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avatar_Xyphoe

Best budget games?

Started by Xyphoe, 02:33, 17 May 10

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Xyphoe

Hi guys

Seems people enjoyed the top 20 Amstrad games vid I put up on YouTube, and have had requests to do more like the 'worst ever games' (I'll do another topic for that one) but interestingly someone asked to do the best 'budget' games!

Sounds like fun ... but there's so many of them I need your help to narrow the list down :(

The criteria is that they can't be 're-releases' of previously full price games, so forget about Hit Squad, Kixx, GBH, Tronix, etc!
And I guess they must have cost less than £3.99 maximum in price.

Some companies to think about - Codemasters, Mastertronic, Alternative, Hi-Tec, Zeppelin, Firebird, Players, etc

So let me know your fav's and your lists!


I'll start off with some ....


Fantasy World Dizzy
Killer Cobra
Turbo The Tortoise
Stryker In The Crypts Of Trojan
Mission Genocide
Chuckie Egg
Kane
Chickin Chase
Thrust
Potsworth & Co
Arcade Flight Simulator
The Island Of Dr Destructo
Warewolves Of London
Into The Eagles Nest


Also were the following released on budget initially?

Spy Vs Spy series?
Boulderdash series?

ukmarkh

#1
Feud
Classic Invaders
Joe Blade
Bosconian 87
RebelStar
Wizards Lair
Chevy Chase
Agent X II
Manic Miner
One Man and his Droid
Ghost Hunter
Ballblazer
Fruity Frank
The last Commando or Commando Tracer
3D Grand Prix
BMX Simulator
Beach Buggy Simulator
Kick Start
ATV
Fly Spy - probably the best budget game ever made! Richard Aplin did this one.




All I can think of at the moe

MacDeath

#2
Sorry but we the french won't help a lot...

We had no idea of the "Budget tapes" phenomenon as we used a lot of Disks...

And well...
Personally, I bought a lot of compilations indeed, this is some kind of budgeting...


yet a "worst of" could be sweet...

What about a video on notorious games that where speccy ported ?

Lot of great arcade names were...

wonderBoy 2, Strider, PacMania, Super Hang On, Black Tiger, R-Type, Enduro Racer, Khharnov...And many many more.



Also please you could have put a link there...

[youtube=yErkvcp9x0w]Xyphoe's Best of Top20 1/2[/youtube]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErkvcp9x0w


[youtube=Kj-bYRyDdJ0]Xyphoe's Best of Top20 2/2[/youtube]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj-bYRyDdJ0



PS : Post edited so we have access to the vids from here...

Xyphoe

Quote from: ukmarkh on 05:43, 17 May 10
Feud
Classic Invaders
Joe Blade
Bosconian 87
RebelStar
Wizards Lair
Chevy Chase
Agent X II
Manic Miner
One Man and his Droid
Ghost Hunter
Ballblazer
Fruity Frank
The last Commando or Commando Tracer
3D Grand Prix
BMX Simulator
Beach Buggy Simulator
Kick Start
ATV
Fly Spy - probably the best budget game ever made! Richard Aplin did this one.

Fruity Frank!!! How could I miss that??
  Although dude ... I'm not sure it qualifies as a budget game.
  According to TACGR it was sold initially for £6.95 .... not sure how   accurate that is tho!
  http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/filedetail.php?recid=348

Totally agreed on Rebelstar, Manic Miner, and very nearly put Chevy Chase and FlySpy on mine too.
Not so sure on Joe Blade but people seem to have a lot of affection for it! ;)

Some of the others I haven't actually played before, so I'll give them a go later tonight :)
 

Xyphoe

Quote from: MacDeath on 07:07, 17 May 10
Sorry but we the french won't help a lot...

We had no idea of the "Budget tapes" phenomenon as we used a lot of Disks...

And well...
Personally, I bought a lot of compilations indeed, this is some kind of budgeting...


yet a "worst of" could be sweet...

What about a video on notorious games that where speccy ported ?

Lot of great arcade names were...

wonderBoy 2, Strider, PacMania, Super Hang On, Black Tiger, R-Type, Enduro Racer, Khharnov...And many many more.



Also please you could have put a link there...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErkvcp9x0w


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj-bYRyDdJ0

Oh yea, of course you guys in France didn't have much of a budget game scene or apparently many cassette releases? I almost wish we over here were forced to get disk machines from the off, whilst there's fond memories of the tape loading noises and loading screens ... its ruined by awful loading times, the dreaded multiload or the even more dreaded tape loading error after 20minutes!!!! Were there any dedicated budget game software houses in France, or Europe as a whole at all?

The Speccy-port wall of shame is an interesting idea ... maybe the 'best of the speccy ports' would be the most interesting? Or maybe the most notorious and high profile/big releases that were done this way?!


Thanks for posting the links to the vids ... I do the vids for fun and to make a contribution to the scene and memory of the Amstrad, not to promote anything else - hopefully the machine will get more recognition and respect it deserves  ... but yes thanks :)

MacDeath

#5
If you look at French game productions of the era...
It was quite quality oriented actually.

As the Amstrad was the main 8 bit format here...it was the spearhead of the 8 bit market.

So no "Budget release from the beginning"... nor Speccy ports...

Many adventure games per example...(ERE informatique, Ubi soft) or games that were released on various computers (crossdevs).

This actually was a good long term strategy, as some MAjor French company still exist nowadays (UbiSoft, Infogramme...) thx to this professionnal way of doing things...

Sometimes games were published as listings you could code yourself in basic in specialised magazines, but Tapes were rarely given with magazines if I remember well.

I heard that in britain the tape format was particulary popular due to the huge Spectrum success, and you could even have Tape softs released on Radio broadcast...

In France we had the Minitel, a sort of Pre-internet terminal (an equivalent existed in Albion), which allowed to actually download games as if on some sort of internet, in the late 80's/early 90's...
This was quite popular, yet I didn't used this.



Gryzor

Oh Mummy - does that count? Was it released by itself?

Also, anything by BubbleBus software. Classic Axiens, Classic Invaders, that Pacman clone...

Axelay

Only ones I can think of that havent been mentioned are Killapede & Super Robin Hood.  But I'd have placed Feud, Flyspy, Kane & Thrust ahead of them.

Into the Eagles Nest & Wizard's Lair were re-releases of full or mid price games though.

Ritchardo

#8
Most of my faves have been mentioned before but here's another lot to mull over!

Spellbound
Knight Tyme
Seymour Goes to Hollywood
Postman Pat
Advanced Pinball Simulator
Grand Prix Simulator 2
The Wild Bunch
Rock Star Ate My Hamster

And one that I've not played yet (it's on the list!) but gets generally good feedback is Jonny Quest - might be worth a look.

Although I would also argue that:

Oh Mummy
3D Grand Prix
Manic Miner
Fruity Frank
Ballblazer
Werewolves of London
Into the Eagle's Nest
Wizard's Lair

Should be struck from the list as they weren't originally budget titles IIRC!


Xyphoe

Quote from: Gryzor on 09:35, 17 May 10
Oh Mummy - does that count? Was it released by itself?

Amsoft titles aren't included :)

Believe it or not they were originally going for between £7 - £9!!

TACGR seems to collaborate this - http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/filedetail.php?recid=639

Actually they seem to have all the Amsoft games listed at £8.95!

Imagine paying nine quid for Bridge-It and Homerunner!!  :o

woody.cool

I never bought any budget games that I can remember.
Where I lived, the CPC was the most popular system and I always ended up buying full priced games on disc or tape.

Cholo

I had so many budget title back then as it was pretty much all i could afford at the beginning.

Good ones (aka i played em quite a lot):
- Feud
- Kane
- The Apprentice
- Spiky Harold
- Ninja Scooter Simulator
- Chronos
- The Island of Dr. Destucto
- Mission Genoside

Ok games, but quite average:
- Chiller
- One Man and his Droid
- Caves of Doom
- 180
- Radzone
- Scout Steps Out
- Park Patrol
- Rigels Revenge
- The Ninja Master
- Willow Pattern
- Mission Jupiter
- Wacky Darts

More game that probably fit (but i didnt play at the time):
- Dizzy
- Fruit Machine Simulator

woody.cool

Quote from: Cholo on 20:55, 18 May 10
- One Man and his Droid
Never like it


Quote from: Cholo on 20:55, 18 May 10
- Dizzy
Absolutely LOVE this game. Still play the original version, even now.
Love the music on it as well  ;D
To me, it seemed that Code Masters released a lot of quality games for the CPC.

Gryzor

@Cholo: The Apprentice was the one with Alan Sugar the little wizard, was it not? I don't remember getting anywhere with it...

Chiller, too, was so darn hard!!!

cpc4eva

there were some very good budget releases and most of them have been named by other members but I believe the best cpc budget games were


inspector hecti at the interchange
anarchy
gp simulator 1 &2
frostbyte


i may be mistaken but i think they were all budget titles


:))

ukmarkh

I quite likeed Anarchy and Terra Cognita

arnoldemu

Quote from: MacDeath on 08:23, 17 May 10
If you look at French game productions of the era...
It was quite quality oriented actually.

As the Amstrad was the main 8 bit format here...it was the spearhead of the 8 bit market.
In the UK I knew nothing of the success of Amstrad in France until Amstrad Action wrote an article about it. (Around 1989 I think).
Then I was amazed to see some of the games.
We did see some of those games here, but I didn't really know they were from France, and I didn't really know that the CPC was so popular there.
Of course, we also got tape versions of the games ;)


Quote from: MacDeath on 08:23, 17 May 10
    Sometimes games were published as listings you could code yourself in basic in specialised magazines, but Tapes were rarely given with magazines if I remember well.
Same here in the UK.

The Amstrad specific magazines had type-ins, mostly utilities it seems.
Some other multi-format magazines also had type ins (c+vg or similar).

And in the UK, Amstrad Action was the only Amstrad magazine to have tapes on the front.
At first it was only 1 time a year, then in 1990 or so it was every month.

However, both the Speccy and C64 regularly had tapes on the front of their magazines.
I don't know why we didn't with the Amstrad.


Quote from: MacDeath on 08:23, 17 May 10
  I heard that in britain the tape format was particulary popular due to the huge Spectrum success, and you could even have Tape softs released on Radio broadcast...
For me I would say it was because of the price. A budget cassette game was £1.99 (later £3.99). full price cassette were £9.99. and disc were £14.99.
Even blank discs were £3.99.

So buying cassettes was most popular because of price. Also, If you were my friend I would have happily transfered them to disc for you.
Really a lot of my friends had disc machines, or 464 with disc drives, but they also owned lots of tape based software too.
I would not buy disc games myself, instead they were given as presents for birthday or christmas, mainly because of the high price.
But I bought quite a lot of tape games because I could afford them.

I would not say they were popular because of the Spectrum, more just the price.

Well here in the UK I don't remember tape games on broadcasts, but I do remember them on Prestel (a viewdata dial-up service) and for the Acorn BBC also on Teletext. (Our family computer was an Acorn BBC and we had a teletext adaptor so we could download software from here. I later bought the CPC for myself... took a lot of mowing the lawn and washing cars to save up the money ;) ).

Quote from: MacDeath on 08:23, 17 May 10
In France we had the Minitel, a sort of Pre-internet terminal (an equivalent existed in Albion), which allowed to actually download games as if on some sort of internet, in the late 80's/early 90's...
This was quite popular, yet I didn't used this.
When I was reading about this, I thought that everyone in France used it and there was a massive active community.
Here in the UK, prestel wasn't as well known, so much less people used it.
And Teletext software, well you needed an acorn bbc and teletext adaptor and that would cost about £700 together! So almost nobody used it ;)

I hope some of this download from minitel has been preserved?
My games. My Games
My website with coding examples: Unofficial Amstrad WWW Resource

Cholo

Quote from: Gryzor on 08:13, 19 May 10
@Cholo: The Apprentice was the one with Alan Sugar the little wizard, was it not? I don't remember getting anywhere with it...
Well, its one of those games that its virtual impossible to finish (unless you cheat and even then .. :D ). Nice and colourfull mode 0 game with nice large sprites and lots of rooms to visit and so many hidden rooms too. All that for just 1.99 ;D  I played it for weeks even tho it has a nasty way of you ending up being multi-killed if you enter a room wrongly. One of the really early game so it could easily have been sold as a full priced game (especially if they fixed the death bugs). Sure its a bit basic, but it fully lives up to games like "the devils crown" and similar.

Only had tapes back in the day, so tapes made a big impact in Denmark (floppies of any kinda was only for "business" people really).  Especially as the discs was even more expensive than in the UKs. Also having games that low ment even kids could buy games. I do miss seeing xbox 360 games at £1.99 today. Still we have way more used games running around i guess.

Grim

Quote from: arnoldemu on 15:52, 19 May 10I hope some of this download from minitel has been preserved?
Unfortunately, the software available from Minitel were merely snapshots (ie. loaded into memory and executed immediately, therefore excluding multiload programs. At least, all the games I downloaded back then were like this). If you wanted to replay a game, you had to download it again, hence paying the phone connection cost again. A backup copy could only be done if you had an MF2/Hackit/Mirage Imager/etc or Z80 haXXoRing skills to modify the Amcharge program.

MacDeath

The minitel terminal was free, because you paid only for the comunication, also if you wanted more advanced terminals you could buy them (combi-Phone+Minitels...)
Was very used by companies...

So yeah, lots of poeple had the minitel yet because it was additionnal stuff on the bill, not used that much.
Exemple : the games available on minitel (like modern flash games on Websites...) weren't free.

Amscharge wasn't free too.
The connection kit (cable and loading software) was to buy and so on, but a lot of advertisement for this was done in Amstrad 100% per exemple.


Yes, we used to get Disk games for birthdays or Christmas and so on... So we mostly bought/asked for compilation.
Some were full of cheap and junk games, other were Awesome Hits only.

But if I remember well we had those budget games...
I remember Mastertronic games and Amsofts...


I had some of them from the time i had my CPC464.
Because at the beginning of CPC and especially 464 (1984-1985) the software offer wasn't that well developped.

French companies started it more from 1985-86 and the Awesome productions date more from 1988+...

So from what i remember, my games on Cassette :

--Chiller : I liked it actually. Colourfull yet hard because not that well playable.

--Locomotion : fun little puzzle game but I was too young to be good at such games.

--Molecule Man : I just could figure how to play it. Also it was damn long to load and shitty Speccy monochrome game.

--Astro Attack : sweet labyrinth shooter in my memory.

--Formula one simulator.

Other games : the boeing 747 simulator, Sorcery (of course...), Roland in Time (Doctor Who actually..lol...).

I had no Multi load games on tape (of I don't remember)
But when we switched to a 6128, we had a Tape-player with special cable.
This Tape-player was specific for computers (third party supplier) so it could manage multiload...but it when broken and my brother dismantled it (to see how it was inside...lol...)
Yet we stil got the cable (DIN5) so later I could use my Walkman with only the Jack ...
I then put my hand a compilation on a 90 minutes Tape, mostly with Solomon's key and other little games.

But this era is dark in my memory, I was young and my Brother keeped the computer for himself most of time.

My real CPC era was when we could get a compatible PC so I could put the CPC in my room.
Also I could get access to awesome cracked games at school (Shinobi, forgotten worlds, Silkworn, R-Type and so on...) and so on.


mylife.fr... lol.

Leonie

#20
NIBBLER was another Low-Budget-Game, and maybe KNIFFEL, CHUCKIE EGG, KILLER GORILLA, FRANK´N STEIN.

By the way: There was a cartoon-porno-slideshow for the Amstrad. I don´t remember the name.
The show contained a "cow sucks a penis" and so forth.  ???



Leonie

#21
Quote from: MacDeath on 08:15, 20 May 10
Astro Attack : sweet labyrinth shooter in my memory.
But this era is dark in my memory, I was young and my Brother keeped the computer for himself most of time.

Nice game!
This was the first game I´ve played on the CPC. (run"astro")
Also my big brother was "the keeper of the CPC".
He was the one who told me "You are allowed to play", or not... :'(

MacDeath

#22
QuoteBy the way: There was a cartoon-porno-slideshow for the Amstrad. I don´t   remember the name.
The show contained a "cow sucks a penis" and so   forth.
Weren't you too young for this ? :-[

QuoteAlso my big brother was "the keeper of the CPC".
He was the one who   told me "You are allowed to play", or not...
Same trauma...I wished I could kill him for this !


Quoteor Z80 haXXoRing skills to modify the Amcharge program.
Yeah, this would need a lot of extra memory and Hacking Hardwares, perhaps 2 computers ???
Then you could pretend "my Hack-Fu is superior than yours !"...

woody.cool

#23
Quote from: MacDeath on 07:07, 17 May 10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yErkvcp9x0w


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj-bYRyDdJ0
Really enjoyed watching them vids mate
However, I'd have probably put Head Over Heels a bit higher ;) and where was Gauntlet/Gauntlet II? ;D


For some nice footage of another CPC game I really love, check this one out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP_fJ06Yi-4

Kwik Snax (Amstrad CPC)
Sorry about the distorted sound .... seems to be something weird with WinAPE on my PC as it doesn't sound as distorted on my CPC464 or CPC6128

Xyphoe

Quote from: woody.cool on 13:51, 22 May 10
Really enjoyed watching them vids mate
.
.
.
Sorry about the distorted sound .... seems to be something weird with WinAPE on my PC as it doesn't sound as distorted on my CPC464 or CPC6128

Cheers mate! :)

re the distorted sound ... for some reason the audio recorded in the resultant AVI by WinApe is too loud ... if you examine the wave form you can see it is peaking and thus distorting. Basically you need to take the AVI and reduce the volume levels then re-encode again and problem solved.

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