 | Poster Paster was a Commodore 64 game by Taskset from 1984. You play Bill Stickers as he tries to paste poster advertisement to billboards under more and more difficult conditions. The game was a notoriously pixel perfect one. Essentially it was one long advert for other Taskset games and other computer companies. It even included one scene where you had to paste a poster for the Apple Macintosh. Taskset had previously scored a big hit with their 1983 game Super Pipeline. The main reason I remember Poster Paster is that the company market tested the game in a local independent computer store near to my house as a kid. Taskset were based in a seaside town only a short drive from my home city. I got to test play Poster Paster and finding it mind-numbingly dull and somewhat off put by the game being a a vehicle for Taskset to sell advertising space, I do recall telling them I thought the game was "crap!" Although I did also end up owning a copy of the game. |
| At the same time as Poster Paster came out Taskset also released Seaside Special. Seaside Special was a controversial little game, because it involved the main character Radium Rodney visiting 10 Downing Street and throwing radioactive seaweed at top UK politicians! The reason the game had a seaside theme, was that every year the main political parties have conferences at seaside resorts. The game developers wanted to send an political and environment message, and even wanted some of the profits to go to Green Peace. Making political statements through computer games was an unusual thing at the time, and appeared unpopular with gamers. That and the repetitive and ultimately boring game-play of Seaside Special. Taskset were an innovative and interesting part of computer gaming history, that has been lost to time. Their games did push the boundaries of what could be done with the C64 graphically and with sound. However their political ambitions may have been their undoing. |  |
