| By now I hope some of you have had a ratch through your old collections and had a look to see if you’ve got any odd tapes. The trouble often is with your own colection, that you have only one version of a tape - so how do you know which version you have ? It is a bit more obvious with the tapes that were changed for the Atmos. They have things printed on there to help you. Some cassettes had a change in design, but no reference to any change. Check www.oric.org and see what you can find. | |
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Here then is the original Xenon-1
cassette. (I now have the correct information thanks to
author John S. Sinclair). Just about everyone has this, but you may not have an original version like this. The giveaway is the address The original has the earlier address of 9 King Street. Later versions use the Unit3c,Moorfields address. This is possibly the most successful Oric title ever and was the 'must have' game for Oric owners. Apparently some 120,000 were sold. |
| Here then, on your right, is a later
release of Xenon-1. IJK moved to new premises and they purchased (more expensive) self adhesive labels which didn't need a special machine to apply them. Eventually they did buy a machine and went back to the white labels so the silver ones are probably the rarest. I have silver label versions of Reverse, Frigate Commander, Probe 3,Fantasy Quest and Invaders whilst my copy of Candy Floss has a black and white label. |
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| Some IJK always had a colour label. As far as I’m aware Cribbage always has a green label and 3D Maze & Breakout was yellow and black. I thought it always hadthose colours but I've recently found an orange and black version and there is the original white label with the King Street address. | |
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Make sure you check the back of your IJK titles ! On
the left are two versions of 3DMaze & Breakout.
The right-hand blurry image is the earlier 9 King
Street one. You'll also notice a big dot next to the
loading instructions. These are also high,ighted with
horizontal lines above and below - all of which was later
dropped. You can also make out instructions to check your Oric-1 manual which was altered later to just Oric. |
| And make sure you check the fronts too ! here are two
versions of IJK Invaders. Look at the top where
'... and ORIC ATMOS' has been added. There are similar
changes on the spine. At some point IJK got granted Oric Approval. They then started putting an 'Oric Approved' badge in the corner of inlays. Early versions have the old Oric logo as used on the Oric-1, and it has a blue stripe. Later versions like the one shown have the new Atmos era Oric logo. If you check www.oric.org you'll find that they have Xenon 1 with the IJK logo in a different position as well - so there must be many variations out there for you to collect ! |
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This is a rare one I have. It is a pre-production
sample of Zorgon's Revenge. Supplied in a
ordinary single cassette box, (i.e. not the larger cases
normally used by IJK) and produced by Duplidata. John S. Sinclair tells me that IJK ploughed their money in to Duplidata, a software copying firm that made duplicates for other software companies and which eventually also copied disks. Apparently only about 10 of these were made, to be sent to software reviewers. A
footnote about IJK: - |
