It had to happen - I did warn Al that one day I would unleash this little Oric lot of beauties on to your retinas so don;t blame me if your eyes hurt afterwards....LOL! Actually, quite a few are duplicates in that they are the same title only released with different inlays or versions (ie. Oric-1 vs Atmos). Here we go, first up, me French titles or me little frenchies as I call em: ABOVE & BELOW - Baz's Frenchies (plus UK IJK & Tansoft clamshell titles) - approx 80 in that little lot. Next up, some of my more interesting and collectable / bigger boxed titles - all UK: About 26 there so running total now approx 106 tapes. And now on to the cased collection: ABOVE: top left box (40 tapes) has smaller relatively unknown s'ware houses; top middle are similar obscure Oric tape types (32) whereas top right (again 32 tapes) are mainly PSS (Personal Software Services) tapes and they had quite a decent catalogue - see here: PSS tapes also feature bottom right as do the famous Durell Software house and their big one for the Oric was of course Harrier Attack (32 tapes). Then bottom left are Tansoft titles - the Oric inhouse software producer (36 in that case). So, what we got here then in the cases: 40+32+32+32+36 = 172 tapes + our running total of 106 = 278 tapes. ABOVE: Three more boxfuls, Oricians: rarer ones far left, middle box more Tansoft titles and some Oric mag listings and data tapes (I won't count those) and far right the big box Tansoft Gruneberg language series and also some Severn Software titles - another software house which produced a fair few tapes for Oric users to play and collect. I count (approx) another: 40 + 16 + 22 = 78. Add that to the running total and we have 356 tapes. A closer look at the box far left shows some nice rarities: Eg. There's Manic Miner bottom right - the Oric version is meant to be arguably the best of all released by Software Projects. There's the one and only release from Artic - Asteroids (I covered this Hull s'ware house on Atari Sector a few years back); there's also the only 2 release from Virgin Games - Them and Killer Caverns. There's the only release ever to come from Bug Byte - The Castle (an adventure game rumoured to be so bugged you cannot complete it!) and finally there's Bridlington s/ware house Taskset's only release for the Oric too - Dig Dog (which still annoys me to this day as I bought it for my Atmos and guess what... it only runs on the Oric1!). ABOVE: These are all unashamed back up copies - not a single original amongst em - even the Operation Gremlin tape is a (photo)copy! Still, some rare birds here and there. I won't count these though. Another 12 in this little Sony box, guys, incl the uber rare Football Manager. Hand on heart, I've got about 20 or so more which are kicking about in various drawers and on the shelves in the man cave, so let's add that final 32 to the running total to make a grand total (approx) of: 388 Oric tapes. It's approx lads, and I would say that maybe 80-90 are duplicates but with subtle or clear differences in their inlays/artwork/ ROM versions so about 300 different games/utils etc. Not a bad collection? OK, I've showed you mine - where's your big haul, big boy?!
Good lord, I've seen less tat in the Poundland Congrats Andy, nice collection there, do you know how many games were actually released for it?
Holy moly, what a brilliant collection Andy. You could open an Oric software warehouse with all that! I'll post a picture of my Playsation 2 games later, not nearly as impressive though.
PMSL! I lurve Paul's observation about there being less tat in Poundland - that's just about what Bev means when she says... "DUST! It's all going in a skip and you are too." She despairs at these boxes of tapes and manuals and books and disks and cables and.... well, you fellas know the rest! I;m not sure anyone has ever been able to put a definitive figure on the number of verified commercial tape releases for the Oric but I'm pretty sure I;ve got about 75% of them so I would guestimate at around 500, Paul. Somewhere in that region. Yer Speccys and C64s must have 3-4 thousand titles apiece and they'll be 1000-2000 titles for the Atari 8bit, I would guess? Great, Al - bring on your PS collection, mate and I'm sure it will bring about gasps of appreciation from the console gamers on here (I won't have a clue what 90% of them are!)
I'll know what most of the PS2 stuff is bar the obscure Japanese only ones.. Although I had a PS2 I favoured the Xbox so sold my PS2. I returned to a PS2 later in life after a deal with Shaun, I wanted to play some of the Sony only titles like Devil May Cry, Sly Cooper , especially Rtype Final and many others. As always, going where the good games are.. Not bad going there Andy, 75%+ of roughly all the games..
Mainly driving, sports and retro compilations in my collection. My favourite genres and the PS2 is well covered with them.
Marvellous, Al. Much much neater than my collection which is too tatty and too much to display without packing everything else away so I just can't win! Some smart titles there I'm sure of that. What are the special picks from your collection - and why?
My favourites are probably the Burnout, Ridge Racer and Outrun games. Also really like the variuos arcade and console compilations I have for the Playstation2 (Namco, Taito, Williams, Intellivision, Atari, etc). Most of the the titles have been picked up from branches of CEX and usually for under £3 each. I've got all the titles I want now so can't see me adding to it unless something really takes my fancy. You can see my smallish PSP collection near the bottom as well, mainly made up of racing games funnily enough Currently have 3 titles on my CEX wishlist for the portable but the closest shop is Aberdeen! The PSP is my favourite portable console just for the sheer variety of quality arcade racers available on it.
I have a couple of UMD films if you want to have them Allen, I think it’s Team America World Police & Master & Commander.
Thanks for the kind offer Richie, but I've never bothered with the movies on the PSP. Think the last one I came across ended up in a charity shop bundle!
I have quite a few Racing games for my N64 & PS2, Ridge Racer 64 is one of my favourite games. I like Rally games mostly, so Colin McRae, WRC, Dakar. I also like Forza Motorsport and the Metropolis Street Racer/Project Gotham Racing series on the XBox consoles.
I use to take my PSP on holiday with me and watch my collection of films on the plane. It was a nice console and had some decent games. I upgraded to a PS Vita later but never really liked it.
Here is my Nintendo man cave. I cover N64 all the way to the Switch The Switch is where the 360 is in the picture. I love the GameCube and my Wii is a first gen which has the GameCube ports and backwards compatibility.
Never could get on with the N64, Nintendo ruined it for me by showing supposed stuff in development looking all fancy and good and yet when they finally arrived the draw distances were horrendous, it wasn't the case of some pop up, the whole thing was constant pop up. Games like WRC racing, the dev version appearing in mags was really good but it turns out they were advanced PC renders which they just forgot to mention. Sony did the same thing with a game called The Bouncer, all early footage shown was yet again, high quality PC rendering and when the game came out most of it was missing. It took Super Mario 64 to show that it COULD do 3D but games of that quality were few and far between, Blast Dozer was fun, Pilot Wings 2 was also good but most games suffered the same awful fogging. It was a shame as I was a big am a big Nintendo fan, I loved my Snes, my Wii, my 3DS and of course the Switch but I never owned an N64 or a Nes, but the nes was because I could not afford one and carts back then. It was either the N64 or the Sony Bouncer thing that made the industry have to tell the public if it wasn't actual in game screens or video on the adverts. They got so many complaints.. Pretty sure it was the Bouncer that finally pissed off the public enough to complain and get that rule brought in.
I have a SNES Mini as well in a drawer that I can fish out for all my classic games from that time. I remember seeing Mode 7 graphics in Pilotwings and Castlevania and being very impressed.
Oddly, I was playing Table Tennis on my Wii last night and my Switch is right next to me and powering up. When I first saw the Snes it was Mario that was the game I saw. I remember seeing it for 2 seconds and arrogantly saying "my Amiga could do that". How wrong I was. When I played Mario I knew I had to have this machine, and then I saw Pilot Wings and was amazed. I simply love the Snes, Super Metriod blew me away and the Star wars games were great fun but when the guy from Argonaut dropped in to our shop and gave us a peek at Starfox I nearly crapped my pants. I knew someone who worked for Argonaut, he used to be an electronics guy in a shop in Carnaby Street making better video mods for the Snes. We became good mates and the next thing I know he's working at Argonaut in their ARM division. I'd said to him about the shop I worked in and thought nothing of it. A month or so later in walks a guy with a Starfox tee shirt on and as the game was getting so much media buzz I recognised the guy as one of the team, Apparently he lived just down the way, almost across the road from a guy called Steve Snake who was a Sega dev and wrote the port of NBA Jam for it, I made some furniture for him and that's when I saw the dev kit and found out who he was. Needless to say, when the Japanese version of Starfox was released me and my mate Kev paid 80 quid or there abouts for the import version from one of our suppliers, I still play / own it (but brought a US one instead and sold the Jap one) to this day. Was so nice to see Starfox 2 released on the Snes Mini. Sadly no real release so had to play the dump that was done from the mini. But my most fave game on the Snes, Zelda, to this day it's still as wonderful as the day I saw it, I like it more than the remake on the Switch which I don't say lightly as it's also superb. So yeah, the Snes still rules, so many really stand out titles, Conrta, Axelay, Actraiser, the list goes on..
Again, another uber cool story from back in the day, Paul. Hell, you've had a lifetime of rich video game experiences in terms of meeting the folks behind a lot of the major releases and stories. Rich, I don't get your images for some reason... odd as I get the other guys, ie. Al's in this thread? PS. I'm running Google Chrome - perhaps I should try Microsoft Edge?
Thanks, and as I always say, all 100% true.. I think the Starfox blokes name was Gavin and my mate who worked in the arm division was called Aris (he was Turkish or Greek), really nice guy, knew his stuff. he's the one I said that my Amiga could do that to re Super Mario. The odd thing about me knowing all these people in the industry is that I never actually ended up doing what I wanted to do which was games design / Producer. The plan was to go and work for Domark as I'd got my mate John in to there and he was head of a design team, but I would have had a big wage drop (Maplin paid their managers very well back then) but the biggest put off was that working for a softie house is not for a married man as when a product hits gold status and it's gearing up for a release then 15hr days are not uncommon and sometimes the norm. I think it would have been pretty hard on us. Never mind, I have some great memories, and we all have met our heroes at times, me, just a bit more than most
I'm using Chrome here and can see all the images Richie posted. Are you using the Oric or PC version of the browswer Andy?
LOL... Chrome via Windoze 7, Al. I'll try Edge and see what happens then. This old ex-Brenski laptop is now seriously showing its age and maybe I should let it now rust in pieces (RIP) as I have been using it (every day for over 6-8 hours over 5 years) and it wasn't new when I got it off him. Probably overdue a retirement.
Sounds like it might make a good little emulator machine Andy, that's usually what I do with old machines.
Hehe - Windoze 7 on a very tired old laptop, mate. Doesn't show Rich's image via Edge either. Never mind. I'll hobble on with the old beast until Oric bring out their own multimedia system, fella. (still on the "drawing board" at the mo... Classic "Oric" engineering! ;-) )
