Shit Game Time: Green Beret + Cassette 50

[ZEUSDAZ]

EDIT: "Scrolling" is using LDIR to move the entire screen to the side. It's not even software scrolling like on later ocean/imagine games. The action stops while it scrolls too. Can the CPC do scrolling? Yes look at later ocean games.
Maybe it was somebody's first game?



Possibly yes, as said, Ocean were a class software company with some great games and conversions, this is sadly not one of them, maybe it was a first attempt or mentally had a day off, I have seen good scrolling on the cpc but not in this case.
Five requests came through from Amstrad owners for me to do a SGT vid of Rastan on the Amstrad and after playing it myself for around an hour,...YES it will be featured on there next time, easily the worst Rastan conversion compared to all the other versions, bland, boring, slow, no music in the game and jerk-aholic scrolling, very sad moment for Imagine / Ocean right there :'-(

[Puresox]

The thing with Green Beret on the Amstrad is the limit and continual spawning of the Three enemy's on screen at a time , When you complete the first loop I am sure that the enemy spawn rate is four. I think (If I am remembering right), a better way to make the game would allow for a random amount of enemies right from the beginning

[arnoldemu]

The thing with Green Beret on the Amstrad is the limit and continual spawning of the Three enemy's on screen at a time , When you complete the first loop I am sure that the enemy spawn rate is four. I think (If I am remembering right), a better way to make the game would allow for a random amount of enemies right from the beginning

The code is limited to checking the collision with 4 enemies. Separate checks are done for bullets and for against the player.
Changing that could mean a big change.

Also respawning of enemies is an AI change. I think changing all that would be hard, it would be simpler to re-write it all but I will not do that.

A better possibility is to port the spectrum version to the cpc.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Five requests came through from Amstrad owners for me to do a SGT vid of Rastan on the Amstrad and after playing it myself for around an hour,...YES it will be featured on there next time, easily the worst Rastan conversion compared to all the other versions, bland, boring, slow, no music in the game and jerk-aholic scrolling, very sad moment for Imagine / Ocean right there :'-(

Rastan was an abortion of biblical proportions, the sprites were a mess, they flickered too, the scrolling was jerky and it just lacked the frantic pace that the arcade had.

A better possibility is to port the spectrum version to the cpc.

Wash your mouth out with soap, Kev! Rewriting the whole thing from scratch would be preferable over that! The last thing the CPC ever needs is another monochrome game. Last I checked, the name was Green Beret, not Sky Blue Beret! 

[Carnivius]

Aren't some Spectrum ports just ports in code and not graphics?  I thought there were some where the code was ported over and then all new 16 colour Mode 0 graphics were done.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Aren't some Spectrum ports just ports in code and not graphics?  I thought there were some where the code was ported over and then all new 16 colour Mode 0 graphics were done.

When I see the term Spectrum Port, I automatically presume the worst. 

[Carnivius]

Understandable.  There are plenty of lazy direct ports.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Understandable.  There are plenty of lazy direct ports.

Made me bang my head off my desk on many an occasion after looking at a nice loading screen.
That said, I remember seeing the loading screen for Chase HQ, fearing the worst, and being pleasantly surprised when the game popped up. 

[ivarf]

Name 100 Amstrad games that should be on the shit list before Green Beret. It should be quite easy... Zeusdaz you have misunderstood the Amstrad fanboys. We quite like Green Beret, we know the system has a lot of bad games. We just disagree with your choice

[TFM]

Name 100 Amstrad games that should be on the shit list before Green Beret. It should be quite easy...

Well, I can name you 1000 c64 games ... 

[ivarf]

Well, I can name you 1000 c64 games ... 

Exactly! There are many bad games out there

[TFM]

Personally I like the GFX of Green Beret on CPC. Give it a better scrolling and it would be a good game. 

[Shaun M. Neary]

Personally I like the GFX of Green Beret on CPC. Give it a better scrolling and it would be a good game. 

It *would* be your cup of tea, is what you're saying then? 

[Shaun M. Neary]

Name 100 Amstrad games that should be on the shit list before Green Beret. It should be quite easy... Zeusdaz you have misunderstood the Amstrad fanboys. We quite like Green Beret, we know the system has a lot of bad games. We just disagree with your choice

So much this.
Xyphoe gave it a decent retro review, citing the scrolling being it's main fault.
AA gave it a healthy mark too, somewhere in the 80s.


Again, it was a newer machine for the time, a lot of people were still learning how to use the thing to it's capabilities, which few people seem to take into consideration.

[Carnivius]

Name 100 Amstrad games that should be on the shit list before Green Beret. It should be quite easy... Zeusdaz you have misunderstood the Amstrad fanboys. We quite like Green Beret, we know the system has a lot of bad games. We just disagree with your choice

I don't. But as I said I don't even rate the arcade game at all.  I like a LOT of Konami's 80's and early 90's arcade classics but Green Beret always seemed pretty lousy to me.

[ivarf]

Shit Game Time vids which are requested by viewers for me to do,...so no it is NOT a first impression review of Green Beret. Not all of them make it into that section as some of them are not shit, for instance someone asked me to SGT Project-X on the Amiga, I refused, it has It's flaws but It's not shit, Tempest on the Amstrad was also a very good conversion but I was asked to put it into the SGT,...again I refused

Tempest! Wow, really! Surely the one that suggested that must have been trolling you or the CPC

[Puresox]

^^^ Yeah just slightly , The Amstrad got the best version

[MaV]

Just as Carnivac said, the original game wasn't even good to begin with, and the Amstrad port is not really good.

Even the graphics can be enhanced. Some of it is ok, but just look at the truck on the second picture:
CPCRULEZ > AMSTRAD CPC > GAMESLIST > GREEN BERET (c) IMAGINE SOFTWARE

That leaves room for a lot of improvements. Clearly, we need a modern CPC mockup.

*CRRRRR* (and other static noise sounds) Calling MacDeath. This is an emergency situation. We need a mockup! Repeat: We need a mockup! *CRRRR*

[ivarf]

A score of 7 for Green Beret from cpcgamereviews:

[chinnyhill10]

A score of 7 for Green Beret from cpcgamereviews:

The reviews on that site are quite unreliable.

[Gryzor]

Indeed, they're just personal opinions, not something to be referenced.

[Shaun M. Neary]

Indeed, they're just personal opinions, not something to be referenced.

Gotta agree here. Sometimes I agree, and other times I've spat out my hot chocolate wondering "Did we play the same fuckin' game?"

[Shaun M. Neary]

It needs to be added, just because someone didn't like a particular game, doesn't make it shit in general.
At least that's what I was told when I thought Elite was shit.


GB wasn't that odd an arcade game for it's time, weirder games came out around that time too (Breakthru anyone? The car that jumped over the hills?!). I'll still stand by that for 1986, the only major flaws in that game was the scrolling and hit detection.


Ghosts N Goblins was FARRRRRRR worse.


#justsayin

[arnoldemu]

Give it a better scrolling and it would be a good game. 

True in part....

And I am saying this to all: it's not that easy.

The code wasn't written for scrolling so it would mean a big re-write to put that in. It means changing sprite drawing, sprite erasing and the way the tiles are drawn and adding the code to do the scrolling. That is the minimum work and maybe it doesn't fit into ram anymore....

Now the next problem, because the green beret scroll is really a screen transition, the code is written like it is static screens, so the ai spawning assumes this.

As soon as scrolling is put in, we will see that the enemy spawning is really bad and that needs fixing to work with scrolling. The AI goes from being ok to really terrible.

It becomes more complex. Since the AI is simplistic and the collision needs fixing the best thing is a re-write. A big job!

Or take the speccy code and put in nice cpc graphics That is also a big job but not as big as re-writing it all!

[Shaun M. Neary]

The code wasn't written for scrolling so it would mean a big re-write to put that in. It means changing sprite drawing, sprite erasing and the way the tiles are drawn and adding the code to do the scrolling. That is the minimum work and maybe it doesn't fit into ram anymore....

You raise an interesting point there actually. At the time Green Beret was released, was the 6128 even released at that stage? Putting comparisons to the C64 aside for a second, porting the speccy version over and re-doing the graphics with an extra 64k to spare, I'm just thinking the possibilities of a 128k only version.