At this point, I would like to plug Yellow Belly’s YouTube channel. Yellow Belly has been streaming most Sunday evenings starting from 19:30 or 20:00 BST, and in each stream, he plays a few relatively little known Amstrad CPC games beginning with a particular letter of the alphabet, hoping to find one or more “hidden gems”. Last Sunday, he played Oriental Games and I admitted I had never played it before, so he suggested that I review it – so that’s what I’ve done! If you’re into Amstrad CPC gaming then I suggest you join him on Sunday evenings and watch his streams.
Retrobytes Productions released Space Moves towards the end of last week, and you can now download the game from the NVG archive. It is a great game, although the first part (which is very similar to Army Moves) is very difficult. Hopefully a review of the game will be uploaded this weekend. If you find the game too difficult, I’ve written a type-in listing that you can use to make the game a bit easier (well, a lot easier, actually).
Deva Drifter
Screenshot of Deva DrifterAlbertoven has released a new game called Deva Drifter. It’s a top-down racing game, similar to Super Sprint and The Oliver Twins’ Grand Prix Simulator games. There are no opponents, though; you’re racing on your own against the clock. Unlike other such games, the author has concentrated on simulating realistic physics, and you can drift the car around corners.
Deva Drifter is the third part of the Hidden History Saga; the first part, Vector Vaults, was highly acclaimed (and was rated 9 out of 10 on this site), and Deva Drifter is also great fun to play, although the track and scenery graphics are very basic. You can download a free version from Albertoven’s site that contains five tracks, and a deluxe digital version with additional tracks is available for €3.90 – but if you want a physical copy of the game, it will cost an eye-watering €69! I don’t see many CPC fans buying copies at that price, however good the game may be.
Yet another new game has been released for the Amstrad CPC, and this one – called The Sword of Ianna – is particularly special. Why is that? Well, it’s a cartridge game, yet it’s designed to run on normal CPC machines and not the GX4000 console or Plus machines! It runs on a device called the Dandanator, which effectively acts like a 512KB EPROM cartridge.
I mentioned The Sword of Ianna back in January. Retroworks originally released the game for the ZX Spectrum and MSX2 in 2017, and they’ve done a great job converting it to the CPC. One of the reasons why it’s only available on cartridge is that it’s a very large game indeed; it will probably take around three hours to complete it from start to finish! There’s also a huge amount of animation, similar to Prince of Persia.
You can download The Sword of Ianna from RetroWorks’ site. It really is an amazing game and all CPC fans should try it out! Because the game runs on the Dandanator, you can only play The Sword of Ianna on a CPC that has this device, or on an emulator that supports the device, such as Retro Virtual Machine.
RetroWorks has released a trailer video on YouTube that you can watch below, and Xyphoe played the game on a live stream last Friday, which you can also watch on YouTube.
Trailer for The Sword of Ianna on YouTube
I have reviewed two games, both of which were released very recently:
ESP Soft has released their latest game Red Sunset. They made a preview available back in Christmas 2018, and it looked amazing. The final version consists of three levels of vertically scrolling action in which you control one of two types of fighter – the Slider or the Viper. The graphics, music and scrolling are all amazing, and the game has been developed by the same team behind Galactic Tomb – another stunning example of what the Amstrad CPC can achieve in the right hands.
Space Moves box and cassette from Matranet
The new, expanded version of Space Moves is now available to order from Matranet on cassette at a cost of €21.45, excluding shipping. The cassette comes in a jewel case inside a cardboard box, and it also includes an instruction manual and a CD containing the soundtrack. There are no plans to release it on disc, although a DSK file for use on emulators should become available to download once all the physical copies have been sold, as far as I know.
John Ward is trying to write Ultimate Play the Game’s ZX Spectrum classic Atic Atac for the Amstrad CPC, and Steven Day has contributed some beautiful Mode 0 graphics. John has posted a video on YouTube to demonstrate how gorgeous the game looks and plays so far, and you can also follow its progress on the CPCWiki forum.
