In the 80’s the Walkman was king. We all had one (or a cheap knock off, usually made by Akai or Alba) and many of us would spend every Sunday night attempting to record the top 40, pausing and un-pausing the tape recorder (that we had unplugged from our Spectrum computer set-up) whenever Bruno Brookes started his inane between-song gabble. The hard work was worth it though if you wanted to be the first in your class to know all the words to the latest Tears for Fears single.

As the majority of computer software at the time was also distributed on tape, it was inevitable that games publishers would look to capitalise on the medium, so it was not uncommon to see games include a music track on its b-side or sometimes on a tape of its own.

Mostly these would be title themes from movie licenses, such as Smokey Robinson’s Tracks of my Tears that was given away in Ocean’s excellent interpretation of Platoon. But actual bands were looking to get in on this computer lark too and acts like Frankie Goes to Hollywood saw themselves immortalised in 8bit glory with their extravagant and often baffling titular game. Frankie went one step further than most, by not only packing in an exclusive live version of their number one smash Relax, but also including a number of their hits in-game chiptune style.

On the face of it these ’freebies’ were a wonderful incentive to purchase the games, but in reality they weren’t really that special. Shoving a track that was past its sell by date in terms of the chart-ability was a pretty lazy (and some might say cynical) way of luring in the punters. What was far more impressive were those software houses that took the fusion of music and games beyond regurgitation of back catalogues, creating original tunes and concepts that in some cases, if they had been marketed right could have challenged the charts of the time.