Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)

I was chatting with pedz before the GR twitchcast last night and I brought up Special Reserve. It was a mainstay of 90s video game magazines, other near the back and sometimes containing games you'd never heard of (as this was before the internet, if it wasn't featured in a magazine, you probably didn't know it existed)

Through special reserve I got:

Megadrive Gunstar Heroes - hadnt heard of this beyond a tiny one paragraph preview, ordered it and about 3 months later it arrived. What a game! It went on to become one of the best swaps in school, nobody had it. I used to get a snes and a load of games offered for weeks just so they could borrow it.

Gameboy worms - this took about a year to.arrive, but it was actually really good.

Anyone else remember them? Panda pops, remember them. Garlic bread. Curly wurleys.

Rola Cola?

Oh I remember them, I think I got Carmageddon 64 as a joining freebie or something.

Worth it to play the game N64 magazine gave 8%. :datass:

I think they had a shop in Stapleford, Notts back in the late nineties. Definitely bought a reasonable amount of stuff from them for a period, probably PC games and parts.

£50 teletext tv upgrade :datass:

Yes!

Bought Super Cars and Super Cars 2 for my Amiga 500, Maniac Mansion and Hired Guns.

They were generally great discounts but took aaaaaaaaaagggggeeeesssss to deliver. Like 2 weeks, which for an 11 year old is 20-30 years.

Yes.

Please wait 28 days for delivery. Man. WTF?! The wait I had to endure for NHLPA '93...

Albear wrote:Yes!

Bought Super Cars and Super Cars 2 for my Amiga 500, Maniac Mansion and Hired Guns.

You bought games for your Amiga? :lol:

I had 'yarr' copies of everything back then. (or 'cracked' versions as they were called)

The state of that Fiat Cinquecento. The 90s were wild.

IT COULD BE YOU WHO'S DRIVING AROUND IN A BRAND NEW FIAT CINQUECENTO

:lol:

I remember Special Reserve, but the adverts I saw were more in the PS/N64 era. I never ordered anything, because I didn't really have any disposable income at the time, and if I did I'd rather just go to a shop and buy a game there. I used to like seeing which games were available though.

Skarjo wrote::lol:

The state of that Fiat Cinquecento. The 90s were wild.

That was £10k? :lol:

Photek wrote:
Albear wrote:Yes!

Bought Super Cars and Super Cars 2 for my Amiga 500, Maniac Mansion and Hired Guns.

You bought games for your Amiga?

I had 'yarr' copies of everything back then. (or 'cracked' versions as they were called)

I could never get my yarrs to work

I actually managed to break 3 of my mate's games attempting to copy them (not sure how I managed that)

Spent about a year avoiding him, terrified he was going to ask for them back

I think I ordered some Zelda OOT figures from them, off an ad in N64 or ONM back in the day!

For further nostalgic recollections, here's a 2005 rllmuk thread from when they went out of business: https://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?/ ... -are-gone/

Lotus wrote:IT COULD BE YOU WHO'S DRIVING AROUND IN A BRAND NEW FIAT CINQUECENTO

I remember Special Reserve, but the adverts I saw were more in the PS/N64 era. I never ordered anything, because I didn't really have any disposable income at the time, and if I did I'd rather just go to a shop and buy a game there. I used to like seeing which games were available though.

Such a random prize.

I only got a few things, and I really had to twist my parent's arms to put a cheque in the post as I'd only get a game or two a year if I was lucky.

Albear wrote:
Photek wrote:
Albear wrote:Yes!

Bought Super Cars and Super Cars 2 for my Amiga 500, Maniac Mansion and Hired Guns.

You bought games for your Amiga?

I had 'yarr' copies of everything back then. (or 'cracked' versions as they were called)

I could never get my yarrs to work

I actually managed to break 3 of my mate's games attempting to copy them (not sure how I managed that)

Spent about a year avoiding him, terrified he was going to ask for them back

He never did

Not only did most 'cracked' games worked but my mate found a way to change out the cracked screen for our own. Cracked games back then used to have a screen after a small bit of loading that advertised who cracked it, usually a logo and a chip tune.

Not only did we change this, I provided the Akira Cover Art which I did with that paint application on the Amiga (it had that golden mummy head as advertising) but I also provided a tune for it too, via Octamed! We redistrubuted a lot under the 'Akira Cracked' moniker in north Dublin back then even though we didn't crack anything. :lol:

There's a very good chance I came across your Cracked Splash screen

strawberry floating mad that games are still basically the same price as they were in the early nineties.

I bought so much from their store in Basildon Essex as it was a bus ride away from home.

I bought a bunch of PS1 games, I think THPS2 was one of them.
A 64MB (I think) graphics card and a RAM stick to play Operation Flashpoint on my then PC

In the early 2000s I would have bought
My PS2 GT3 bundle
GameCube with Smash Bros Melee and Rogue Squadron
The parts to build my first computer tower (it was about £2k with the DVD RW!)

Never bought anything from them as I tended to get games from Makro during the 90's as my mum got something like 20% staff discount.

Later on I started getting most of my games from Gameplay via their Sky digital online shop then a few years later almost everything came from either Gamestation (my brother worked there while at university so I took full advantage of his staff discount), Play (before they went gooseberry fool) and VG+ (mostly region free handheld stuff).

I remember Special Reserve but I never used them. I didn't really buy a lot of games at all until I was buying them with my own money in the Gamecube era and beyond. I usually got games bought for me as a kid from a number of small local indie stores and market stalls.

Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)

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