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Sly Spy

Started by reidrac, 00:11, 28 March 21

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reidrac

Sly Spy was an excellent conversion by Software Creations of the Data East arcade.

https://www.cpc-power.com/index.php?page=detail&num=1963

Coded by Dean Belfield, with music by Follin and graphics by Simon Street and Craig Houston.

Let me share here this thread from Twitter by Belfield himself:

https://twitter.com/BreakIntoProg/status/1375912617793966084

TL; DR: Dean decided to work on the Amstrad CPC version of Sly Spy (at the end he also did the speccy version, at home as overtime when Mike Follin was pulled off Speccy development to do Gameboy). He was fed up with people doing lazy ports from the speccy to the CPC, and decided to do a dedicated version for the Amstrad (instead of a port).

The interesting bit here is that Dean run out of time to do justice to the speccy version. So there you are: someone from back in the day that didn't like direct ports and did an excellent job (IMHO) on the CPC. Shame on me that I knew him because the speccy, and turns out he's a CPC legend as well.

With so many cases of lazy ports, I thought I'd share Dean's story here. I hope he doesn't mind!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

Gryzor

The TLDR version was probably longer than the tweet thread but interesting nonetheless :D

Skunkfish

I had never played it, so gave this a quick go yesterday.

It's a good looking, well coded game that probably needs a bit of fine-tuning and polish in the gameplay department. But 90% better than most of the ports we received at the time!
An expanding array of hardware available at www.cpcstore.co.uk (and issue 4 of CPC Fanzine!)

reidrac

Quote from: Gryzor on 08:12, 29 March 21
The TLDR version was probably longer than the tweet thread but interesting nonetheless :D

LOL. I tried to make it readable :D

Dean mentioned that the arcade wasn't the greatest material. I guess the game is truthful to the original, but the gameplay wasn't really there to start with. Still, quite nice compared with some garbage that was published for the system!
Released The Return of Traxtor, Golden Tail, Magica, The Dawn of Kernel, Kitsune`s Curse, Brick Rick and Hyperdrive for the CPC.

If you like my games and want to show some appreciation, you can always buy me a coffee.

Gryzor

Well I remember enjoying the arcade to be honest, I don't think gameplay ever annoyed me though I could see some technical shortcomings like limited sprite frames...

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