4th May 2015
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...
CPC4eva has reviewed three games:
He has also provided new, amended reviews of
BAT and
Roy of the Rovers
which were originally published last month.
7th April 2015
I have reviewed two games:
CPC4eva has reviewed six games:
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.
4th April 2015
CPC4eva has reviewed five games:
15th March 2015
Pug has reviewed three games:
8th March 2015
Pug has reviewed six games:
Missas has reviewed Saboteur II.
By the way, if anyone from Robico Software is reading this
– please don't sue me for the review of Village of Lost Souls! ;-)
2nd March 2015
Pug has reviewed five games:
28th February 2015
CPC4eva has reviewed two games:
22nd February 2015
CPC4eva has reviewed six games:
Pug has reviewed two games:
14th February 2015
Pug has reviewed two games:
8th February 2015
For those of you who like text adventures, Eric Safar's game
Athanor is now available in English, following the release of the French
version last year. It's inspired by some early French 1980s text adventures, and
graphically, it uses simple, monochrome, line-drawn pictures similar to those
used in the many games that were created using Graphic Adventure Creator.
Eric has informed me that the game will cost €20 including postage, or
€24 if you require additional tracking. As you can see from the photos
below, the game is beautifully packaged and includes a variety of 'feelies'. You
can click on the photos to view them at their full size.
If you're interested, you can visit
Safar Games and find out how to order a
copy of Athanor.
Athanor is intended to be the first of a trilogy of
adventures, and Eric has announced
on the CPCRulez forum that he is working on the second instalment, and he has
also posted a screenshot. The second game will use full-colour bitmap graphics,
and it looks great!
Pug has reviewed eleven games:
CPC4eva has reviewed Karatian.
Screenshot of Megablasters: Escape from Castle in the Clouds
3rd February 2015
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the release of one of the biggest and
best CPC games to be released, Axelay, with the help of rexbeng, McKlain and Tom
et Jerry, has released a new version of Megablasters! The original game by
German CPC user Odiesoft took up two whole discs and was widely acclaimed for its
astounding graphics and gameplay, and it was also the first Bomberman
clone to be released for the Amstrad CPC. Now, 20 years later, comes
Megablasters: Escape from Castle in the Clouds. It's not as big as the
original game, but the graphics and music are both marvellous – and be
warned that it's much harder than the original game!
If you think you're up for the challenge, you can
download
Megablasters: Escape from Castle in the Clouds from NVG. Alternatively,
if you're feeling nostalgic for Odiesoft's game, you can
read my review or
download
Megablasters from NVG. Go on, you know you want to...
Front cover of Cyber-Chicken
30th January 2015
TFM has announced that there are only six physical copies of his game
Cyber-Chicken left – four on cassette and two on disc. They are now
on sale at a reduced price of €10 for the cassette version and €12 for
the disc version (excluding postage). Head over to the
Cyber-Chicken web site to order a copy
– and if you haven't bought a copy yet and you're not convinced,
read the review by Missas on this site!
25th January 2015
CPC4eva has reviewed nine games:
Missas has reviewed Mansion Kali.
20th January 2015
Missas is back with reviews of two games:
Screenshot of 2048 in MODE 0
4th January 2015
Happy New Year to all CPC fans!
I have reviewed nine games:
Crackers Velus have released a new version of 2048
which features MODE 0 graphics – and the game certainly looks much
better as a result! The new version can be
downloaded from NVG,
along with the original version which used MODE 1 graphics.
Screenshot of 2048
30th November 2014
Following on from the news about the #CPCRetroDev game programming
competition, Crackers Velus have released their own entry, 2048.
Many of you have probably heard of this puzzle game, which
was developed by Gabriele Cirulli and released earlier this year as a mobile app
and has become very popular indeed. The game involves sliding blocks around a
4×4 grid and combining them to produce higher-numbered blocks. The aim is
to produce a block with a value of 2048.
The very simple nature of the game means that 2048
has already been ported to many 8-bit computers, and now it's the CPC's turn to
get a conversion. You can download
2048 from NVG. Just be aware that once you start playing it, you'll
probably become addicted!
29th November 2014
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?
E-mail: nich <AT> durge <DOT> org
|
