RetroGamer Top 25 Amstrad Games

[Gryzor]

I'm surprised noone has mentioned it yet, so here goes:

   
• Chase H.Q.
• target: Renegade
• Robocop
• Head over Heels
• Gryzor
• Sorcery+
• Switchblade
• Prince of Persia
• Batman: The Movie
• Batman
• Barbarian ("equally fab" c64 port??)
• Rainbow Islands
• Bomb Jack
• Gauntlet
• Spindizzy
• Renegade
• Turrican
• Lemmings
• Exolon
• Fantasy World Dizzy
• Driller
• A.T.F.
• Ikari Warriors
• Solomon's Key
• Get Dexter

Honorable mentions:

   
• Feud
• Cybernoid
• Inside Outing
• Aliens
• Donkey Kong

Which made me think, once again, how pointless such charts are, but a nice (though short!) read.


It's really a shame, how the RG forums are. I left them a long time ago because every. single. time. a thread about Amstrad appeared Speccy (mostly) and Commie fanboiz would take over flaming about how inferior the CPC was. A real mess of out-of-topics.

[ukmarkh]

Typical... no Operation Wolf, list is null / void!!!

[SyX]

Typical RetroGamer lack of euro-vision , only Prince of Persia and Get Dexter are not from there, curiously the only cpc exclusive games in it.

But well, a CPC games list without one spanish game or more of all those lovely french cpc games, it says a lot of the group of retro-illiterates that make that magazine

RetroGamer people, the CPC world is bigger than UK... even in UK is bigger than Ocean/US Gold 

[Gryzor]

 Well, before judging RG you should know that this list came from a forum poll among the readers

Lots of great titles missing, of course, the list left me somewhat lukewarm. And, hey, where's the best game of all time (according to every list out there), Elite?

[TFM]

No Trantor, Driller, Starglider... the list is crap!!

And f*ck them!!! To call Barbarian a c64 port, are they crazy??? A c64 port to the CPC is like to port a game from a pocket calculator to a cray.

[Gryzor]

Nonono, that's not what they wrote, they wrote that it's "just as good as the fab 64 port".

[SyX]

Well, for the issues that i have seen, the RG people need to take a look to more CPC games than Gryzor and Renegade.

Are they interviewed to John Brandwood or Richard Aplin or another geat cpc coder? Because i think that only have passed zx and c64 people

[Nich]

Typical... no Operation Wolf, list is null / void!!!

My initial reaction was that neither of the two Rick Dangerous games was included in the list!

[beaker]

Typical RetroGamer lack of euro-vision , only Prince of Persia and Get Dexter are not from there, curiously the only cpc exclusive games in it.
But well, a CPC games list without one spanish game or more of all those lovely french cpc games, it says a lot of the group of retro-illiterates that make that magazine
RetroGamer people, the CPC world is bigger than UK... even in UK is bigger than Ocean/US Gold

Actually it's all my fault, sorry. These were my suggestions on the retro gamer forum and some made it into the list. I shall leave and hold my head in shame.... 

No idea why I didn't put Rick Dangerous 2 in as I loved it and Head Over Heels.... Do'h! (You had to name 10 and score them from 10 to 1 - 7 didn't count so I left it out)

Switchblade - 10 points
Batman - 9 points
Solomon's Key - 8 points
Into the Eagles Nest - 6 points
Space Crusade - 5 points
Exolon - 4 points
Bubble Bobble - 3 points
Barbarian (Palace Software) -2 points
Fantasy World Dizzy - 1 point

Oh and I am one of those who subscribe to the magazine and enjoy it 

[SyX]

Actually it's all my fault, sorry. These were my suggestions on the retro gamer forum and some made it into the list. I shall leave and hold my head in shame.... 

Come on!!! Would you not believe that you can satisfy everybody?

[beaker]

Come on!!! Would you not believe that you can satisfy everybody?

lol, no 

[TFM]

Nonono, that's not what they wrote, they wrote that it's "just as good as the fab 64 port".

But IMO (not only) the colors are more beautiful on CPC.

[Gryzor]

Well, a bit off-topic, but last night I read the Spectrum vs c64 article which pronounced the Commodore as the (surprise! Wow! Who would have thought!) better machine. Sometimes it really feels as if RG's editors first decide and then try to prove their points... For instance, in their effort to give the Speccy some points they say that it was better as a development platform... because it was so shitty that you needed to be competent to do anything on it and hence gave rise to some great programmers. My brain hurts from trying to follow this kind of logic.

[Bryce]

And it was better for your health because the stupidly heavy power supply gave you a better workout?

Bryce.

[MaV]

And it helped refine your rhetorical skills by having to argue with your parents about you constantly besieging the living room TV with your new C64.

[Puresox]

The C64 was The best machine IMO,  The experience was so entertaining, the majority of the games that were made for it worked well, played well ,sounded great, The games generally had more touches to them than that of the other computers. Whenever you played a new game for the c64 it wasn't a lottery as to whether you were going to have a game that wasn't up to scratch. It was a pleasure to play on a c64. The Spectrum had lots of great games but the all round experience wasn't as thrilling as the c64.

[beaker]

Well, a bit off-topic, but last night I read the Spectrum vs c64 article which pronounced the Commodore as the (surprise! Wow! Who would have thought!) better machine. Sometimes it really feels as if RG's editors first decide and then try to prove their points... For instance, in their effort to give the Speccy some points they say that it was better as a development platform... because it was so shitty that you needed to be competent to do anything on it and hence gave rise to some great programmers. My brain hurts from trying to follow this kind of logic.

Lol, I didn't think the example you raised was that unbalanced. I mean they did include quotes from Mike Dailey who said "I prefer the C64 for coding because it had lots of hardware to play with and produced silky smooth gaming. The Speccy was a great simple machine to start learning with, but the C64 was the one you really wanted; lots of RAM, lots of toys, and great games, that sounded amazing."

From my point of view I have to agree with RG; when I went to University in 1996 doing a Business and Computing degree they refused to upgrade from Delphi 2 on the grounds that things like autocomplete would make you a lazier developer and you wouldn't learn as much. Roll on to today and using c# is a soulless affair where almost everything is done for you leading you to write lazy code; I'd much rather be getting my hands dirty in an environment that doesn't help you out as much.

They do seem to be writing more articles that feel like fillers though. Hopefully it's just gearing up for issue 100 next month that will turn out to be amazing 

[Cholo]

Making a top-list of anything is quite hard as so many factors come into play. How many had the game? Was it a cheap budget cassette game that sold 1000th or a expensive disc only in limited editions? Or should it be judged by technical excellence or just for having simplistic fun gameplay or having a challenging mindboggling hard gameplay? When was the game sold (within the amstrad "lifetime" or) and does later games or remakes count as well.

Just looking at the list and i see 12 games i didnt have back then. This dosnt mean much tho as i saw most of the games back then while playing games at friends etc. But still there is a couple that makes me go "huh?".

Like Sorcery+ .. how many people actually had that game? Wasnt this a disc only game and who actually had a disc drive in 1985? The people who could actually play this back then must have been so few that they couldnt form a soccer team if they wanted. Or perhaps im missing something being non-uk? Still, im surpriced that this old game jumping in as the 6th best amstrad game ever, lol.

First impression i from looking at the list was:  some spectrum owners going "did you see that game? Those amstrad owners musta loved that one"-vibe. Or perhaps a bit of youtube 8bit wars comparison .. like there is game in there simply because someone rated them better than another systems version of the same game.

Then there is A.T.F .. my mind had to look it over a few times until i noticed that it was not a typo of A.M.C, lol.

Personally id probably remove Batman as it is a really ok game but Head Over Heels is already in there (Batman would probably fit nicely in a top 100, and i dare not say freely my opinion of the 4 colour mode 1 3D iso games either).

Exolon is also a great game and even tho all games by Raffaele Cecco are great .. its one of the earliest games so it could  swap place with one of the later more impressive ones.

I do feel Arkanoid is missing in there somehow. Apart from the first one and the Doh one there was made at least another 3 or 4 verisons more by people who like the games so much that they hacked the originals and released their own underground versions. Also seen from a "popularity" view id think a lot would have voted for Ghost N Goblins and Lightforce.

Oh well, what do i know .. im still the silly fella who felt that Green Beret was a really cool game and it wasnt untill about 15 years later i got online and learned how wrong i was 

[Gryzor]

Lol, I didn't think the example you raised was that unbalanced. [...]refused to upgrade from Delphi 2 [...]

But the argument was for the best dev system, not the best learning system. Huge difference there.


And yes, I agree about the filler pages; it used to be that I would read every single page in the magazine, now I'm skipping more and more, especially with all the 'modern' stuff creeping in. What a shame...

[beaker]

But the argument was for the best dev system, not the best learning system. Huge difference there.

You are of course quite right, the whole learning to code thing could have been done in a legacy section, saying something along the lines of the low entry barrier to C64 development meant in general the Speccy created more competent programmers...

I guess I was just reading the article from my perspective. The Ste Pickford quote "The hardware sprites and scrolling of the C64 meant that it was possible, without that much skill or talent, to get a sprite moving on a scrolling background" just struck a chord with me. Most of the time with C# these days I find what I need in the .net framework, reference the relevant DLL, create an object of the class I want and then call some methods to manipulate said object as required without needing to understand the specifics of what the DLL does. Yes, encapsulation is one of the three basic concepts of object-orientation along with inheritance and polymorphism but with C# I really do feel like I am painting by numbers (there's not much skill involved) while being Microsoft's bitch, and that's not a fun place to be...

I've been told I should start learning Objective-C - probably not a bad idea 

[Executioner]

Oh well, what do i know .. im still the silly fella who felt that Green Beret was a really cool game and it wasnt untill about 15 years later i got online and learned how wrong i was 

I still don't think you were wrong. I really liked Green Beret on the CPC. Sure I didn't know it "should" have had scrolling, but that didn't matter when I didn't know, so how does it make the game any worse?

[Cholo]

I still don't think you were wrong. I really liked Green Beret on the CPC. Sure I didn't know it "should" have had scrolling, but that didn't matter when I didn't know, so how does it make the game any worse?

True, It was a good game at the time, so i really shouldnt worry about what other people say later on 

[ukmarkh]

The reason I hate Green Beret on the CPC, as with Out Run is that I live in the 2nd city, and as a kid there were arcade halls everywhere, even every chippy had an arcade machine in them. So after playing Outrun and Green Beret in the arcades, I had such high hopes for the CPC version. Lets not forget, in B'ham the CPC was massive, loads of people I knew had one, and loads had the Speccy and C64. So straight away, from the word go, I knew the CPC version was a poor effort.


I do understand the argument for not knowing any better, but for me it was a shite conversion... if it wasn't for the massive pause everytime you moved, I might have been slightly convinced (I could have accepted the Ghosts n Goblins scrolling).


I remember everyone at school, even the mags ribbing the CPC for that game, claiming the CPC couldn't scroll! In my opinion it really hurt the Amstrad's reputation, because at the time, it was a big game.

[Carnivius]

But IMO (not only) the colors are more beautiful on CPC.

Barbarian could have looked so much better on the CPC but instead we got the same bland unshaded crud of the C64 version's color-limited sprites.  Sure it looks ok when animated but the CPC version could have really gone to town on making those sprites look a hell of a lot better and more solid too.  Backgrounds could have used a touch up also. 


And that's actually not a bad list at all.  Quite a few of  my favorites ranking highly there and thankfully no Elite.  Never cared for Prince of Persia though.  Or Sorcery+ come to think of it.

[MacDeath]

Barbarian could have looked so much better on the CPC but instead we got the same bland unshaded crud of the C64 version's color-limited sprites.  Sure it looks ok when animated but the CPC version could have really gone to town on making those sprites look a hell of a lot better and more solid too.  Backgrounds could have used a touch up also. 

I agree with the sprites, but the backgrounds almost look better than on the Atari ST IMO.


I "studied" a bit the graphics with barbarian, they are coded in Mode1 (4 colours) then recoded when put in the "VRAM".

This was a good way to get those sprites with a lot of moves and animation frames to get into the 64K... also this enable software palette swap.

So yeah, quite ported from the C64 (sprites), the background on the other hand was cleverly redone for the CPC palette and "no attributed" mode...
But the Sprites are not that much CPU wise too.

So the problem was that the game was certainly limited by the default (faulty ?) 64K limit as usual on CPC.