Space Walk by M.A.D.?

Hello,

I don´t believe a M.A.D. disc version of Space Walk exists.

[www.generation-msx.nl]

Here´s my arguments:

- M.A.D. was a low budget label from Mastertronic. I don´t believe they would release a DISC game
- M.A.D. have NOT released any game on disc besides this
- M.A.D. have never released a game released previously by Mastertronic

I suggest removing the entry untill further confirmation.

Love to hear your thoughts.

Looking around, I suspect this was added because in the tosec set, there is an entry called "Space Walk (1987) Mastertronic Added Dimension".
However, I don't see a reference to MAD, or 1987 when I run it. Perhaps I would need to look into the binaries themselves...

What is different about it though, is that it has a Virgin Games loading screen, which is not found on the tape versions, so I'm not quite ready to call it a home conversion from tape to disk. It may have been part of some disk compilation perhaps?
Although we don't have any such compilation listed, or in fact any disk releases, from Mastertronic, MAD or Virgin Games...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2019 06:29PM by rderooy.

Note that MAD == Mastertronic's Added Dimension... but was this label ever put on the software's title/credit screens? Wasn't it only used on the sleeves and only "Mastertronic" appeared on the screens? (I haven't checked.)

Did you check if the loading screen of that disk version is perhaps just from a tape version and converted to disk as well?
OK, I just checked it myself... It seems to be a generic loading screen. Perhaps it was taken from some other (tape) game? (Search on LGVIRGIN.SCR for disk games....)

I tend to agree that a disk release of this game is highly unlikely. My guess is that it is a bootleg/crack conversion from tape to disk.

I own the original tape and it does not come with a loading screen. The whole game is less than 8kB.

Just my 2cts...

Grtjs, Manuel

PS: MSX FOR EVER! (Questions? [faq.msxnet.org] )
PPS: Visit my homepage at [manuel.msxnet.org]

I´m trying really hard to remember any other UK-made game released on disc. Not a single one comes to mind.

Even the biggest companies like Gremlin or Grandslam or Mastertronic only released tape games (and very very VERY occasional cart games).

I´m not even sure if there were UK-made MSX disc drives around... MSX crashed really soon and really bad over there.

I mean, I´ve got a few dutch games on disc, and even some french ones (TNT from Infogrames). And I know some spanish games got a disc release. But from UK? Can´t remember a single one.

I'm pretty sure the majority of European disk releases were done by Aackosoft/Eaglesoft/Eurosoft/etc or others mainly targeting mainly the Dutch market. Even though the Spanish market was clearly larger, almost all of their releases were on tape. Italian releases were also almost exclusively on tape.

Not saying that disk releases were not made in other countries, there are obviously some disk releases from Infogrames, which was French, and also Philips released some unique titles for the German market on disk (typically made by Data Beutner).

Generally my recollection was that if you wanted MSX2 software back in the day in the Netherlands, you needed a disk drive. Most commercial software was released on 1DD disk to maximize the amount of machines it could run on, unlike the Japanese market which quickly switched to 2DD.

I think part of the reason for this is also, that the MSX2 was more popular in the Netherlands, while most other countries stuck with the MSX1.