Hi guys, Green Beret for Amstrad is now up and live on the "Sh*t Game Time" section requested by another Youtuber, terrible conversion :picard:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShGOgz8ADIw)
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Also, remember the cruddy Cassette 50 compilation released on virtually all 8-bit formats bck in early 80's?! Well this is also now on the "SGT" section,...3 bloody hours long and resulted me almost going into a self-induced coma!,...never again!!!,...from now on 1 game per SGT please lads, it was toooooo much pain and exhaustion doing that one :(
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLOrT4uMhu0)
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All the best guys, Zeus.
[EDIT: Please remember to use the YouTube button to embed your video]
I never had the Cassette 50, but I clearly remember loading Green Beret back in the days and turning the CPC off in about eeerhm... 2 minutes. I think that I never played the game again. Really, I was hating it like crazy! :-\
I never had this back in the day. But I am certain that the only reason people ever bought it on any system was for the free calculator watch. Still, all the games are better than Home Runner.
Quote from: EgoTrip on 19:43, 26 April 16
I never had this back in the day. But I am certain that the only reason people ever bought it on any system was for the free calculator watch. Still, all the games are better than Home Runner.
We all got it just for the watch matey :-)
Hey didn't I do Home Runner on the SGT for you a little while ago?! ;-)
Quote from: ||C|-|E|| on 18:46, 26 April 16
I never had the Cassette 50, but I clearly remember loading Green Beret back in the days and turning the CPC off in about eeerhm... 2 minutes. I think that I never played the game again. Really, I was hating it like crazy! :-\
It was a stinky conversion mate that's for sure, way over due on the SGT section!
Scrolling steps are 8 MODE 0 pixel, that equals 4 bytes or 2(!) CRTC addresses!!! Fix that and the game is ok.
Quote from: ZEUSDAZ on 20:09, 26 April 16
We all got it just for the watch matey :-)
Hey didn't I do Home Runner on the SGT for you a little while ago?! ;-)
Yeah you did. I can't apologise enough for putting you through that.
Green Beret looks extremely shit and repetitive to play, I've not played this game and neither do I care to. However the scrolling method used isn't terrible is it? After all, if its good enough for the Legend of Zelda games, then it can't be that bad.
I have played and enjoyed the CPC conversion of "Green Beret" on Amstrad CPC. Maybe not the best one, but still playable, with not so bad graphics and animation. I managed to finish it last century without any cheat ;D .
If you really want a shitty release of this game, look at Thomson Mo5/To7-70 conversion ;D . MSX one is not exceptional too...
Green Beret is one of the first game I ever had on CPC464, and I LOVED IT AND PLAYED IT TO DEATH. I'm not afraid of being alienated for saying this :).
How did you survive doing all 50 Cascade games?!
Sorry, I didn't spend 3 hours watching every exciting moment, heh!
I loved Green Beret too :P maybe the first game I run with my CPC 464 and GT-64, could be 3D grand prix...
One of the games that defined the CPC before the 16/32 bits era (I had the ST late 87..) :D
I tried the arcade at the end of the 90" with the emulators...I didn't like it. Neither the C64 version.
I had the Disk 50, which I think was the same as the Cassette 50, which had a nice Helicopter Demolition City type game on it. :)
I never played the arcade version but I thought the CPC version of Green Beret was great.
Green Beret on the CPC is an ok game, but compared to the Arcade original it stinks.
Cassette 50? Trying that turd takes a lot of courage. :D
Quote from: AMSDOS on 00:25, 27 April 16
I had the Disk 50, which I think was the same as the Cassette 50, which had a nice Helicopter Demolition City type game on it. :)
For me it has one good game (not strangely it's the only non .bas of the disk), it's Space Pod Rescue.
Quote from: remax on 11:25, 27 April 16
For me it has one good game (not strangely it's the only non .bas of the disk), it's Space Pod Rescue.
Hmmm, just had a look on CPC-Power and I do remember Space Pod Rescue, though the one I was thinking of was Whirly Bird.
I didn't mind this game but the scrolling and collision detection wasn't the best. It was a hard game.
Wonder how it might play on a GX4000 if it could ever be enhanced.
Why is it not as good as the arcade?
Maybe this is why:
I am sure that for some arcade conversions the companies didn't have the arcade machines near them. Sometimes they had to visit
the local arcade and put money in and play it to find out.
They didn't have a dump of the graphics, sound or code and no description of how the game worked, it's gameplay, it's secrets etc
and all they could go from is playing it at the local arcade and possibly recording videos of them playing it. This is in the early days
of VHS too.
Unfortunately that means they don't know about the secrets and they probably miss quite a lot of things in the game play too.
So potentially they loose quite a lot that makes it so fun compared to the arcade.
I believe later they had access to the machines in their offices, and some did dump the data from the roms to get more
accurate sprites and level layout. With it being in the office they had more chance to find things when they played it, it
was often set to free play and still they probably missed some secrets etc because they were not told how to trigger or activate them or were not good enough
to play and find them.
Also Green Beret is an early game in 1986 so maybe the programmers were not quite so good with the CPC then.
It doesn't use hardware scrolling. It uses the firmware for some things, it's double buffered, sprites are uncompressed. It's not that bad for an early game.
I think if it had been made by a later ocean team with their software scroll it would probably have been better.
@ZEUSDAZ (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1578) I'd be interested in seeing the CPC version of cassette 50 if there is one :P
Heh, I did preserve that for the Dragon, and found that there were actually TWO versions of the damned tape, so I ended up taking 100 screenshots for the wiki page... ::)
You can check them here (http://archive.worldofdragon.org/index.php?title=Cassette_50).
Sorry, but I enjoyed Green Beret for the CPC. It was quite tough to play from level 2 onwards.
Sure, it's attempt at screen scrolling was fairly poor and it suffered from occasion responsiveness issues when firing off a weapon, but for me, it's pros outweighed the cons.
I played this one for an age, but I never got to rescue the captives on level 4, if I was lucky enough to make it to that level. The bridge on level 3 used to stump me more often than not.
Whatever about technicalities, but for 1986, there was a shedload worse out there than Green Beret in my honest opinion.
I played the C64 version before the CPC. I found the C64 version very difficult but I enjoyed it.
I then bought the CPC version and did not enjoy it at all. For me, it's the collision detection that really lets it down and ruins the gameplay experience, regardless of the artwork, sound effects or scrolling.
In regards to the scrolling, Ghost n Goblins had a similar style, but that felt better than Green Beret because of the slower pace.
Kung fu master was released around at the same time (I think) and had better scrolling, hit detection and gameplay.
Green Beret is in a serious need for a remake (I'm not doing it :) ). It's not graphically heavy, has very little animation and background tiles. The music is a short loop and it probably has around 5 different sound effects.
The ghost and Goblins scrolling was acceptable(To Me) And was better done because I am sure it didn't freeze the enemy and player sprites as it moved, like Green Beret does. The fact that everything stops for tea , whilst you trundle along make Green Beret a bit of a laughing stock.
I played Green Beret back in the day and enjoyed it a lot. It seems there were many of us that did that
Yeah I enjoyed it tbh , but when looking from the C64 or Speccy version , it is going to be ridiculed unfortunately
I loved playing Green Beret :doh:
Pretty poor attempt to review Green Beret. I guess he never had a amstrad & heard everyone non-amstrad droning on how bad the amstrad version scroll was. Its true its not as easy as the really drap, cut down, slow scrooling c64 & spec versions that both felt very generic and you can just rush thru them in less than 10 mins with little efford.
The difficulty is probably what makes the amstrad version so disliked by other 8bitters even though they should know better being 8bitters themselves. I recall getting the game back then and being really impressed with the many multicoloured enemies & their variation .. aka some of them chase you, some dont, some you can jump & some you can duck etc. Easily played it for weeks untill i beat it and it felt like i actually done something. Felt the game was really faithfull to the arcade as well.
Then i got online 20 years later and it seem everyone was just blindly hating on the amstrad flip screen scrooling and Green Beret being flagged as the worst one. The amstrad version do have slightly "heavy" controls so perhaps that is it.
Anyways, the video is quite clearly just a "first impressions" video mixed with a lot of "prior opinon adoptation" that is sadly trending on youtube with modern games.
Quote from: Cholo on 23:51, 08 May 16
Pretty poor attempt to review Green Beret. I guess he never had a amstrad & heard everyone non-amstrad droning on how bad the amstrad version scroll was. Its true its not as easy as the really drap, cut down, slow scrooling c64 & spec versions that both felt very generic and you can just rush thru them in less than 10 mins with little efford.
The difficulty is probably what makes the amstrad version so disliked by other 8bitters even though they should know better being 8bitters themselves. I recall getting the game back then and being really impressed with the many multicoloured enemies & their variation .. aka some of them chase you, some dont, some you can jump & some you can duck etc. Easily played it for weeks untill i beat it and it felt like i actually done something. Felt the game was really faithfull to the arcade as well.
Then i got online 20 years later and it seem everyone was just blindly hating on the amstrad flip screen scrooling and Green Beret being flagged as the worst one. The amstrad version do have slightly "heavy" controls so perhaps that is it.
Anyways, the video is quite clearly just a "first impressions" video mixed with a lot of "prior opinon adoptation" that is sadly trending on youtube with modern games.
I didn't feel it was very faithful to arcade at all even when I played both the arcade and cpc version back then as it plays very different when you compare them to each other in terms of hit detection, scrolling and character speed.
In terms of speed in completing the game, with the cpc version your able to get 3 characters on screen at once (including your own), you can run through the whole level as those 3 characters chase you. No other characters will come on screen during that time, so your able to complete it quite quickly compared to the other versions from what I remember.
I always feel bad when someone tells green berets was "bad"... it wasn't that bad and quite enjoyable when you are 8 years old.
Quote from: MacDeath on 18:01, 09 May 16
I always feel bad when someone tells green berets was "bad"... it wasn't that bad and quite enjoyable when you are 8 years old.
8?! I was still enjoying it at 12 and 13! ;D
The 8 years old me had a very bad impression of it ;D However, the 8 years old me was a terrible player (pretty much as nowadays) and he never had the patience to go on with the game. I was dying time after time, I got very frustrated and I never loaded the tape again, hehe.Luckily, it was a gift. I remember that one of the things I disliked was the pace of the game, I usually do not mind if something is very difficult but I have all the time in the world to make my decisions and move the character, however with this one you had to be very fast and accurate, just the opposite of me :-\
If it is a game in its own right , it is enjoyable . If you were to buy it in the expectations of playing something like the arcade game or after having played your mates Spectrum version or commodore version you would not be as impressed.Its playable and enjoyable and if you lived a life that was sheltered from C64 /Spectrum and Arcade machines you could easily feel that its alright . Probably as an 8year old it would be preferable to the tougher C64 and Speccy versions which were tough esp Speccy version .
Amstrad Green Beret does most certainly not deserve to be featured as a Shit Game vid. Especially being an early conversion and considering there are scores of real bad Amstrad titles out there..
Quote from: dodogildo on 19:39, 09 May 16
Amstrad Green Beret does most certainly not deserve to be featured as a Shit Game vid. Especially being an early conversion and considering there are scores of real bad Amstrad titles out there..
He has PC Outrun on the same list of shit games :o
I was really enjoying Green Beret as a child on my mate's MSX - even now looking at those screens with the missiles and the mines and all brings back memories...
When I played it on the CPC many years later I remember thinking, wtf, was it really THAT bad?
Yes, reading other people's comments I have to admit it's not really a shitty title - problematic and seriously lacking, yes, but not that bad as the video makes it out to be. But still a far, far cry from my experience on the MSX... (I should revisit that one)
Quote from: dodogildo on 19:39, 09 May 16
Amstrad Green Beret does most certainly not deserve to be featured as a Shit Game vid. Especially being an early conversion and considering there are scores of real bad Amstrad titles out there..
Yes, it's hard and flawed but I enjoyed playing it on my CPC. It's hardly "shit".
Quote from: Puresox on 19:06, 09 May 16
If it is a game in its own right , it is enjoyable . If you were to buy it in the expectations of playing something like the arcade game or after having played your mates Spectrum version or commodore version you would not be as impressed.Its playable and enjoyable and if you lived a life that was sheltered from C64 /Spectrum and Arcade machines you could easily feel that its alright . Probably as an 8year old it would be preferable to the tougher C64 and Speccy versions which were tough esp Speccy version .
And even at that it's subjective.
I enjoyed both the CPC *and* the arcade versions. The problem with a lot of youtubers is they're playing games and judging by modern standards. Very different story compared to playing up to two or three years after they were released, really.
And that was pretty much the version you had. You didn't have emulators to compare, or multiple systems. You played the game and you played it through in most cases. Now you have armchair "retro experts" (some of which weren't even born when the game was released!), labelling a game as shit after playing it once or twice.
It's like the Nirvana superfan who was born in 1997.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 23:11, 20 May 16
And that was pretty much the version you had. You didn't have emulators to compare,
I was quite lucky and really had a good spread of systems to try via my friends. I also managed to get a Spectrum and C64 so I had all three main 8 bits while they were on the high street.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:49, 27 April 16
Why is it not as good as the arcade?
Maybe this is why:
I am sure that for some arcade conversions the companies didn't have the arcade machines near them. Sometimes they had to visit
the local arcade and put money in and play it to find out.
They didn't have a dump of the graphics, sound or code and no description of how the game worked, it's gameplay, it's secrets etc
and all they could go from is playing it at the local arcade and possibly recording videos of them playing it. This is in the early days
of VHS too.
Unfortunately that means they don't know about the secrets and they probably miss quite a lot of things in the game play too.
So potentially they loose quite a lot that makes it so fun compared to the arcade.
I believe later they had access to the machines in their offices, and some did dump the data from the roms to get more
accurate sprites and level layout. With it being in the office they had more chance to find things when they played it, it
was often set to free play and still they probably missed some secrets etc because they were not told how to trigger or activate them or were not good enough
to play and find them.
Also Green Beret is an early game in 1986 so maybe the programmers were not quite so good with the CPC then.
The basics are all there, the programmers captured the arcade perfectly. But all their efforts were massively undone with the crap scrolling and lousy collision hit detection. Fix this, and it's one of the best action games on the CPC.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 23:11, 20 May 16
And even at that it's subjective.
I enjoyed both the CPC *and* the arcade versions. The problem with a lot of youtubers is they're playing games and judging by modern standards.
Nope! I thought it was crap back in the day too.
Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 23:11, 20 May 16
And even at that it's subjective.
I enjoyed both the CPC *and* the arcade versions. The problem with a lot of youtubers is they're playing games and judging by modern standards.
Quote from: ukmarkh on 11:21, 21 May 16
Nope! I thought it was crap back in the day too.
It was also slated by reviewers back in the day too. Many people thought that the CPC was no good at scrolling (or games) because of it from what I remember.
(Xyphoe gives a lot more details on this on his analysis.)
Quote from: ukmarkh on 11:19, 21 May 16
The basics are all there, the programmers captured the arcade perfectly. But all their efforts were massively undone with the crap scrolling and lousy collision hit detection. Fix this, and it's one of the best action games on the CPC.
The scrolling didn't bother me as much, scrolling wasn't a major thing in 86, but that hit detection being so off at times did make me want to throw my CPC to that floor a few times, I won't disagree with you there.
Quote from: Cholo on 23:51, 08 May 16
Pretty poor attempt to review Green Beret. I guess he never had a amstrad & heard everyone non-amstrad droning on how bad the amstrad version scroll was. Its true its not as easy as the really drap, cut down, slow scrooling c64 & spec versions that both felt very generic and you can just rush thru them in less than 10 mins with little efford.
The difficulty is probably what makes the amstrad version so disliked by other 8bitters even though they should know better being 8bitters themselves. I recall getting the game back then and being really impressed with the many multicoloured enemies & their variation .. aka some of them chase you, some dont, some you can jump & some you can duck etc. Easily played it for weeks untill i beat it and it felt like i actually done something. Felt the game was really faithfull to the arcade as well.
Then i got online 20 years later and it seem everyone was just blindly hating on the amstrad flip screen scrooling and Green Beret being flagged as the worst one. The amstrad version do have slightly "heavy" controls so perhaps that is it.
Anyways, the video is quite clearly just a "first impressions" video mixed with a lot of "prior opinon adoptation" that is sadly trending on youtube with modern games.
I was a teen in the mid 80's so was gaming at the perfect time of the golden 8 & 16bit machines owning all 3 main 8-bit machines, spectrum 128k+1 (still own to this day), C64c (still own to this day) and a cpc464 which sadly for Amstrad was known in the U.K as "the third machine" or "the runt of the litter" (not that I'm slagging it or gave it those nick names), not many kids wanted to own one back then, I only own one now for either the challenge vids myself and Novabug are doing or 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, Green Beret on the other hand IS a poor conversion even for cpc464 standards especially for an Ocean / Imagine game, very unplayable with terrible side scrolling unlike It's other 8-bit counterparts which are far superior, you can see from comments on the Youtube SGT of this that the general feelings towards the game is negative. I also own an Amiga A500 which is my original since 1989,...my most beloved machine along with 128k+1 spectrum but I still include some of their games into the SGT section to prove I am not bias towards any machine, if a game has been requested for me to do a SGT review I will judge it myself before I decide to put it in there, in this case Green Beret deserves that place. Usually It's those who cannot see out of the box because in their eyes their favourite machine never delivers bad games and if it does the owners of those machines will heavily defend it no matter how bad that game really is, I've been playing games for over 30yrs and I know what are classics, failures, good games, bad games and lost opportunities, Green Beret is an awful conversion from such an impressive software house, Rastan on the Amstrad is also the worst conversion ever officially done with immense jerky scrolling, bland backgrounds and no music in the game and will feature on the next SGT video in a weeks time. Outrun on the Amstrad was pretty bad on all formats but again the Amstrad won the prize for the worst which is why I also placed that into the SGT section and yet an Amstrad fanboy reviewed it himself on youtube way before I reviewed it and just kept telling himself it was pretty good, yet in reality it is total garbage at 2fps animation, he just couldn't wake up and smell the roses to the reality that it was in fact a crud conversion which is what I said in the SGT vid of Outrun Amstrad. The SGT section is non bias, all formats feature in it not just Amstrad so don't feel I'm aiming at one machine, I own many of them but they all have bad games and good games, Green Beret deserved the position this time round. If you haven't yet, my advice is to start heavily playing a load of games on the C64 and Spectrum 128k of the same games, it wont be long before you also start seeing the slow jerky scrolling issues of those certain Amstrad conversions. Just don't take anything personal, I'm here to review, play and have fun, not to create enemies.
Just loosen up and accept shit games appear on all systems (including your beloved cpc) and if they are requested for me to do I will look at them first and then decide if they will feature on a SGT video no matter what system that game is on.
I didn't enjoy Green Beret on any format. I got the CPC one in the superb value Dixons Top 20 pack for 99p and it was one of my least liked games on the whole thing and I thought eh maybe it's just a bad conversion and it probably is but after playing it on other formats a long time ago ago including the arcade version I just find it a poor game in general.
Quote from: Carnivac on 09:34, 23 May 16
I didn't enjoy Green Beret on any format. I got the CPC one in the superb value Dixons Top 20 pack for 99p and it was one of my least liked games on the whole thing and I thought eh maybe it's just a bad conversion and it probably is but after playing it on other formats a long time ago ago including the arcade version I just find it a poor game in general.
Well I'm glad you can see for what that conversion really is weather It's comparing it back in the day or to today's way of thinking,...BAD GAME.
It just amazes me that certain fanboys of certain machines cannot accept when a game on their beloved machine is garbage and just defend it to the end (shaking my head in sadness and disbelief).
It is a poor conversion,...fact.
Hope you pop by the Zeusdaz Youtube channel :-D
Quote from: ZEUSDAZ on 09:15, 23 May 16
not many kids wanted to own one back then, I only own one now for either the challenge vids myself and Novabug are doing or Shit Game Time vids which are requested by viewers for me to do
There we have it, a member of an amstrad forum that only owns one to make 'shit game time vids'.
I wonder why he even bothers to post here?...... Oh yeah, to get hits on his YouTube channel
Quote from: Dr Tiger Ninestein on 12:24, 23 May 16
There we have it, a member of an amstrad forum that only owns one to make 'shit game time vids'.
I wonder why he even bothers to post here?...... Oh yeah, to get hits on his YouTube channel
Dude, grow up, jeez, getting more hits only matters if money is involved via monitizing,...I don't monitize my vids, so your second statement is flawed.
Second,...blame those Amstrad fans that ask me via either the request video or through the Amstrad forums to SGT those certain Amstrad games, I don't simply pick one out of the blue and slate it,
they choose it, I look at it and then decide if I sgt it or not,...do your revision before saying anything!, god forbid if you were called to do Jury duty,...the poor bugger would be found guilty within seconds,....REVISION FIRST!
Yes a reality check for you,...It's mainly Amstrad fans that
ask me to do the SGT vids for Amstrad games!!!,...so complain to them.
14f1 - appears to be collision code for bullets
143a - is collision code with enemies, more specifically with knifing them I think
2451 - is collision with player character.
539 - update enemy movements
af3 - I think this is sound related
216b - input relatedf.
EDIT: So what exactly is wrong with the collision?
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?
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 :'-(
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
Quote from: Puresox on 09:58, 24 May 16
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.
Quote from: ZEUSDAZ on 15:25, 23 May 16
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.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:13, 24 May 16
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! :laugh:
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.
Quote from: Carnivac on 14:54, 24 May 16
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. :laugh:
Understandable. There are plenty of lazy direct ports.
Quote from: Carnivac on 15:16, 24 May 16
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. :D
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
Quote from: ivarf on 21:08, 24 May 16
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 ... 8)
Quote from: TFM on 21:10, 24 May 16
Well, I can name you 1000 c64 games ... 8)
Exactly! There are many bad games out there
Personally I like the GFX of Green Beret on CPC. Give it a better scrolling and it would be a good game. :)
Quote from: TFM on 21:21, 24 May 16
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? :laugh:
Quote from: ivarf on 21:08, 24 May 16
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.
Quote from: ivarf on 21:08, 24 May 16
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.
Quote from: ZEUSDAZ on 09:15, 23 May 16
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
^^^ Yeah just slightly , The Amstrad got the best version
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 (http://cpcrulez.fr/GamesTest/green_beret.htm)
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*
A score of 7 for Green Beret from cpcgamereviews:
(http://s33.postimg.org/hdelpldpb/tmp_10701_Screenshot_2016_05_25_11_47_02_898_325.jpg)
Quote from: ivarf on 10:37, 25 May 16
A score of 7 for Green Beret from cpcgamereviews:
The reviews on that site are quite unreliable.
Indeed, they're just personal opinions, not something to be referenced.
Quote from: Gryzor on 11:40, 25 May 16
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?"
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
Quote from: TFM on 21:21, 24 May 16
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!
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:19, 25 May 16
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.
How can Green Beret's scrolling be worse than in Gal(i)van?
galvan - cosmo police © ocean software (1986) (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=947)
*Tiny* playing area horrible jerking scrolling. Ouch!
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:37, 25 May 16
How can Green Beret's scrolling be worse than in Gal(i)van?
galvan - cosmo police © ocean software (1986) (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=947)
*Tiny* playing area horrible jerking scrolling. Ouch!
They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:41, 25 May 16
They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.
Thinks about how hard Dinamic Green Beret would have been... :o
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:19, 25 May 16
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!
... and end up with a game probably running at the same frame rate as the current CPC version in nearly half the play area size? ;)
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:41, 25 May 16
They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.
This is a case in point. Army Moves is already a little sluggish (and dont get me wrong, I love my Dinamic games) but the playing area is small and heavily bordered, and I'd be very surprised if it's scrolling more than those 4-5 characters along the bottom with everything else as sprites, so it doesnt look remotely comparable to what you'd want for Green Beret to me.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:37, 25 May 16
How can Green Beret's scrolling be worse than in Gal(i)van?
galvan - cosmo police © ocean software (1986) (http://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=947)
*Tiny* playing area horrible jerking scrolling. Ouch!
That's a good candidate for zeusdaz shit game. Have anyone here had good fun playing Galvan?
Quote from: ivarf on 18:39, 25 May 16
That's a good candidate for zeusdaz shit game. Have anyone here had good fun playing Galvan?
it actually made me feel a bit sick when I played it.
Also the colour of the character sometimes merges into the busy background :(
Quote from: ivarf on 21:08, 24 May 16
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
Not me. I totally agree with Zeusdaz choice on this one.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:41, 25 May 16
They should have got Dinamic to do Green Beret! They had Army moves in 1986 and the scrolling in that is fine.
Games like Kung Fu Master had better scrolling and collision detection around the same time that Green Beret came out. I think that they would of made a good conversion of Green Beret.
I also agree that the game would need a completely new rewrite.
At least It's not graphic heavy and the animations are very simple along with the sounds effects and music.
Quote from: sigh on 20:47, 25 May 16
Games like Kung Fu Master had better scrolling and collision detection around the same time that Green Beret came out. I think that they would of made a good conversion of Green Beret.
I also agree that the game would need a completely new rewrite.
Gotta slightly disagree here. While the CD was good on the generic muggers / knife guys, it was an utter shambles at the end of level guys, half the hits not registering at all.
Totally ruined my gaming experience on what was otherwise a decent attempt at a conversion (It was also a graphic horror in places, specifically the 3rd end of level boss).
Seems that people have to agree on disagreeing. It makes me wonder if there are any games that we all think is good. From the sound of it in this thread, the c64 and Spectrum critics are right, most games on the CPC is shit and the CPC couldn't scroll. Are least not scroll at the time and that ruined the game experience.
Quote from: ivarf on 01:31, 26 May 16
Seems that people have to agree on disagreeing. It makes me wonder if there are any games that we all think is good. From the sound of it in this thread, the c64 and Spectrum critics are right, most games on the CPC is shit and the CPC couldn't scroll. Are least not scroll at the time and that ruined the game experience.
I think that only happened if you allowed it. As I've said before, I enjoyed Green Beret despite it's lack of scrolling, it's hit detection bothered me more as there's nothing more frustrating than losing your last life when you *knew* you hit the guy.
It's horses for courses, personally, I never understood the appeal for the Spectrum and it's monochrome style at all. Most of their graphics were just outlined. That would have put me off more than scrolling, but that's just me personally.
Quote from: ivarf on 01:31, 26 May 16
Seems that people have to agree on disagreeing. It makes me wonder if there are any games that we all think is good. From the sound of it in this thread, the c64 and Spectrum critics are right, most games on the CPC is shit and the CPC couldn't scroll. Are least not scroll at the time and that ruined the game experience.
I guess that nobody would say that games like Savage, Trantor, Turrican, Exolon, B.A.T, Iron Lord, Capitán Trueno, Navy Moves... and many others are bad. It happens, however, that there are games that were not so good but we personally enjoyed when we were kids. Probably the good memories make us to appreciate them much more. I have a few of those in my own list, like Quartet or even Score 3020 :)
This thread has got me playing Green Beret again. I've never played the Arcade game, but I could play this. Scrolling - Not as Jerky as "Roland on the Ropes" and people still enjoy playing that game. Playability - actually really good, I can Duck, Jump, Stab, Move Left & Right while Ducking! Compare that with Codies SAS Combat Unit, the 2nd Round in that game you need to be Pixel Perfect to Stab those guys coming from Front & Behind, Green Beret allows multiple opportunities to stab the enemy before they kill you.
Quote from: AMSDOS on 11:54, 26 May 16
This thread has got me playing Green Beret again. I've never played the Arcade game, but I could play this. Scrolling - Not as Jerky as "Roland on the Ropes" and people still enjoy playing that game. Playability - actually really good, I can Duck, Jump, Stab, Move Left & Right while Ducking! Compare that with Codies SAS Combat Unit, the 2nd Round in that game you need to be Pixel Perfect to Stab those guys coming from Front & Behind, Green Beret allows multiple opportunities to stab the enemy before they kill you.
Yes. I now want to go back to it to see if my memory cheats or not + to compare it to the other versions. IIRC there is a BBC version. Perhaps will do a round-up later in the year.
Quote from: AMSDOS on 11:54, 26 May 16
....Scrolling - Not as Jerky as "Roland on the Ropes" and people still enjoy playing that game.
Roland on the ropes is using hardware scrolling but moving at 2 chars at a time. Everything is drawn as tiles. The character is split into tiles, the enemies, the backgrounds etc. No problem at all with drawing over the "problem" are because of this. And it seems to keep track of which tiles are dirty so only erases/redraws the tiles it needs to. It makes extensive use of the firmware for both doing the scrolling AND for calculating screen addresses and yet it also has some multiplies done in loops which should have been look up tables. The thing that lets it down is that it is single buffered and when scrolling the panel at the bottom is redrawn and it looks a bit messy and flickery.
If it was double buffered this could have been avoided but it uses quite a lot of ram for the graphics maps and sprites. It's got "real scrolling" too, none of the green beret fake scrolling.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:28, 26 May 16
Roland on the ropes is using hardware scrolling but moving at 2 chars at a time. Everything is drawn as tiles. The character is split into tiles, the enemies, the backgrounds etc. No problem at all with drawing over the "problem" are because of this. And it seems to keep track of which tiles are dirty so only erases/redraws the tiles it needs to. It makes extensive use of the firmware for both doing the scrolling AND for calculating screen addresses and yet it also has some multiplies done in loops which should have been look up tables. The thing that lets it down is that it is single buffered and when scrolling the panel at the bottom is redrawn and it looks a bit messy and flickery.
Roland On The Ropes was one of the first games coded for the system and had to be programmed extremely quickly.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:28, 26 May 16
Roland on the ropes is using hardware scrolling but moving at 2 chars at a time. Everything is drawn as tiles. The character is split into tiles, the enemies, the backgrounds etc. No problem at all with drawing over the "problem" are because of this. And it seems to keep track of which tiles are dirty so only erases/redraws the tiles it needs to. It makes extensive use of the firmware for both doing the scrolling AND for calculating screen addresses and yet it also has some multiplies done in loops which should have been look up tables. The thing that lets it down is that it is single buffered and when scrolling the panel at the bottom is redrawn and it looks a bit messy and flickery.
But we still love it! :D
Roland on the Ropes uses every bit of the 43k the 464 had available to it, so any attempt to improve it with double buffer, would mean 128k at least. :D
QuoteIf it was double buffered this could have been avoided but it uses quite a lot of ram for the graphics maps and sprites. It's got "real scrolling" too, none of the green beret fake scrolling.
Well I could of presented the game I'm working on, originally it was using SCR SW ROLL (&BC50) to Scroll down a section of the Screen, and like Roland on the Ropes there was flicker. Altering that to use Fake Scrolling has made a difference, though the game improved significantly when I went from the UDG Driver to Sprite Driver (which has received little interest).
Quote from: AMSDOS on 08:11, 27 May 16
Roland on the Ropes uses every bit of the 43k the 464 had available to it, so any attempt to improve it with double buffer, would mean 128k at least. :D
Well.... look at the code... sorry, this looks nearly like taken from an 8080 system. Not much usage of the 2nd register set an sophisticated Z80 code. Code could be more quick and compact.
For me, the arcade version was fantastic, the Speccy and C64 conversions felt authentic, and were enjoyable. Other versions came out, that were fun i.e. NES version.
I owned a CPC 464 in 1984, I was nine, in 85 / 86 I played Green Beret, it was shit then, it's still shit now. We had a C64 as well, I preferred my CPC, but Green Beret on the C64 was programmed to perfection.
No amount of fanny boy Amstrad talk will ever convince me otherwise. I would love a remake, i believe given the R-Type treatment, it would play a blinder.
I love the CPC, but will I never defend some of the crap that was released for it... Outrun and Green Beret being prime examples.
Best words spoken to end the discussion! All said! :)
Green Beret was coded on the Amstrad by the same coder that coded Yie ar Kung Fu. Two good games. Too bad we didn't get more games from him
Quote from: ivarf on 21:37, 01 June 16
Green Beret was coded on the Amstrad by the same coder that coded Yie ar Kung Fu. Two good games. Too bad we didn't get more games from him
Yie Ar Kung Fu had two coders on it.
Brian went on to make loads more games for cpc.
Looks like Keith went on to do Vidi - so no longer doing games.
Quote
Re: Rastan Saga CPC coder mini interview
« Reply #4 on: 18:39, 01 August 15 »
Hi :D
yes Keith was indeed the coder on Yie Ar, I only did the sprite routines which used a cool form of RLE compression to get more of them into the game and allow colour changes using the same data.
I also did all the sprite graphics, which at the time were done by freeze framing a video of the arcade game and copying the fames in Amdraw...it took a while
I did however write the Speccy 128K on my own for Ocean which may be why I keep getting the credit for all the 8bit versions of Yie Ar Kung Fu, which is not at all fair on the original coders. Keith was a brilliant young talent and its a shame he quit coding.
I already answered on the FB post about Rastan, I don't know of any level loading bugs in the tape game. When we delivered the masters it was all working fine, so it maybe something bad happened at the mastering stage. I do know we delivered it fine though.
Anything else you want to know feel free to ask.
Brian
A remake of green beret, interesting :) visually I quite liked the conversion but it was the scroll / collision that made the gameplay hard... Must play this game again including other platforms(maybe in cheat mode?)
I noticed yie ar Kung fu in conversations, one of my Amstrad favs, so much so I did a concept for Amiga (it never got a version)
Back in the day Green Beret scored 81% in Amtix. Amstrad Action gave it a Rave and 83%
Because they got impressed by the brutal GFX. [nb]Yes, back the day this was brutal.[/nb]