Worst Ever Amstrad CPC Games

[tastefulmrship]

Deserving
=========
Outrun
Super Space Invaders

Just bad, but not the worst
===========================
Zynaps
Flight Path 737

Disappointing
=============
St Dragon
Bubble Bobble
Thundercats

Personal Dislikes Not Shared
============================
Kane
1942
Airwolf 2

What are they doing here?
=========================
Commando
Alien-8
Knightlore
Elite

Not sure / not played yet
=========================
Nemesis The Warlock
Starion
Trollie Wallie
Radzone
One Man and his Droid
Marsport
Techician Ted
Into Oblivion

These are the games I do not agree should be in their respective categories. (Yet again, this is just a personal opinion)

I loved all those games back in the day and would happily spend 6-10 minutes waiting for them to load on tape. ZYNAPS; I wouldn't even play the game, I would just sit on the title-screen listening to JDR's amazing score!


I am surprised no-one included any of the WHITE KNIGHT series. They were rather hit/miss with the critics!

[EgoTrip]

You missed out Super Gran from your Deserving list, IMO it is the second worst game on the CPC I have played (Home Runner is the 1st).


Super Space Invaders was actually OK I thought, yeah its tricky to see everything at times, but it plays ok. Amsoft games dont really count if they were made at the start of the CPC's life - there was no real standard as such to live up to and they wanted to have a good amount of software for people to buy. Unless of course they were truly terrible like Home Runner, which was so bad they even made "features" out of the bugs and bad programming.

[Bryce]

Add Red Arrows to that list too. It was completely unplayable.

Commando should not be anywhere in there, it was one of my favourites (Along with Ikari Warriors).

Bryce.

[AMSDOS]

Commando and Myth: History in the Making are equally dire in their own right, overrated and irritating. The CPC version of Commando is rough through gameplay and execution, anyone whose played the Atari 2600 version of Commando knows the CPC version is merely a simple graphical touchup with a crude gameplay & plan, sure it might be unfair to compare with the Arcade or the Atari 7800 version which are high status games, though the CPC is capable of much better than what it got with Commando making for a poor effort from Elite.

Myth: History in the Making suffers from Poor Graphics along with poor Collision Detection (hello bad dudes I'm punching you and nothing is registering) and Gameplay, controls are awkward and I personally had no time nor patience in playing this game, to think it was highly regarded by Magazines like AA and others which think it's brilliant need to consider that this game isn't the kind of game that everyone would enjoy playing - so it's not perfect.

[AMSDOS]

OK I think I'm going to sort them out in some kind of order into what I think are deserving as being in a list of the 'worst ever', and the rest into 'bad but not the worst', 'disappointing but not *that* bad', 'what are they doing there??' and 'not played yet' ... and see what people think.

The list as it stood I felt was quite accurate, the main problem with all those games are people are going to have selective views in the way people accept them. People will either enjoy them or they won't, i.e. One persons dud is another persons gem - Xybots for instance got a healthy 76% when it was reviewed as a Full Price Game in AA47 at £15 on Disc! And yet was to getting scores like 37% in AA76 and 58% in AA88 when it was being reviewed at Budget price of £4! Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters is also another victim of this, getting 78% as a Full-Price Game in AA59, on Budget Re-Release it was reviewed at 46% - so what have people got to say about these discrempies?? The only reasonable explanation I can come up with is clearly these games are all a matter of opinion and people will simply hate them if they don't like them. Don't like them, then don't play them and move onto other games which you might agree with.

It's all subjective though, some people will think a game is completely terrible but I end up kinda liking (Psycho Pigs UXB being a good example! I still really like this game!) and I won't mean to offend anyone by placing a game in a certain bracket but I'm just trying to drill this down. Worst Ever games would also make a fun wiki article too

There are games which are badly done, though for one reason or another, someone may find them to be enjoyable. I enjoy playing Thunderzone, Street Gang Soccer, Spaghetti Western (AA60 - 37%), T-Bird (AA60 - 55%), Scramble Spirits (AA55 - 41%) for example. Games like Monty on the Run was once subjected to a low score of 37% in AA50 which I thought was a little bit cruel, but then you have to have to pick up the right items which is a little annoying component to the game, I enjoy Mutant Monty a little bit more myself, plus it was completable!    Obviously it's great to have a challenge component in games as well, though sometimes you just feel like beating your opponent to get a sense of accomplishment. It's annoying having to deal with a game where you reach a certain point and not being able to proceed and being stuck! 

[tastefulmrship]

Games like Monty on the Run was once subjected to a low score of 37% in AA50 which I thought was a little bit cruel, but then you have to have to pick up the right items which is a little annoying component to the game, I enjoy Mutant Monty a little bit more myself, plus it was completable!    Obviously it's great to have a challenge component in games as well, though sometimes you just feel like beating your opponent to get a sense of accomplishment. It's annoying having to deal with a game where you reach a certain point and not being able to proceed and being stuck! 

Yes, MONTY ON THE RUN suffered from the 'escape kit' irritation... but the game (and especially the music) made up for it and it shouldn't really be classed as a 'worst CPC game'. It's the same problem I had with ZYNAPS... great game, just unfair!

MUTANT MONTY wasn't a part of the Gremlin Graphics 'MONTY' franchise, but it was ARTIC SOFTWARE's best game, in my view.
The graphics were a little poor, the music got very irritating quickly; but, as you rightly said, it was completable and it gave me plenty of happy gaming hours... even more when I finally ripped it to 3" without resorting to AMSKEY.
Some of the 40 levels required pixel-perfect timing, but also gave you a sense of achievement once you'd completed them!


EDIT: And, MUTANT MONTY wasn't just a SPECTRUM port either! ARTIC used multi-colour MODE 0 sprites and it looks a lot better than both the SINCLAIR and COMMODORE versions!


AMSTRAD CPC


SPECTRUM 48K


COMMODORE 64

[Gryzor]

-Into Oblivion (Mastertronic)[/l][/l]
I thought that was supposed to be a good game, but then I've seen lots of cheats for this game in Cheat Mode, so I'm presuming that's the clue! 

That was my very first videogame ever, so naturally I now own even a couple of sealed copies, but still don't know what to do in it

[sigh]

Streetfighter HAS to go in the "Deserving" category! Seriously - if Outrun is in(which I agree with) then that has to be in there too! It was full priced, horrible and a much anticipated game!

[Xyphoe]

Streetfighter HAS to go in the "Deserving" category! Seriously - if Outrun is in(which I agree with) then that has to be in there too! It was full priced, horrible and a much anticipated game!

I'm not sure it should go in the 'worst ever' or deserving category. Firstly it's not the worst 1v1 beat-em-up on the Amstrad and is vaguely competent - just dull, lacking and little gameplay or skill. Secondly, when talking about Outrun and it being much anticipated - at the time I really don't think it was. Hardly anyone had heard of and played Street Fighter I in the arcades - this was released in 1987 with the Amstrad version arriving in 1988. It wasn't until 1991 that Street Fighter II hit the arcades that everyone went batshit crazy over it and searched out Street Fighter I on the Kixx budget re-release (and then went - WTF!). I know at least for me that was the case. With Outrun it was one of the most popular arcade games ever and had been out for quite some time - the crushing disappointment was bad enough, but even on it own merits licence aside it was a terrible racing game - sheesh there were even better Amsoft racing games out there years before!

Just my opinion anyway

[Xyphoe]

These are the games I do not agree should be in their respective categories. (Yet again, this is just a personal opinion)

I loved all those games back in the day and would happily spend 6-10 minutes waiting for them to load on tape. ZYNAPS; I wouldn't even play the game, I would just sit on the title-screen listening to JDR's amazing score!

Sorry - do you mean that *none* of those games should be talked about as being particularly bad/worst ever or do you mean their respective placings in the certain category?

[tastefulmrship]

Sorry - do you mean that *none* of those games should be talked about as being particularly bad/worst ever or do you mean their respective placings in the certain category?

Ah, I see where the confusion arises now... sorry, English is my first language and I'm still crap at it!
I don't class those games as bad. I happen to like all of them on the list that I provided (my personal opinion, of course) However, I can understand why people would have issues with some of them.


I think we should start to consider voting to see which games make the All-Time Bottom 10 CPC Games hall of shame!
No?

How about having categories, like an awards ceremony? Worst Graphics, Worst Conversion, Most Obvious Speccy Port, Biggest Disappointment, etc.

[Metr]

Ooh ! The Golden Raspberry awards for the CPC !
We should make an Alan- err Oscar & Golden Raspberry for every year !

[AMSDOS]

It's interesting lots of references have been made to Outrun, I haven't played it though I've played Cisco heat (AA76 - 38%) and felt it was a lot better than that (AA even had a playable demo on the AA75 Covertape), I guess I wouldn't put it as the best game of it's genre, though since nobody has mentioned it until now, I'm presuming it's another one of those games which falls under the radar. AA76 seems to be the centre of the Universe when it comes to low scores! 

[MacDeath]

English is my first language

Most Obvious Speccy Port

I didn't know Native English speakers had "Obvious" as a synonym for the word "Shitty"...

I think I should have some more english lessons then. 


Categories ?

Ok...


=Bad lasy Speccy ports : obviously.

=Deceiving screenshot : looks good but bad game.

=Unfinished allegro : the game is clearly rushed to the released unfinished yet had a few potential good ideas/aspects.

=Arcade Lost in Translation : Bad Arcade pots.

=Shitfest licenses : yes, serial shit happens... be it only a stand alone game, they also comited sequels.

A little problem is that many speccy porks were also Arcade games... well...

[steve]

After 8 pages, we should realise that "the worst games" are a matter of individual opinion and we will not agree if the criteria solely focusses on the "idea" of the game,

Instead we should rate games on technical merit, if the game is a masterpiece of programming then it will not be the worst game even though nobody ever plays it because it is so boring.

Criteria

Screen resolution
Number of colours on screen
Quality of sound reproduction
Quality of the music
Responsiveness of controls
User selectable options
Playability
Longevity of game
Comparison with versions written for other 8-bit micro's
"Idea" of game - good or bad

[redbox]

I think it's pretty much possible to tell which games are just a big pile'o'sh*te and which were disappointing...!


Really looking forward to the video Xyphoe 

[steve]

I think it's pretty much possible to tell which games are just a big pile'o'sh*te and which were disappointing...!


Really looking forward to the video Xyphoe 

You may know which games are rubbish, but can you get everyone to agree with you?

[Xyphoe]

You may know which games are rubbish, but can you get everyone to agree with you?

Well really the topic was about 'the worst ever' Amstrad games, which I thought would have been pretty unanimous - I think we've got sidetracked with bad and disappointing games, and I was just expecting to find out about a few I may have missed (like LA Swat which I'd never played before).

[Xyphoe]

Ooh ! The Golden Raspberry awards for the CPC !
We should make an Alan- err Oscar & Golden Raspberry for every year !

Yes totally! That's a good idea

Actually a few months back I very nearly posted a topic called The Arnold Awards, or 'The Arnies' ... (around July time on the anniversary of the CPC) ... as a fun thing. But didn't in the end. I initially was going to do it for games and demo releases over the last year, but as there weren't that many it could have caused disagreement and more problems than fun. Then I thought about just for games overall ... but I figured we'd never all agree and someone would really strongly disagree with something leading to arguments and all that.

But you know what, maybe we should do it anyway, helps inject a bit of life into things ... obviously this topic has already spawned 8 pages in a couple of weeks! lol 

[sigh]

I'm not sure it should go in the 'worst ever' or deserving category. Firstly it's not the worst 1v1 beat-em-up on the Amstrad and is vaguely competent - just dull, lacking and little gameplay or skill. Secondly, when talking about Outrun and it being much anticipated - at the time I really don't think it was. Hardly anyone had heard of and played Street Fighter I in the arcades - this was released in 1987 with the Amstrad version arriving in 1988. It wasn't until 1991 that Street Fighter II hit the arcades that everyone went batshit crazy over it and searched out Street Fighter I on the Kixx budget re-release (and then went - WTF!). I know at least for me that was the case. With Outrun it was one of the most popular arcade games ever and had been out for quite some time - the crushing disappointment was bad enough, but even on it own merits licence aside it was a terrible racing game - sheesh there were even better Amsoft racing games out there years before!

Just my opinion anyway

Streetfighter 1 was extremely anticipated and well known - at least when I was at school and much noises was made about it on the top deck of the bus (even though we shouldn't of been going to the arcades in the first place) so I strongly disagree with you there.

Also it's not just "dull" - it misses so much from the original arcade(if you ever played it much) especially when compared to the strong US version on the C64.
Maybe if I didn't play the C64 version I would of felt differently. I had more fun with Ninja Hamster!
But hey - it's a matter of opinion

*runs off to play third strike*

[Xyphoe]

Streetfighter 1 was extremely anticipated and well known - at least when I was at school and much noises was made about it on the top deck of the bus (even though we shouldn't of been going to the arcades in the first place) so I strongly disagree with you there.

Also it's not just "dull" - it misses so much from the original arcade(if you ever played it much) especially when compared to the strong US version on the C64.
Maybe if I didn't play the C64 version I would of felt differently. I had more fun with Ninja Hamster!
But hey - it's a matter of opinion

*runs off to play third strike*

Really? That honestly surprises me. At my school no-one had ever heard of it - at all! I don't remember ever seeing a SFI cabinet in any of the arcades - local or on the sea front.

It's strange how different places, schools, or whatever people had different experiences with gaming, arcades and computers. I often hear on the Retro Gamer forums when the Amstrad is discussed things like 'No-one in my school had a CPC!' or 'There was only one lonely guy with the CPC, everyone else had Speccy and C64's!' ... that's said a lot on there. Where as at my school, which was a bit rough, lots of kids had the more expensive CPC - it was the one guy with the Speccy that was laughed at!

[AMSDOS]

Well really the topic was about 'the worst ever' Amstrad games, which I thought would have been pretty unanimous - I think we've got sidetracked with bad and disappointing games, and I was just expecting to find out about a few I may have missed (like LA Swat which I'd never played before).

Okay I'm looking at Post 1 and what do I see - Altered Beast. That's your fault cause you've raised the bar way too high. For your info Altered Beast reviewed in AA52 as a Full-price game got 50%. Two other games from that issue received lower scores - Tintin on the Moon (which also has nice graphics) got 44% and Ghouls and Ghosts was a pretty bog standard affair only scoring 49%. This goes back to the problem I mentioned earlier where it's open to debate - Altered Beast was reviewed in AA75 at Budget cost and scored a healthy 14% On the other hand Ghouls and Ghosts was reviewed as a Budget game in AA79 and scored 71% It's very difficult to judge what's obviously Worse Ever when you've got games of those sort which bounce up and down with people when it comes to percentages, sadly even the Odd Mastergame like WWF (AA77 - 90%) is hated as well which means other Mastergames need to be examined.    Though anyone could be made to hate games like Rick Dangerous or Rainbow Islands.

Take a Look at the Jetsons though cause AA only gave it 10% in Issue 80, so they might be onto something really bad with that one. Sadly they gave games like Baby Jo 35% in AA78 and it's let down seems to be jerky scrolling, though 35% is cruel.

It's easy to trash AMSOFT games, though people must remember that Computers aren't made overnight, the Amstrad was up against other computers (C64, Speckies, BBCs, etc) and had to be a competitive contender in 1984. The Firmware is the lifeblood for many of those early games, and those games were mainly written to be played for the pleasure and knock up another Highscore. I've cheated at Electro Freddy with Infinate Lives, which is a simple game which never ends and only gets harder and faster as it progresses - probably has 255 levels, though it's mainly there for entering highscores and a large bulk of those early AMSOFT games were High Scores, even though games like Roland in Time doesn't feature it, it's mainly about collecting all the Gems, though like many other AMSOFT games they were made for the simple fun of it. Once the Amstrad had progressed into another phase machines like the 664 and 6128 came out and games like Sorcery came out as a measure of popularity which came from the 464!

[Bryce]

How about a system like AA and other magazines used, ie: when The video has been uploaded or game has been played, a user poll could be started with categories such as: Playability, Graphics, Music, Inoovativeness, Story line, etc. For each category the user can give a mark between 1 and 10. The result would show a percentage for each catagory plus a total score/percentage calculated from the accumulated scores. That way a realistic view of the game could be given.

Bryce.

[tastefulmrship]

 Ok then, let's start with CHOPPER SQUAD by INTERCEPTOR SOFTWARE (they also did TROLLIE WALLIE).

Here's a bunch of info about the game from various places around the CPC network.
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Chopper_Squad
http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/c/index5.html
http://genesis8.free.fr/amstrad/game-rom/amstrad-gamef.php?prog_id=977
http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/filedetail.php?recid=178

I would suggest you guys play this game for... well, as long as you see fit, then return here and give it a score out of ten for:

Playability, Graphics, Music, Innovativeness, Story line, etc.

Good idea or no?

[AMSDOS]

Ok then, let's start with CHOPPER SQUAD by INTERCEPTOR SOFTWARE (they also did TROLLIE WALLIE).

Here's a bunch of info about the game from various places around the CPC network.
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Chopper_Squad
http://www.cpcgamereviews.com/c/index5.html
http://genesis8.free.fr/amstrad/game-rom/amstrad-gamef.php?prog_id=977
http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/filedetail.php?recid=178

I would suggest you guys play this game for... well, as long as you see fit, then return here and give it a score out of ten for:
Good idea or no?

Well I downloaded it and played it til I couldn't play it anymore, I agree with Nich (cpcgamereviews) on this one with a 6 out of 10, although I got to Level 9 and Completed that with one life to spare when the screen went blank with the Chopper Sounds for a few monents and then vanishing! The screen shots will show what I did to get through those later levels. AA gave it 34% and Amtix gave it 21% be interesting to know what Amtix said about it, AA is only a JPEG away!    I think in their defence they probably thought the game was too expensive, £6 is a bit rich, I personally worked the game out in an hour and got through what I think is the whole lot, unless there's a bug in it somewhere, usually games that old are pretty routine when it comes to hacking them onto Disk Images. Anyway perhaps if it was £2 it might have been more favoured!    I liked the Mode 1 Screen with the Red Helicopter on it though and nice how it would revert back to it from the screen. Otherwise I didn't mind it, it's no classic, though it plays well, with functional graphics not eye popping, though the speed of the game remained constant throughout with a little though not obvious slowdown when a lot of lazer beams (or rockets) were moving around the screen which I was glad about cause it's annoying when you see some games get ruined when too much on screen is happening and slowdown occurs, simple concept and earlier when I bombed out on Level 6 when I was trying to post a Snapshot of the game, it had that one more go appeal just to see where the end would be!