Of all the formats supported by Mastertronic during their lifetime, only the Dragon 32 saw fewer releases than the Commodore Vic 20. Released in 1981, it was a groundbreaking system and was notable for being the first ever home computer to reach a million sales. But no sooner had it launched, it was discontinued just four years later in January 1985.
Vic 20’s Short Lived Support
Even though the Vic 20 saw it’s first Mastertronic release in April 1984 at the company’s launch, support lasted little over a year with the final game – Crazy Cavey – being released in July 1985. However, it wasn’t a case of sales being poor for the platform – the best selling Vic 20 game for Mastertronic sold an impressive 53,000 and never dropped below 20,000. So what happened?
When it comes to software, the harsh reality for the Vic 20 is that the commercial sector universally abandoned the computer completely in 1985. It wasn’t just Mastertronic that stopped supporting it, but every publisher worldwide stopped releasing Vic 20 games. But with their business model and low overheads, could they have continued to release more games after that point?
Rival Formats
Looking across other platforms covered by Mastertronic, even though the average sales figures were lower for both the MSX (which was supported until 1987) and the BBC (supported until 1989) it’s clear that high volumes weren’t needed for Mastertronic to make money. Even games selling less than 10,000 units seemed to be profitable so it seems strange that Mastertronic stopped supporting the Vic 20 when games could have continued to be released for the platform.
During it’s most active period, typically games for the BBC sold less than 20,000 units with the exception of Galactic Patrol and Kane, both released in 1986. The final mainstream title, Way Of The Exploding Fist on the Ricochet label, struggled to sell just over 5,000 copies in April 1988. Two further games were released on the Americana range which struggled further barely scraping 2,000 copies (Beach Head and Beach Head II). Their final release – Tetris on the Mastertronic Plus/PAL Developments range – didn’t even reach 1,200 sales when it was released in May 1989, marking the end of the BBC as a viable platform.
More Vic 20 Games?
But back to the Vic 20, and as a fan of Commodore’s unsung hero the question has to be asked if there was potential for more releases than the 17 games and The Games Designer that made up Mastertronic’s complete range? So what other options could Mastertronic have had, and how long could they have continued and still made a profit?
The first thing we can look at is how Mastertronic sourced many of their early games. To start off with, most were re-releases and they looked to Richard and David Darling and their company Galactic Software, as well as Mr Chip Software for a lot of the Commodore titles. This gave them a huge selection to get the company started, but not everything developed by both publishers was released.
So What Was Available?
Several titles spring to mind from both publishers that were released on one format, but other versions – including the Vic 20 – were strangely ignored. The Pac Man clone Munch Mania from Mr Chip for the Commodore C64 was a renamed version of their previously released game Pacmania. The Commodore 16 version was later released as part of C16 Compilation but the Vic 20 version was nowhere to be seen.
I also mentioned Galactic Software, and a couple of their games are worth mentioning. Bug Diver made an appearance as a Dragon 32 only release for Mastertronic. But not only did a Vic 20 version exist of this as well, but also an edition of the game for the Commodore 64. Why all three weren’t released makes no sense at all, especially with the scale of the partnership between the companies at the time.
The final Vic 20 release that never made it from Galactic Software was Space Shuttle. A Vic 20 exclusive title and while a relatively simplistic game and probably not one that would have been up to the same standards of many of the other games released, it would have been a welcome addition.
Potential Late Releases
I mentioned that support for the Vic 20 stopped on a commercial level in 1985, but I do wonder if Mastertronic could have attempted to release two final games in 1987 that would have taken little or no effort to create. While I accept that games being released this late in the machine’s lifetime would have needed to sell a considerable amount to be profitable (5,000+) with these two games in particular I believe this might just have been possible…
First, from the Ricochet label, is Jet Pac. The Vic 20 conversion of this Ultimate classic is absolutely incredible and even several years after its release I don’t see why this couldn’t have sold as many copies as the ZX Spectrum version, if not more. I’ve played all three versions of the game and would have to say that the Vic 20 port is the best of the three and at a £1.99 price point could have been a hit,
Still with the re-releases, in the main range we had Gridrunner from Llamasoft. While this was originally released across a wide range of formats (including the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum), for some unknown reason only the Atari version was picked up by Mastertronic. Of all of them, the two best versions of the game were for the Atari and Vic 20 and with Jeff Minter having such a cult following it would have made sense to consider a re-release of this classic as well.
What Might Have Been…
It’s common knowledge that Mastertronic’s approach to their releases was innovative. By handling distribution themselves they were able to not only offer a healthy profit margin to retailers, but also make a comfortable profit even on games that sold in low quantities. That’s why they were able to support formats like the BBC and MSX for so long.
Looking back, the only question really is how many sales would they have needed to make a good enough profit to release more Vic 20 titles? In the case of the early games from Mr Chip and Galactic Software, it’s quite possible that these could have been included in the license deals that had already been established. And as sales were still at good levels for Vic 20 titles, these would have been surefire hits for Mastertronic.
The Wilderness Years
But with the final options in 1987 that would have been a very different story. Mastertronic would have made history and been the last publisher to support the Vic 20, but would anyone have been interested at that point? They didn’t sell directly to consumers so they would have been dependent on retailers willing to dedicate shelf space to what was effectively dead format. For any stores that did sill sell Vic 20 games, these would have been leftover stocks or second hand games in computer stores that ventured into the pre-owned market.
To make each a commercial success, they would have needed to sell around 7,000+ depending on the license agreements with Llamasoft and Ultimate. Would that have been possible? I truly don’t know but if any games could have made it for the Vic 20 outside of it’s original commerical lifespan it would have been those ones.
However, at the end of the day, we still have some fantastic games and fond memories to look back on from all the releases Mastertronic did bring us for the Vic 20 and for that at least we can be thankful.
Main image by Evan-Amos – Own work, Public Domain, Link
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