From the forum issue 96

[jdanddiet]

One word: Chaos. Hours and Hours of my life, and then Rebelstar 2 too!

A note of caution however on these claims of "free" - certainly during the 8bit era the mags tended to subtly raise the price.

[Mayhem]

The Zzap Sampler from issue 26 - Last Ninja was my very first wow moment when I saw the first screen render.

(which may have been one of the first tapes on the cover I believe?)

It was the first cover tape Zzap!64 did. Also featured a concept demo by Sensible Software for a game that never came out, and also the remix of the Sanxion music by Rob Hubbard as audio on the reverse...

[Rory Milne]

Given the time of year, I'll have to go for Sonic Team's Christmas Nights, which was generously given away with one December issue of Sega Saturn Magazine.

[DreamcastRIP]

Wasn't disc 1 of Panzer Dragoon Saga given away with a Saturn mag' once? I never owned a Saturn back then as I was a late adopter but I think I recall reading this happened...

[thevulture]

Disc wise:PC Zone i think, gave away Hidden+Dangerous for free.Nice.

[rapidly-greying]

Your Sinclair gave away the theme music to the arcade version of Afterburner, awesome tune! Batty and Xmas Monty get very honourable mentions too.

[rapidly-greying]

Official Playstation Mag gave away a disc of Net Yaroze games once. It featured a decent Sensi Soccer clone that achieved legendary status in my eyes due to having some tremendous comedy names. Jimmy Floyd Hooslebonk springs to mind,genius.

[Matt_B]

I can remember a game called unSensible Soccer, given away with the Easter 1993 edition of ST Action, that let you play a game of apples versus oranges. These replaced the normal footballer graphics. There were also banana skins strewn about the pitch and you'd fall over if you slipped on one.

[Gabe]

Right towards the end of the Amiga's life there was a disc-based magazine that ran for probably only a couple of issues (it was terrible), but it did have one of the best football games on it I'd ever played at the time. No idea what the game or 'mag' were called though.

[Gabe]

I am very tempted to say Batty as that was brilliant and another one that comes close is A Whole New Ball Game that cam free on a Crash tape but the one I actually spent the most time with was a really good footy manager game that came free with ST Action. It was called The Manager (great original title there) and me and my best mate spent hours upon hours playing it.

That was an great little game - I remember that you'd see Santa at Christmas in the animation window.

[yethboth]

I would have to say Shuriken on the ZX Spectrum was my favourite covertape game which was an Exolon clone and a very good one. It was made by a Speccy fan for Speccy fans and was given away free on the Dec 1990 issue of Crash Magazine as one of the Covertape games.

[Hitman_HalStep]

um...from the forum issue 96? time warp? deja vous?
i'ts going to be a ps1 demo disc but i'll check through them later to see which triggers the best memories.

[crusto]

CVG had the soundtracks to Outrun and 720 on their cover. Iirc it was a crimbo issue. Fantastic.

[IronMaidenRule]

I am going to go for the demo disk that was on an Issue of Official Playstation Magazine. It has an exclusive demo if ISS'98 that me and my mate played to death until the game came out, one half of France vs Brazil.....heavenly!!

[joefish]

I remember an ST Format coverdisk once included a brilliant shareware shoot 'em up called Cybernetix, a slick cross between Asteroids and Defender with great sampled sound effects and either rendered or digitised asteroids.