2nd place: The Rookie Thief (CPZenon Games) – €75 prize
Special mentions
Best music (awarded by Gominolas): Operation Alexandra – €135
Most enjoyable game (awarded by Carlos Abril): Operation Alexandra – €135
Best technical development and artificial intelligence (awarded by Pablo Ariza): Jarlac – €135
Best global product (awarded by Jon Cortázar): Operation Alexandra – €135
As you can tell, 4MHz dominated the awards with Operation Alexandra,
receiving €705 in prize money, and it's a deserving winner. You can
download all 41 games
from the #CPCRetroDev website.
As with the previous competitions, I offer my congratulations to all the
winners!
6th November 2018
Entries for the #CPCRetroDev 2018 contest
closed on 31st October, and this year saw 41 games (count them!) submitted
– a new record! Now we all wait in anticipation of what the final results
will be. The results are due to be announced this Friday 9th November at 18:30
CET (17:30 GMT). There is a
playlist
with short clips of all 41 games on YouTube, and some of the more 'professional'
developers, for want of a better term, have their own separate preview videos
that you can watch:
Screenshot of Chibi Akuma(s) (V1.666, Plus version)
Chibi Akuma(s)
Keith Sear released version 1.666 of his bullet hell shoot-'em-up Chibi
Akuma(s) a couple of days ago, in time for Hallowe'en. The game
received a rating of 10 out of 10 on
this site, and further improvements have been made. The game now uses the
improved engine that was used in the sequel, Chibi Akuma(s) Episode 2:
Confrontation!; a 2-player option has been added; there are additional
background graphics, and if you have a Plus machine, the game makes much more
use of its enhanced 4,096-colour palette.
You can download Chibi
Akuma(s) from the official site, and you can also
buy a physical copy from poly.play
for €20 for the 3½″ disc version, or €25 for the 3″
disc version (excluding shipping). I've already bought my copy and the
packaging and artwork are lovely!
Some of you may know of the game The Trap Door by Piranha,
based on the classic animated children's TV series. It turns out that a bug
exists in the Amstrad CPC version of The Trap Door, which makes it
impossible to complete the game – and for 32 years, it seems to have gone
unnoticed.
One of the tasks you have to complete is to prepare 'boiled slimies'. You do
this by putting the slimies in a cauldron, and releasing a green robot-like
monster from the depths of the Trap Door. What is supposed to happen (and which
can be verified by watching walkthroughs on YouTube of the ZX Spectrum and
Commodore 64 versions) is that the robot can be made to breathe fire on the
cauldron and boil the slimies – but on the CPC version, no matter how
many times the robot heats the cauldron, the slimies remain uncooked.
I will not bore you with the technical details, but after a lot of digging
in the code, I have fixed the bug, so after 32 years, The Trap Door can
now finally be completed on the Amstrad CPC! You can
download
the fixed version of The Trap Door from NVG, and there is also a
discussion on the CPCWiki forum
which prompted my decision to create a fixed version.
YouTube user NovaBug has wasted little time in creating a walkthrough of the
Amstrad CPC version, which you can watch below.
I have reviewed Behind Closed Doors Seven. This is one of
two text adventures that have recently been released by
Zenobi Software for the CPC (the other
one being Ramsbottom Smith and the Quest for the Yellow Spheroid).
Zenobi Software is much better known in the ZX Spectrum community for its huge
catalogue of homebrew text adventures, so it's great to finally see a release
for the CPC 32 years after the company's first ZX Spectrum release.
Juan José Martínez has released his new game The Dawn of
Kernel a day earlier than scheduled. You have received a distress call from
the mining base on the planet K3R-NL, and you must explore the base, shooting
and dodging a variety of enemies and their weapons.
You can download
The Dawn of Kernel from usebox.net, and if you want to add a physical
copy of the game to your collection of Amstrad CPC software, you can buy it from
poly.play.
New reviews
For the first time in eight months, I have reviewed some games! Here are my
opinions of three Spanish games:
Just a matter of days after releasing Pink Pills: Manic Moritz and the
Meds, Sebastian Braunert released another platform game for the Amstrad CPC
using Arcade Game Designer. This one is called Mike the Guitar,
and in this game, you control Mike the guitar and you must collect all eight
plectrums and then plug yourself into the loudspeaker to complete the game. It's
rather short – there are only nine screens – but it's certainly not
easy. You can download Mike the Guitar from the
CPCWiki forum.
The Dawn of Kernel
Juan José Martínez's new game The Dawn of Kernel is
due to be released on 21st August 2018, so there's not long to wait now! Juan
has uploaded a teaser video, which you can
watch on
YouTube.
15th July 2018
Screenshot of The World War Simulator: Part II
Screenshot of Pink Pills: Manic Moritz and the Meds
The World War Simulator: Part II
Retrobytes
Productions has just released a new game for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC
called The World War Simulator: Part II. You must infiltrate Adolf
Hitler's bunker and kill him before he commits suicide himself. You have to
explore the labyrinth of rooms, shoot Nazi soldiers, avoid stepping on mines,
and search for keys and ammunition to help you progress in your quest. The style
of gameplay is similar to Into the Eagle's Nest, and you
can download the game from
Retrobytes Productions' site;
scroll down and look for a paragraph entitled 'DESCARGAS' to find the links.
Pink Pills: Manic Moritz and the Meds
Sebastian Braunert has developed a platform game using Jonathan Cauldwell's
Arcade Game Designer called Pink Pills: Manic Moritz and the Meds.
Arcade Game Designer is better known on the ZX Spectrum, but it is
gradually seeing more use within the Amstrad CPC community. You are a dog called
Moritz who has taken a few too many pills, and in your dreams, you are hunting
for bones in a variety of strange worlds. The graphics are very colourful, which
fits the background story of the game rather well, and there is also a
soundtrack of chiptune versions of well known tunes which has been compiled by
Shining. You can download it from
Vintage
is the New Old.
Cover of issue 3 of The Classic Adventurer
The Classic Adventurer
Something that recently caught my eye is
The Classic Adventurer
– a magazine that is dedicated to the golden era of text adventures. I
like to think of it as a version of Retro
Gamer magazine that is devoted to text adventures. The magazine is
produced by Mark James Hardisty, and the amount of effort that he puts in to it
is outstanding. The artwork is particularly impressive, and much of it has been
carefully restored from the original versions. I like the 'Desert Island
Dungeons' pages, where interviewees are given a choice of five games to take
with them to a desert island – and yes, I am fully aware that the concept
was borrowed from Retro Gamer's 'Desert Island Disks'!
So far, three issues of the magazine have been released. PDF versions are
available to download for free,
and you can also buy physical copies, although it'll hit your wallet, as these
are print-on-demand copies, and shipping is quite expensive. Here's a taster of
what's in the first three issues:
Issue 1
In-depth interviews with Mike and Pete Austin of Level 9
Computing and Veronika Megler (one of the authors of The Hobbit)
The making of Doomsday Lost Echoes (which should
be of particular interest to Amstrad CPC fans)
In-depth interviews with Fergus McNeill of Delta 4 and Tim Gilberts of
Gilsoft (who developed The Quill, a program for creating text adventure
games)
Issue 3
Interviews with Brian Howarth of Adventure International UK, Anita
Sinclair of Magnetic Scrolls and Vicky Carne of Mosaic Software
A gallery of artwork by Terry Greer (who contributed graphics to
Interceptor Micros' range of adventures)
#CPCRetroDev 2018
The 2018 edition of the
#CPCRetroDev Game Creation Contest has been
announced,
and there are prizes worth a total of €1,500 to be won, including €300
for the best game. The deadline for submitting entries is 31st October 2018,
and this year's contest offers bonus points for tributes to Topo Soft's 1988
game Chicago's 30.
Last year's contest saw some pretty impressive games such as
Baba's Palace,
Cris. Odd Prelude,
Bitume and
Laser Boy. Let's hope that this year will also see lots
of great new CPC games being released.
7th June 2018
Athanor: The Legend of the Birdmen (click to enlarge)
Athanor: The Legend of the Birdmen
Éric Safar announced the release of an English edition of Athanor:
The Legend of the Birdmen last weekend. This is the second release in what
Éric has intended to be a trilogy of adventures. The first game,
Athanor, was a text adventure with rudimentary black and white graphics,
which was a deliberate choice on the author's part, as the trilogy is intended
to show the evolution of adventure games over the years.
The second part of the trilogy is also a text adventure, but with improved
graphics that are loaded from disc, like Sram or many
of Lankhor's adventures such as La Secte Noire. The
photo on the right shows you what the packaging looks like. Those of you who are
familiar with the 'feelies' that were included with Infocom's range of text
adventures will notice that Athanor: The Legend of the Birdmen also
includes several objects which act as clues to help you solve the game.
To order a copy, visit Safar Games and
follow the instructions there to e-mail Éric.
Hibernated 1: This Place is Death
Stefan Vogt's text adventure Hibernated 1: This Place is Death has
also been released and can be downloaded from
Pond Software.
12th May 2018
Screenshot of Galactic Tomb
Screenshot of The Shadows of Sergoth
Screenshot of Ghosts'n Goblins (cartridge version)
Title screen of The Dawn of Kernel
Title screen of Sir Ababol: NES-OM Edition
Galactic Tomb
ESP Soft released Galactic
Tomb at the RetroMadrid 2018 event last weekend. This
platformer/shoot-'em-up was first previewed in a
YouTube video back in
2016, and after watching it, we all knew it was looking like quite a spectacular
game – and ESP Soft haven't disappointed.
You play an élite commander, and you must travel to the three worlds
of Pherenos, Robota and Microbia, to find the three tombs of Siemb and retrieve
artefacts from them that will enable the evil emperor Shakar to extend his life
– and his reign of terror – further.
Galactic Tomb is a brilliantly presented game with very colourful
graphics and excellent music. You can
download the game
from ESP Soft's site (scroll down to 'Descargas' and click on 'Galactic Tomb
[128K] (dsk)'). Currently the game requires at least 128KB of memory, but a
cassette version which is compatible with 64KB machines is planned. Don't miss
it!
The Shadows of Sergoth
Galactic Tomb wasn't the only game to be released last weekend.
CPC-POWER released a role-playing game called The Shadows of Sergoth. If
you've ever played Dungeon Master on the Atari ST or Amiga, or
Bloodwych on the CPC, The Shadows of Sergoth
should look very familiar to you. All is not well in the kingdom of Chrisandia,
and you have managed to locate the source of the evil that is threatening the
kingdom. You must explore the dungeons of the castle of Sergoth and battle with
many nefarious creatures and discover lots of secrets.
To download The Shadows of Sergoth, visit
CPC-POWER, where you can download a ZIP
file containing the game and instructions in either English, French or Spanish.
This game requires 128KB of memory, and it's also brilliantly presented and
offers many hours of exploration and combat.
Ghosts'n Goblins
Xifos has developed and released a version of Capcom's classic coin-op game
Ghosts'n Goblins for the GX4000 console and Plus machines. I think it's
fair to say that Elite's original conversion of the game could have been better,
although the music was quite good. This remake obviously has a lot more colour
and is more faithful to the original arcade game, with the addition of animated
sequences, power-ups, and the loss of your armour if you hit an enemy, causing
you to run about in just your underwear!
You can download the remake of Ghosts'n Goblins from the
CPCWiki forums, but as it's intended for the GX4000 and Plus
machines and not the normal CPC range, you'll need a suitable emulator such as
WinAPE in order to play it.
The Dawn of Kernel
Juan J. Martínez has been posting on the
CPCWiki forums
and his Twitter feed about a
Cybernoid-influenced space shoot-'em-up he is developing, called The
Dawn of Kernel. Sources suggest it should be out by the end of May, and
poly.play will be releasing a physical
edition. You can watch a short video of how the game is looking on
Juan's twitter feed.
I have to say that I think the choice of colours on the title screen is very
garish and not to my liking, but that is only my opinion – but the in-game
graphics look a lot better!
Sir Ababol: NES-OM Edition
The Mojon Twins have tweeted
that a special edition of Sir Ababol on the Amstrad CPC is planned.
Another tweet
shows an in-game screen in MODE 0 (the
original version of the game was in MODE
1), and there may even be a physical release of the game on cassette, containing
the special edition and the sequel, Sir Ababol II: The Ice Palace, along
with ZX Spectrum versions of the first and second games. If it is released, I
hope they will fix Sir Ababol II, which is unfortunately severely bugged
on the CPC.
Hibernated 1: This Place is Death
Stefan Vogt has developed a text adventure called Hibernated 1: This Place
is Death for the Amstrad CPC. It's already available for the Commodore 64
and ZX Spectrum from Pond Software
as free downloads, and the CPC version should be available soon, according to a
tweet from
Stefan. It's written using Professional Adventure Writer (PAW), so
it's text only and runs on CP/M.
ZEUSDAZ's YouTube channel added
I've added links to videos on
ZEUSDAZ's YouTube channel on
my site. Zeus' channel features videos of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit games, nearly
all of which use unemulated footage – in other words, the games are all
played on the original machines and not an emulator.
