Why, and to what extent, did France like different games (and computers)to elsewhere?

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Alan Sugar, AIUI, also dumped an absolute shedload of unsold 464 inventory on his French arm of the business for tax reasons? And it just took off.

Yeah, I think, at the time in France, if your were not a "geek", the computer to go for a Lambda family was the Amstrad. They were occupying the TV ads and regularly the billboards in the street so everybody did know the existence of this computer for sure. Clearly, they had free rein; no one else advertised on these channels. And the ads were punchy and funny.

I wonder how much Amstrad spent in advertising budget.

[Calabazam]

About the SECAM standard, i don't think it has ever impacted the success or downfall of a particular computer on the french market because our TVs were double standard PAL/SECAM. SECAM mattered more for the video market.
Hence i used my Amiga initially with a Thomson black 36 cm TV through RGB cart, which was absolutly similar to the Commodore 108x monitors except mono audio output.
It was at a time when most families had two or more TV at home (unlike when Marty McFly travelled back to 1955) and it was more interesting to me to have a TV used as a monitor for my computer in my room than a dedicated computer monitor.

Atari ST have always been in large numbers because it came earlier on the market than the Amiga and was cheaper. Besides, in the late 80's, it seems a lot of youngsters where in music as i had a lot of friends with Atari ST at home with on older brother connecting to it some kind of keyboard synthetizer (never been a musician myself).
Amstrad CPC was a big hit because of the huge ad campaign, including on TV, and it was cheap.
Anything else 8 bits was far behind the Amstrad fame, or too expensive for the french home market, even if i knew of some people with a C64 (never knew at the time someone with an Apple II but i guess this one was more for professionals than teenagers).

Then came the Amiga 500, soon on par with the price of the Atari ST, and by early 1992, ST was seen as dead and the Amiga largely prevailed amongst french teenagers (computer aficionados of course because the Nintendo/SEGA dudes were many).

As for the games, i did like arcade games, action or shoot them up as much as anyone, but my natural taste was more in strategy, RPG, adventures. Silmarils made many of them and they had a house style different than companies from other countries. Even if there were some flaws, Storm Master was a fascinating game with several screens made out of classic David painting such as the crowning of Napoleon or the murder of Marat. Transartica was so much "la compagnie des glaces" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Compagnie_des_glaces awesome serie of books. Ishar games showed some unusual RPG stuff.
Delphine Software made "Les Voyageurs du Temps" and "Operation Stealth" and the jewel on the crown "Another World" (and its more or less successor "Flashback").
Don't forget Lankhor with "Maupiti Island", and the huge game to this day from Cryo, Dune.
I would say that these french companies did have a tendancy to build their games on inspirations from art and literature more than other gaming companies.
It is true then that i can't think of a major action or arcade french game (except Jim Power from Loriciel). There were some good sport games like Vroom and a few tennis games.

[CCCP alert]

It was the French who also solved the crappy YM sound problem of the ST with the bundled cartridge with the game B.A.T. for just £10 more, if a little too late in the ST Amiga wars worldwide but still nobody else bothered to do it.

[Megalomaniac]

I really need to spend more time playing some of the quirkier French stuff, truth be told I didn't buy many French games back then. They seemed to do more 'adult' games than a lot of the world, Vera Cruz (written by a policeman, and built around the aforementioned Diamond police computer system) is one early example.

Not only was it a French company who came up with a sound cartridge for the ST, they also did some of the first double-sided-only ST games, Quest For the Time Bird the first but also North & South and Jumping Jack-Son (all of which are very French games in different ways, all quite focused on disk-space-hungry features such as artwork or in the latter case music).

Those interactive cartoons like Passengers and Time-Bird seemed to leave a lot of non-French players cold - I don't think they've as much 'gameplay' as some countries expect. Even things like Storm Master is relatively forgotten, despite great international reviews at the time (just 13 votes on LemonAmiga). The only Loriciel games with 50 or more votes on Lemon are Jim Power, Panza Kick Boxing and Baby Jo - hardly typical French fare. The more traditional-style adventures like Future Wars and Cruise For a Corpse seemed to 'cross over' internationally much more, though even then the UK (and Germany) seemed to prefer American adventures, especially Lucas (no translation issues, I guess). It feels like the world needed to be braver with experiencing the French way of making games, we were probably missing a chance to expand our mindsets and get a taste of France's culture earlier in life.

Did non-French action games generally sell well in France, notwithstanding that some of the British Amstrad development was so lazy? Did C64 owners tend to like the same games as French Amstrad owners, or the same games as American or British C64 owners? Were the C64's scrolling shooters (which the Amstrad and ST struggled to match) a big draw within that scene in France?

[CCCP alert]

Cruise for a Corpse by Delphine is one I only played in the last 5 years and I was really impressed with.

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

Did non-French action games generally sell well in France, notwithstanding that some of the British Amstrad development was so lazy? Did C64 owners tend to like the same games as French Amstrad owners, or the same games as American or British C64 owners? Were the C64's scrolling shooters (which the Amstrad and ST struggled to match) a big draw within that scene in France?

On the C64 I can't really think of any I liked off hand, think they did a better job of using the abilities of the CPC. I thought T.N.T. on the ST wasn't too bad though, the graphics on level 2 were quite atmospheric for a jungle night raid sort of feeling. Didn't really use my ST for more than 18-24 months really though.

[commodorejohn]

As Neal Stephenson has pointed out, these are the people who forked the English monarchy for a while there. Doing things different just-because is very much their thing XD

[CCCP alert]

I like how the French people smashed every speed camera in response to some idiotic reduction in speed limits proposed lol

[Megalomaniac]

With that question this morning, I was really wondering how France regarded those C64 games which did things the Amstrad couldn't easy do. Did the country's C64 owners use e.g. Paradroid and Delta as evidence of their machine's superiority, or did France's Amstrad fans just come back and say "we have Le Manoir de Mortville and Crafton et Xunk, we're not interested in shoot 'em ups"? Or did it upset France's C64 owners that they didn't have many of the French adventures and other distinctly French games (the Bumpy and Skweek games and Iron Lord come to mind as great French games where the Amstrad was the only 8-bit version)? How many of the big American disk-only C64 adventures / RPGs were ever translated into French, and did other C64-but-not-Amstrad games like Creatures get much attention in France?

[CCCP alert]

It's been a few years since I whizzed through 500 odd games on my 464 + MP3 player & cassette adaptor setup but it's always interesting to see the differences how computing was in different countries.

All I can find is 'did not sell well in France' for the Commodore 64 which doesn't really help gauge the difference in market size or how likely it is games would be translated and sold in France so maybe their exposure to the C64 was limited anyway. A bit like in the UK with the completely unknown PO Engine, FM Towns and X68000 to your average Amiga owner in the UK reading Amiga only magazines, was it the same in France for CPC owners.

I know that the only evidence of the feudal Japan flavoured Gauntlet knock off called Budokan(?) unreleased game being developed by the duo who wrote Gauntlet 1 for the ST is only in a French magazine etc. Looked really awesome actually.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

With that question this morning, I was really wondering how France regarded those C64 games which did things the Amstrad couldn't easy do. Did the country's C64 owners use e.g. Paradroid and Delta as evidence of their machine's superiority, or did France's Amstrad fans just come back and say "we have Le Manoir de Mortville and Crafton et Xunk, we're not interested in shoot 'em ups"? Or did it upset France's C64 owners that they didn't have many of the French adventures and other distinctly French games (the Bumpy and Skweek games and Iron Lord come to mind as great French games where the Amstrad was the only 8-bit version)? How many of the big American disk-only C64 adventures / RPGs were ever translated into French, and did other C64-but-not-Amstrad games like Creatures get much attention in France?

You know, at the time this kind of question was not so important. As a C128 owner I was very happy with the vast amount of software available for the C64 including games and tools like PrintMaster or The Print Shop. It was just incredible for a kid to be able to create his own Fanzine and have a such superior machine.

My friend having his Amstrad was very happy too. Having titles I did not have he brings the Amstrad home and we enjoyed it. This provided a good reason to get together. I had another friend who had a Spectrum and we regularly played with it at his home because his father bought a Trinitron TV and it was so enjoyable to have this big screen.

In short, if you wanted to have a try on a title you cannot have on your own machine, make friend with someone who have it. A good opportunities to enjoyed friendship and build a network.

FWIW

[TCD]

Originally Posted by TEG

In short, if you wanted to have a try on a title you cannot have on your own machine, make friend with someone who have it. A good opportunities to enjoyed friendship and build a network.

[malko]

Originally Posted by TEG

[...] In short, if you wanted to have a try on a title you cannot have on your own machine, make friend with someone who have it. A good opportunities to enjoyed friendship and build a network. [...]

This is something I think miss today's generation. Now they mostly play online games but rarely with schoolmates or kids from the same neighbourhood. Thus they never meet and the relationship is definitively more superficial.

[TEG]

Originally Posted by malko

This is something I think miss today's generation. Now they mostly play online games but rarely with schoolmates or kids from the same neighbourhood. Thus they never meet and the relationship is definitively more superficial.

Perhaps there's some balance coming now. My neighbor, someone who is like 25, invite friends each week to play video games or watch their favorite soccer team at the TV. I mean they are a small group of people, usually more than two so the group seems important to him. The drawback for me is they regularly play up to 2 am and cry like crazy in front of their screen

In the same trend, I read an article about people now have a preference for meeting at home over going to night clubs. Especially since the covid.