As you might guess from the spelling of colour in the title, I’m from the UK. And in the UK in the eighties only the rich kids had microcomputers with disk drives.
The rest of us made-do with cassette tapes.
And if you collected computer cassette tapes then there is no way you wouldn’t have had a title from Mastertronic in your library.
One of the cool things about Mastertronic, apart from the cheapo games, was that they colour-coded all of the platforms so you knew which games would run on your ZX Spectrum (the yellow ones) or which ones would run on the Commodore 16 (the pink ones).
The other day, I needed to know all the colours they did for all the platforms but could only remember a handful, so did some research.
So in the rare situation that someone needs a list of the colours then here’s what they were:
And what happened to Mastertronic? Well they essentially turned into Sega Europe — but that’s another story for another time.
Big thanks to @SimonPlumbe, @CrazyCollector1 and @TheyWereOurGods on Twitter for their help
— Simon added that some were dual colour-coded such as an orange / yellow one for a dual Amstrad/Spectrum cassette, and that standalone Electron games were also Purple.
The rest of us made-do with cassette tapes.
And if you collected computer cassette tapes then there is no way you wouldn’t have had a title from Mastertronic in your library.
One of the cool things about Mastertronic, apart from the cheapo games, was that they colour-coded all of the platforms so you knew which games would run on your ZX Spectrum (the yellow ones) or which ones would run on the Commodore 16 (the pink ones).
The other day, I needed to know all the colours they did for all the platforms but could only remember a handful, so did some research.
So in the rare situation that someone needs a list of the colours then here’s what they were:
| Platform | Colour |
|---|---|
| ZX Spectrum | Yellow |
| Commodore 64 / 128 | Red |
| Amstrad CPC | Orange |
| BBC Micro / Electron | Purple |
| VIC 20 | Cyan |
| Commodore 16 / Plus 4 | Pink |
| Atari 8-bit | Blue |
| MSX | White |
| Dragon 32 | Green |
And what happened to Mastertronic? Well they essentially turned into Sega Europe — but that’s another story for another time.
Big thanks to @SimonPlumbe, @CrazyCollector1 and @TheyWereOurGods on Twitter for their help
— Simon added that some were dual colour-coded such as an orange / yellow one for a dual Amstrad/Spectrum cassette, and that standalone Electron games were also Purple.
