The ‘Deluxe Edition‘ of Marble Madness was released the same year as ‘The Construction Set‘ edition and it contains a new set of screens to play through, plus the Construction Set editor, and the ten screens from the earlier release. It’s still complete and utter garbage, though…
Continue reading Marble Madness: Deluxe Edition, Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC version of Melbourne House‘s 1986 release of Marble Madness is more or less identical to the ZX Spectrum version, but with a bit more colour. It was coded by the same author – John F. Cain – and suffers from the same problems as the Spectrum version.
Continue reading Marble Madness: The Construction Set, Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad CPC version of Shadow of the Beast was developed and published by Gremlin Graphics in 1990 and is similar to the ZX Spectrum version (which was also created by Gremlin), but with more on-screen colours. It requires 128K of RAM to run, so is for Amstrad 6128 machines and compatibles only, and is spread over two floppy disks.
The Amstrad CPC version of Commando – published by Elite Systems in 1986 – is easy to write off, due to its chunky graphics and mostly featureless backgrounds, but it’s actually one of the better 8-bit conversions.
The Amstrad CPC conversion of Paperboy was coded by Mark Haigh-Hutchinson, with graphics by Paul Walker, and first published by Elite Systems in 1987. Compared to other Paperboy conversions this is a mixed bag of good and badness…
The Amstrad CPC version of Rod Pike‘s text adventure, Frankenstein, just about falls into the middle of the Commodore 64 and Spectrum versions.
The Amstrad CPC version of Ariolasoft‘s Bride of Frankenstein could be the best version of this game available for 8-bit home computers (although that’s really not saying much). It looks slightly better than the C64 and Spectrum versions, and it’s also got fairly responsive controls, so is somewhat playable.
Frank N Stein on the Amstrad CPC is more or less the same as the ZX Spectrum original, except that the colours are different in this, and the Amstrad version has a really good high score table (which the original doesn’t). It was first published by PSS and Amsoft in 1985.
The Amstrad CPC version of Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond‘s classic isometric platform game is arguably even better than the ZX Spectrum original it is based upon. Mainly because of the extra colours, which make a big difference.
The 1987 Amstrad CPC version of Big Trouble in Little China is more or less a direct port of the ZX Spectrum original, but with slightly more colour in the graphics. It is noticeably slower than the Spectrum version, though.
The King of Grabs 