It’s been a long time since I reviewed any games, and since I’ve been off work this week, I decided to test some Spanish games, so here are 11 reviews for you:
Staying on a Spanish theme, I’ve learnt that a CPC game programming competition was held recently, although almost no one outside Spain seemed to be aware of it! Over 30 entries were submitted to the #CPCRetroDev 2014 contest, and the prizes were €200 for the winner, €75 for the runner-up, and €75 for the best game written in BASIC. You can find more information about #CPCRetroRev here.
Now that the rest of the world knows about the competition, will there be more entries from outside Spain in 2015?
Screenshot of Dead by Dawn
MiguelSky has been busy lately. Not only was he working on converting The Prisoner to the CPC, he’s also managed to convert another game! This one is called Dead by Dawn, and it was originally created on the ZX Spectrum using the 3D Construction Kit, which lets you create your own Freescape-style games.
This is not the first time that MiguelSky has converted a Freescape game; earlier in 2014, he also converted a Commodore 64 game called A Chance in Hell to the CPC. Could there be even more CPC Freescape games making their way? Only time will tell...
The Prisoner title screen
After several months of delays, Commodore Plus has released the English version of The Prisoner. This text adventure was originally released in Spanish in October 2013 and is based on the British cult 1960s TV series starring Patrick McGoohan. In the game, as in the TV series, you are an unnamed secret agent who has resigned from his job – but you have been abducted and taken to a mysterious seaside village, where everyone is identified by a number rather than a name, and the population is constantly being monitored and indoctrinated. You must escape from this Orwellian nightmare – but how?
Screenshot of Altair
A new game called Altair has recently been released. It’s an unofficial conversion of a Spanish 1981 coin-op arcade game by Cidelsa. The person behind it goes by the rather bizarre pseudonym of Inmensa Bola de Manteca, which translates to “immense ball of butter” in English. The gameplay is quite similar to Galaxian and it’s quite faithful to the original arcade version (footage of which is available on YouTube). You can download Altair from either NVG or from Inmensa Bola de Manteca’s web site, and the source code for both the CPC and ZX Spectrum versions of the game is also available from the author’s site.
Screenshot of Kamyzol
Crackers Velus have released their third game, called Kamyzol, and like their previous releases, it’s a puzzle game. Each level contains several rectangular blocks which, depending on their orientation, can only be moved either horizontally or vertically, but not in both directions. There is also one block which is coloured red and must be moved to the exit – but this is not as easy as it sounds, because the blocks are enclosed within a confined space! As you can see from the screenshot on the right, the graphics are very basic, but don’t let this put you off; it’s quite a challenge, and Crackers Velus themselves warn that it may make you go crazy! You can download Kamyzol from NVG.
Screenshot of Jetpac Sinclair ZX Spectrum Emulator
40Crisis has done it again! This time, he has emulated Ultimate Play The Game’s classic 16K ZX Spectrum game Jetpac on the Amstrad CPC. Jetpac was one of the first games that Ultimate Play The Game released back in 1983, and at the time, it set new standards of quality for ZX Spectrum games. Now this classic game can be played on a CPC – but you will need to download the original ZX Spectrum game, and as the Spectrum community is very strict about not allowing Ultimate’s games to be downloaded, you won’t find it on World of Spectrum, so you’ll have to hunt for it yourself.
If you manage to find it, you can download the emulator from NVG, which contains a program that will convert the Spectrum version of the game to a DSK and CDT file which you can play on an emulator or transfer to a real CPC.
Although I owned a Spectrum in the 1980s, I never played Jetpac at the time, but this CPC conversion is a fantastic little game!
Title screen of Superpix
Kukulcan, the administrator of the well known CPC-POWER site, recently released a new game called Superpix. If you like Picross puzzles, then you’ll love this game. Picross games such as iLogicAll and Pix have been released for the CPC before, but Superpix boasts a massive 720 puzzles to solve! It also saves your scores to disc, and if you’re not familiar with Picross puzzles, then a helpful tutorial is also provided on the disc. You can download Superpix from NVG, and there is more information at CPC-POWER.
A new contributor, Richard Lamond, has reviewed eight games:
By the way, I programmed the CPC versions of both of these games! :-)
Screenshot of Gliece Security
Crackers Velus have released another new game called Gliece Security. It’s another puzzle game in which you have to move coloured keys around a confined space and match them with the locks of the same colour. The problem is that all the keys move simultaneously; you can’t move each key individually! There are 60 puzzles, and you must solve them all within 22 minutes. You can download the game from NVG. Missas has written a review of Gliece Security.
Screenshot of Ant Attack Sinclair ZX Spectrum Emulator
Another game which emerged a few weeks ago, but which I didn’t report on at the time, is Ant Attack. This 1983 ZX Spectrum classic has been emulated on the CPC by 40Crisis, who also released an emulated version of another ZX Spectrum game called Maziacs on the CPC a few months ago. You can download Ant Attack from NVG. However, if you do this, you will also need to download the original ZX Spectrum game from World of Spectrum, as Sandy White, the original author of Ant Attack, hasn’t officially given permission to allow free distribution of the game – although it has been available to download for years, and Sandy White has his own website which includes a page about Ant Attack and a guestbook with lots of messages from visitors who fondly remember the game. Having said that, you can also download the game from CPCRulez or CPC-POWER without having to download the ZX Spectrum version as well. Missas has also written a review of Ant Attack.
