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Hi from Yorkshire

Started by Loki, 11:31, 11 February 19

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Loki

Hello, just thought I'd introduce myself here. I've started rediscovering the CPC recently, it's something I have great memories of being the first computer I had, I got the CPC 464 for Christmas in I think it was 1984, I know the CPC was fairly new at the time and I remember going downstairs Xmas morning and finding it on the table, all wired up and ready to go, with a bunch of Amsoft games next to it. I'm sure many of you started the same way but the memories I have from that time are priceless. The CPC and Amiga were the main computers I grew up with and tbh I'm glad those were my childhood years as far as computers and gaming went, it was all new to everybody then and an exciting time to grow up in.


I've recently got back into things via emulation anyway, and not only is it great to revisit the games I loved as a kid, and also play ones I missed out on back then. So far though, I'm finding myself really impressed with some of the recent titles which have come out on the CPC as well, such Orion Prime, Shadows of Sergoth, Operation Alexandra, Doomsday Lost Echoes to name but a few. I don't know if people would agree, but I don't think we saw the full potential of the CPC back in the day and I think it was overlooked in favour of the Spectrum and C64, seeing some of these new games makes me realise just what the CPC could actually do and I wish we'd had more of that back then tbh.


Anyway, that's all for now, all the best and I'll look forward to hopefully talking to you all more soon.

Carnivius

Welcome. :)I'm a CPC 464 and Amiga guy too.
Hope you enjoy the site and discover more and more awesome CPC games both old and new. :)
Favorite CPC games: Count Duckula 3, Oh Mummy Returns, RoboCop Resurrection, Tankbusters Afterlife

ComSoft6128


keith56

Welcome to the forum!

Nice to hear your CPC Xmas story...
The way I remember it (may not be what really happened) was we bought ours from town, we had to wait around a while for it, and then it was brought home and plugged in... like yours, it came with a the amsoft games, it must have been around 1985

My dad had bought it for work, he used to write little programs to help him with calculations and things - and wrote little study games in basic to help us learn maths

I was immediately fascinated with it, and used it right up to the early 90's when I moved onto the PC... I had lots of fun writing programs and games, but I was only a basic programmer back then.

I think you're right about the CPC having a lot of potential, the CPC+ features were hardly used at all, and there are super clever programmers around now like 'batman group' doing things with the CRTC that the speccy just can't do!

I'm not sure on the C64's 'maximum capability', I know it's done some amazing things, but personally I think the color palette of the CPC is superior, and I prefer the way the cpc's Z80 works to the C64's 6502

I hope you keep enjoying the forums and CPC gaming!
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Learn ARM, 8086, Z80, 6502 or 68000 with my tutorials: www.assemblytutorial.com
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Gryzor

Welcome - both back to the platform and to our little community!


You're certainly right - today's titles show much of the overlooked potential. Much of the reason behind that is, I would guess, that people nowadays do it out of their love for the machine rather than a payday.


@keith56 should know what he's talking about ;)

Loki

Thanks for the welcome everyone, I certainly look forward to enjoying the forum and more CPC games. I'm still amazed tbh that not only can I revisit the classics but people are still developing quality titles over 30 years later. I've seen Batman Group's demo of Pinball Dreams too and that looked well impressive, look forward to the full game when it's eventually out. Also discovered the remake of Vampire, Phantomas 2.0 so will be giving that a go shortly.



I also used to program games and stuff in BASIC as well, teaching myself from programs in books and magazines and playing around with them to find out what does what and what happens if I change this bit, never managed anything too flash as I was never good at doing graphics but still had some fun doing it.


But yeah, it's great to see a good community for the CPC anyway, glad to see it's still alive :)

mr_lou

Welcome to the forum!

I'm also a CPC and Amiga dude. But the CPC weighs the most on the nostalgic scale. Lots of great memories there.

Quote from: Loki on 11:31, 11 February 19I'm sure many of you started the same way but the memories I have from that time are priceless.

Agreed! I felt my memories were so good that they had to be preserved. I felt I had to share them, so I turned them into a diskmag-like eBook (with supplemental videos).

Quote from: Loki on 20:36, 12 February 19
I also used to program games and stuff in BASIC as well, teaching myself from programs in books and magazines and playing around with them to find out what does what and what happens if I change this bit, never managed anything too flash as I was never good at doing graphics but still had some fun doing it.

Sounds like you've got a few stories you could tell as well.  :)
You got any of your disks or tapes from back then, with any of the stuff you did in BASIC?

Loki

I don't have any of them unfortunately, although I remember some of them really well. I would have been about six when I first got my Amstrad and I think about eight or nine when I first started playing around with BASIC, just because I loved the games I was playing and wanted to figure out how to make my own, so I started teaching myself just by messing around and experimenting with it.


I still recall the first real game I actually wrote back then, like most stuff I did it was simple and made entirely from ASCII graphics but it involved you as a robber, having to break out from prison, rob a bank then make your getaway and was essentially a series of minigames, starting by dodging the prison guard to escape, followed by having to fight a rival bank robber when you arrived at the bank, then grabbing bags of money from the bank and the final game had you speeding off in your car trying to keep it on the road. Looking back, it was pretty naff lol, basically the equivalent of a kid drawing pictures in crayon, the one on one fighting bit basically had two identical stick man figures made from O's and / and \ with three moves, hardly Street Fighter but back then I was well pleased with it and it impressed my friends when I showed it to them as well, most of them ended up attempting to program their own stuff and asking me to show them how to do it!


I had a look at your 8 Bit Memoirs website as well, so far I've only looked at the eBook as I've no way (yet) of sorting out a way to play the full content but there's some interesting stuff in the eBook, reminding me of my own experiences too. It's interesting too because when you mention "stories" I was wondering what sort of stories could be interesting to people, but reading that even simple things like memories of certain games are great not only to keep for posterity but for example, reading about Caves of Doom and remembering things about it myself from when I played that game as a kid. For example, I don't remember cheats for it but I do remember messing about with the editor more than the actual game, I'd never seen a game with a screen or level editor before so spent a lot of time playing with that too, and I cheated using that as well as I recall....

mr_lou

Quote from: Loki on 14:48, 14 February 19
I don't have any of them unfortunately, although I remember some of them really well. I would have been about six when I first got my Amstrad and I think about eight or nine when I first started playing around with BASIC, just because I loved the games I was playing and wanted to figure out how to make my own, so I started teaching myself just by messing around and experimenting with it.

Sounds very similar.  :)
Sad that you don't have any of your old stuff anymore.

I know I was rather lucky in that regard. I'd been stupid to sell my CPC464, along with my disks. So I'd actually also lost everything.
But then one day my cousin was on his way to throw out all of his CPC stuff!. On the way he got the thought of swinging by me to hear if I'd want it all instead of him throwing it out....   :-X
Extremely lucky I was home at the time! Otherwise it would have been gone! Crazy!  :'(

On my cousin's disks and tapes I found a lot of crispy nostalgia, including all my BASIC tunes I coded as a kid. Talk about a nostalgic trip.

It's scary to think about that all of that could have been lost forever.  :o

Quote from: Loki on 14:48, 14 February 19I still recall the first real game I actually wrote back then.....

Sounds like you were doing the exact same thing as many of us did.  :)
If you're really passionate, then you could make it a project to re-create one of those old games of yours. Remakes are very popular these days.  ;)

Quote from: Loki on 14:48, 14 February 19I had a look at your 8 Bit Memoirs website as well, so far I've only looked at the eBook.....

The only difference between the PDF/ePub version and the Blu-ray version of my issue of 8-bit Memoirs, is the additional 5 hours of background music + 9 hours of supplemental video showing the games and homebrew projects I'm writing about.

I'd love to read stories similar to my own but obviously written by someone else, and see videos of their childhood creations. But not many people have managed to keep their old tapes and disks from back then. And also, writing an issue of 8-bit Memoirs is a lot of work, so it's not for everyone.

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