Newbie saying hello!

[Bryce]

Unfortunately the Z80 doesn't offer all the signals you'd need for a RAM/ROM expansion, so it would be a Z80 mounted device, with quite a few other connections needed around the board. A bit messy I'm afraid.

@MacDeath: Dream on!

Bryce.

[TotO]

Unfortunately the Z80 doesn't offer all the signals you'd need for a RAM/ROM expansion

Sure. 

[TFM]

... But, an internal 256K RAM / 256K ROM / CF board socketed under the Z80 will be amazing... Looking for 99,99€ max. in mind.

You may kick my ass now to the moon.... Yarek updated one of my 6128 to 4 MB RAM, 2.5 MB Flash-ROM and the IDE8255 hard-disc controller (ALL internal!) for 75 Euros 

[cmonkey]

Wow, I go away for a few days and when I return this thread has ballooned into a real behemoth!!  Thanks very much for all your input and comments, I'm going to need more time than I've got to wade through all the youtube videos and what not!


I picked up my 6128 on Wednesday night.  Haven't had a lot of time to spend with it yet.  I slipped a new drive belt in yesterday as I had a couple of spares laying around from my Spectrum +3's.  I loaded Starstrike II and had a play for 10 minutes.  Seemed pretty nice, I haven't played the equivalent game on the Spectrum so I've not got a reference point.


Then I loaded up my all time favourite Spectrum game, Chuckie Egg 2 and was a little disappointed to be honest.  It's blatantly obvious that it's exactly the same as the Spectrum version (although it's difficult to know whether the Spectrum version came first and the CPC version followed or vice versa or whether they were both developed at the same time in tandem, my thought would be that they were developed in tandem).  But the CPC version definitely lacked the colour of the Spectrum version.  With it running in mode 1 it's limited to 4 colours on screen at any one time but the Spectrum version quite often used 7 or 8 colours on screen at any one time.  So, whilst the CPC version obviously didn't suffer with the (albeit limited) colour clashing of the Spectrum version it didn't look as colourful to me.  I also did some timing based comparisons against the same game running on a real Spectrum that was sat next to the 6128 and the Spectrum game was definitely running slightly faster than the CPC version.


So from what I can gather, if you're prepared to sacrifice resolution you can have lots of colour but if you want at least the same resolution as the Spectrum then you're limited to 4 colours.  I can imagine that the lower resolution would be initially hard on the eyes after 30 years of 256x192.


I'm sorry if I come across as being a bit negative here, that's not the intention.  I'm merely trying to compare the CPC to the Spectrum that I'm used to.  Maybe if I throw any comparisons out of the window then things will seem different.  That's why I think it's important that I play a few 'CPC only' games so that I simply can't compare to the Spectrum.  I've only had time to try those two games.  Hopefully I'll get a bit more time over the coming week to try a few more in the massive haul that came with the CPC.


Everybody here probably hates me a little right now so I'll go away and do a bit more experimenting today!


Thanks again for all the input, it's much appreciated.

[McKlain]

I didn't even know that chuckie egg 2 existed, so I searched on youtube and found this:




It seems that every other platform but the speccy got a lazy port.

[cmonkey]

As much as I love CE2 I'll be the first to admit that the 16-bit ports of it were absolutely dreadful!  The collision detection was so bad that it made the game unplayable.  Thankfully the 8-bit original on Spectrum/C64/CPC wasn't blighted with such terrible gameplay.


I guess the reason the game is my favourite all time game is that when I first got it as a 16 year old kid it was soooo huge of an adventure.  120 rooms!  I wasn't aware of any other game at that time that had so many rooms to explore.  I never thought I'd see all of them but eventually I did and nowadays I know my way around them blindfolded!  I loved the idea of being able to pick things up and carry them around to other rooms and drop them and how the adventure unfolded as you got deeper and deeper into exploring it.  I remember the exhilarating feeling that came from delivering my first ever completed egg!  I liked the idea of being able to save your progress at any time and then resume from that same point later on.  Happy days indeed!


To me there has never been another platformer like it and, although I keep searching, I doubt I'll ever find another game which holds my attention as much as that game still does to this day.  Most people hated it because it was in such a different vein to the original CE but I much preferred it over the original.  People are all individual, that's what makes the human race so great, it wouldn't be good if everybody all liked the same thing.

[McKlain]

I guess the reason the game is my favourite all time game is that when I first got it as a 16 year old kid it was soooo huge of an adventure.  120 rooms!  I wasn't aware of any other game at that time that had so many rooms to explore. 

I got the same feeling with Batman and Head over Heels. Those games were like entering another world 

[arnoldemu]

@cmonkey:
ce2 is poor.

however chuckie egg on cpc is a nice version, comparable to bbc micro version.
So it's not all bad news

So now you have an understanding why we get a bit angry about lazy conversions to the cpc

[McKlain]

Chuckie Egg could have better graphics on the CPC, but at least it's blazing fast.

[Gryzor]

Ohhh welcome to the world of Speccy ports, mate! A world where a machine with superior graphical capabilities has worse results than the source machine! Noone will get mad at you for bashing them, in fact there have been numerous discussions about this. You can read more about the phenomenon here:  Speccy Port - CPCWiki