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

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Victor Mildew
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PostSpecial Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Victor Mildew » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:04 pm

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)

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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.

Hexx wrote:Ad7 is older and balder than I thought.
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Hypes
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Hypes » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:23 pm

Rola Cola?

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Skarjo
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Skarjo » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:27 pm

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:

Karl wrote:Can't believe I got baited into expressing a political stance on hentai

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Rex Kramer
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Rex Kramer » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:28 pm

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.

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Victor Mildew
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Victor Mildew » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:29 pm

£50 teletext tv upgrade :datass:

Hexx wrote:Ad7 is older and balder than I thought.
Albert
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Albert » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:50 pm

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.

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Saint of Killers
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Saint of Killers » Thu Aug 13, 2020 1:53 pm

Yes.

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

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Photek
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Photek » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:06 pm

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)

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Skarjo
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Skarjo » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:11 pm

:lol:

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

Karl wrote:Can't believe I got baited into expressing a political stance on hentai

Skarjo's Scary Stories...
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Lotus
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Lotus » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:13 pm

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

:lol: :dread:

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.

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Photek
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Photek » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:14 pm

Skarjo wrote::lol:

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


That was £10k? :lol:

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Albert
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Albert » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:15 pm

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? :lol:

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

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aayl1
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by aayl1 » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:17 pm

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/

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Victor Mildew
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Victor Mildew » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:18 pm

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

:lol: :dread:

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.

Hexx wrote:Ad7 is older and balder than I thought.
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Photek
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Photek » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:20 pm

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? :lol:

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: :toot:

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Albert
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Albert » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:25 pm

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

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Skarjo
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Skarjo » Thu Aug 13, 2020 2:26 pm

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

Karl wrote:Can't believe I got baited into expressing a political stance on hentai

Skarjo's Scary Stories...
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BID0
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by BID0 » Thu Aug 13, 2020 3:33 pm

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!)

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Ironhide
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Ironhide » Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:15 pm

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).

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Cumberdanes
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PostRe: Special Reserve - did you ever order from them (90s game mail order)
by Cumberdanes » Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:34 pm

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.

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