CPC games you've finished? Story time!

Shaun M. Neary · 14:34, 10 January 23

Idea nicked from @lmimmfn

I'd suggest don't make a mad list. Just mention one game per post with any stories / recollections. I think it would make for a great thread.

I'll get the ball rolling.

Wonder Boy (Activision). This game brought out so much game rage for me in 1988. I made it to the end of the game and didn't figure out the small jump and hit the end of level guy with the axe. I had about 12 lives getting there and got wiped out in about 5 minutes. 12 year old me legit bawled his eyes out in frustration and I didn't touch the fucking game again until 2016 when I finally completed it. I later went on to finish it on the Spectrum using the exact same tactic as the game is pretty much ported from the Spectrum while trying to use the C64's sprites. What works on one, works perfectly on the other.

eto · 14:50, 10 January 23

M.G.T.

It was highly praised in the ASM magazine so I went out and spent my money on it. And first I really liked it. Nice isometric graphics, great atmosphere, challenging puzzles. However, just after two days of playing it, I also finished it. And once you knew all puzzles, there was no longer a challenge. I was really, really disappointed that I spent so much money on a game that gives me only about 8h of fun.

Definitely a "hidden gem" and if you want a nice challenge, I can recommend it. At least for a few hours until you finish it once ;-)

eto · 15:31, 10 January 23

Bruce Lee

What a simple and addictive platformer. But there is this one room, that almost always kills you. And I still remember the day when I solved that screen the first time after loosing many, many lives. But even this screen, after lots of practice, was no longer a (huge) challenge and finishing Bruce Lee became somehow "normal".

Well... after coming back to the CPC a few years ago, of course I played Bruce Lee again. And this f**** room is now my challenge again ;-)

dthrone · 16:46, 10 January 23

Switchblade.

Definitely the most satisfying Amstrad completion involving the least rage. Most other games did admittedly usually involve rage and tears of frustration etc. before completion

For days I practiced each subsection and boss in advance over and over using the high score table sheet, spent some time carefully plotting out my route, then when the big day came and I did it, oh yes!!

Shaun M. Neary · 16:58, 10 January 23

Quote from: eto on 15:31, 10 January 23Bruce Lee

What a simple and addictive platformer. But there is this one room, that almost always kills you. And I still remember the day when I solved that screen the first time after loosing many, many lives. But even this screen, after lots of practice, was no longer a (huge) challenge and finishing Bruce Lee became somehow "normal".

Well... after coming back to the CPC a few years ago, of course I played Bruce Lee again. And this f**** room is now my challenge again ;-)

The blue room with the electric floors!

Top floor - easy done.

Second floor - run as soon as the left to right bolt shoots. Jump 1/3rd of the way to dodge the first bolt, the second one should be easy to figure after that.

Third floor - Stand halfway between the edge of the floor and the far right. Half a second after the middle bolt shoots toward you, jump immediately and run. When you get to the middle run a bit more and then jump so the second bolt shoots under you. Jump to the very far left.

Ground floor - Broken up into two bolts and a larger gap. The trick is to run a little during the larger gap, you should be able to jump over the two bolt section as they go towards you.

BSC · 18:01, 10 January 23

Alien 8

I loved this game back in the days for its space theme, the cute robot, the vast place with lots of rooms to explore and even the repetitive walking music. I don't think it was particularly hard, Knight Lore was harder, I think, so I eventually managed to get all of the crew woken up in time and the ending was .. cute! Short, but cute.

abalore · 19:33, 10 January 23

I'll limit the list to games I completed back in the day, in recent times I finished a lot more.

My fastest game completion was Navy Moves, I did it the same day I took it home after a few tries. Others are:

Afteroids, Army Moves, Batman (Jon Ritman), Batman The Movie, Beyond the Ice Palace, Big Trouble in Little China, Boulder Dash (all difficulty levels), Capitan Sevilla, Chicago's 30, Commando, Demon's Revenge, Freddy Hardest I and II, Galactic Plague, Ghosts'n Goblins, Golden Axe, The Great Escape, Gryzor, Humphrey, Infiltrator, Kung-Fu Master, La Abadia del Crimen, The Last Mission, Livingstone Supongo, El Misterio del Nilo, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Myth: History in the making, The Newzealand Story, Ninja Scooter Simulator, Operation Wolf, Out Run, Phantomas 2, Prehistorik, Prince of Persia, Psycho Pigs UXB, Rick Dangerous I and II, Robocop, Saboteur I and II, Shinobi, Short Circuit, Star Wars, Sultan's Maze, Target: Renegade, Titanic, Titus the Fox, Tuareg, Turbo Girl

probably I'm missing many others

GUNHED · 19:50, 10 January 23

For example Hacker II - a great game, and after you finish the first time, still lots of fun and ways to survive there to explore.

VincentGR · 23:18, 10 January 23

About 60+ games, at least from when I started keeping record.

SkulleateR · 00:24, 11 January 23

Ok, so I posted this story 21 years ago on some other Media but I thought I share this here again ...

The day I completed Bomb Jack

It´s a sunny afternoon. My wife is at work and the children are playing outside. I´m bored. Sitting in front of the TV, I wonder what to do this evening. I decide to make myself a coffee, so I go to the kitchen. As I´m nearly there, a big box gets my attention. Hmm, what may be in there ? Surely some Christmas things or something like that, that my wife wants me to put away for her. I try to lift the box but it´s very heavy and so I decide to open it to have a look inside. But wait a minute, what´s that ??
It´s my old Amstrad CPC 464 Computer that I´ve been playing on years ago. Only got a Tape Drive, my Floppy got boken years ago. I wonder if it´s still working, so I make some spare room on the table and put the CPC on it. Now for the big moment : I push the power button and with a nearly not hearable "bzzzzzz" the CPC got back to life after more than 12 years. Now I´m standing in front of this machine, getting a blue screen with yellow letters on it, stating that it is ready to load a program. I remember I stood there more than 10 minutes only watching this screen and the yellow letters on it. Uhhh, do I still have some Tapes ??
I´m running up the stairs to get to my room. There have to be at least SOME games left for this great machine. Thirty minutes later I got about fifteen Tapes and some Floppy´s but since these are useless without any Floppy Drive I carefully put them back into the box. Back at the table where the CPC is still presenting his blue boot screen, I begin to look at the tapes I digged out some minutes ago...... "Enduro Racer", "Thrust", "Starglider", "Bombjack" .... wait ..... Bombjack ?? YES, that´s the game to play today. I carefully open the Tape Drive and put the tape inside. I push the play button, hmmm, nothing seems to happen. Wait, what was the syntax for the load command ? Ah, yes, LOAD "" ! I cannot hold it anymore, I´m nearly about to cry as I typed L O A D " " on my old Computer.
These deep feeling I got for this lovely machine makes me forget the world around me completely. As I hit return, the tape drive begins to spin and a whispering noise appears in the room. The screen displays : Loading "Bombjack.bas" .... hmm, the loader. Since I have to wait some time for the game to load, I decide to go to the kitchen now and make the coffee. Grabbing my Cigarrets from the kitchen table and my coffee, I get back 6 minutes later and the Bombjack mainscreen allready popped up. Well, let´s play then but wait, uhhhh I need a joystick.
So back upstairs and search some other boxes. Yes, there it is, my good old Competition Pro. Black with a red stick. I find myself running down the stairs, trying to be as fast as possible, only in mind that I´m about to play a classic computer game after 12 years again. I plug the joystick into the port. Now the big moment, I´m pressing fire. The playfield appears, "READY" is shown on the screen. The sprite of Bombjack himself appears at the center of the screen, starting to fall down. I start to move the stick. First bomb, second, third ...... I cannot get my eye´s of the screen. This is fascinating. The first three levels get me in no trouble at all, still having all of my lifes, I start into the fourth level. Over to the left, first bomb, second ......... AHRG.
That one costs me a life. Ah well still enough left, so again, over to the left, first bomb, second .... NO, not again. I feel my hand begin to sweat. It´s getting critical. Once again, over to the left, first bomb, second, third ..... pfewww, another level passed. So on to the next level and what catches my eye ? A "E" is floating around the screen. That gets me an extra life, YES. I´m on the trail again. At the end of the level another "E". The rest was easy. After getting through the final level of 99 and the level counter is back at zero, I feel a great relief. I looked around me and saw my wife looking with wide eyes to the chaos I brought to our living room. Cables, tapes and all that stuff are floating around. I looked at her and laughed. Not because of her wondering face, but about playing one of the greatest games of all times on one of the greatest Homecomputers ever built. This was one of the most exciting days in my life. Since then, the CPC got a place in my room, and whenever I feel sad or something is depressing me, I turn it on for a round of good old Bombjack. But since back then, I NEVER EVER managed to finish Bombjack again. But that doesn´t really matter.

As some of you may know, I still use THIS 464 today, floppy is still broken but hey, got a M4 and a USIfAC so what

Have a great 2023 and keep making great games for old computers

Shaun M. Neary · 11:37, 11 January 23

Quote from: VincentGR on 23:18, 10 January 23About 60+ games, at least from when I started keeping record.

Give us a story from one of them!

TotO · 11:44, 11 January 23

Waiting the @Kukulcan list!

VincentGR · 13:24, 11 January 23

Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 11:37, 11 January 23
Quote from: VincentGR on 23:18, 10 January 23About 60+ games, at least from when I started keeping record.
Give us a story from one of them!

Dear Lord

VincentGR · 13:31, 11 January 23

Ok, it was somewhere between summer of 88"
I was playing Ikari Warriors on a GT65 at our holidays house.
I remember that I was walking on that tank and tried to get inside.
Even pressed the fire button, but only a grenade was launched.
The winter passed and this was still my favorite game.
Next summer while I was tossing some grenades, I accidentally walked over that tank.
And guess what? The timing was perfect and I was inside.
The game instantly was new again and I managed to finish it.
Proud I did it, not proud for being the jerk of the year for not entering the tank a year ago.

ComSoft6128 · 14:41, 11 January 23

Quote from: SkulleateR on 00:24, 11 January 23Ok, so I posted this story 21 years ago on some other Media but I thought I share this here again ...

The day I completed Bomb Jack

It´s a sunny afternoon. My wife is at work and the children are playing outside. I´m bored. Sitting in front of the TV, I wonder what to do this evening. I decide to make myself a coffee, so I go to the kitchen. As I´m nearly there, a big box gets my attention. Hmm, what may be in there ? Surely some Christmas things or something like that, that my wife wants me to put away for her. I try to lift the box but it´s very heavy and so I decide to open it to have a look inside. But wait a minute, what´s that ??
It´s my old Amstrad CPC 464 Computer that I´ve been playing on years ago. Only got a Tape Drive, my Floppy got boken years ago. I wonder if it´s still working, so I make some spare room on the table and put the CPC on it. Now for the big moment : I push the power button and with a nearly not hearable "bzzzzzz" the CPC got back to life after more than 12 years. Now I´m standing in front of this machine, getting a blue screen with yellow letters on it, stating that it is ready to load a program. I remember I stood there more than 10 minutes only watching this screen and the yellow letters on it. Uhhh, do I still have some Tapes ??
I´m running up the stairs to get to my room. There have to be at least SOME games left for this great machine. Thirty minutes later I got about fifteen Tapes and some Floppy´s but since these are useless without any Floppy Drive I carefully put them back into the box. Back at the table where the CPC is still presenting his blue boot screen, I begin to look at the tapes I digged out some minutes ago...... "Enduro Racer", "Thrust", "Starglider", "Bombjack" .... wait ..... Bombjack ?? YES, that´s the game to play today. I carefully open the Tape Drive and put the tape inside. I push the play button, hmmm, nothing seems to happen. Wait, what was the syntax for the load command ? Ah, yes, LOAD "" ! I cannot hold it anymore, I´m nearly about to cry as I typed L O A D " " on my old Computer.
These deep feeling I got for this lovely machine makes me forget the world around me completely. As I hit return, the tape drive begins to spin and a whispering noise appears in the room. The screen displays : Loading "Bombjack.bas" .... hmm, the loader. Since I have to wait some time for the game to load, I decide to go to the kitchen now and make the coffee. Grabbing my Cigarrets from the kitchen table and my coffee, I get back 6 minutes later and the Bombjack mainscreen allready popped up. Well, let´s play then but wait, uhhhh I need a joystick.
So back upstairs and search some other boxes. Yes, there it is, my good old Competition Pro. Black with a red stick. I find myself running down the stairs, trying to be as fast as possible, only in mind that I´m about to play a classic computer game after 12 years again. I plug the joystick into the port. Now the big moment, I´m pressing fire. The playfield appears, "READY" is shown on the screen. The sprite of Bombjack himself appears at the center of the screen, starting to fall down. I start to move the stick. First bomb, second, third ...... I cannot get my eye´s of the screen. This is fascinating. The first three levels get me in no trouble at all, still having all of my lifes, I start into the fourth level. Over to the left, first bomb, second ......... AHRG.
That one costs me a life. Ah well still enough left, so again, over to the left, first bomb, second .... NO, not again. I feel my hand begin to sweat. It´s getting critical. Once again, over to the left, first bomb, second, third ..... pfewww, another level passed. So on to the next level and what catches my eye ? A "E" is floating around the screen. That gets me an extra life, YES. I´m on the trail again. At the end of the level another "E". The rest was easy. After getting through the final level of 99 and the level counter is back at zero, I feel a great relief. I looked around me and saw my wife looking with wide eyes to the chaos I brought to our living room. Cables, tapes and all that stuff are floating around. I looked at her and laughed. Not because of her wondering face, but about playing one of the greatest games of all times on one of the greatest Homecomputers ever built. This was one of the most exciting days in my life. Since then, the CPC got a place in my room, and whenever I feel sad or something is depressing me, I turn it on for a round of good old Bombjack. But since back then, I NEVER EVER managed to finish Bombjack again. But that doesn´t really matter.

As some of you may know, I still use THIS 464 today, floppy is still broken but hey, got a M4 and a USIfAC so what

Have a great 2023 and keep making great games for old computers

A great story, thank you

Gryzor · 14:48, 11 January 23

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Off-Topic: Show

Bryce · 14:50, 11 January 23

This will be a short one....

I have never finished any game on any system.

Bryce.

Gryzor · 14:52, 11 January 23

Quote from: Bryce on 14:50, 11 January 23This will be a short one....

I have never finished any game on any system.

Bryce.

Not even Aminal Vegetable Mineral?

robcfg · 17:46, 11 January 23

Me and a friend from high school (whose mother liked to play Wonder Boy on his CPC

) actually managed to complete La Abadía del Crimen.

Armed with our trusty MicroManía magazine, he took care of moving around the abbey while I was guiding him and I managed to memorize to path through the labyrinth.

Oh, the joy when we managed to finish it!

I was so over the moon that I actually copied the whole end text, typed it on my Olivetti Lettera 10 typing machine, and burned the borders with help of my mother so it would look like a burnt parchment.

That still makes me smile

Shaun M. Neary · 20:26, 11 January 23

I have another one...

Out Run.

So it's 1988, in Catholic Ireland, I had just made my confirmation. Money is incoming and I got me a Powerplay Cruiser joystick and several games. Sadly all the places we went to didn't have Out Run in stock.

Virgin Megastore on Aston Quay had it, and the mother went in and picked it up as she was going that way anyway. She brings it back, box art looks awesome, open it and there's a tape and a funny rectangular square. That's a bit odd.

To put things into perspective, I'm a 464 owner.

Tape also says "Audio cassette" on it.

I check the front of the box. AMSTRAD DISC.

Fuck!

Explain to my mother, and she's not going back into the city for another week.

A week???!!!

FUUUUUUCCCCK!

A week goes by and its here! Two tapes, YES!!!

Load up the game, screen is nice. I start to read the instructions and notice the tape loading map... the hell is this for. I've to write the tape counter markings for... every trac... oh dear god no, its a race game that loads every level??

Tape stops. Splash Wave doesn't sound too bad on AY... hit the joystick button and select the controls etc and rewind the tape. That tape looks very long! Load up the first level and let's go go go!

Game is very quiet... joystick is up, I pressed fire right? I'm still in low gear... but it says 290km/h... and is that meant to be a skidding sound???

Get to the end of level 1 and the tape starts again. Wait, I have to play the tape all the way through to get all the tape counter marks?

Tape stops and the game resumes except I'm still looking at the inlay in disbelief and I've about 18 seconds to finish the second level.

But being a big fan of the arcade, and the wait for not only the shops in Ireland to get a copy which took over a week, despite the utter disappointment. I made sure I got my way through every bloody track during the summer of 88. I literally forced myself to find some sort of enjoyment out of it!

VincentGR · 23:15, 11 January 23

Christmas, and mother asked me what I want for a present.
After a lot of thinking, I decided to get Double Dragon (the good version) instead of Shinobi.
There were no copies available yet... so I had to get the original.
It was easy to finish it and did it many times, I love this game.
Then I destroyed the box, and glue it on my scrap book.

One day, our teacher of religion (if I say this correct) saw that notepad and said.
Notepads must blue, only a picture of Christ or mine is allowed.
Funny guy with a great soul and humor.

Side story:
After a few days, a friend came with both DD and Shinobi cracked.
Couldn't copy the second as I only had the CP/M copier and not Discology.
I played once and reached the level with the rotating statues.
I really wanted this game.
Some years later I got an Amiga and played it there, I preferred CPC version till today as I like it more than the arcade one.
When I had my first accelerator, I went to an FTP server and got it for my CPC emul on the Amiga.
It didn't work.
Finally, after many years, I finished on my CPC in 2016.

roudoudou · 08:04, 12 January 23

i loved saboteur 2 back in the days, the game is one of the first openworld, it is huge, the hero is a girl and you can clim everywhere

the first contact was hard as expected, and find the exit to complete mission 1 was not that easy
then i explored around my "optimised" path to find some boxes with microfilms (you need more and more microfilms when you rise up in the missions, then find the mainframe, how to disable electric fence...)
years later, Amstrad is dead but emulators popped out, we are in the end of the 90's
i dont know why but i have in mind to make a map of the game with screen captures
I remember my PC had only 64M
the raw map i build was a TIFF of 128M but thanks to PNG format which compress lines, i succeed to make a 1M PNG (still on cpc-power website)
wowowo, but i still did not finished the game right?
doing this map, exploring every single part of the game made me learn the entire buildings and corridors
so i quickly succeed to complete the final mission
note:
- september 2020, Clive Townsend bugfixed a display bug in a part of the game, 35 years later

- october 2021, RealShadowCaster posted a message about a secret way to get moar microfilms, being equiped with "?" and searching the "2 microfilms box", you can get any number of microfilms. Then you can avoid walking all the complex and finish the last mission easily

Shaun M. Neary · 09:26, 12 January 23

Quote from: VincentGR on 23:15, 11 January 23Finally, after many years, I finished on my CPC in 2016.

Shinobi is a very rewarding finish, and the spinning statues boss is probably the most difficult out of all of the end level bosses as the stage 4 boss only needs 2 or 3 hits once you've used the magic and the last level doesn't even have a boss, just a nightmare stage you have to jump from top floor to bottom floor, where the bottom barely has floor!

I only finished it for the first time in 2017 myself too.

jaymanu · 11:22, 18 January 23

RELIEF ACTION

I had this game on tape in the old days, came with my 2d hand 464.
In modern terms, it would be called an Alien-themed first-person 3D escape-the-room.

I managed to reach the 2d floor, but I could never survive for long there, as suddenly the "monster" comes in and kills you.

In modern times I could never find any walkthrough or help, besides a map of the 3 floors from a magazine and a very incomplete guide.

So someday out of obsession, as I was on my own I started to learn how to use winape debugger in order to analyze the game.
I managed to sort out some POKEs to disable the monster, which allowed me to explore the entire ship without sudden death.

And I discovered to my surprise a very immersive and dense adventure game. The atmosphere of loneliness and helplesness in space is very well rendered (though the crude and slow wireframe graphics wouldn't have allowed anything else, they do fit here).

I was feeling like just playing a good game, not just playing and old nostalgic game.

It's a pity that it was hardly plagued by 3 defaults which sadly hide the gem :

- the monster logic is unforgiving and spoiled the whole experience
- the timer is very frustrating (after some minutes the ship explodes -> sudden death again !)
- moving is sooo slow. It becomes enjoyable on emulation with 400% speed

The monster and timer might have been added to artificially harden the gameplay, but this was too much in my opinion and spoiled an otherwise very good (even more for the time !) game.

You can follow my advances in another thread of this forum.
I got quite obsessed and extracted all the text / objects / rooms from memory, to be sure not to miss any detail.
"amstrad maniaque" posted a youtube longplay using my solution and pokes.

eto · 12:10, 18 January 23

Elite -

OK, I mean, it's impossible to finish and I also did not reach the rank "Elite". But I reached the moment, that there was nothing left to do.

Elite is probably THE game I spent most time with. It was also the most expensive game I ever bought. 20% more expensive than any full price game. But it was worth it. The box, the poster, a novel related to the universe you will be about to exploring - and the manual. The manual is not written like a game manual, it's a manual for a space ship. I was just blown away by all of that already.

And then the game itself. It was just not like anything I have ever seen. And it was SO hard. It took ages to manage landing on a space station without a landing computer. It was insane to even survive the attack of a tiny pirate ship without better laser weapons.

Once you had the right equipment it started to become fun. Exploring more parts of the galaxy, searching the best trade routes, battling pirates for fun - or even surviving a Thargoid attack the first time. So many awesome moments.

But then there was also a point were it began to become a routine. Buying, delivering, selling goods. With the occasional pirate attack. Exploring a galaxy was not rewarding and in some areas you were just stuck. The variety of planets was small. Either it was a pretty easy flight or, especially in anarchic systems, it took ages as there were dozens of pirate attacks on the way to the planet. Seriously, after 20 attacks you are just bored and want to get to the station. The most frustrating part was, that again, it was not rewarding. The prices on the planet were exactly like the ones on safer routes. And you couldn't even buy illegal stuff that would give you a high margin when sold in other systems.

And then I had enough money to buy a galactic hyperdrive. So I set off for the next galaxy. Just so see: It's no different than any previously unknown area in the first galaxy.

So I checked out the galaxy map for any interesting area, stayed there for a bit, jumped to the next galaxy and so on...

At the end I came back to my "home" galaxy. Now with a Cobra MK III with full equipment, status of "deadly" (one before Elite), lots of money in the bank - and didn't know what I could do else.

And then I retired as a space captain on the Coriolis space station in the system Lave - home sweet home ;-)

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CPC games you've finished? Story time!