Today CPC Game Reviews has reached a milestone, with 2,000 Amstrad CPC games reviewed! It took almost five years to reach 1,000 reviews, and as I got older, left university and real life increasingly got in the way (as I’m sure it has for the large majority of readers), I felt I would never reach 2,000 reviews – but I’ve done it at last!
A big thanks to everyone who has contributed reviews to this site over the many years it’s been online (21 and counting). Without your help, the site would still be languishing at around 1,400 reviews.
I hope all of you Amstrad CPC fans out there are still enjoying browsing all the reviews and playing lots of great (and perhaps not so great) CPC games during these challenging times, and please remember to stay safe.
So what’s in the latest batch of reviews to be added? I have reviewed four games:
The site is now very close to reviewing 2,000 Amstrad CPC games. I’m really not in a rush to reach this target – I’ve been running CPC Game Reviews since 1998, so it’s taken over twenty years to get here – but it would be nice to hit the big 2,000 fairly soon!
CPCGamesCD front cover
A new version of CPCGamesCD has been released. CPCGamesCD is an ISO file (an image of a CD-ROM) that contains all of the games on the NVG FTP archive, as well as over 200 Amstrad PCW games, for those who prefer to play their games on a larger, monochrome screen. The archive includes the CPC Loader software, which allows you to browse the full list of games, order them by name, publisher or year of release (to give a few examples), view loading screens and in-game screens, and of course play them on a range of emulators. It’s very convenient, and you have a huge range of games available to play with a few mouse clicks!
The latest version contains all the games that were on the NVG archive as of the 21st of March 2020, so it includes recent releases such as The Curse of Rabenstein, Cheril of the Bosque en Otro Bosque and Sir Ababol NES-OM Edition. You don’t need a CD or DVD drive on your computer to use CPCGamesCD; Windows 8 and Windows 10 both have the ability to mount ISO files without installing any additional software.
At my suggestion, Novabug has recorded and uploaded a YouTube video of Ere Informatique’s game Contamination, which was released in the UK by PSS. Given what is currently happening with the COVID-19 pandemic, it seemed an appropriate game to draw to people’s attention. The game sees you fighting deadly pandemics that threaten the Earth’s population and trying to develop antidotes to combat the spread of viruses.
YouTube video: 5-10 minutes of gameplay - Contamination
Cheril en el Bosque en Otro Bosque
Screenshot of Cheril en el Bosque en Otro BosqueThe Mojon Twins released another new game called Cheril of the Bosque en Otro Bosque, which is a sequel to their 2010 game Cheril of the Bosque that was rated 9 out of 10 on this site. After escaping from the Badajoz jungle, she now finds herself in another forest, and in order to escape from this forest, she has to collect objects and find several characters from The Mojon Twins’ other games and speak to them in the correct order, which is determined randomly in each game. You can download Cheril of the Bosque en Otro Bosque from The Mojon Twins’ site, although be aware that at the time of writing, the loading screen is missing from the disc version and the game will only load if you type RUN”QUICK”.
The Curse of Rabenstein
Screenshot of The Curse of Rabenstein
While most of Europe (and indeed, the world) goes into lockdown over the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, Stefan Vogt has decided to release his text adventure The Curse of Rabenstein now, so you can dedicate some time to playing and trying to solve it while you’re stuck in your house! The year is 1862, and you are travelling through the Black Forest on your way to Strasbourg when the coachman becomes lost and he tells you to go to a nearby village while he watches his horses – but when you return to the coach, he has disappeared, leaving behind only a crucifix and a bloodstained scrap of cloth...
The game contains some astonishingly beautiful pictures to accompany each location, which have been drawn by Dylan Barry (aka Railslave). You can download The Curse of Rabenstein and offer a donation as well. If you haven’t already done so, please also consider ordering a boxed collector’s edition through poly.play. The cost is €29.00, excluding shipping costs.
Sir Ababol NES-OM Edition
Screenshot of Sir Ababol NES-OM EditionThe Mojon Twins have released a new version of their 2010 platform game Sir Ababol. This remake is entitled Sir Ababol NES-OM Edition and it was actually completed in 2018. It features Mode 0 graphics, new music and different gameplay mechanics (you can now jump on enemies to kill them, which you couldn’t do in the original game, and instead of energy, you have lives). The aim of the game is to collect all 24 of the red ababol flowers that are scattered throughout the land. You can download Sir Ababol NES-OM Edition from The Mojon Twins’ site.
Space Moves
Two tweets have been posted by Toni Ramírez of Retrobytes Productions and Pedro Aznar of a new version of Space Moves – an arcade game that you may recall won the 2015 #CPCRetroDev Game Creation Contest. That version consisted of two parts, but Retrobytes Productions intended to release another version with more parts, and the aforementioned tweets show how the graphics have been improved and at least one new part has been introduced, which looks like it has been inspired by Dinamic’s Freddy Hardest.
Retrobytes’ original plan was to premiere the new version at Amstrad Eterno in Barcelona later in March, but that event has now been cancelled due to the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic in Spain. The latest news is that physical copies will be on sale from Matranet at some point in the future.
Screenshots of Space Moves
For the first time in over a year, I have reviewed some old games – four of them:
I have also replaced my review of Epimetheus with one for the slightly enhanced version, Epimetheus+, that was released a couple of months after the 2019 #CPCRetroDev Game Creation Contest.
