After some discussion between EgoTrip, Missas and me, the rating for Missas’ review of A Prelude to Chaos has been reduced to 9 out of 10.
It’s been nearly two months since I last posted any news, but since my last posting, several new Amstrad CPC games have been released.
Golden Tail
Screenshot of Golden Tail
Juan J. Martínez has released a new platform game called Golden Tail. The Golden Tail is a magical stone that has been broken into 30 pieces. You play a ninja spy called Kitsune, and you must wander around looking for the pieces of the Golden Tail. One rather nice innovation is that you can use Kõga Magic to become invisible for very short periods of time, and while you are invisible, you can run faster and jump higher. You can download Golden Tail from Juan’s website.
Heroes Rescue
Screenshot of Heroes Rescue
Javy Fernández of Defecto Digital Studio has released the full version of Heroes Rescue. A preview version of the game with six levels was released a few months ago, but the full version has thirteen levels and features cartoon characters from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons and Marvel comics, who you must rescue. You can download Heroes Rescue from Defecto Digital Studio’s site; click on the blue button labelled “Descarga AMSTRAD CPC” towards the bottom of the page to download it. Javy is planning to release a physical edition of the game as well.
Kung Fu Guns
Screenshot of Kung Fu GunsbitbitJAM is an annual competition where entrants have to program a game on old 8-bit or 16-bit hardware in one week. The team at ByteRealms set themselves a challenge – to develop a beat-’em-up for the 2016 competition. In fact, they developed their game Kung Fu Guns over a weekend – and they achieved 5th place out of 20 entries!
In Kung Fu Guns, you play Sheriff Melissa Chase, the ‘Red Hot Princess’, who has arrived in the town of Dos Santos to rid it of bandits. As the game was developed in such a short space of time, there are only two levels, there’s only one type of enemy, and it’s very easy to complete, but the author has stated that ByteRealms will probably release a more polished version with additional features in the future. In the meantime, you can download Kung Fu Guns from NVG or from Game Jolt.
Screenshot of Adiós a la Casta: Episode 2
4Mhz have released a preview version of Adiós a la Casta: Episode 2. Like the first episode, it’s a platform game in which you must collect as many objects as you can, but the graphics are now mostly drawn in Mode 0 instead of the four-colour Mode 1, and they look absolutely wonderful. You can download the preview version from 4Mhz’s site.
It was also recently announced that the Oliver Twins are joining the jury in the #CPCRetroDev 2016 competition. They will be examining all the entries and providing feedback to the developers, and they will also be at the awards ceremony. I think every CPC fan will know about the Oliver Twins; they programmed more than 20 games for the Amstrad CPC and they also created one of the most famous 8-bit characters of them all – Dizzy – so this is exciting news!
Screenshot of Space Invaders Arcade Emulator
40Crisis has emulated yet another classic on the Amstrad CPC! This time it’s one of the most famous video games of all time, and one that even the most ardent non-gamer will recognise – Space Invaders. Yes, you can now play the original 1978 coin-op arcade version of Space Invaders on a CPC! However, you will need to find the relevant ROMs and download them, as 40Crisis hasn’t included them with the emulator for copyright reasons.
You can download the emulator from NVG, which contains a program that will convert the ROMs to DSK and CDT files which you can play on an emulator or transfer to a real CPC. Get blasting!
Screenshot of Jewel Warehouse
EgoTrip has just released another CPC game starring little Amy, called Jewel Warehouse. It’s a simple platform game in which you control Amy and must collect jewels. Each level has a tight time limit, although you can retry each level as many times as you wish. There is a discussion on the CPCWiki forum which includes a link to download the game.
Missas has reviewed three more games from from last year’s #CPCRetroDev competition:
Speaking of #CPCRetroDev, the 2016 competition has been launched, with a total of €1,050 in prizes on offer. This year, some well known personalities will be among the judges – the Spanish musician Gominolas, Jon Ritman (the author of classic games like Batman and Head Over Heels) and Victor Ruiz of Spanish software house Dinamic. The deadline for submitting entries is the 26th of October, so there’s five months to program a game. 36 entries were submitted for the 2015 competition; will we see as many in 2016?
I have also been informed that Sir Ababol II: The Ice Palace is being developed for the CPC. This post from RetroManiac contains a few CPC screenshots, and someone has posted a tweet with a picture of the game being played on a CPC at the Amstrad Eterno event held last month.
Missas has reviewed two games from last year’s #CPCRetroDev competition:
Advertisement for Sir Ababol II: The Ice Palace
One other item of interest from the recent Amstrad Eterno event in Barcelona was an 80-page special edition of RetroManiac magazine which was available for purchase exclusively at the event. However, if you weren’t there, you can download it from their site; click on the link entitled “Páginas sueltas...”. Be aware that the entire magazine is written in Spanish!
The special edition is dedicated to the #CPCRetroDev contest that was held last year. There are reviews of all 36 games, an interview with Fran Gallego (the organiser of the contest as well as the developer behind the CPCTelera library), and “making of” articles for some of the highest-ranking games in the contest (Space Moves, Frogalot, Top Top, Regreso al CPC and Junior!).
What intrigued me the most were the advertisements included in the magazine: Adiós a la Casta: Episode 1, Galactic Tomb, and... Sir Ababol II: The Ice Palace (see the image on the right). My limited knowledge of Spanish prevents me from confirming if this is just a spoof advertisement, but is it really possible that we may see a return of the Mojon Twins to the CPC after a hiatus of five years?
The first Amstrad Eterno event took place in Barcelona last weekend. Unfortunately I wasn’t there, but there was plenty of news of new games that were released or are currently in development.
Galactic Tomb
The most impressive game that I learnt about is Galactic Tomb from ESP Soft. It’s a shoot-’em-up with beautiful graphics, multi-directional scrolling and end-of-level bosses. A playable demo of the first level was available at Amstrad Eterno, and a YouTube video is also available, which you can also watch below, right here on CPC Game Reviews. Based on what I’ve seen in the video, this could be one of the best-looking and most ambitious games to be released for the CPC for several years!
Video preview of Galactic Tomb on YouTube
Linaje Real
The second game from ESP Soft is Linaje Real – a platform game with a medieval theme which is being programmed by GG. According to ESP Soft, the game has “scrolling so smooth that you’ll have to see it to believe it”. ESP Soft uploaded a YouTube video several months ago, so you can judge this claim for yourself, although the video doesn’t have any sound.
Adiós a la Casta: Episode 1
Shortly before Christmas 2015, a beta version of Adiós a la Casta was released by 4MHz. Now they’ve released version 1.00, which you can download from their web site. It’s a platform game in which you play a character called Pablender (inspired by the Spanish politician Pablo Iglesias) who must collect as many opposition votes and the votes of undecided people as possible, with the votes being represented by icons. The more votes collected, the easier it will be for Pablender to defeat the final boss Rodrigo Rata. I don’t know anything about Spanish politics, but this is a very playable platform game with nice graphics and music which plays fairly similarly to most of the Mojon Twins’ games.
Zombi Terror Reloaded
The final game to be announced is Zombi Terror Reloaded from a new development team called Bitzarro Games. It’s a reworking of Kabuto Factory’s game Zombi Terror which was released for several different formats. The game is a text adventure in the style of the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebooks that were popular in the 1980s, although you’ll need to understand Spanish to be able to play it properly. You can download Zombi Terror Reloaded from Bitzarro Games’ site.
Screenshot of A Prelude to Chaos
EgoTrip released a new CPC game called A Prelude to Chaos a few days ago. It’s the latest in a series of games starring a girl called Amy. EgoTrip also released a ZX Spectrum game with the same name in early 2015, but the CPC version is much bigger.
The game seems to be inspired by the Legend of Zelda series of games for Nintendo’s NES console, and the aim is to collect 40 jewels scattered around a maze of screens. You can download it from the CPCWiki forum.
