t think anyone’s going to argue that it’s not among the best-sounding either… Which is a good place to say I’ve only ever played the 128K version, so as well as probably missing out on those cutscenes, if you’re only getting the regular clicking effects that accompany your leggy movement or the various white noises of destruction on a 48K Spectrum, then feel free to disagree! Otherwise, though, Dave Whittaker’s music is outrageously good, from the second that outrageously-bad loading screen finally disappears and gives way to the chip-tune equivalent of The Smiths’ greatest hits on the title screen, which then transitions to this punchy, Rob Hubbard on a SID chip-esque beast of an introduction track, full of adrenaline and military pomp, before that in turn gives way to the most melancholy, haunting sounds you’ve ever heard coming out of a Spectrum! This in-game track is so atmospheric, moving between this full-on haunted house synth melody to a much deeper, Jaws-like keyboard tune, and then to silence, and then to a sci-fi soundscape, then back again… And yes, I know I’ve said it before, but we are still talking about a £2.99 game here!

We should talk game now too, which, after all that gushing about presentation, is probably where the price tag is most apparent because, as immersive as the gameplay loop can be while it lasts, it’s never massively exciting, or particularly tense once you’ve come up against The Queen a few times, or become familiar with the movements of her minions. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its moments though, like when you suddenly realise you’ve backed yourself into a corner and the drone you were playing cat and mouse with is no longer alone, or you’ve been a bit free and easy with those bombs and the city is suddenly on dangerously high damage. And all of these things regularly combine to make this a tough game! Like I said what seems like a long time ago though, it’s more methodical than action-packed, and if you come to it as such, then you’ll find the interior of the armoured car you’re controlling in third-person outside the window perfectly captivating, as you switch between different scanner modes or call in support, and there is a natural drama to your movement, with your surroundings demanding you plan them, especially when you’ve got a supa-bomb onboard and there’s a load of drones between you and The Queen, and they’re closer than you thought because your scanner is looking for her not them, and this thing is £2.99 so what more do you want?!?!

Well, at the time I probably wanted Agent X and Enduro Racer more than this, but I’d still take them over pretty much anything else that’s emerged since, so we can’t be too down on Amaurote for that, or anything else really! It might have cost a bit more than the average budget title we’d got very used to by then but, together with its stablemates like Spellbound and Master of Magic, and even to an extent The Last V8, this was no average budget title. The long-term gameplay might become an acquired taste once the novelty wears off (which is also true of those other games!) but there’s no denying its quality, and certainly not a level of polish above and beyond about eighty percent of anything else – budget or otherwise – around at the time, golden age of the Spectrum and all!

As always, I’ll never expect anything for what I do here but if you’d like to buy me a Ko-fi and help towards increasingly expensive hosting and storage costs then it will always be really appreciated! And be sure to follow me on Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) or Threads for my latest retro-gaming nonsense!