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Established 1997
Fun Fact. I thought initially St. Dragon was an Atari
exclusive. Because, well, ‘ST’ -- right? Little did I
know that it stood for “Saint”. Which proves I’ve
always been an idiot. St. Dragon on the Amstrad
feels somewhat sluggish and a bit confined, it is
rather pretty though.
Rick Dangerous is about as playable as Rick
Dangerous ever gets, It’s also taking full advantage
of the Amstrads colour palette.
The Amstrad CPC range suffered from getting the
sloppiest of all Spectrum ports. A system not noted
for its wondrous handling of colour. Fortunately for
fans of R-Type the game has been remade for the
platform doing the system more justice than the
emotional disaster that was the originally released.
One thing Broderbund never did when porting
Prince of Persia from one platform to another was
use the Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V combination excessively.
The Amstrad version is a solid conversion for the
Amstrad,
One of my go to games when investigating a new
system: ‘Star Wars’ wireframe edition. The Amstrad
version is actually pretty good.
Everyone knows, or at least they should do, the
Spectrum version of ChaseHQ is pretty special.
Amstrad owners at the time must have been
chewing their butts hoping that their version wasn’t
a cack-handed version of the speccy version. Lucky
for them, it wasn’t. It’s pretty good, too.
Brace yourself. I swear, the Amstrad version of
DonkeyKong is better than the NES version. There I
said it.
The Amstrad version of Hang-On is everything that
annoyed Amstrad owners in the ‘80s. Yep, a Speccy
port, with literally no tweaks for the CPC’s superior
capabilities. Lucky them.
Your Fired…
A catch phrase that has nothing to do with
this computer, which is actually good.
In the 1980’s Alan Sugar was
famous for making cheap un-
likeable products that exuded
plastic, and were an
embarrassment to be seen with.
What’s that? Can’t afford a Sony
Walkman? Then Amstrad would
eagerly leap into action and
provide you with a shoddy, poorly
made, truly embarrassing
alternative. It was either that or
Saisho or Matsui. It all depended
on how poor and smelly you really
were. So, imagine the UK’s shock,
when from the very loins of cheap
‘n nasty, a very respectable home
computer emerged. The Amstrad
CPC range.
I only knew one person who owned an Amstrad. It was an Amstrad
CPC464 with the colour monitor. His parents were divorced, so one has
to assume one of them was over compensating with getting him this
machine. He also seemed to enjoy a steady stream of games.
Parked along side the C64 & Speccy in adverts, the Amstrad was
undeniably desirable, coming with the option of a floppy disk, albeit a
bloody 3” debacle of a FDD, and a colour monitor. Which meant the
Amstrad was pretty expensive too, and therefore frequently lost out to
the Spectrum and Commodore machines, machines that also enjoyed a
wider selection of games.
Ultimately, the perfect combo was 20 mates with a Spectrum computer,
twinned with an Amstrad Tape-to-tape hi-fi system. You would have
been ‘beloved’.
I had a Atari 2600 in 1986, so I was mocked. And possible be-cursed.
Saint Dragon
Rick Dangerous
R-Type
Prince of Persia
Starwars
Chase HQ
Donkey Kong
Hang-on