Soft Aid

Soft Aid was a Charity Computer Game Software edition, released by Quicksilva in late 1985 to support the Famine Relief in Ethiopia. The software was released on tape for the ZX Spectrum computer and the Commodore 64.

Promotional advert

On one side of the tape, as well as games, the charity single, Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid was also available if the tape was played (at this point) on an audio tape recorder.

The tape was unusual in that it was released to help support a charity (possibly unique in computer gaming at the time). To help bring home this point, the cover featured an artwork by British artist David Rowe,[1] showing a desert landscape, a bright blue sky (upon which the Soft Aid title was written in yellow scrawl, and a sub-title of Feed the world written in red), a tree (backed by distant mountains) and a person of indeterminate gender, clearly representing the starving people of Ethiopia, sitting on the desert, with their head on one hand. It also listed the games found on the tape for both games systems.

The tape sold in the United Kingdom for £4.99

Games included

Sinclair ZX Spectrum

The following Sinclair ZX Spectrum games were available on the tape:

  • Spellbound
  • Starbike
  • Kokotoni Wilf
  • The Pyramid (video game)
  • Horace Goes Skiing
  • Gilligan's Gold
  • Ant Attack
  • 3d Tank Duel
  • Jack and the Beanstalk
  • Sorcery

Commodore 64

The following Commodore 64 games were available:

gollark: The lesson is... start with small-scale planetary destruction then scale up?
gollark: Turns out destroying planets *may* lag the server possibly to death, sorry!
gollark: Guessable *especially* if you have loads of data points, like thermostat logs.
gollark: I mean, they might set it to work automatically.
gollark: Heating costs money and all.

References
  1. CRASH magazine: The Online Edition - Features - ON THE COVER - DAVID ROWE, cover artist talks about how he got started illustrating computer games (Issue No. 15 APRIL 1985)
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