Recently we celebrated a couple of milestones for the Mastertronic Collectors Archive website, publishing not only our 200th game review, but also our 64th review for the Commodore 64. And we’re celebrating once more as our site turns two years old today!
It’s been an incredibly journey since we launched the site, something that came about originally from a conversation with Anthony Guter, Mastertronic’s former Financial Director. He was faced with the prospect of having to close down his own website that was dedicated to the history of Mastertronic which not only featured a detailed look at the company from an insider’s perspective but also featured an extensive archive of press cuttings. He approached us to ask if we could take over running of the site, but after talking to him at length not only did we decide to preserve all of his work, but expand on it to what you see here – Anthony’s original site, vastly expanded upon with reviews, articles, checklists and much more.
Checklists
While many of our lists are still in a Work In Progress stage right now, over the last two years we’ve added 21 separate checklists separated by format and range including the incredibly obscure Mastervision VHS range. For this we have the most comprehensive list of these videos anywhere and this list is used by collectors worldwide as the definitive resource for these hard-to-find tapes.
We are expanding these lists every week and eventually it will be a complete list of all their releases.
Mastertronic And Beyond
As a company, Mastertronic has an extensive history and we wanted the site to reflect that. Since they took over Melbourne House and eventually merged with Virgin Games, we took the decision to cover both of those publishers as well here on the site so you’ll see these integrated into our reviews and checklists. In addition, we’re covering international releases such as the Spanish re-releases through publisher DroSoft.
And looking beyond the original company, we’re also covering the re-launched Mastertronic Group and all their PC and console releases. In addition, as they purchased the Sold Out brand, these too will be featured. So there’s a lot for us to feature in the years to come!
Reviews
To-date we’ve published a staggering 217 reviews spanning 14 different formats. As well as the main Mastertronic range, we’ve covered the likes of Ricochet, MAD, US exclusives and even console titles from the Blast! range released by the Mastertronic Group. Hopefully there’s been something of interest for all of you but you can find easy direct links to all of them in our complete Review Index.
More importantly, every review is fully interactive. You, our readers, can add your own scores and comments to every single one of them so this site is just as much yours as it is ours!
ZX Spectrum Milestone
And speaking of game reviews, today celebrates another milestone as we are proud to bring you our 48th review for the ZX Spectrum in the shape of Manic Miner. Considered to be one of the best games ever released for the system, it received a much welcome re-release by Mastertronic back in April 1989.
We’ve run a lot of coverage for Sir Clive Sinclair’s 8-bit wonder over the last two years and if you want to see all of the other reviews and features, please feel free to check out the rest of our ZX Spectrum content.
What’s Next?
Going into our third year, we have some exciting plans ahead. We’ll be starting to run interviews which we have been promising for a while which we are excited about. In addition to this, we want to bring you more content over on our YouTube channel including game reviews, more quizzes and other ideas that we’re working on.
Beyond that, we’ll be adding more checklists, expanding the ones we currently have on the site and aiming to bring you even more reviews than ever before, hopefully along with some new faces joining our writing team so we can add even more content every week.
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Thank you for visiting our site and reading this article. The Mastertronic Collectors Archive is run on a voluntary basis, we do have site costs we need to cover. If you are able to help with these, please visit our page on ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/mastertroniccollectorsarchive – every penny you can spare helps and will allow us to invest in the site and our YouTube channel. The page also has exclusive behind-the-scenes material, so even if you’re not able to donate please give us a follow to enjoy extra free content!
Simon, you and the team have done a wonderful job. I am satisfied that my legacy is in very safe hands. More power to your elbows!
Thanks so much for the kind words Anthony. I can’t thank you enough for trusting us to preserve your site and continue the great work that you did for so long.