USB 50 is BASICally a Spiritual Succcessor to Cassette 50

Cascade’s Cassette 50 with varying degrees of fondness, and now, some 43 years later, USB 50 is looking to revive the concept.

Originally released in 983 for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Atari 8-bit. Apple II, Dragon 32, Vic-20, Oric-1, and Oric Atmos, Cassette 50 was notable because it offered a whopping FIFTY games on a single cassette tape!

The catch? All of the games had been written in the BASIC programming language, so the games themselves were rather basic, to put it politely!

The compilation was sold via mail order, from advertisements in the computer magazines of the day, and it even came with a free digital calculator watch!

And now, some 43 years after the half-century of games on Cassette 50 disgraced home computers across the UK, the ZX Spectrum homebrew developer Animated Alex is reviving the concept for the ZX Spectrum once more, with the suitably updated title of “USB 50”.

Animated Alex is currently seeking contributions for USB 50, via the project’s itch.io page, so if you’re proficient in Speccy BASIC why not submit your own masterpiece to the project? While the bulk of your submission must be written in BASIC, in the spirit of Cassette 50, you are allowed to use some machine code also.

Or if you’re just interested in playing the games once USB 50 is released, you can just follow the project’s progress!

Despite its name, USB 50 will actually be a free digital download only, via itch.io, so if you would like the games on an actual physical USB stick, you’ll have to provide your own, and transfer the games across yourself!