septembre septembre 2011 archives of Genesis8 Amstrad Page

Antiriad played on piano and longplay video

Not a remake but simply the music of the game Antiriad (the armor of) played on piano by Alpiso on Youtube.

For the longplay video by Cholo head to longplay part 1 of Antiriad and longplay part 2 of Antiriadon Youtube.

Thanatos played on piano and longplay video

Once again a beautiful play of piano by Alpiso about the Thanatos game on Youtube.

And if you dislike piano, what about listening to a guitar arrangement played by Pacopersia about the Thanatos game on Youtube ?

For the longplay video by cholo head to the longplay part 1 of Thanatos, the longplay part 2 of Thanatos and the longplay part 3 of Thanatos on Youtube.

Goody HD Gameplay by Metr81

Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of Goody written by Opera Soft in 1987.

Nebulus : theme remix, video longplay and remake

A remake of the Nebulus music is available on Youtube by Alpiso.

That was a hard game, I only went to the second tower (and there are 8 of them), so if you want to see all towers, here is a longplay of Nebulus by Wanderlain on Youtube.

You can also play remakes of Nebulus : Tower Toppler for windows, linux, BeOS and MacOS X, or Power Toppler for Iphone with 2 missions of 8 towers, it has been developped by Silver Software (the game cost 0,79 €).

A new forum for the Amstrad Notepad (NC100, 150 et 200), PCW and PDA600

A new forum for the Amstrad Notepad (NC100, 150 and 200), PCW and PDA600 is available on CPCwiki.

ACE v1.1, an Amstrad CPC emulator for MorphOS

ACE v1.1 is an Amstrad CPC emulator for MorphOS by Philippe Rimauro (written in C).

• ACE does not allow emulation of a CPC+ with CRTC 1,
• ACE does not hurt the PSG musics,
• ACE does not damage what is displayed of the screen,
• ACE does not embed too many integrated monolithic tools,
• ACE does not need a nuclear power plant.
• ACE does only allow emulation of real CPC,
• ACE does emulate an accurate PSG the way it is mixed on CPC,
• ACE does show on screen what the real CPC would,
• ACE does offer infinite expansion capabilities thanks to it's AREXX interface,
• ACE does run one frame on a small little G4.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Mercenary (Novagen Software) remake, now a SDL version

Even if there no recent update of the remake of Mercenary games by Novagen Software for windows, there is now a SDL version of MDDClone by Szymon Ender for Windows, Linux and MacOSX.

HxC Floppy Emulator Manager V2.4 by NoRecess

To help using your HxC floppy emulator, vous can use the last version of the HxC Floppy Emulator Manager (v2.3) by NoRecess.

It's now faster to launch, spaces in directory names can now be used, and the user interface is now using the default system font with new color scheme (aligned to ParaDOS and QuickCMD's ones). As previous releases, ROM version is also available.

A music remake of the Amstrad CPC game Navy Moves by Mcklain

A remake of the Navy Moves music is available on Youtube by Mcklain.

Bomb jack HD Gameplay by Metr81

Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of Bomb jack written by Elite in 1986.

A classic I remember well, I was able to play 3 or 4 times all levels before loosing all lives, Bomb Jack 2 was disappointing though.

Edge Grinder HD Gameplay by Metr81

Edge Grinder for Amstrad CPC is only a few days ago, and here is the first HD video of this game on Youtube by Metr81.

Edge Grinder by Axelay is out

The Amstrad CPC version of the multi-platform game Edge Grinder is out. This Amstrad CPC version was programmed by Axelay (Paul Kooistra), music by the ubiquitous Tom & Jerry and graphics by Trevor Smila Storey.

The video you will find below comes from the C64 version.

Source : CPCWiki's forum

QuickCMD v2.2 by NoRecess

QuickCMD v2.2 is out, a shell-based user interface by NoRecess.

These are the changes:

• Added support for Bryce's MegaFlash
• Renamed RO and RW commands to READONLY and READWRITE
• Removed CRTC command
• Reset screen to QuickCMD’s default if external RSX changed video mode
• DELROM now clears a rom with &FF value (was using &00)
• Fixed: was overwriting first byte after HIMEM
• Fixed: not assuming anymore than Amsdos area is always at &A700

Gamebase CPC v22 is out

GameBase CPC V22 is out since 14th September 2011.

Ikari Warriors on PS3 and Xbox360

Ikari Warriors is out on PS3 and Xbox360.

Source : JeuxVideo.com

Another CPC+ modded, by Badstarr, with the HxC floppy emulator

Remember the CPC+ modded by DeepFB ?

Here is another mod of a 464+ by Badstarr, with 128 Ko and of course the ubiquitous HxC floppy emulator.

P.S. : go read the source of this news for more photos at the page 2.

Inside the modded 464+, there you see the HxC floppy emulator and the whole SD card.

Here is the bottom, you can see a tiny part of the SD card from the hole.

Source : CPCWiki's forum

Shadow dancer, review and longplay by Xyphoe

Metr81 isnt the only one to post videos of Amstrad CPC gameplay on Youtube, there is also Cholo and Xyphoe.

The first video made by Xyphoe announced there is Shadow Dancer written by US Gold in 1991.

R-Type, origine and remake

R-Type was written in 1987 by Keith A Goodyer for Activion (Electric Dreams label) which gave him only 21 days to write the port, by using the ZX Spectrum version (written by Bob Pape). He used the PDS system written by Foo Katan, probably the world first IDE editor, cross assembler, linker and debugger development. it was running on a PC (ms-dos) with extra hardware that allowed to send the compilted code directly onto the target hardware. It eventually supported development for Z80, 6502 and 68K.

Here is the method he used :

Given the extream time limits i was given to the port this is basic strategy that I took to do the port... (I hope i remember all this correctly).

The spectrum had its ROM in the lower 16K, and the 48K of RAM above it. So I configured the Amstrad to locate the MODE 1 screen in the lower 16K, and loaded the spectrum version in the top 48K (As it would be located on a spectrum - and ran it). I then went through the code line by line, modifying anything that 'plotted' pixels on the screen to something that would plot the equivalent pixels on on Arnolds screen.

As the spectrum screen is 'Attribute Based' I continued to used all of Bobs 'Colour' code, and the whole 768 bytes of the spectrum colour attribute screen is running on the Amstrad version. When ever there was a 'Byte' write to the spectrum screen, I would use a look up table to indexed by the byte and the value of the corresponding spectrum colour attribute to extract the two bytes required to produce the correct pixels on the CPC screen. Then all I had to do was port the control (Sinclair/Kempston) to CPC stuck, and the Sound and the job was done. A few days with DJL to add the 'Protection' and the job was done.

Now the sad news... about 5 years ago, I had a massive leak in my roof, and all my records (including the source code) was destroyed.

Now some Trivia: At the time I had a 464, 664 and a 6128 - I took the final masters down to Activision, and it would not run on their 6128. It tuned out that at some point in time, Amstrad had made a small revision to the design that meant that a the interrupt would fire just before a frame fly back pulse, where on previous versions it would occur just after. The net effect was that when my code was waiting for the frame fly back pulse to occur, the interrupt would trigger just before it, go off do some processing, and by the time it had finished the processing and returend to the main code loop, had missed the pulse - and locked up.

A R-Type remake by Fano (code), TotO (graphics) et iXien(sound) is going to be available very soon, you can actually read Fano's interview on Push'N'Pop.

I let you check differences between the screenshot of the original R-Type and its remake (first screen of the Youtube video)..

Source : CPCWiki's forum

No less than about 4000 Amstrad CPC tape games being sold on Ebay

Check this Ebay auction of 4000 Amstrad CPC tape games.

Source : CPCWiki's forum

Devil's Castle HD Gameplay by Metr81

Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of Devil's Castle written by Chip in 1986. It's a sorcery clone.

Birdie HD Gameplay by Metr81

Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of Birdie written by Stéphane PICQ (ERE Informatique) in 1987.

Barrio Peligroso HD Gameplay by Metr81

Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of Barrio Peligroso written by Edisoft in 1987.

The prayer of the warrior, video and history

Another HD video by Metr81 of the prayer of the warrior.

Though this time there is more to say about this plat-form game, which was written in 1992 by 2 brothers : Francisco Javier Serrano García (programmation) et Emilio Serrano García (graphics). It was meant to be edited by Zigurat to be finally canceled. It is now available due to ESP Soft (also available on CPC Power). Code has been modified by SyX, the cover is by Lopez ESPI.

Amstrad CPC on Android and soon on Iphone

There are already 2 Amstrad CPC emulators on Android : AndCPC and CPCDroid.

Both of them are based on PSPCAP32 by Ludovic Jacomme which is a port of Caprice32 open source Amstrad CPC emulator.

To my dispair, the excellent adventure game Orion Prime cant work with PSPCAP32, is it the same thing with these 2 emulators ?

Anyway, there is an incoming Amstrad CPC emulator on Iphone ! My dream comes true (read the source for more and future informations).

Source : CPCWiki's forum

Nyan Cat on Amstrad CPC

Nyan cat is an internet meme, referring to an animated gif of a cat with the body of a cherry Pop-Tart flying through space, leaving a rainbow trail behind the cat; or to a video of the animated ?.GIF?, set to a remix of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!",[1] or to any of several Nyan Cat based games.

It's now on Amstrad CPC, with the music adapted by John McKlain and the code by Demoniak (just for fun !).

Beware the Amstrad CPC Nyan Cat video on Youtube isnt the last version available (current version is 3).

If you cant read the french forum, here is the same thread on CPCWiki's forum.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Mandelbrot in one line of basic by Demoniak

Just copy this one line of basic code by Demoniak and paste it in WinApe in the File Menu (or Ctrl + F11, or with any other Amstrad CPC emulator. Just for fun, like the Nyan Cat.

10 MODE 0:e=-1.3:FOR y%=0 TO 199:d=-2.4:FOR x%=0 TO 159:z=0:i=0:a%=0:WHILE a%<15 AND (z*z+i*i)<4:s=(z*z)-(i*i)+d:r=(2*i*z)+e:z=s:i=r:a%=a%+1:WEND:PLOT x%*4,y%*2,a%:d=d+0.0215:NEXT:e=e+0.013:NEXT

P.S. : in the general settings of WinApe, click on display every 1 frame and Turbo Mode, or you may have to wait a bit...

P.P.S : the second image is another basic source (more than 1 line) by Tronic-GPA.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Food for my plus volume 1 by Hermol

Download (click below on the source) Food for my plus volume 1 by Hermol with 2 nice CPC+ screenshots.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

NoRecess blog update

What about an Odiesoft interview as a starter, then an update of ManageDSK and SDCC2Pasmo for the main dish and dessert on NoRecess ?

Source : CPCWiki's forum

Alan Michael Sugar on Facebook and Twitter, and his autobiography

I only discovered that Alan Michael Sugar is on Facebook and Twitter.

By the way his autobiography is available in paperback since the 1st August. I already read his previous biographies, one more to go !

The Amstrad CPC generation, are we getting that old ?

Below you will find an extract of the excellent french site Dans Ton Chat (some IRC chat goodies).

Couchax: Shit, my sister has a new boyfriend, an older man (older than mathusalem), about 10 years older than her ! What a pity ! She bringed him back to the house just yesterday... I am quite ashamed !

Adrien: What's the problem ? It's not you who is dating him, so what... If your sister is feeling well with him, it's what is important ?

Couchax: I dont care about this, I am telling you that I am really ashamed...

Adrien: Why o.O ?

Couchax: I was very badly beaten to Super Street Fighter 4, never has been beaten like that before...

Adrien: What a shame, being beaten by the Amstrad generation...

Couchax: Yes...(-_-)'

Doh, I am feeling 10 years older now in the space of just a few seconds... :-)

Source : Dans Ton Chat