CPC Vs GX4000 - Comparison of the ported games.

[andycadley]

No Exit is a terrible game, it isn't any fun on a normal CPC and the GX changes don't do anything to alleviate that at all. I can't even say it looks pretty, because it just looks like a complete mess.

Panza Kick Boxing is a really nice conversion, they've clearly gone to the effort to make owning the cartridge version worthwhile. One of the genuinely good cart releases.

Wild Streets is just odd. The game itself is paper thin, you can literally just ignore all the bad guys till you get to the last screen of a level then unleash you bullets into the "boss" - who obviously looks exactly the same as everyone else. And then you have your cat thing, which doesn't actually seem to do anything useful at all - I seem to recall there was a spate of arcade games in which you were "assisted" by a pet dog/wolf/badger etc and can only assume that was an attempt to cash in on that fad. I don't remember the audio issues on it though, I'll have to try it again on real hardware because that seems like it might just be an emulation problem (or at least the emulator making a minor issue sound much worse)

[Novabug]

NoExit :
heard rumors that the game would crash with 6128PLUS or simply PLUS with any peripheral plugged...
This games tries to include some "Demoscene" styled things in the intro, and the graphics are actually quite good...
Very Atari ST like.

Sadly the gameplay is far from ... efficient. Quite a shame, could have been a fun fight game if provided with same animation and gameplay qualities as Barbarian on CPC.

Panza Kick boxing :
the game actually plays the same on both machine but really GX4000 has 16bit graphical makeup (despite wide pixels)
Basically one of the best GX4000 games actually and the only proper choice to get a proper fighting experience.
I guess this game soemwhat suffered slightly from having only 128K ROM, sounds are not perfects and some graphical patches in Hardsprites here and there could have smoothen the beauty.

Wild Street :
this game is bad to begin with.
at least Titus did some colour makeup but really not quite succeded into having the game enjoyable...
Yeay the game is quite faster but to no gain : the game sucks.

Just go to the right, dodge all combats until you get to the final boss, empty the gun on him... that's it, you won.

Really a shame titus failed hard to provide games like Prehistorik 1&2, blues Brothers or Moktar/Titus the fox, which were later huge success from them...


Also a shame a game like Wild Street faield to be as good as many of those french side soft platformer such as Night hunter, Taghdan or Back to the golden age...
(a bit of a shame Barbarian 2 also failed at being like those games... but quite had more interest than WildStreet)


Can't wait for the next videos...

Thanks OJ. Yes, this series is not reviews. No Exit and Wild Streets are bad games yes, I'll be covering reviews on these in the future.


In the meantime, upcoming videos include 2 more parts to the 464 Project, the Bad game series and a review of Slap Fight.


Cheers

[Novabug]

Wild Streets is just odd. The game itself is paper thin, you can literally just ignore all the bad guys till you get to the last screen of a level then unleash you bullets into the "boss" - who obviously looks exactly the same as everyone else. And then you have your cat thing, which doesn't actually seem to do anything useful at all - I seem to recall there was a spate of arcade games in which you were "assisted" by a pet dog/wolf/badger etc and can only assume that was an attempt to cash in on that fad. I don't remember the audio issues on it though, I'll have to try it again on real hardware because that seems like it might just be an emulation problem (or at least the emulator making a minor issue sound much worse)

I'm pretty sure this is not an Emulator issue. I have the game on hardware as well. The sound is possibly effected by the lower cycles of the GX's CPU. Cheers for watching.

[Novabug]

Part 4 takes us on a drive to the tennis courts....

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[Edited: Please remember to use the YouTube button to embed your video]

[||C|-|E||]

Great videos all of them! I enjoyed them a lot!! 

P.D: Do you know a funny thing? I swear that the original Mystical I have in Spain, the standard disc version for the 6128, has sound. It is something that I already noticed in before, everybody mentions that the normal version of this game does not have sound but I truly believe that mine has it. I will bring the floppy with me the next time I go to Spain and I will try to make a proper image.

[ukmarkh]

Same here, the version I have on disk features sound, I'm 99.9% sure of it.


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[Nich]

P.D: Do you know a funny thing? I swear that the original Mystical I have in Spain, the standard disc version for the 6128, has sound. It is something that I already noticed in before, everybody mentions that the normal version of this game does not have sound but I truly believe that mine has it. I will bring the floppy with me the next time I go to Spain and I will try to make a proper image.

XOR's crack of Mystical does not have sound effects, for some unknown reason. This is probably the 'normal version' that people are referring to.

[||C|-|E||]

Mine is the original one, yes On the other hand, I can tell you that the sound effects are exactly the same 

[Novabug]

Mine is the original one, yes On the other hand, I can tell you that the sound effects are exactly the same 

Hmmm, well, we live and learn. Curious to get a physical disc of this now to check. Doesn't change the fact it's identical though.

[MacDeath]

Do you know a funny thing? I swear that the original Mystical I have in Spain, the standard disc version for the 6128, has sound. It is something that I already noticed in before, everybody mentions that the normal version of this game does not have sound but I truly believe that mine has it. I will bring the floppy with me the next time I go to Spain and I will try to make a proper image.

yeah, spanish market always had different stuffs...

Different Double Dragon, different PaperBoy... even different language. 


Should check what version were dumped and distributed in all the forums/websites... if this is always the same cracked version...




Crazy Car II :
wasn't too much a bad game on CPC... basically I would only ride it for the "sensation" and the nice graphics.
Otherwise the game itself doesn't have a lot of interest.
So the GX4000 version has the Mode1 Map, which can take quite some space and includes some Hardsprites.
But game has not that much interest finally.
but it is hard to align a decent Car game after Burnin'Rubber/Wec le Mans.
Also this game was all marketing... "look! it has a ferrari F40..."

Fire & Forget 2 :
Same whith this game, nice graphics, but gameplay is not that well done.
it should just be some sort of space harrier or Mach 3 (Loriciel)
I see no point to have the road to turn, should better focus on the enemies and shoot/obstacles.
Still the game can pass for an almost/somewhat decent GX4000 game.

Great Court :
2 tennis games and they basically are not too bad after all.
If you like Tennis games, GX4000 is actually a good choice and the cartridge version is good to go.

Tennis Cup 2 had better graphics IMO and the dual screen mode is cool... but really both tennis games are  "decent games" for me and quite included a lot of PLUS features..

[andycadley]

Crazy Cars 2 and Fire and Forget 2 both suffer from a similar problem, namely that they were at best mediocre driving games on the CPC and the conversion hasn't really added much to them. Which wouldn't be so bad except they both have to compete with Burnin' Rubber, a game literally every GX and Plus owner had, and that puts them both to shame by such a wide margin.

Pro Tennis Tour was great though, a game I put many an hour into and still enjoy. And I don't even like tennis! Possibly not a common opinion, but I actually preferred this one over Tennis Cup 2, although both were quite nice titles.

[ukmarkh]

I really liked CC2, never managed to finish it on stock CPC, but with the accessible map on the GX4000 and controls, I was finally able to complete.

Fire and Forget 2 was abysmal, just play the excellent Master System version to see what could have been.

Yes, I can't remember which, but one of the tennis games on the GX was really good!


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[Puresox]

Amstrad knocked out some great tennis titles,
Can anyone give a reason why the GX4000 cpu was clocked a fraction slower? Is it too do with overheating or what? Not that it is of a significant level . But you would expect it to be improved on the oldCPC?

[ukmarkh]

I wasn't aware, but I imagine, with Sprite hardware, and scrolling hardware, there was less for the CPU to worry about. But I haven't noticed any speed difference with games


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[ukmarkh]

Wasn't Toki 512K?


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[andycadley]

Amstrad knocked out some great tennis titles,
Can anyone give a reason why the GX4000 cpu was clocked a fraction slower? Is it too do with overheating or what? Not that it is of a significant level . But you would expect it to be improved on the oldCPC?

I believe it was something to do with being able to derive the PAL clock from the master clock, which made for a better picture quality on TV sets.

[gerald]

Amstrad knocked out some great tennis titles,
Can anyone give a reason why the GX4000 cpu was clocked a fraction slower? Is it too do with overheating or what? Not that it is of a significant level . But you would expect it to be improved on the oldCPC?

To match the PAL colour carrier frequency 9th harmonic (9 * 4.43361875 MHz = 39.90256875) to
- save an oscillator
- avoid creating a beat frequency effect with the 40MHz

[arnoldemu]

Wasn't Toki 512K?

Toki wasn't released.

I thought first level was made. it filled 128kb. They asked Ocean for bigger cart.
Ocean (or Amstrad) said "no". Toki was scrapped.

I think if it had been finished and they had been allowed 512KB it would use it all.

[arnoldemu]

All of these are my opinions

Pang is great. Nice game, fun to play, not too hard.

Robocop is nice looking but rock hard. Jump is a bit rubbish could have been adjusted to be a bit better and easier to control.

Navy Seals is nice looking but rock hard. One shot kills.. I know it's realistic but makes the game too tough.

Epyx world of sports was nice but a bit hard and didn't have much in it. Not enough lastability.

Switchblade was great. Nice graphics, not too hard, enjoyable.

Burning rubber was nice. Not too hard but enjoyable.

CC2 was boring.

Wild Streets looked bad and had really poor gameplay.

dick tracy was a little bit better than wild streets but not much, still too poor.

No Exit was no fun. Looked ok, just no fun to play at all.

[andycadley]

Robocop is nice looking but rock hard. Jump is a bit rubbish could have been adjusted to be a bit better and easier to control.

Is it just me or does Robocop jumping around always seem a bit off? Even in the arcade original and ports like the Gameboy, it just felt wrong and looked a bit ridiculous.

I do wish the GX version of Robocop 2 had been more like the Speccy version though, as that plays better in my opinion.

[ukmarkh]

Is it just me or does Robocop jumping around always seem a bit off? Even in the arcade original and ports like the Gameboy, it just felt wrong and looked a bit ridiculous.

I do wish the GX version of Robocop 2 had been more like the Speccy version though, as that plays better in my opinion.

I didn't like the Speccy version, it just didn't hang together well for me.

[MacDeath]

Is it just me or does Robocop jumping around always seem a bit off? Even in the arcade original and ports like the Gameboy, it just felt wrong and looked a bit ridiculous.

Robocop doesn't move legs when he jumps, which explains why it feels quite odd.

It quite suffers from PLUS sprites being not quite easy torefresh as they don't quite point at somewhare in RAM/ROM like other systems would do...

[Novabug]

It's opened up a lot of quality discussion and debate, and it seems you guys have enjoyed this series of videos. I hope I didn't make to many mistakes in the ultra technical stakes.


Anyway, the final part of CPC Vs GX4000 is done. So enjoy.

[Edited: Please remember to use the YouTube button to embed your video]




and as a little spoiler, this has inspired me to make more of this kind of format. During this year...  I'll be highlighting the Speccy to CPC ports....

[Puresox]

Robocop doesn't move legs when he jumps, which explains why it feels quite odd.

It quite suffers from PLUS sprites being not quite easy torefresh as they don't quite point at somewhare in RAM/ROM like other systems would do...

I think he is on about , the ridiculousness of Robocop being able to jump , just does not compute , this is also why I think the Spectrum and Amstrad versions of the original are the best.

[MacDeath]

yeah, those comparison videos are nice.

And this GX4000 themed serie was quite enjoyable and interesting, and would open for debates here...