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.
Nita (Mode 0 version)
Screenshot of Nita (Mode 0 version)
haThus Entertainment has released an updated version of Nita – one of the entries in last year’s #CPCRetroDev contest. It was one of the more popular entries, finishing in fourth place overall and winning the “most popular game” award, as chosen by the public (i.e. Amstrad CPC fans). The original version featured detailed Mode 1 graphics, but the graphics in the updated version are in the CPC’s more colourful Mode 0. Both versions can be downloaded from itch.io.
You can also purchase a physical copy of Nita on cassette from Matranet for €8.75, excluding shipping costs.
Midnight Streets
Screenshot of Midnight Streets
Ayor61 of GGP has released another platform game. This one is called Midnight Streets, and like some of his previous games, it has been developed using Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer. The game’s protagonist, Mike, was due to meet his girlfriend Sandra at a nightclub – but a Mafia gang has abducted her and told Mike to pay a ransom of $100,000 to release her. There’s no way Mike is going to give in to the gang’s demand, so he must find the gang and use force to rescue his beloved Sandra!
Midnight Streets features an intro sequence with several digitised screens, as well as nice in-game graphics by the GGP team and tunes from Mr Lou and Manshovel. You can download it from GameJolt.
A new contributor, David Muscat, has reviewed The Survivor by Anirog.
SuperLéo
Screenshot of SuperLéo
Pakal33 has released a little game called SuperLéo. Pakal33 has recently rediscovered the Amstrad CPC, and he has reprogrammed a couple of his early BASIC games in a combination of C and assembly language – one of which is SuperLéo. You are Léo the lion, and you must escape from a zoo and avoid being caught by the boss who is running behind you! You must also avoid the various traps that will slow you down and enable the boss to catch up with you. SuperLéo can be downloaded from itch.io.
