Classic Replay has uploaded a video to YouTube showcasing 40 of the best ‘modern’ Amstrad CPC games to be released for the machine in the last 15 years or so. If you’re not familiar with the CPC, or you haven’t played CPC games for many years and want to rediscover what this excellent machine has to offer, you can watch the video below or on YouTube and see if you agree or disagree with his rankings.
Amstrad CPC Top 40 New Games on YouTube
Chaos Rising Part 2
Screenshot of Chaos Rising Part 2
EgoTrip has released a new game called Chaos Rising Part 2. It’s intended to be a continuation of the first Chaos Rising game and not a sequel. Amy has awoken on an island that has been overrun by machines, and its inhabitants want her to destroy the five Chaos Chips that control the machines. You can download Chaos Rising Part 2 from the CPCWiki forum.
Happy New Year everyone! 2020 was a terrible year with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but it was a great year for CPC releases, which helped me to pass the time stuck at home and get through it all – and I also wrote over 50 reviews of CPC games during 2020, which is the most I have done for many years. Thanks must also go to the other contributors – Robert Small, Shaun Neary, neepheid and Missas – who also provided reviews during 2020.
Atic Atac
Screenshot of Atic Atac
John Ward released Atic Atac just before the end of 2020. It’s an unofficial conversion of Ultimate Play the Game’s classic ZX Spectrum game from 1983. You are locked inside a castle and must explore it to find the key to open the door that will let you escape. You can choose one of three characters – a wizard, a knight or a serf – and each of which has their own set of secret passages that only they can use. It plays just like the Spectrum version, but the graphics are much more colourful and beautiful thanks to the work of Steven Day.
Merry Christmas to all CPC fans! There are two more new CPC releases to announce, although one of them is a preview and not a full release.
Wonder Boy Remake
Screenshot of Wonder Boy Remake
Benjamin Yoris has been working all year on a remake of the Activision game Wonder Boy. It’s fair to say that the original CPC version of the game is mediocre at best, and it was rated only 4 out of 10 on this site. The remake features much better and more colourful graphics, better music and smooth scrolling. Benjamin has released a playable preview version of the first stage, which you can download from the CPCWiki forum.
Ninja Carnage
Screenshot of Ninja Carnage
A group called Resistance has released a new game called Ninja Carnage. You are a ninja and your aim is to kill a female rival called Nure-onna who is hiding in a temple. It plays similarly to a point-and-click adventure, but instead of exploring and trying to solve puzzles, you move in a linear manner throughout the game and you have to use a process of trial and error to work out which areas of each panel you need to click in the correct sequence. If you make a mistake, you have to restart the current panel. The graphics are beautiful and the music is excellent, and it’s a style of game that hasn’t been seen on the CPC before, to the best of my knowledge.
An early version of Ninja Carnage finished in second place in a contest that was organised earlier this year, and you can now download it from Resistance’s site. It has been translated into six languages – English, French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish – but be aware that it contains very strong language throughout and is certainly not suitable for people who are easily offended.
The coin-op game Slap Fight was converted to the Amstrad CPC and other 8-bit machines in 1987, but Spanish CPC user Abalore thought that, as with Bubble Bobble and R-Type, it could be done better on the CPC. Now, after four years of work, it has been released just in time for Christmas! You can see how fantastic it plays and looks in the YouTube video below:
Video of Alcon 2020 on YouTube Alcon 2020 can be downloaded from Abalore’s site. One thing to bear in mind is that if you want to play it on an emulator, you will need an emulator that emulates either the GX4000 console or the X-MEM memory expansion device. WinAPE and CPCEC are two emulators that emulate the GX4000 console, and Retro Virtual Machine can emulate the X-MEM device. I advise you to download the cartridge version (the CPR file), as it’s much easier to use than the X-MEM version, which has to be installed on the X-MEM first, which can take a while.
Personally, I’m against the idea of developing Amstrad CPC games that require additional hardware expansion devices, as it goes against the spirit of the CPC’s “golden era” of the 1980s and early 1990s when games had to run on an unexpanded machine – but that’s just my opinion, and Alcon 2020 is a marvellous game.
New reviews
Shaun Neary is back, and as he’s a big fan of Slap Fight, he wasted little time in writing a review of Alcon 2020.
Robert Small has reviewed Chuck Yeager’s Advanced Flight Trainer. Chuck Yeager was a famous American test pilot who passed away at the age of 97 a few days ago.
Please note that Buccaneers is currently only available for downloading as a one-level playable demo. The full version is only available by purchasing a physical copy from Matranet, and if you like fancy, shiny packaging, then it is worth purchasing! If you want to see the game in action, Xyphoe played (and completed) Buccaneers on one of his live streams on YouTube, which you can watch here.
Screenshot of SonicGX
In November 2019, it was announced that Sonic the Hedgehog was being converted to the GX4000 console and Plus machines, under the name of SonicGX. It was expected that it would be released by the end of 2020, but the programmer, NoRecess, has posted a news update to say that it won’t be ready until at least 2022. So far, levels 1 and 2 have been completed, and NoRecess has been busy improving and optimising the graphics and adding new music, courtesy of Targhan, but nine screenshots have also been posted, and it’s looking rather nice indeed.
