Why no CJ games on the CPC?

[chinnyhill10]

Did a review of CJ's Elephant Antics the other week for the Speccy and C64. The Speccy version was converted by CPC stalwarts Big Red Software.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOOpbYB8GAA


In the video I speculate that a scrolling platformer may have been too difficult to convert on a limited budget and timeframe. But does anyone know the truth? Did they ever plan to do a CPC version or did they decide it would be too much hassle.


The CPC lost out on a potentially decent platformer, then again look how bad CPC New Zealand Story is!


This has been rather bugging me!

[arnoldemu]

Didn't Big Red do "Grell and Falla"?

They could re-use the engine for that.

I'm guessing here that Cj's was near the end of the CPC's commercial lifetime and either CJ was in progress but cancelled OR it wasn't started because of that.

[arnoldemu]

Looks like none of the CJ games came to CPC.

[chinnyhill10]

I'm guessing here that Cj's was near the end of the CPC's commercial lifetime and either CJ was in progress but cancelled OR it wasn't started because of that.

It was only 1991 and Codemasters were bringing out all their other games on the CPC, even if some of them were very lazily ported like Bubble Dizzy.

[EgoTrip]

Its no big loss, its just a generic, bog standard platformer.

[chinnyhill10]

Its no big loss, its just a generic, bog standard platformer.

Completely disagree. It's actually a damn sight better than stuff like Fluff (which people tend to overlook the average gameplay on in favour of the hardware tricks). CJ is actually a very solid game and all for just 4 quid.

[Puresox]

Isn't DJ Puff, very similar to CJ? I always get them mixed up .

[chinnyhill10]

Isn't DJ Puff, very similar to CJ? I always get them mixed up .

Interestingly DJ Puff on the C64 appears to use exactly the same game engine as CJ. Yet on the Spectrum it doesn't. So on the 64 they are closely related games.


So yes they are quite similar!

[zeropolis79]

I noticed a few later Codemasters games never appeared on the CPC...

KGB Superspy, Bee 52, Bounty Hunter, Cue Boy, Slicks, Tilt, Murray Mouse Supercop, Paris to Dakar, Tarzan Goes Ape, Wrestling Superstars..

But I'm in touch with people from  Big Red so will ask about CJ

[chinnyhill10]

I noticed a few later Codemasters games never appeared on the CPC...

KGB Superspy, Bee 52, Bounty Hunter, Cue Boy, Slicks, Tilt, Murray Mouse Supercop, Paris to Dakar, Tarzan Goes Ape, Wrestling Superstars..

But I'm in touch with people from  Big Red so will ask about CJ

Would be good to know.


Just played DJ Puff. Proves a CJ game would be technically possible however the colour scheme is terrible. So ugly. Looks like a BBC Micro game!


Shame really as it has great music and the scrolling is OK. Doesn't play as well as CJ but that's down to the game design really.

[MacDeath]

what is CJ ?


anyway :

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_GxVWtAgaY

this one actually uses some strange sub palette system and software colour swaps.

graphics are stored in "Mode1" then converted into Mode0, background actually uses very very few colours...

[andycadley]

this one actually uses some strange sub palette system and software colour swaps.

graphics are stored in "Mode1" then converted into Mode0, background actually uses very very few colours...

Almost certainly a result of using the assets directly from the C64 version, with the "sub palette system" being a remapping of the C64's multicolour mode attribute system.

As to the lack of CJ, it's a bit odd but the Spectrum version is so shockingly bad that I doubt much was missed by it.

[zeropolis79]

MacDeath - CJ is an elephant who appeared in at least two games on the C64 and Spectrum and two unreleased games, one of which was found on the C64...

CJ In Space – 1992 Codemasters - Games That Weren't - GTW64 - home of
CJ's 4th Adventure – 1993 Codemasters - Games That Weren't - GTW64 - home of

[arnoldemu]

I noticed a few later Codemasters games never appeared on the CPC...

KGB Superspy, Bee 52, Bounty Hunter, Cue Boy, Slicks, Tilt, Murray Mouse Supercop, Paris to Dakar, Tarzan Goes Ape, Wrestling Superstars..

But I'm in touch with people from  Big Red so will ask about CJ

It would be interesting to know if there were any/many games that they did for cpc that got cancelled.

[chinnyhill10]

As to the lack of CJ, it's a bit odd but the Spectrum version is so shockingly bad that I doubt much was missed by it.

Really, it's not. It's actually quite good.

[andycadley]

Really, it's not. It's actually quite good.

The scrolling is terrible, the attribute clash in places is ridiculous and the only difficulty comes from the way your bombs bounce in really awkward patterns and the plethora of "drop down onto unseen deadly objects" traps. It mainly shows that the Spectrum just wasn't good at those kinds of game. Ironically the character based scrolling might have been used to help the CPC version out, since it could have used the hardware to do it, but as DJ Puff demonstrates it'd be much more likely that it'd be a quick port that wasn't really tailored to the machine at all.

Weirdly though, CJ does in fact appear in a CPC game. He has a cameo in the first bit of Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, which I'm sure must've seemed very odd to anyone not familiar with titles from the other platforms (though by no means the worst thing about CKD!)

[zeropolis79]

It would be interesting to know if there were any/many games that they did for cpc that got cancelled.

Well, I plan to interview people for my Dizzy book - I intend on asking about cancelled games.

[TFM]

So, if I plan to do a Dizzy game and then cancel it, will you interview me?

[zeropolis79]

No - it's only people involved with OFFICIAL Dizzy games.. Oliver Twins, Big Red...

[MacDeath]

well, my actuall name is Olivier, does it counts ?
I have many many wapovares in my history... perhaps one per post actually... twice as much if you include the PLUS versions as well...


Also they have some nice vids on their Youtube video, please give them some extra views...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTwQ-qmJ07c

[TFM]

Official versions? Pah, they are bad on CPC - speccy ports I say!