Screenshot of Blinky's Scary School
Zisquier (aka Amstariga) has released Blinky’s Scary School. I’ve played it and it plays very well and looks very nice, but from what I’ve seen so far, the puzzles and the layout of the castle have changed, so if you’ve played any of the original versions of the game, it probably won’t help you much! You can download Blinky’s Scary School using this link to Google Drive.
Goody, el Regreso
Iván Ávila has released Goody, el Regreso. Spanish readers may be familiar with Opera Soft’s 1987 release Goody, and this is an unofficial sequel. Following his previous bank-robbing capers, Goody made some poor financial investments and has had to don his mask once more and break info safes to recoup his losses. As with Iván’s previous games such as Llum, Goody, el Regreso has been programmed using the 8 Bits de Poder (8BP) RSX library, and you can download his latest game from itch.io.
Paco, el Hombre
Goody, el Regreso isn’t the only new release to be programmed using 8BP. Jose Javier García Aranda, the author of 8BP, has released Paco, el Hombre – a clone of Pac-Man that is designed to demonstrate that games developed using 8BP don’t have to be sluggish. There is only one level, and there are no power pills to collect, but the game can be played at four different speeds ranging from 15fps (frames per second) to 33fps. You can download Paco, el Hombre from the 8BP GitHub page; look in the ‘dsk’ and ‘tape’ folders for the disc and cassette images for use with emulators.
Screenshot of Chuckie Egg 4
Jean-Marie Barone has released another modified version of Chuckie Egg, which is unsurprisingly entitled Chuckie Egg 4. This latest modification features eight more new screens taken from the 2009 BBC Micro and Acorn Electron release Chuckie Egg 2009 by Dave Edwards, and it also includes a new title screen courtesy of Kukulcan from CPC-POWER. You can download Chuckie Egg 4 from NVG.
Blinky’s Scary School
Thanks to XeNoMoRPH on the CPCWiki forum for posting details of a preview version of a game called Blinky’s Scary School that is being developed for the GX4000 and Plus machines. This arcade adventure platformer was originally released by Zeppelin Games in 1990 for several 8-bit machines, as well as the Amiga and Atari ST, but unfortunately the Amstrad CPC missed out. I used to own it for the ZX Spectrum and I remember playing it a lot – until the Spectrum developed a terminal fault a few months later and I was left with only my CPC.
Amstariga has been working for several months developing Blinky’s Scary School, and he has suggested it will be coming very soon. It’s looking quite impressive, although the palette resembles that of the Commodore 64 in places. You can watch his latest preview video below, and he has posted a few more videos of the game on his YouTube channel.
Preview of Blinky's Scary School on YouTube
Last Friday, Xyphoe presented the second Amstream Amstrad Video Game Awards Show, known colloquially as the Sugars. There are no real life prizes, but it’s a fun way to recognise the hard work that has been put in by individuals and teams to develop new games for the Amstrad CPC over the last twelve months. Fifteen games were nominated, and the results are as follows:
Screenshot of Chuckie Egg 3
Jean-Marie Barone has released a modified version of the A’n’F Software classic Chuckie Egg called Chuckie Egg 3. Back in 1984, Bit Twiddlers released their own modified version of Chuckie Egg for the BBC Micro with the title Chukee, apparently with the approval of A’n’F Software. It contained eight new screens, and Jean-Marie has inserted those screens into the CPC version of Chuckie Egg. You can download Chuckie Egg 3 from NVG.
