News:

Printed Amstrad Addict magazine announced, check it out here!

Main Menu
avatar_chinnyhill10

ChinnyVision - The New Zealand Story

Started by chinnyhill10, 13:20, 20 February 15

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

chinnyhill10

I'm afraid the CPC version gets a kicking in this due to it being even worse than I remembered. It suffers awfully as soon as you play it alongside, well,  any other version to be honest.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE0r26emH1s
--
ChinnyVision - Reviews Of Classic Games Using Original Hardware
chinnyhill10 - YouTube

VincentGR


CraigsBar

I fondly remember the CPC version of this one. Loading it from Big Box tape back when I was a kiddie LOL.


Just last year I bought a 3inch disc version from trade in post and I thought then that I remembered the screen bigger!


Still a great little game tho. Now I have to get hold of the Megadrive version, I never realised one existed. That will be a must have ROM on my JXD S7800b ;)


Thanks for video, another highly entertaining Chinnyvision production.

IRC:  #Retro4All on Freenode

chinnyhill10

Quote from: CraigsBar on 19:53, 20 February 15
I fondly remember the CPC version of this one. Loading it from Big Box tape back when I was a kiddie LOL.


Just last year I bought a 3inch disc version from trade in post and I thought then that I remembered the screen bigger!


Still a great little game tho. Now I have to get hold of the Megadrive version, I never realised one existed. That will be a must have ROM on my JXD S7800b ;)


Thanks for video, another highly entertaining Chinnyvision production.


Megadrive version is a must own. But as I say, the level layouts are totally different. On the upside if you like TNZS then its effectively a whole new game to play!


As for the CPC, I think back in the day I would have tolerated it more (can only guess as I never had it) but looking at it now its the worst of the conversions by far. The Speccy version might be sparten but it plays well.

--
ChinnyVision - Reviews Of Classic Games Using Original Hardware
chinnyhill10 - YouTube

VincentGR

Megadrive had always different layouts, see chelnov, sunset riders, toki, prince of persia etc etc.

chinnyhill10

Quote from: VincentGR on 20:32, 20 February 15
Megadrive had always different layouts, see chelnov, sunset riders, toki, prince of persia etc etc.


In this case they appear to have ported the game from an early version of the arcade board. So no idea of if it was deliberate or if the developers just got a cab that happened to be running the older code.
--
ChinnyVision - Reviews Of Classic Games Using Original Hardware
chinnyhill10 - YouTube

Sykobee (Briggsy)

I had this, and because I didn't know better I made the most of the fact it was a terrible game. Although I think I ended up using an infinite lives cheap because of dying too often because of the terrible scrolling (which I believe was done in software despite scrolling in character sized units). At least it had music.

chinnyhill10

I was musing on Twitter that the Codemasters CJ games (very similar to New Zealand Story) never got ported to the CPC. The scrolling on the Speccy versions of those is pretty dodgy. Did they avoid porting the game due to it just being too hard to do well (and quickly) on the CPC. Given it probably would have been a straight Spectrum port?
--
ChinnyVision - Reviews Of Classic Games Using Original Hardware
chinnyhill10 - YouTube

seanb

Loved this game. Maybe because I hadn't played the other version I thought the graphics were ok and the scrolling never bothered me. I do prefer the graphics over the c64. At least you can work out what they are.

I loved this game on the cpc. Got quite far in it, never knew there was a cheat for it
Thou shall not question Captain Wrong!

chinnyhill10

Quote from: seanb on 01:15, 22 February 15
Loved this game. Maybe because I hadn't played the other version I thought the graphics were ok and the scrolling never bothered me. I do prefer the graphics over the c64. At least you can work out what they are.

I loved this game on the cpc. Got quite far in it, never knew there was a cheat for it


C64 graphics really aren't a problem when you start to play the game. At least they move smoothly. On the CPC if it moved any more slowly it would be a Dizzy game.


Or chess.  :D
--
ChinnyVision - Reviews Of Classic Games Using Original Hardware
chinnyhill10 - YouTube

seanb

I'll have to fire it up again. Played the Amiga version since I last played the cpc one so will see if the scrolling starts to affect me.
Never did as a child
Thou shall not question Captain Wrong!

EgoTrip

Someone should make this properly for the CPC.

I used to play this loads on a friends Amiga back in the day but I sucked at it. Never played the CPC version and have no intention on doing so after watching this video.

chinnyhill10

Quote from: EgoTrip on 21:21, 22 February 15
Someone should make this properly for the CPC.

I used to play this loads on a friends Amiga back in the day but I sucked at it. Never played the CPC version and have no intention on doing so after watching this video.


A Plus version would be good with hardware scrolling and hardware sprites. Possibly using the assets from the Master System version due to it also being Z80 based.
--
ChinnyVision - Reviews Of Classic Games Using Original Hardware
chinnyhill10 - YouTube

seanb

So I played it again.
still like it. The scrolling want too bad but I can see why people wouldn't like it.

Was tempted to see if the whale would eat me fit the first end of level bosss but decided to just shoot it instead.

Guess my destructive side won out against my curiousity
Thou shall not question Captain Wrong!

sigh

No offence to the team that worked on this as you never know the restrictions or sort of a scheduling they had to port this game, but I paid full price for this game and did not like it at all.
The sprite - I coulddn't make out what it was supposed to be. Even the sprite enemies are very hard to read and to see what sort of creature they were supposed to represent.
The scrolling is what really kills this game for me. I found it to be a real eyesore when I used to own my CPC colour monitor and the gameplay just wasn't fun because of this.
Graphically, it reminds me very much of Rodland which also suffered the same problems.

The C64 version sprite looks more like Tweety Pie, but it plays really nicely. The speccy looks like it has a much smoother experience and I'm sure with the full soundtrack, it would be an enjoyable game to play. Needless to say, I had a copy of this game on my amiga later on and I loved it.

VincentGR

Quote from: sigh on 01:43, 23 February 15Graphically, it reminds me very much of Rodland which also suffered the same problems.

That is what I was thinking all day yesterday  :-X

Sykobee (Briggsy)

It would be a nice project to redo this properly.


On the CPC it needs a larger screen, but the four way scrolling might still have to be push (using character scroll, not software) - although it would be better because of the bigger screen.


On the Plus it could use the hardware scrolling, and sprites for the main sprite or scoreboard overlay.


Both need better background graphics.

Shaun M. Neary

This was an abortion in a box, I'm sorry.


I remember loading this up and thinking "What the fuck is going on? Arcade conversions were way better two years earlier!"
I could live with multi load games if the main memory was used up on nice graphics etc, but this looked minimalistic.

I was even more surprised to see that this was done by Choice, as I was convinced this was another ballsup by Probe.
Choice didn't exactly have a great track record with arcade conversions in my view at that time. I still hadn't forgiven them for Kung Fu Master.

They didn't do too badly with movie licences though, I remember enjoying Rambo II.
In terms of release period, I felt sorry for anyone that bought this over Rainbow Islands! xD
Currently playing on: 2xCPC464, 1xCPC6128, 1x464Plus, 1x6128Plus, 2xGX4000. M4 board, ZMem 1MB and still forever playing Bruce Lee.
No cheats, snapshots or emulation. I play my games as they're intended to be played. What about you?

Powered by SMFPacks Menu Editor Mod