Many early software publishers relied to a certain extent on submissions from amateur programmers for products, particularly on formats like the Spectrum, which was relatively easy to knock something out on. Firebird, one of the first publishers of budget software, advertised for new talent and were inundated with responses.

Not all were potential number ones, as you might expect. Instead of returning all the not-quites with a standard letter of rejection though, someone in Firebird’s marketing department thought it would be a wizard wheeze to compile a tape of ‘the worst computer games ever written’ and release them, 14 years’ ago this week, for the princely sum of £2.99.

Amazingly, it worked and Don’t Buy This! (yes, they put the exclamation mark in the title) turned out to be one of the publisher’s steadier sellers over the next two years. In reality, Don’t Buy This! didn’t contain the worst five computer games ever written of course, the chosen five merely suffered from a dearth of imagination in their conception - the actual programming was well up to the commercial standards of the day.

A follow-up compilation appeared some time later, which should have been called Don’t Buy This Either! but made do with Don’t Buy This! 2 but we’d all moved on and it didn’t do as well. This quaint little episode serves to remind us how much the world has changed and, like leaving your engine running while you pop in to a shop for a packet of fags, it’s one of those things that no-one would dare do today. At least not intentionally, anyway…