"Chip Sonderheft" CPC games Top 20 lists

[Morn]

Hi all!

In Germany, Chip magazine has published a special issue (CHIP Kiosk - Kult-Computer der 80er - Happy Computer) about retrocomputing this month, also celebrating the 30th anniversary of Happy Computer magazine.  It's really very nicely done and with coffee table book-quality photos throughout. They also include a DVD-ROM with emulators and a few videos about the different systems.

They mainly write about computers that were popular in Germany in the 1980s of course, so they primarily cover the C64, Amiga 500, Atari 8 bit and ST, and of course the Amstrad/Schneider CPC (and I think even the Robotron Z80 clones are covered briefly too).

They rate the CPC very positively in the magazine (a bit less so in the video on the DVD-ROM), so as a Amstrad fan I'm pretty pleased with their articles. It's all very nice and balanced and not so C64-centric as some of the other retro gaming special issues I've seen.

What I also like about this issue are their Top 20 lists of games for the various computers. Such lists are always an interesting way to learn about games you did not know before or to rediscover ones you might have forgotten. Hence I wanted to post them here.

So without further ado here's their Amstrad CPC list:

1. Spindizzy Spindizzy - CPCWiki
2. Tau Ceti Tau Ceti - CPCWiki
3. Knight Lore http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1258
4. Get Dexter Get Dexter - CPCWiki
5. Driller http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=772
6. Bomb Jack http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=448
7. Lords of Midnight Lords of Midnight - CPCWiki
8. Head over Heels Head Over Heels - CPCWiki
9. Gryzor http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Gryzor
10. Solomon's Key http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1983
11. Tomahawk http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Tomahawk
12. Tempest http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Tempest
13. Gauntlet http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Gauntlet
14. Mission Elevator http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1434
15. Starstrike II http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Starstrike_II
16. Ikari Warriors http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1138
17. 3D Grand Prix http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/3D_Grand_Prix
18. Renegade http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Renegade
19. Cybernoid http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=55
20. Zombi http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Zombi

And here are the C64 and Atari 8 bit lists—quite a few of those games were ported to the CPC, so this is also interesting. "(CPC)" means there's a CPC version.

C64:

1. Maniac Mansion
2. Winter Games (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Winter_Games
3. Elite (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Elite
4. Pirates! (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Pirates!
5. Paradroid
6. Ultima IV
7. International Soccer (Emlyn Hughes IS, which was very much inspired by IS, was ported to the CPC, so I'd count this as yes) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Emlyn_Hughes_International_Soccer
8. The Bard's Tale (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=424
9. Impossible Mission (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1145
10. Wizball (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1670
11. Silent Service (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Silent_Service
12. Great Giana Sisters (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1007
13. The Sentinel (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1903
14. Bubble Bobble (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=483
15. Leaderboard (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Leaderboard
16. Gunship (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1032
17. Ghosts'n Goblins (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Ghosts_%27n%27_Goblins
18. The last Ninja (well Last Ninja 2 was ported, so we can say yes here I think) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1281
19. Uridium (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=2239
20. Pitstop II (ported to the CPC but apparently unreleased) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=3701

And here's the Atari 8 bit list. Not too many CPC ports here, but there are a few:

1. M.U.L.E.
2. Rescue on Fractalus! (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Rescue_on_Fractalus!
3. Boulder Dash (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Boulder_Dash
4. Star Raiders (well, there is Star Raiders II for the CPC at least, although gameplay is quite different)
5. Mercenary (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1392
6. Ballblazer (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=359
7. Dropzone
8. The Seven Cities of Gold
9. Spelunker
10. Archon (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=294
11. Lode Runner (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1311
12. International Karate (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1166
13. Koronis Rift (CPC) http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1267
14. Eastern Front
15. Bruce Lee (CPC) http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Bruce_Lee
16. Flight Simulator II
17. Choplifter
18. Montezuma's Revenge
19. Muder on the Zinderneuf
20. River Raid

[EgoTrip]

Cant speak for the C64 and Atari lists, having not played most of them, but in the CPC list there is only 5 games I would consider in my personal top 20 list.

[dcdrac]

I had Gunship for the CPC

CPCRULEZ &#9733 AMSTRAD CPC &#9733 GAMESLIST &#9733 GUNSHIP (c) MICROPROSE

[Bryce]

On my way to the nearest kiosk....

Bryce.

[Morn]

Cant speak for the C64 and Atari lists, having not played most of them, but in the CPC list there is only 5 games I would consider in my personal top 20 list.

True, that's what I think what makes these lists so interesting. That's also why I think you really have to combine the lists. I mean "Pirates!" is a classic on any platform, it would deserve to be on the CPC list too I think. But they probably wanted to avoid repetition too, so they tried to pick 20 different games for each list. Otherwise the Atari ST/Amiga lists might also be identical more or less.

I had Gunship for the CPC

CPCRULEZ &#9733 AMSTRAD CPC &#9733 GAMESLIST &#9733 GUNSHIP (c) MICROPROSE

You're right. In the magazine, they said something like "What Gunship was for C64 users, Tomahawk was for the CPC." I thought that meant Gunship was not ported to the CPC, but maybe they simply considered it inferior to Tomahawk? Can't say for myself, I've never been a fan of helicopter flight sims (too complicated to fly IMO).

On my way to the nearest kiosk....

Absolutely, this effort deserves to be supported. For once its not the usual "C64/Amiga was best, everything else sucked" kind of midset. I mean I like the Amiga and C64, but I think the CPC often gets an undeserved bad rap in articles about retrocomputing.


Oh, I forgot, on page 141, they list CPC-Wiki as the recommended CPC site! Combined with a bit of bitching and moaning about what happened to the German CPC forum.


Martin


P.S. Sorry about the double-spaced line breaks. Everything looks normal in the edit box, I don't know what's happening here.

[Morn]

And just so R-Type fans don't get upset that their favourite game hasn't been included yet, here are the Atari ST and Amiga lists. Oooh, Midwinter. Oooh, Pinball Dreams. Some really good stuff here. No love for Falcon though, how sad. I spent a lot of time in Falcon on the Amiga. I mean Interceptor isn't bad, but it's far less realistic than Falcon. No Red Storm Rising either. Tsk, tsk. Oh well.


How can they rate Lotus 1 higher than Lotus 2? I mean that stupid permanent split screen alone was so terrible...


Again, I think you have to mentally combine these two lists into one and think of it as the 16-bit list. Still, there are quite a few decent ports to the CPC here too.


Atari ST


1. Dungeon Master
2. Carrier Command Carrier Command - CPCWiki
3. Typhoon Thompson
4. Speedball 2
5. Midi Maze
6. Kick Off http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1240
7. The Pawn http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1612
8. Oids
9. Virus
10. Prince of Persia Prince of Persia - CPCWiki
11. Stunt Car Racer Stunt car racer - CPCWiki
12. Sundog
13. Midwinter
14. Arkanoid http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=298
15. Starglider Starglider - CPCWiki
16. Tower of Babel
17. Rick Dangerous 2 Rick Dangerous 2 - CPCWiki
18. Metrocross
19. Goldrunner
20. Xenon II


Amiga 1000/500/2000


1. Lemmings Lemmings - CPCWiki
2. Populous
3. Turrican II Turrican 2 - CPCWiki
4. Rainbow Islands http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1751
5. SimCity http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/SimCity
6. Marble Madness http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1356
7. Sensible Soccer
8. Formula One Grand Prix (unreleased for the CPC?)
9. Battle Isle
10. Shanghai http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1917
11. Defender of the Crown http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Defender_of_the_Crown
12. R-Type http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/R-Type
13. Eye of the Beholder
14. Battle Squadron
15. Pinball Dreams
16. It Came From the Desert
17. Lotus Turbo Challenge
18. F/A-18 Interceptor
19. TV Sports Football (yup, this is an American football game)
20. Blood Money

[Morn]

P.S. Now I notice they have an image of the page with the CPC-Wiki mention (bottom right on the right page): http://www.chip-kiosk.de/media/produkte/2013_CHIP_SoHe/Kult-Computer/Community_System-Hilfe_G.jpg


CPC-Wiki's 15 minutes of fame it seems! 

[TFM]

Well, surely a nice magazine for the "whole retro colloctor". But for me as CPC user, 10 bucks for that ... I dunno.


BTW: Gunship is way superior to Thomahawk on CPC. I spend 100 hours or more with Gunship, an excellent game! And yes, there was a German version too. 

[TFM]

Also pretty sad that they don't mention the only German CPC forum left. Their effort in retro research is not really poor, but they could have done better. IMHO it's pretty superficial.

[Morn]

I'd say it's a big step up from the usual C64-slanted German retro special issues. Sure, they could have done a better job, but I think the idea was to make something very accessible like the English retro mags. So it's not very technical but more about the games and how the various systems were connected. E.g., the Jay Miner connection and the family feud (Tramiel on both sides) between Atari and Commodore.


The CPC getting mentioned in the same breath as the C64 and Amiga is a big deal I think, especially when they are not just mocking the CPC's lack of hardware sprites or scrolling. And of course there are also economic reasons they have to include more than one system.


It's not perfect but much better than just translating articles from the English "Retro Gamer" magazine or doing a C64 anniversary mag only. And CPC-Wiki gets mentioned, so at least in that regard they've done their homework. For the CPC retro scene this magazine is good news I think and will get quite a few people to become interested in the CPC again because it's not treated like dirt for once. 

[Bryce]

Just picked up a copy and reading it at the moment. What an excellent read No serious "Fanboyism" spotted yet.

@TFM: They also mention "Der Verein zum Erhalt klassischer Computer" if that's the German Forum you were referring to.

Bryce.

[Devilmarkus]

No, there exist a real German CPC-Forum:

Schneider / Amstrad CPC Forum - Index

[TFM]

@TFM: They also mention "Der Verein zum Erhalt klassischer Computer" if that's the German Forum you were referring to.

OMG! No! They have a defined Commodore bias. The club behind the forum is 100% commodore, and it's no CPC specific forum at all.


The forum I refer to is the only pure CPC forum in German language:
Schneider / Amstrad CPC Forum - Index


With good 50 members it's of course not as big as other fora, but it's CPC specific and in German. And you will get qualified help there. 

[Devilmarkus]

With good 50 members it's of course not as big as other fora, but it's CPC specific and in German.

Sure it only has so few members, because there are other "more important" fora and so there's no reason to advertise it  

[TFM]

I think that 50+ members are very good for Germany. How much active sceners do you count?



Alphabetically ordered...


- Bryce (lifes at the moment in DE)
- BSC
- Devilmarkus
- MaV (ok, Austria, but same language)
- Octoate
- Prodatron
- Tolkin
- TFM


and of course the other forum members.


Ain't that much left.

[Devilmarkus]

I gave it up to count them

[Bryce]

I've visited it in the past. In some categories there are 70 Threads, but all were started by the same person and 90% of the posts seem to be from that same person. That's not a forum, it's a soap box!

Bryce.

[Devilmarkus]

Sure, but somewhere we need to start...

[Morn]

To get back on topic, one thing that the magazine only mentions indirectly (p. 102/103) is the trajectory of the German home computer market, which I think was a bit different from the US and UK markets: In the late 1970s/early 1980s, arcade games and home consoles seemed to be far more popular in Germany than computers, so unlike in the UK or US, people did not already have a PET/VIC-20/Speccy in large numbers when the CPC appeared.

In the mid-1980s the youth protection laws were revised amid a big media frenzy about violence in video games, leading to a ban of arcade games from areas where minors had access (Goldene Ära der Arcade-Spiele – Wikipedia). That caused home computers to really take off on a wider scale. Also, there were very attractive tax breaks when you e.g. purchased a C64 and claimed it was part of your home office. That's why the CPC came out at such an opportune moment for Germany and was the second-best-selling computer after the C64 for many months (as the CPC sales chart on p. 26 of the magazine shows).

Schneider (Amstrad) was big, really big in Germany in 1985 and this isn't always fully acknowledged. And later Schneider apparently sold the first IBM-compatible PC for less than 2,000 DM, which was a psychologically important milestone. Schneider's PC segment was later crushed by Vobis, which in turn was crushed by Media Markt/Saturn, which is the market situation we still have today.

Martin

[sigh]

Not really feeling that C64 list:

Way of the Exploding Fist
IK+
Creatures
Spy vs Spy
StreetFighter (American Version)
Ninja Spirit
.......

All great C64 games that I would of loved to have seen in the list.

[ivarf]

To get back on topic, one thing that the magazine only mentions indirectly (p. 102/103) is the trajectory of the German home computer market, which I think was a bit different from the US and UK markets: In the late 1970s/early 1980s, arcade games and home consoles seemed to be far more popular in Germany than computers, so unlike in the UK or US, people did not already have a PET/VIC-20/Speccy in large numbers when the CPC appeared.

In the mid-1980s the youth protection laws were revised amid a big media frenzy about violence in video games, leading to a ban of arcade games from areas where minors had access (Goldene Ära der Arcade-Spiele – Wikipedia). That caused home computers to really take off on a wider scale. Also, there were very attractive tax breaks when you e.g. purchased a C64 and claimed it was part of your home office. That's why the CPC came out at such an opportune moment for Germany and was the second-best-selling computer after the C64 for many months (as the CPC sales chart on p. 26 of the magazine shows).

Schneider (Amstrad) was big, really big in Germany in 1985 and this isn't always fully acknowledged. And later Schneider apparently sold the first IBM-compatible PC for less than 2,000 DM,

I would love to see a scan of this sometime. Especially the sales numbers and more about how well Schneider did with the CPC

[TFM]

I've visited it in the past. In some categories there are 70 Threads, but all were started by the same person and 90% of the posts seem to be from that same person. That's not a forum, it's a soap box!

Bryce.

Well, why don't you contribute? Then there would be more diversity. 

[Bryce]

Because there's a perfectly good Forum here and it's in English, so it will be read and contributed to by much more international members.

Bryce.

[TFM]

The point was to have a German forum. There are still a lot of people who don't like to do everything in English, because it's tedious for them.

[Devilmarkus]

For me for example it's very hard to read technical documents in non-German... So it's very sad, that for example Kevin's CPC documents dont exist in German, too...
Sure, I know English, but knowing a language and really understanding it, is a different pair of shoes (At least for me)