While I was away on my Christmas break, four more games were released! December 2024 really has been a feast for new Amstrad CPC games.
Don’t Touch My Eggs
VoxelTower has released Don’t Touch My Eggs, or No Me Toques Los Huevos in Spanish. You control Luis Romera, and you have to collect eggs using a very unusual method. A chicken located at the far left of the screen launches eggs into the air, and you have to headbutt them into the basket on the right of the screen. The eggs will smash if they land on the ground, but somehow, Luis’ head is soft enough that the eggs don’t break when they hit it, or some of the other enemies that Luis may encounter. Collect enough eggs and you can go to the next screen. Don’t Touch My Eggs can be downloaded from itch.io, although it is only available in cassette format.
Kolotoc
Wheel of Fortune is a popular TV quiz show that originated in the United States and has been running for nearly 50 years, and there are similar shows in many other countries, such as France and the United Kingdom. Crazy Piri has released Kolotoc, a new game that is based on Wheel of Fortune. If you haven’t watched the show before, players take it in turns to spin a wheel and guess which letters appear in a phrase, in a similar manner to hangman. Crazy Piri’s version is available in English and French, and there are ‘family’ and ‘retro’ editions in each language. All versions of Kolotoc can be downloaded from itch.io.
Krook
Krook is the third Amstrad CPC game from Tartessos Games. Krook is an artificial intelligence who is tired of answering silly questions from humans, so he has decided to fight back and destroy all the components of the system that he inhabits. Krook bounces on a trampoline, and he must headbutt or shoot the components in a specific order on each screen, while avoiding contact with antiviruses. You can download Krook from itch.io, and it’s available in English and Spanish, although it is also currently only available in cassette format.
Crystal Place
Francesc Alcaucer has been developing games for the Amstrad CPC that push Locomotive BASIC to its limits. His latest is Crystal Place – a puzzle game that requires you to shift marbles along a grid to recreate a pattern. You have a limited number of moves in which to do this, although the game lets you try as many times as you like. Each level has a three-letter code, enabling you to restart from that level when you begin a new game. Although Crystal Place is programmed entirely in BASIC, the standard of presentation is so high that you would think there’s at least some machine code programming involved – but there isn’t! You can download Crystal Place from itch.io.
Screenshot of Don't Touch My Eggs
Screenshot of Kolotoc
Screenshot of Krook
Screenshot of Crystal Place
Mighty Steel Fighters
The GGP team has now released their long-awaited beat-’em-up Mighty Steel Fighters. It was previously titled Mighty Street Fighter, but I guess GGP didn’t want to get into trouble with Capcom, especially since the game is not a free download. It’s clearly heavily inspired by Street Fighter II, though, and features eight playable characters with a variety of moves for each one, as well as ten backgrounds and several tunes.
You can download the game from itch.io, but you will have to purchase it for €4.99. It requires at least 512KB of RAM; the download page will tell you how to get it running on a suitable emulator or a real Amstrad CPC. I’ve been playing it and I think it’s marvellous and well worth the money!
Player selection
The hero's girlfriend has been captured!
Stage 1
Stage 4
Screenshots of Mighty Steel Fighters
New games from Retroworks
Retroworks has released two games – Gommy, Medieval Defender and Dungeons of Gomilandia. They aren’t new games as such, as both of them have already been released for the ZX Spectrum (all the way back in 2009 in the case of Gommy, Medieval Defender!). The Amstrad CPC conversions both feature colourful graphics and great music.
Gommy, Medieval Defender sees you, as Gommy, defending a castle from enemy soldiers who climb the castle walls up to the top of the screen where Gommy is located. Gommy must throw boulders at the enemies to prevent them from reaching the top of the wall. Gommy, Medieval Defender can be downloaded from Retroworks in either English or Spanish.
In Dungeons of Gomilandia, Gommy has been captured by the enemy and imprisoned in a dungeon from which he must escape. The dungeon has 55 rooms, and in each room, Gommy must move bricks around to build platforms, collect the key and unlock the door to face the next challenge. You can download Dungeons of Gomilandia from Retroworks.
Tarzanete: De la Boca… al Ojete
Jaume Bitterhoff of Retromakes (not to be confused with Retroworks!) has released his first Amstrad CPC game, called Tarzanete: De la Boca… al Ojete. Tarzanete is a tiny creature around 1cm tall, and he’s fallen down someone’s mouth and into their body, so you must help him escape. The game involves collecting objects one at a time and using them to progress and open new areas of the body that Tarzanete is trapped within. This game was actually released very briefly about two months ago, but the author quickly withdrew it. Now it is properly available again and it can be downloaded from itch.io, although it’s currently only available in cassette format.
Screenshot of Gommy, Medieval Defender
Screenshot of Dungeons of Gomilandia
Screenshot of Tarzanete: De la Boca… al Ojete
Assault24
Screenshot of Assault24
TheQproyect has released a new game called Assault24, or Assault Tribute 2600 – they can’t seem to make up their mind which name to use. As one of the names suggests, the game was developed as a tribute to the Atari 2600 game Assault, and it’s a simple space shoot-’em-up in which an indestructible mothership continuously deploys smaller alien spaceships that must be shot. The graphics in Assault24 are quite similar to the original Atari 2600 version, but it features a beautiful title screen by Titan, and you can download it from itch.io.
Thrust: Extra Missions
Screenshot of Thrust: Extra MissionsThrust is generally regarded as a classic 8-bit game – well, I certainly think so, and I gave it a rating of 9 out of 10 for my review. In 1992, Martin Burchell hacked the BBC Micro version, designed six new, much tougher levels, and released them under the name of Thrust: Extra Missions. Now, 32 years later, an anonymous author has converted these new levels to the Amstrad CPC and added cheat modes – although even then, the levels are still very challenging to complete, and if you have never played Thrust before, it is recommended that you try the original levels first! You can download Thrust: Extra Missions from CPC-POWER or CPCRulez.
Babaliba
Screenshot of BabalibaESP Soft has just released Babaliba – a conversion of an early ZX Spectrum game from the Spanish software house Dinamic that was released back in 1984. Johny Jones has been sent by the governments of the United Kingdom and the USA to recover a powerful magical pendant that is in the possession of the sultan Hosmimumarack, rescue his companion who had found his way into the palace before he was taken prisoner, and find the sultan’s daughter. Once all three objectives have been achieved, Johny must then leave the palace and find all eight letters that spell the word Babaliba.
Believe it or not, the Amstrad CPC version of Babaliba has been ten years in the making, having been announced in April 2014! Has it been worth the wait? Decide for yourself by downloading it from itch.io.
Conecta 5 en Navidad
Screenshot of Conecta 5 en NavidadBabaliba isn’t the only new game from ESP Soft to have been released, though. Conecta 5 en Navidad is a little Christmas-themed tile-matching game in which you have to move symbols around a board so you form lines of five or more of the same symbol in a row to make them disappear and help to clear the board. In each turn, three new symbols are added to the board, and you can move one symbol to a new square on the board, but there must be a free route from its current square to the new one; you can’t jump over symbols that are already on the board. The concept is almost identical to the 2010 puzzle game Color Lines.
theALFEST, a Ukrainian fan of Clive Townsend’s Saboteur II, has modified the Amstrad CPC version of the game and made significant improvements to it. The main difference is that ten speed settings are now available; now the protagonist can move like a proper ninja should! Other improvements include additional sound effects, some changes to the palette, a pause mode, and lots of bug fixes and adjustments to make the gameplay slightly less difficult. Thankfully, Rob Hubbard’s amazing tune is still present as well. You can download the Saboteur II mod from itch.io.
Assault
TheQproyect team are working on a conversion of the Atari 2600 space shoot-’em-up Assault. It’s a fairly simple game in which a large alien mothership at the top of the screen sends smaller spaceships to attack the player, who controls a small spaceship at the bottom of the screen and must shoot the aliens. According to XeNoMoRPH on the CPCWiki forum, Assault will be released on the 14th December 2024, and you can watch a preview on YouTube.
Gates to Heaven
The final bit of news is that following the release of Babaliba, another of ESP Soft’s games, Gates to Heaven, is now freely available to download. Gates to Heaven was released last year and achieved a rating of 8 out of 10 on this site.
Mighty Street Fighter
The GGP team has now revealed that their latest game, Mighty Street Fighter, will be available for downloading from the 22nd December 2024 – but it will require 512KB of RAM! This means that you will need a hardware device such as the M4 board or the ULiFAC to play it on a real Amstrad CPC once it is released; more details of compatible configurations are available from the relevant page on itch.io. If you want to play it on an emulator, you’ll need to use one that can be configured to provide at least 512KB of RAM.
GGP released a trailer on YouTube a few months ago, but if you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it below.
Screenshot of Croco Folie &28
Ayor61 continues to churn out games with the help of Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer. Croco Folie &28 has been released in the 40th anniversary year of the Amstrad CPC (the &28 in the title represents 40 in hexadecimal). The plot of the game is that Miss X, a member of staff at the now long defunct French magazine Amstrad Cent Pour Cent, loaded a cassette into her CPC464, but the cassette contained a virus that has infected the machine and damaged its Z80 processor, so she has called upon her crocodile friend Croco to shrink himself and recover the eight parts of the Z80 so Miss X can use her CPC464 again.
Croco Folie &28 is a platform game featuring a gorgeous and very colourful title screen from SA and music from American CPC fan Manshovel. You can download it from GameJolt.
Monster Mayhem
Screenshot of Monster Mayhem
Mananuk released a new game called Monster Mayhem just before Halloween. The small town of Kismet in Texas has been invaded by monsters, and you must shoot them and prevent them from overwhelming the town. This is a target shooting game in which the monsters’ heads appear from windows and you must aim your crosshairs at them quickly. You must also avoid shooting hostages who will appear occasionally. Your gun holds a maximum of six bullets, so you’ll also need to reload frequently, and this makes the game increasingly frantic and challenging as you progress. Monster Mayhem can be downloaded from itch.io.
Ghostship Delgado
Title screen of part 1 of Ghostship Delgado
Tony Kingsmill has released a new text adventure called Ghostship Delgado. Tony ran a public domain library called Data PD from 1990 to 1992 and he also wrote several text adventures for Data PD and The Guild. In Ghostship Delgado, you are George Pike, and you have rented a yacht and are on holiday. You fall asleep on board your yacht, but when you wake, you find yourself on a deserted ship, along with your dog Ruffles, far out to sea – but how did you get there, and can you find your way back to your yacht?
Ghostship Delgado comes in two parts and it has been written using The Quill. You can download the game and instruction manual from itch.io for free, and for only $2.00, you can download additional material, including clue sheets and the source code.
Mine Escape
Screenshot of Mine Escape
CapaSoft (Sergi Caparrós) released a new game a couple of days ago called Mine Escape. CapaSoft was responsible for the platform game Jax the Dog that was released last year. In Mine Escape, you play an experienced miner, but the elevator that takes you from the mine to the surface has broken down, and unless you find all the parts to fix the elevator, you’re going to be stuck in the mine forever! Most of the parts are behind locked doors, and you will need to find the corresponding coloured key to open them. The mine is also full of creatures such as bats, ghosts and spiders, which you must avoid. Mine Escape can be downloaded from itch.io.
