Screenshot of The Return of Traxtor
Following on from writing Space Pest Control as part of the 2015 #CPCRetroRev Game Creation Contest, Juan J. Martínez has converted his Spectrum game The Return of Traxtor to the CPC. It’s a puzzle game in which you must match three or more coloured blocks to make them disappear. Blocks are constantly appearing at the top of the screen and pushing the other blocks downwards. You can download The Return of Traxtor from Juan’s site, usebox.net.
The results of the 2015 #CPCRetroDev Game Creation Contest were announced yesterday. This is the third year that it has been running, and thanks to the increased publicity the 2015 contest received within the wider CPC community, a record 35 games were submitted to the competition! A total of €900 of prizes was offered, and there were two main categories (BASIC, for games written entirely in BASIC, and PRO, for all other games), as well as two ‘special mentions’.
Screenshot of Regreso al CPC
Screenshot of Space Moves
Screenshot of Frogalot
Screenshot of Mas to the Past
Some of the prize winners in the 2015 #CPCRetroDev Game Creation Contest The verdicts of the jury are:
BASIC category
1st: Regreso al CPC (Antonio Corpas) – €100 prize
2nd: Junior! (MiguelSky) – €50
PRO category
1st: Space Moves (Toni Ramírez) – €300
2nd: Frogalot (CNGSoft) – €150
3rd: Top Top (Rantan Games) – €75
Special mentions
Technical achievement: Frogalot (CNGSoft) – €125
Originality: Mas to the Past (Antrax CPC) – €100
Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!
Only a few of the entries have been released so far, and my understanding is that the organisers will release and publicise each entry individually over the coming weeks. However, some authors have decided not to wait and have already made their entries available for downloading (click on the names of each game below to download them):
RUN"CPC (Ervin Pajor) (nominated for the PRO category)
Space Moves (Toni Ramírez) (winner in the PRO category)
In the meantime, you can find more details (in Spanish) of the nominations and results, as well as screenshots of all 35 entries, at RetroManiac.
In other news, Eric Safar has released a few screenshots of his forthcoming adventure Athanor 2: La Légende des Hommes-Oiseaux, the sequel to Athanor which was released last year. So far, the game looks very impressive! You can keep up to date with its progress by visiting Safar Games.
Screenshots of Athanor 2: La Légende des Hommes-Oiseaux As it was Hallowe’en very recently, I had hoped to review a few horror-themed text adventures, but in the end, I only had time to look at one of them:
Screenshot of Let's Go!
Morri has released a new CPC game called Let’s Go! It’s a clone of the mobile platform game Relic Rush which has been written using CPC Basic 3 and a variety of other tools. It’s a very simple game; a pink blob wanders left and right and climbs and descends ladders, but the only way you can control it and stop it moving is to hold down the SPACE bar or the Fire button on the joystick. You can download Let’s Go! from NVG.
A video showing an early preview of a version of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. for the CPC has been uploaded to YouTube. Gianpaolo Ingegneri is the person behind the preview, and there’s a brief interview in both English and Spanish on the RetroManiac blog. The preview currently only shows the very first level scrolling endlessly, but it looks promising – although I suspect that Nintendo won’t be happy if they find out about it!
Screenshot of Elf
Spanish CPC users may also be interested to learn of a new text adventure called Elf which is being developed by Defecto Digital Studios for both the CPC and the PC. It’s based on the platform game released by Ocean Software in 1991. Visit Defecto Digital Studio’s site for screenshots and a YouTube video. Of course, the game is in Spanish, but it looks very nicely presented, and there are digitised graphics for each location.
Roland Radio logo
This news has come rather late, but a new online radio station called Roland Radio was launched at the beginning of April. It plays Amstrad CPC tunes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and has a playlist of nearly 2,000 tunes. There are various streaming options available, so now you can listen to great CPC music from famous artists such as Ben Daglish, J. Dave Rogers, Jonathan Dunn and David Whittaker anywhere! Some CPC users have even recorded their own short ‘jingles’ which are played every 15-20 minutes, which is a nice touch.
For more information, go to Roland Radio and click on the ‘Listen’ tab near the top of the screen. I’ve also added a button to this page that will open the Roland Radio web site in a new tab, so you can listen to Roland Radio while browsing the extensive list of reviews on this site!
Screenshot of Duck Out
Something that seems to have gone completely unnoticed by the wider CPC community (including me) until now is that CNGSoft seems to be working on a CPC conversion of the Spanish Spectrum game Duck Out. I haven’t played the Spectrum version, but it seems to involve you playing a duck who wanders around a kitchen bashing enemies with a frying pan! (Don’t you just love games with such outrageously wacky scenarios?)
César uploaded a preview video to YouTube in February. It doesn’t feature any enemies – just the anatine protagonist wandering through the kitchen – but it looks promising. There’s no indication yet as to when it will be released, and bear in mind that César has been quite busy with other things over the last few months. We still await news on the progress of a CPC conversion of Parasol Stars, though...
I have also moved my review of Mad Mix Game to The Pepsi Challenge Mad Mix Game and rewritten it slightly and provided a new screenshot. The game was released as The Pepsi Challenge Mad Mix Game in the UK.
