ChinnyVision: Switchblade

[chinnyhill10]

I look at Switchblade across all formats and put the GX4000 and CPC versions head to head:


www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-o3QQvuO_0


I hope my assumption that the extra colour in the Plus version is derived from some of the background objects being hardware sprites is correct!


CPC version is from my 6128, GX4000 is emulated. I had 3 fail on me so I'm not bothering to buy a fourth! Ironically the Switchblade image I'm playing is from my own cart!

[arnoldemu]

I hope my assumption that the extra colour in the Plus version is derived from some of the background objects being hardware sprites is correct!

Yes correct.

[EgoTrip]

Switchblade is a quality game, one of the jewels on the CPC. It also has one of the best music tracks on the CPC. Its games like this that really show the power of the CPC, even the standard version, next to the other 8-bits, puts them to shame.

[chinnyhill10]

Yes correct.

Phew! 

[CraigsBar]

Switchblade is a quality game, one of the jewels on the CPC. It also has one of the best music tracks on the CPC. Its games like this that really show the power of the CPC, even the standard version, next to the other 8-bits, puts them to shame.

and the plus version is perfection on a platform game

[Novabug]

One of the very best games on the CPC and GX4000. If only more games were programmed to this high quality on the GX, I may have had a longer life. Enjoyable video.

[Gryzor]

Thanks for the entertaining vid

I had a flash of inspiration, a cross between this and Rick Dangerous...

[Zoe Robinson]

I love your videos, Chinny - the intro sequence is brilliant.

Switchblade was one of my favourite games late into the CPC's run. I used to play it all the time with friends; although I don't recall any of us actually managing to finish it!

[MacDeath]

should have talked about stryker/striker in the crupt of trogan which uses the same "engine"... minus the use of hardsprites but with more rasters.

PLUS :


CPC :


It doesn't use hardsprites for some background (actually foregorund) setting elements as it is RAM based game (Disk) and those hardsprite would need a lot of RAM to be stored and extra code to be managed.

But a rare Mode1 game with usefull raster effects, compared to those speccy ports with 6 to 8 colours on screen yet somewhat monocolour game (Pacmania, blacktiger, even strider...)


the speccy version uses tiles in 12x16 pixels instead of 16x16 as on CPC.
This explains why they didn't used the attributes for extra colours on gamezone, but this enables for exact same tilemap from 320x200 to 256x192...

Switchblade is a speccyport done right as it went from CPC to speccy, not the other way.


interesting :
Striker in the crypt of trogan was also ported on speccy and actually uses attributes, hence some colour clashes between the 12x16 or 6x8 sized tiles and the 8x8 attributes characters... Well I think.
But the graphics being a bit more messy than the clean sqaure ones in Switchblade, it is not too bad.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzRXczBm0Wo


CPC version :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xgm2biUQO2Y

would have been perfect on ORIC with its 6 pixels wide atrributes.


Those games may compare with MYTH : history in the making on CPC/spectrum, ported the other way.

CPC :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=436ub4BgbHA

Speccy :
www.youtube.com/watch?v=evi2-Ew-SFg

Nice game actually, but could have used graphics with more than 2 colours per character (1bpp sucks), some rasters and extra Hardware sprites scenery settings.



The way to port from CPC to speccy with tiles going from 16x16 (8x8) to 12x16/ 6x8 is brilliant and I guess many retro-ports from speccy/MSX to CPC could actually use it the other way.

a 16x16 tile on speccy would become a 20x16 tile on CPC. This would enable for the use of exact same tilemap.
But it would perhaps lead to issues with simple characters : 8x8 being 10x8 would mean that you have half octet to cut here and there as in Mode1 4 pixels = 1 octet.


still nice video about switchblade and sorry for going out of topic again. Nice to See Amstrad getting best 8bit version sometimes.