Mastertronic Style: Part 1, The Mastertronic Image - Covers, Adverts and Tronix

The Mastertronic Image – Covers, Adverts and Tronix

Covers

The development of Mastertronic cover artwork, and some further details about the commercial changes as we expanded into the USA, embarked on the Arcadia project and were finally taken over by Virgin Games, are set out over the following pages (links to be added shortly):

Early years – 1984-6
New labels – MAD, Bulldog, Entertainment USA
Middle years – 1986-88
Labels for republished software – Ricochet, Americana, Rack-It/Rebound
The makeover – 1987-91
Mastertronic USA
Virgin Mastertronic

The logos

Much thought went into the look of Mastertronic – the yellow on black lettering, the “M” shape used both flat and at an angle, the complex artwork commissioned for many of the early covers – even the decorations of our main offices in Paul Street, London EC2 – were planned to give a consistent “cool” image. At one time we envisaged Mastersound as a record label, Mastervision as a video publisher and perhaps other variants. But the takeover by Virgin produced a major change as we tried to create a new look blending in with the old Virgin Games designs.

Tronix Club and Mistertronic

The Tronix Club was intended to build support for the brand and provide a mailing list of customers.

The Club was launched in July 1985 but the only advertisement for it appears to be one in Home Computing Weekly.

Click here to see this ad full size (and a nice reader’s letter praising the club).

Members got a free game and the promise of a regular magazine and other goodies.The Tronix Magazine was short-lived. I think we only managed two editions before we abandoned the Club. There was no-one in the Company with the time (or the interest) to keep it going, and probably there were not enough members to make it commercially worthwhile.

Issue 1 spared no expense – 16 pages with four full colour pages advertising recent releases. However much of the content was taken from The Falcon Lord series of books published by Sphere and it seems likely that Sphere put up much of the cost of production.

Here are scans of the whole of the second, and final, issue, published in August 1986. The chief interest is that it uses the character of Mistertronic, also featured on four early games, Type-Rope, Hotch-Potch, Walk the Plank and Make Music. All four pages of Issue 2 of the magazine are reproduced below (apologies for the poor quality).