As the crusade against music piracy has gotten more intense, music manufacturers have attempted to lure consumers into buying CDs by including addtional multimedia content on CD albums. I think it’s actually a nice idea when done properly; the gratuitous addition of a crappy video is not what I’m looking for here. I was surprised to find out that this has been done before, though, on vinyl LPs and 45s, no less!
An article on kempa.com entitled Vinyl Data reveals several examples of vinyl with embedded games, of all things, as separate tracks or B sides. Now keep in mind that this is back in the early ‘80s, when personal computers like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum read data over cassettes (I remember those days…), so in many cases the LP or 45 was just recorded onto a cassette which was then read into a computer. I think that it’s so cool that someone thought of this back then. Take a look at the article for more details and even some downloadable games that survived the ravages of time…
