Some GX4000 cart reviews from "Mean Machines" multi console magazine (1990/91)

[cwpab]

I guess you could always make artificial levels that don't look like levels, like "oh no! I have lost all my items except for these 10, and someone has restored my energy to X. And then you're in the magical kingdom of Y and you can't go back. So it's like a "part 2" with a simple password. Not cool for RPG fans, I know. I'm not into that myself, I just find interesting how to overcome the saving ability.

Back to Alan Michael Sugar, Trip Hawkins and their failed consoles, well, there are obvious differences. 3DO sold 2 million units Vs. 15,000 of the GX4000. And the 3DO was revolutionary, even if the business model (and lack of developer support) killed it. In contrast, the GX4000 was kind of like the Wii on a graphical level (only an improvement on the previous machine, not a generation jump), but without motion controls and with only 10 mediocre games. But in Amstrad's favour, I suspect the whole adventure was not particularly expensive... because the 3DO company ended up in bankrupcy. So maybe Mr. Sugar was not that dumb... He used a zero risk approach... did he? Unless we discover he manufactured 500,000 of these little white spaceships, but I don't think that's the case.

[eto]

There is also the possibility for disc/tape saves on the plus computers. 

yeah, they mention that in the Arnold V documentation. 

And to be honest, when I read that the first time, I recognized that whoever developed that system just didn't care about the result. That section is just a stupid justification. In case someone says "it does not support save states" then you can point to the documentation and say "sure it does". 

While it is technically true, in real life, it's unusable.

1) there is no firmware to use - the developer has to implement the tape/disk access. 
2) the user experience would be awful - "you paid much more for that cartridge than for a disk game and now we ask you to enter a blank disk, so we can store a few bytes on it"
3) not sure here... Was it even possible to distinguish a Plus 464 from a GX 4000 via Software? Or could a GX 4000 owner end up in a situation when the GX4000 waits for a non-existing tape to load?

Actually I don't understand why they did not add a few more lanes to the cartridge so hardware developers could add more logic. There is absolutely no reason to make the cartridges as small as they are. 

[andycadley]

While it is technically true, in real life, it's unusable.

1) there is no firmware to use - the developer has to implement the tape/disk access.
2) the user experience would be awful - "you paid much more for that cartridge than for a disk game and now we ask you to enter a blank disk, so we can store a few bytes on it"
3) not sure here... Was it even possible to distinguish a Plus 464 from a GX 4000 via Software? Or could a GX 4000 owner end up in a situation when the GX4000 waits for a non-existing tape to load?

1) I'm not sure that would be a big deal for commercial companies, they pretty much all had their own custom loaders anyway or could just license something.

2) Yeah, it would be a bit crap. Especially on a 464+ where you'd have to revert to cassette.

3) Yes you can, if you select ROM 7 to be paged in (the disk ROM) you'll get a different result on a GX which can be used to detect this situation.

Actually I don't understand why they did not add a few more lanes to the cartridge so hardware developers could add more logic. There is absolutely no reason to make the cartridges as small as they are.

Adding lines isn't really the problem, it's grafting all the logic to make that memory writable. The Plus leans heavily on the existing ROM infrastructure on the CPC, but that's all designed with Write-Through to RAM (and that needs to remain to stay functional), so you can't just make one of those ROMs be a bit of RAM and write to it because those writes would go elsewhere.

Instead you'd have to map that RAM in some other way (the ASIC register space?) and then merge writes to that address range to appear as writes to the cartridge. It's not impossible, but it starts getting messy fast and is entirely not how you'd do it if you were designing the system from scratch without the existing constraints of the CPC design.

[Anthony Flack]

The lack of save space is the biggest bummer about cartridge games for me. Even for a simple arcade-style game, I like to have my high scores saved.

Robocop 2 and Navy Seals are interesting for showing how the console could perform pretty well even compared to 16 bit systems; decent enough graphics, good framerate. If only they were good games...

But the quality of the design and implementation is nowhere near enough to compete with Sega and Nintendo. It's the same with Switchblade. These are not terrible games, but they were not good enough. Amiga games were also mostly not good enough. Not compared to the arcade-hardened design focus of Japan's top game companies. 

A lot of companies were good enough for the local market in the 1980s but not for the global market in the 1990s. It was like a local champion turning up to an international competition and getting slaughtered.

[andycadley]

Yeah, it's definitely true that they weren't really competitive with the types of games coming out on console. Partly that was just down to sheer numbers, the consoles sold much more copies so larger teams could be put on each game (and helped considerably by Nintendo artificially limiting how many titles a publisher could release, thus forcing fewer but higher quality output). Some of it did come down to the hardware itself though - home computers, even things like the Amiga, weren't ideally suited to fast paced games in the way the consoles were, the programmers were putting a lot of effort into "keeping up" and therefore a lot less effort into finessing the games themselves.

[Anthony Flack]

So what failed? Not the lack of save states, I guess, as people didn't play it enough to save games on it. Basically the lack of a killer app, the inability to bring something new to the table.

I agree - and the lack of save states is more of a nuisance to me NOW rather than a big concern for developers back in 1990. Personally I think they should have given it a tape in/out and made cheap games their USP. I know it would have gone against their whole business model and they would have never... but their business model did fail after all. Amstrad Action could have put loaders on their covertapes to add GX features/controls to existing CPC games. And you could have saved your RPGs onto a tape. 

Issues around design are endlessly interesting to me, I guess because game design is my job and the whole fun/not fun thing is my primary responsibility.

British and European developers in the mid 80s and early 90s were the best in the world at pushing hardware limits. They did impressive things with graphics and sound and fast 3d code. Sometimes it paid off superbly but often it seemed like technical considerations dominated too much, and design given too little attention, and those games have aged poorly. 

A lot of Japanese console games of the time were programmed like crap but with much more awareness of things like pacing and good level design, resulting in better games. Yeah it did help that the console hardware was similar to arcade hardware, when most of the popular games of the day were similar to arcade games.

[ComSoft6128]

October 90 review of the GX4000 & Burning Rubber from ZERO magazine:

https://archive.org/details/zero-magazine-12/page/n89/mode/2up?q=gx4000

ZERO magazine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_(video_game_magazine)

[dodogildo]

"Amstrad's console is going to sell and sell, 
Software houses are familiar with the CPC format, 
so there'll be no shortage of good titles. ,
It's got a good future me thinks." 
-Page 90

[andycadley]

"Amstrad's console is going to sell and sell,
Software houses are familiar with the CPC format,
so there'll be no shortage of good titles. ,
It's got a good future me thinks."
-Page 90

Now that's a comment which did not age very well.

[cwpab]

"Amstrad's console is going to sell and sell,
Software houses are familiar with the CPC format,
so there'll be no shortage of good titles. ,
It's got a good future me thinks."
-Page 90

Now that's a comment which did not age very well.

I think he was very accurate: the console sold and sold and sold and sold until it reached a few thousands units. And the CPC catalog is finally avaialble in 2023!