Flagship Games

Kikstart is the game that more than any other defines Mastertronic's golden period. Released in 1985 for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC, it placed the player on a motorcycle navigating a series of obstacle courses — logs, gaps, ramps, and barrels — with pure trial-and-error satisfaction driving the gameplay loop.

The mechanics were deceptively simple. Accelerate, brake, and wheelie. The courses escalated in difficulty with the precision of a well-designed puzzle — each obstacle learnable through repetition, each failure immediate and legible. The game understood its own pace completely.

What made Kikstart legendary on the C64 was Rob Hubbard's SID chip soundtrack. Hubbard's composition for Kikstart became one of the most iconic pieces of 8-bit music — a driving, melodically complex piece that used the SID chip's hardware capabilities to create something that sounded, to young ears in 1985, genuinely extraordinary. The music was discussed in Zzap!64 reviews, passed around on copied tapes, and is still reproduced on SID player apps and tribute compilations today.

Kikstart 2 arrived in 1987, adding a track editor and two-player simultaneous mode — considerable features for a budget title. The Hubbard soundtrack returned, expanded. The sequel confirmed the original's status as Mastertronic's most beloved franchise.

Action Biker starred Clumsy Colin — a licensed character from a British confectionery brand — and placed him on a motorcycle in a large open-world environment. For a £1.99 game, the scale was remarkable: a scrolling world with different environments, collectables, and locations to discover. The open map approach was genuinely ahead of typical budget game design.

The character licence was unusual for a budget publisher. Mastertronic typically avoided expensive licences — they were budget, after all — but the Clumsy Colin tie-in proved an exception. The resulting game was one of their best-reviewed original titles, praised for its scope and the quality of the C64 implementation in particular.

Action Biker represented Mastertronic's ability to commission games that exceeded the typical expectations for a budget release. Not every Mastertronic title was a polished gem — the economics of the model meant some were underdeveloped — but Action Biker demonstrated what the label could produce when conditions aligned.

Mastertronic's publication of Tetris in 1987 represents the most historically significant moment in the company's existence. Alexey Pajitnov had created Tetris in 1984 at the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow. By 1987, the game's licensing rights were being brokered through a complex chain involving the Soviet state software export agency Electronorgtechnica (Elorg) and British software consultant Robert Stein.

Mastertronic, through their M.A.D. label, secured the first legitimate UK licence for the game — beating the larger publishers who would later fight over the rights. The M.A.D. label Tetris edition for C64 and Spectrum was, therefore, the first legally licensed Tetris in British homes.

The Tetris licensing saga would become one of the most complex and consequential in gaming history. The rights battles — eventually won by Nintendo for the Game Boy — are well documented. But Mastertronic's moment in 1987, bringing Tetris to British cassette players at the M.A.D. label's premium price point, was a genuine milestone that demonstrated budget publishers could compete for significant licensed titles.

The C64 implementation in particular was well received — clean, faithful to the original's addictive design, and packaged in the M.A.D. label's slightly more premium presentation. The Tetris name alone was sufficient marketing; Mastertronic's achievement was securing the right to use it.