Amstrad CPC, much better than I thought it would be!

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Cybernoid 2 is a gem on the CPC, great graphics, very good animations and a legendary soundtrack

Gonna have to call you on this one - the Spectrum version was better. Higher resolution, better artwork, more animation of enemy sprites and player ship.

D.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Gonna have to call you on this one - the Spectrum version was better. Higher resolution, better artwork, more animation of enemy sprites and player ship.

D.

I just played with klive on the speccy version of cybernoid II.

It's faster than the CPC version, but well, the CPC version is better in every graphic area. Title screen, level graphics and so on.

the game code is basically the spectrum version with lots more colors.

And Hugh Binns did an incredible job on the CPC version

And Raffaele Cecco always made the best versions of its game on the Amstrad CPC (stormlord I & II, Cybernoid I & II, etc).

[Retro-Nerd]

But Jeroen Tel's title track on the C64 is best of all 3 versions.

[ Show youtube player ]

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

But Jeroen Tel's title track on the C64 is best of all 3 versions.

[ Show youtube player ]

Not better Retro, different. The original tune is the zx spectrum 128k disk version, replicated by Dave rodgers on the 64k CPC version.

The C64 version of cybernoid is a port of the CPC version, and the title music completely different from the original one; Jeroen did its own song for it (the problem to me is that the C64 tune and the amiga tune are almost the same).

[idrougge]

I really prefer the bright colours of the CPC, but when I want to play Turrican, I choose the C64 version. The CPC version runs in a postage stamp-sized window and scrolls in character blocks. It's not a showcase for the CPC in any way.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by idrougge

I really prefer the bright colours of the CPC, but when I want to play Turrican, I choose the C64 version. The CPC version runs in a postage stamp-sized window and scrolls in character blocks. It's not a showcase for the CPC in any way.

that's right i think. If i want to play to a show case on the CPC i show stormlord for example or Iron Lord Iron Lord is basically the 16 bits versions in 4 colors. Stormlord has a beautiful scheme of colors, as well as a great music, excellent animations and a great scrolling.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I just played with klive on the speccy version of cybernoid II.

It's faster than the CPC version, but well, the CPC version is better in every graphic area. Title screen, level graphics and so on.

I'd have to disagree - there's much more animation in the Spectrum version. The title screen border scroll, the Animation of the rear gun, the rolling animations of the pipe guardians, etc etc.

And I'd have to say, I prefer the Spectrum's graphics of all of them, it's one of those rare cases where the Spec beats the rest of the 8bits.

D.

[lost dragon]

Point was raised earlier that the CPC really should of had 128K as standard, well you could make the case for limited Ram restricting hardware potential for much later hardware, PS2 and PS3, but you'd be back with the same issue facing you-you increase the Ram, you increase the price and you then find yourself priced outside mass-market level.Just look at the 3DO for example....

[lost dragon]

It would of been nice to have seen more software houses develop specific versions of games for the 3 main 8bit machines, where possible, rather than just knock out straight ports...

As a C64 owner, i was always interested to see what had been done with games like:Myth (System 3), Soldier Of Fortune (Graftgold), Dan Dare (Virgin) etc.

That way you had a different experience on another platform, rather than going to it and seeing what had been lost as it were.

But the reality was you'd need another set of coders, artists etc to develop it and you couldn't be sure it'll see 'better' on 1 platform over the other.

For myself going from the 800XL, then C64 to the ST and then later looking into the CPC, i do tend to not find myself taking to harsh sound effects, flick-screen scrolling or character-block scrolling, which many coders used to get around hardware limits.

It's not a case of snobbery, more a case of having taken it for granted.

The St's short comings were for myself, hard to swallow at times,

[S0ulA55a551n]

Was thinking about how mad this thread was earlier, and got me thinking to one of my fav Amstrad games of all time, guess it was on all the other 8bits as well, and its a pretty simple game graphically, thought the physics etc is where its at.

Thrust, took me ages to get into it , but once you did was such a challenge and tough game to play.

I am CPC fan, but I believe game play is where its at, obviously graphics do come into it , but not over game play.

[jayminer]

This is one of the silliest threads I have ever read. Still I can't keep away from reading it, and now also commenting in it :/

As a C64 owner who has also [ Show youtube player ] I am obviously a bit biased, but I think it's silly to say that Turrican II on the Amstrad even can compare to the C64-version. Sure it has more vibrant graphics and I can understand that some people might prefer that, but personally I don't think it looks very good with some odd colorchoices (the green and yellow) - but that's the only thing I can see that someone could argue is better on the CPC.

Turrican II was a C64-game, the Amiga-version is a port (even if it was released before the C64-version ) and Manfred Trenz really put the C64 to it's knees with that game. You can notice the engine not quite keeping up when too much is happening on the screen, but it anyway manages to keep up with 50 fps updates for everything allmost all of the time. Turrican II is a technical marvel on the C64. The CPC version which doesn't even use softsprites but moves everything after the 8x8 tile-grid looks like a really bad port in comparison and it looks horrible in my eyes.

That doesn't mean I don't think the CPC is cool hardware and the batman demo for the CPC really shows what the machine can do. The R-Type-port is very cool aswell.

[Retro-Nerd]

Engima variations produced mainly crappy low budget games for 8bit machines. They obviously had no clue what do to with such a AAA licence like Turrican 2. Well, Probe's Turrican 1 wasn't better on CPC/ZX.

Julian Eggebrecht words about the ZX and CPC T1 versions: "Thank god these maschines aren't widespread, thus not many people seen this versions". For Turrican 2 ZX/CPC: "Originate from an untalented team mediated from the Anco business executive".

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by jayminer

This is one of the silliest threads I have ever read. Still I can't keep away from reading it, and now also commenting in it :/

Hi Jay

As a C64 owner who has also [ Show youtube player ] I am obviously a bit biased, but I think it's silly to say that Turrican II on the Amstrad even can compare to the C64-version.

The game pleasure is here. The CPC coder used the amiga assets

The real problem on the CPC versions of turrican is the small screen size.

But technically, think about it : the graphics take more space in RAM than the c64 version, next, it's based on the spectrum code, modified to support 16 colors (both turrican I and II).

For all these, there was no other solution than reduce the screen size. With proper programming, a larger screen can be possible, and this with 128k.

The real weakness of the CPC is the amount of ram available considering the big size of the graphics in mode 0 16 colors. 64k is too low.

Power aside, the CPC is almost a 16 bits computer graphically wise, with an 8 bit processor. This is quite a brake when you think about it.

Sure it has more vibrant graphics and I can understand that some people might prefer that, but personally I don't think it looks very good with some odd colorchoices (the green and yellow)

It's not odd color choices. Since the CPC port is made from the amiga version, and some of the colors are made of grey tones, and the CPC having only 1 grey, you have to replace these colors by others.

You get however a point about the "not well choosen" colors palette on some CPC games (they used on some games really shitty color palettes converters that i would never wanted to have even for free).

- but that's the ony thing I can see that someone could argue is better on the CPC.

The CPC has been, independently of its very own weaknesses, completely underused by most game companies.

like said previously, the CPC was a machine were many times the development time allowed was between 1 week and 3 months.

Even on C64, no one at that time could have forked out a game in such a limited period of time.

How many CPC games were basically c64 and Spectrum emulators/ports, with native routines transcoded line by line, unoptimized, and with the mandatory obligation of convertion also on the fly the c64 asset they stored in the CPC version ?

You see what i mean ? As a coder, i'm sure you'll perfectly understand that emulating another computer behaviour is making the concerned machine going down a crawl for nothing.

Like you read it above, Barbarian from Palace is in this case. When you search the graphics of the barbarian, you can't find them in CPC graphic format in the CPC RAM. Those are in c64 format converted by the CPC on the fly ingame. The result is known : it makes the game lagging and slowing down uselessly.

So when people come and say that a CPC game is bad because the CPC is bad, or weak, they should think that the coders were much c64 and speccy lovers that they gave us a lot of the time crap GFX and code emulation from a foreign computer working totally differently.

An example on Amiga : Super wonderboy in monsterland. The amiga is considerably slowed down because it has to convert on the fly the Atari ST assets stored on the Amiga disk version.

Is the amiga bad ? No, certainly not. It's a problem based between the chair and the computer keyboard.

Turrican II was a C64-game, the Amiga-version is a port (even if it was released before the C64-version ) and Manfred Trenz really put the C64 to it's knees with that game.

To me X-out is really a game pushing really bad the c64, further than the Turrican series. Turrican has really nothing exceptional technically speaking to me. It's addictive side, is coming from all the artworks, and game design of the levels, making it a great game to play.

This explains why it's so much love on every computers.

You can notice the engine not quite keeping up when too much is happening on the screen, but it anyway manages to keep up with 50 fps updates for everything allmost all of the time.

The scrolling aspect i don't like in the turrican series on c64 is the way the scrolling is doing a sort of "push forward" when you jump up right.

Turrican II is a technical marvel on the C64. The CPC version which doesn't even use softsprites but moves everything after the 8x8 tile-grid looks like a really bad port in comparison and it looks horrible in my eyes.

Turrican II is the biggest game ever made on an 8 bits machine, and the biggest CPC game.

The game source code on CPC is 4000kb and the game is 715kb crunched on two 178kb floppy sides.

Turrican II use 32x32 tile blocks and scroll 8 pixels per 8 pixels. It's a pleasure to discover all the gigantic maps. I did them all with maptapper and they are the same size as the amiga version.

All the animations, sprites enemies, maps were retained in the CPC version.
I have not noted a single kind of sprites missing. You can have many sprites on screen, it never slows down.

And the best is that the speed sequence of the shootem up part is also there, it's going very fast for a CPC and it's quite a feat for a commercial game considering all the shits we had to live with.

That doesn't mean I don't think the CPC is cool hardware and the batman demo for the CPC really shows what the machine can do. The R-Type-port is very cool aswell.

Yes, the main CPC quality is that it's a very cool machine.

The batman demo explains that the CPC was only used at 6% of its real potential during his commercial life. Today, it still has some hidden parts, when you see the games or demo made during these last years.

The CPC reserve all its flavours to the best coders, the others just stay at the door

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Engima variations produced mainly crappy low budget games for 8bit machines. They obviously had no clue what do to with such a AAA licence like Turrican 2. Well, Probe's Turrican 1 wasn't better on CPC/ZX.

What Julian said is one thing. We, as CPC customers and owners just tell him :

"Go to hell, You're too c64 minded-biaised to appreciate !".

PS : the first batch of Turrican 1 CPC disk was faulty and wrongly mastered (the one with blue stickers), where was Rainbow Arts assurance quality when this happened ?

For the little story, i bought the game in original, but there you go, after using the disk 4 or 5 times, oh no, the disk was not working anymore !

The huge hypermarket specialized in video games where i bought it explained to me that Rainbow Arts had problems with a batch of Turrican 1 for CPC, and had to get all them back !!

Julian Eggebrecht words about the ZX and CPC T1 versions: "Thank god these machines aren't widespread, thus not many people seen this versions".

Graphically, the CPC version just break through the c64 version. But there you go, since Rainbow Arts were mostly c64 lovers, i'm not wondering at all about his comment.

The CPC got the highest ratings in the game magazines, and praised everywhere, so JE comments are pure bullshit !

For Turrican 2 ZX/CPC: "Originate from an untalented team mediated from the Anco business executive".

That's bullshit again, none of the CPC team people where coming from the Anco business executive.

Robin Holman (ROB) is a spectrum coder, Sean Conran is known for working as musician on many computers (Amiga, CPC and others), and Mick Hanrahan too.....

Seriously, guys like JE should just have let their PR speak instead of pulling out bullshits out on the streets.

If Rainbow Arts wanted the series to sell better they should have pushed the game and make a better cover back in the day, and in the end they would have not sold only 20000 copies of these games.

PS3 : If you have the luck to communicate with JE, just tell him in France we've sunk the c64 in less than 1 year, and made Commodore France Bankrupt, with the c64 owning not even 2% percents of the leisure computing market when the CPC got 60% of the market back in 1990 !

Rainbow Arts could have made tons of money (CPC games sold by truckloads here), no, instead they did a shit-all-around-c64-we-love policy and went whining and crying :

"Arrrhh !!! Mein gott die scheiBe, gross scheiBe, Turrican I und II verkauft nur 20.000 Kopien !!!, scheiBe UND scheiBe!!! Geben Sie mir eine pistole, ich mich schieBen müssen !!!

Consequence of their marketing strategy failure: loosers !

More seriously, Rainbow Arts have been unable to market correctly their game outside germany.

An AAA game like the Turrican series should have sold at leat 500.000 copies on CPC, considering the love of the players for these games.

You see what's happening when you only focus on a machine, the c64 and ignoring the other strong markets ?

You loose tons of money. And it's not the fault of the Probe or Enigma variations teams. They used the best tools available to do the job, and used the 16 bits assets to make the games.

When you're selling a product you need to have the right selling strategy or you fail And they failed ! Even on their "beloved" machine !

[Retro-Nerd]

Taken from mobygames. And i'm sure Eggebrecht knew acutally what he was talking about.

Enigma Variations was based in Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, in England.

The company's Managing Directors were Mark Greenshields, and Richard Naylor. The firm was originally based in Richard's residence. After a while they moved to new offices near the centre of town.

Key Staff members were Stuart Cook, Mark Mason, Andy Swann, Jason McGann, (all programmers), and Pete Tattersall, and Shaun McClure (artists).

Primarily the company developed budget games on ZXSpectrum, Amstrad, C64, Amiga, and ST, for companies such as Alternative Software, and Anco Software.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Taken from mobygames. And i'm sure Eggebrecht knew acutally what he was talking about.

It's still bullshit. Turrican I & II never sold like they should normally have, because they never supported the product like it was meant to be.

And piracy was certainly not the problem. As said, the publishers sold tons of original games on CPC.

Turrican I and II cost back in the day in france was 150 francs (disk) and 99 francs (tape).

Those games were extremely promising, praised in all the magazines, and Rainbow Arts just fucking failed to sell them correctly.

I'll pass on the turrican I first CPC disk batch failed by Rainbow Arts, showing their amateurism on such an AAA product.

This is the best wrong way to start selling a great game, just fuck up its manufacturing !

And then go puke at the face of the coders for your own faults.....

If it's not cynism at its best, i don't know what it is.

[Retro-Nerd]

Seriously Denis. You couln't make serious money with action computer games. All the real bestsellers were adventures, RPGs, strategy, economy simulations etc. That why the most arcade/action games specialized companies left for the consoles at the first chance. Look at Lionheart. Thalion sold it without any copy protection and of course it was a financial disaster.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Seriously Denis. You couln't make serious money with action computer games. All the real bestsellers were adventures, RPGs, strategy, economy simulations etc. That why the most arcade/action games specialized companies left for the consoles at the first chance. Look at Lionheart. Thalion sold it without any copy protection and of course it was a financial disaster.

Seriously Retro ?

Turrican was an exception in the action computer games. It's a game you always want to come back in.

And Rainbow Arts from the information you gave, never supported the game like it should had been needed.

You're almost basically understating that the piracy was the reason behind the fail.

The fail lies in the people responsible for selling this game and its sequel.

The companies have quit the Amiga because Sega or Nintendo were paying huge money and on time. This have nothing to do with piracy.

The Amiga in February 1991 owned 21% of the UK leisure market, that was more than enough to make money.

And about your statement on Thalion, you're actually wrong, and this makes me wonder why, because since you're german you read better than i do the german magazine interviews, (of Erik Simon and Jurie Hornemann), Erik who was stating Lionheart sold incredibly well, even without copy protection.

Ambermoon development would never have been possible without the money coming from Lionheart, unfortunately, the real financial disaster came from the too long development time for Ambermoon. This is really what has killed Thalion.

I'm not giving my opinion here, you can find these informations on Gerry's thalion website in german and english from the mouth of Erik Simon.

[Retro-Nerd]

"Often we have the impression that software companies suspected of neglecting someday certain computer models out of sheer wickedness Imagine. A dark, rainy night, in trench coats clad figures knocking somewhere in a major European city to a door, muttering a slogan . ( 'Amiga sucks') and gather in a smoke-shrouded conference room, where the annual meeting of the bosses of the big software companies will be held and this time they decided:' Let's wipe out the Amiga owners one, we turn them off the tap, as recently the Atari ST users! Koste it what it may, har, har! ' So it is not natural. And if it does, we have not received an invitation. Anyway, I would like to make it clear that all software companies do not have to decide, is being developed for which computer. The customers do that for them. And their ballots are receipts. Sorry, the old stitch 'We have to sell a few programs to survive' to arrive, but it stands out in terms of sales of Amiga programs a rather sad picture from, especially considering that the computer installed in Europe millions is. To be fair, one must note, however, that offer some of the complainant of the weak purchasing morale of Amiga owners on this computer products in a rather weak quality, so that one can say is difficult if the game due to the many pirated flopped or because it is simply bad was.
For these reasons, we, however, refuse to drop the Amiga. First you have to be very clear that it is not so easy for a quite small company like Thalion to change from one day to another system. We have too many development programs that are tailored to the Amiga, perfected over the years. The rewrite everything on PC environment would cost at least half, production Loose year. Secondly, we have decided to fire two missiles test, in the form of two Amiga programs, their quality (our course not entirely objective opinion) is higher than average: Lionheart and, quite fresh, Amber Moon. In the case of Lionheart buyers reactions were so seen disappointing we could just cover our high development costs. For an action game, but the sales were clearly above average.
A clearer sign of life the Amiga community, we hope with Ambermoon because we technically and qualitatively operated an effort that is now found only in leading PC RPGs.
The initial question can therefore answer for Thalion so: even the Amiga is not dead for us. However, serious symptoms are obvious. When drugs in the form of software on a fair level of quality to the patient can not help financial constraints are stronger than the Amiga enthusiasm with us. "

Erik Simon, Thalion

Above average doesn't mean "sold well". btw: Erik Simon (Factor 5 too) blamed indeed the software piracy though i think it was mismanagement that finally led to the bankruptcy of Thalion. They were just talented nerds programming (mostly) good computer games, and no businessmen.

Erik Simon in a 2002 interview.

What were you think are the greatest advantages of the Amiga? Are you of the opinion that the death of the Amiga was accelerated by piracy? Had the software piracy affect Thalions survival?

The Amiga was the best home computer of its time and gave us wonderful opportunities offered to be creatively active without having to worry about the restrictions and the higher financial risks of the console market. The downside, however, was clearly the piracy, which was a main reason for Thalions end. Well, we were in financial matters not completely incapable, but we would have been better businessmen, we might have survived anyway. It was just simply a fact that high quality games not sold on this computer in sufficient numbers.

[turrican9]

Originally Posted by idrougge

I really prefer the bright colours of the CPC, but when I want to play Turrican, I choose the C64 version. The CPC version runs in a postage stamp-sized window and scrolls in character blocks. It's not a showcase for the CPC in any way.

And I choose the Amiga version