CPC GAME REVIEWS

5th September 2008
Kevin Thacker's latest game, Sudoku, has now been finished and will hopefully be available from Cronosoft in the near future. In the meantime, you can download the final demo version from Kevin's website.

25th August 2008
Cronosoft has released two games for the CPC - Balloonacy and Star Sabre. Many of you will probably be familiar with Star Sabre, as it has been freely available for a while. Both games are now available on cassette for £2.99 each (not including postage), and Balloonacy is available for use on an emulator for only £1.75. Don't forget that Cronosoft's six previous releases for the Amstrad CPC - The Smirking Horror, Yarkon Blues, Yarkon Blues II, Help Inc., Stranded and Iron Sphere - are still available!

As a result of these new releases, I have also reviewed both Balloonacy and Star Sabre.

17th August 2008
Retro Gamer magazine has reviewed yet another new Amstrad CPC game in their latest issue. Richard Wilson's Deathchase achieved a score of 82%.

I have reviewed ten games, and as the 2008 Olympics are taking place in Beijing at the time of writing, two of the reviews are of Olympic-themed games:

Deathchase

Mariano the Dragon in Capers in Cityland

Sudoku

28th July 2008
It's been more than six months since the last update, and as usual, a lot has happened since January. Two games have been released, and there's news of another one that is currently being developed and will hopefully be released soon.

First of all is Richard Wilson's conversion of the ZX Spectrum classic Deathchase to the CPC. Deathchase was originally released in 1983 and sees you riding a motorbike through a forest, hunting down enemy bikers, helicopters and banks. It sounds bizarre, but it's a brilliant game and very fast indeed as you weave through the increasingly dense forest, chasing your targets while trying to avoid crashing into the trees! Years after its release, Your Sinclair rated it at number 1 on their top 100 Spectrum games of all time. Download it and find out why for yourself!

Next is Mariano the Dragon in Capers in Cityland from CEZ Games Studio. Five of Mariano's friends have been captured and jailed by Pachin Poi Poi, and in order to release him, he must perform five tasks which can only be carried out by finding the correct objects. This is a very colourful and fun platform game with a large playing area to explore - and Retro Gamer magazine seems to agree, with Jason Kelk awarding it a respectable rating of 78% in issue 53 of the magazine. Well done! You can download the game from CEZ Games Studio's website.

Meanwhile, Kevin Thacker has been working on his new game, Sudoku, for a while now, and it is nearing completion. It contains lots of Sudoku puzzles and also has the ability to solve Sudoku puzzles - so if you can't get anywhere with a puzzle you've found in a newspaper, Sudoku should solve it for you. It will be released by Cronosoft, but in the meantime, you can visit Kevin's website and download a demo version. The website also lists the other games he has created, including Balloonacy - which is still awaiting a full release. Hopefully it won't be long!

Retro Gamer has been covering the Amstrad CPC quite a lot in the last few months, which is great news for us CPC fans. As well as reviewing Mariano the Dragon in Capers in Cityland, they also reviewed Magical Drop CPC in issue 48, which scored 62%, and Star Sabre in issue 51, which scored a very well deserved 88%!

Finally, Neil Reive and Ali Halabi have produced a 136-page tribute to Amstrad Action magazine which you can download or buy from lulu.com. The layout is very faithful to the original, and among other things, you'll find a round-up of the main CPC websites and emulators, a look back at AA's history, interviews with former staff members and a few of the current big names in the CPC scene (including myself), reviews of nearly every game that has been written for the CPC in the last decade (no sign of zblast SD, though!) as well as a selection of CPC games released in the 1980s and early 1990s, and a cheats section. It's not to be missed; if you haven't downloaded it already, do so now!

After all that news, I have also reviewed six games, all with a Formula 1 theme:

I have also checked my links page and removed all the links that no longer work. I've also added a new link to CPCGAMES, which is a database of nearly every CPC game ever released. Each entry has screenshots and downloads in tape, disc and/or cartridge formats, and where applicable, there are also scans of covers, advertisements and maps, manuals, and music which can be played through your browser. It is a really comprehensive site, and I have contributed quite a lot to it recently (and that's one of the main reasons why CPC Game Reviews hasn't been updated for so long).

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