I have reviewed five games, three of which were released recently:


As this will be my last update before Christmas, I would like to wish everyone who visits this site a merry Christmas! 🎅

Darkula64


Screenshot of Darkula64
Iván Ávila has released another game – his third one this year for the Amstrad CPC. This one is called Darkula64, and it’s a conversion, or a demake, of a platform game that was released for Windows in 2019. The story goes that a group of monsters set up a theme park named Deviland Park, but they’ve spent so long living underneath the bright lights that they’ve forgotten what darkness looks like. Enter Darkula, who must jump from platform to platform, extinguish all the lightbulbs on each level and avoid contact with the other monsters. You can download Darkula64 from itch.io.

Hyperdrive


Screenshot of Hyperdrive
Hyperdrive has now been released and can be downloaded from usebox.net. As previously mentioned, it is only available as a GX4000 cartridge file or a Dandanator ROM file, so if you want to play it on an emulator, you will need to use an emulator that supports one of these formats. WinAPE supports GX4000 cartridges, Retro Virtual Machine supports the Dandanator, while CPCEC supports both formats.

Tenebra


Screenshot of Tenebra
Haplo has converted his game Tenebra from the Commodore 64 to the Amstrad CPC. Tenebra is a puzzle game consisting of 31 single-screen dungeons. You have to guide your character to the exit, but the dungeons are dark and lit only by braziers and torches, and your character is afraid of the dark and won’t wander into areas that are unlit. The puzzle element comes from picking up torches and using them to light your way around each dungeon, but you can’t take them everywhere! You can download Tenebra from itch.io.

New reviews


Robert Small has reviewed two games:

Robert Small has reviewed Jaws by Screen 7. Unusually, there are two versions of this game, both by the same developer (Intelligent Design), and the second version only seems to have been released on a compilation from Ubi Soft called Top 25. Robert’s review is for the original release.

Hyperdrive


Hyperdrive title screen
Juan José Martínez has tweeted that he will release his latest game, Hyperdrive, this Friday 9th December. Hyperdrive is a vertically scrolling space shoot-’em-up that, in a departure from Juan’s previous releases, will only be available as a GX4000 cartridge file or a Dandanator ROM file, rather than a cassette or disc image. There is more information about Hyperdrive on Juan’s web site.

Sente Mini Golf


Screenshot of Sente Mini Golf
Copper France has released two videos of a new game he is developing called Sente Mini Golf. It’s an unofficial conversion of Bally Sente’s coin-op arcade game of the same name from 1985, and as the name suggests, you play a round of miniature golf, with a wide variety of unusual designs. Your ability to progress depends on how well you play on each hole.

You can watch videos of the normal CPC version and the Plus version on YouTube. There are more screenshots on CPC-POWER, although there’s no indication yet of when it will be released.

I have reviewed the top six games from the recent #CPCRetroDev 2022 contest:

The organisers of the 2022 #CPCRetroDev contest have announced that there were mistakes in the scoring of games, which has adversely affected the results of the top five games.

One of the rules of the competition was that entries would receive points if they included some sort of gesture to the game Lárcenas Legacy, which was the winner of the first #CPCRetroDev contest back in 2013. Two of the top five entries, Dire Dare and Deep, Deeper, Deepest, contained a gesture, but they didn’t receive the 25 points that they were entitled to. If the points had been awarded, Dire Dare would have finished in second place, and Deep, Deeper, Deepest would have finished in fourth place.

Because of this mistake, the organisers have decided to award a tie for second place to Dire Dare and Penguin Attack (the original second-place finisher), and a tie for fourth place to Deep, Deeper, Deepest and Druid & Droid (the original fourth-place finisher). The final placings and prizes for the PRO category are now:


It’s good to see that CNGSoft and Carlos Pérezgrin eventually received the recognition they deserve, and hopefully there won’t be any such mistakes in future contests.

Missile Command


Missile Command title screen
Cyrille Gouret (alias Ayor61) released Missile Command yesterday. As you might expect, it’s a version of the classic coin-op arcade game from Atari. Cyrille has developed it for the GX4000 and Plus machines as a tribute to Atari, Inc., which was founded 50 years ago, in 1972. The action is fast and frantic as you try your best to defend six cities against an onslaught of ballistic missiles raining down from the sky. You can download Missile Command from itch.io.

CPC Game Reviews has been revamped


You may have noticed that CPC Game Reviews has also been revamped slightly. I’ve spent several months on and off rewriting the code for the site and finally bringing it into the 21st century! There is now a search bar at the top of each page to enable you to search for reviews of your favourite games, and you can now view news articles all the way back to the beginning of 2014. If your browser window is wide enough, you should also see a screenshot and a link to a random review from the site on the left of the home page.

However, some features have been removed in the meantime. All of the scans of advertisements have gone, as the prevalence of ad-blocking software on browsers meant that users couldn’t see them! The database of Amtix! ratings has also gone, although in the long term, I hope to bring this back and display them against each individual review. I’ve also removed the page of links to other Amstrad CPC sites, as it was getting too out of date, although again, I may bring it back in the future. At the moment, I want to focus on the site’s main theme – reviews.

Please feel free to e-mail me at nich <AT> durge <DOT> org and let me know what you think.

As the World Cup begins tomorrow, I have reviewed two World Cup-themed management games:

New footage of Vespertino released


Back in 2019, Batman Group uploaded a teaser of their racing game Vespertino to YouTube. It was so impressive that some people (including me) struggled to believe – or indeed, denied – that they were witnessing an Amstrad CPC game, and the footage was fake.

Well, Batman Group has released some more footage of Vespertino being developed and the code being assembled in WinAPE, in response to recent claims that the project is a hoax. The video shows the car selection menu with the 3D rendered rotating cars, and a car driving slowly along the race track. It’s enough to convince me that, yes, Vespertino is real and the original footage wasn’t faked. There’s still no indication of when it will be released, but Batman Group has tweeted that they have a surprise for the CPC community before the end of the year and to “stay tuned”.

The new raw footage can be viewed at files.fm, and Xyphoe has also uploaded a video with his thoughts on the new footage, which you can watch below.

New footage of Vespertino on YouTube, presented by Xyphoe