Classic Replay

Star Trek: LightSpeed Game development Stardate – Part 1 (-305854.8007039574) Game Story: This will be a sweeping adventure through space and play out like an episode of Star Trek. Throughout the game, you'll upgrade your ship to its former glory, engage in turn-based combat, earn new experimental upgrades, and prevent the Federation from destruction. You’ll need to navigate the Alpha Quadrant, meet with new life forms and solve a variety of political disputes. Turn based system: You start in a defensive stance, but you can use multiple actions in one turn, if you’re feeling brave, you can opt to miss a turn, this is a highly risky move, but should your shields hold, this builds up, even more, power, nine times out of ten, this will deal a deadly blow to an enemy vessel. Mess this up, though, and you’ll damn near lose everything. You won’t go back to the start, but you will have to go back to the last saved waypoint losing any upgrades you acquired during that mission. Every t...

MODE 0 graphics showing how things might play out...  For as long as I can remember, the Amstrad CPC was starved of a decent Star Trek game, we had a few games trickle through, but nothing that set the pulse racing. I believe I have a really good idea for a Star Trek game on the CPC, it would probably need 128K of memory, a starfield effect similar to that used in 'Tin Tin on the Moon' during the rocket ship sequence, but without the need to actually move the ship from side to side, just give the illusion that the ship is moving forward. The game would actually play out similar to a JRPG, you would make your way to a location or planet, and battle Star Trek aliens on your way to seek out new worlds and civilisations. Once you reach a certain point, you would then battle an even bigger enemy. The bad news is, you would start out in a massive battle, that would see your ship damaged and limping away for survival and much-needed repair. Action panel to help you throughout...

Here we have a bullet hell shooter for the humble CPC, it's been in development for quite some time, it features full-screen scrolling, up to 256 enemy bullets on screen at any one time and works across all CPC model of computers. What does  it  handle like? You can shoot in two different directions using a separate left or right key configuration, it works really well and independent of moving the character left or right in the traditional sense. Holding down the fire button slows character movement to a snail's pace, making it next to impossible to keep your finger pressed on the trigger, as you need to move quickly when faced with a certain type of enemy, especially when embroiled in a boss fight. It doesn't help things when needle-like bullets fly all over the place, I can't even tell if I'm being hit half the time and the player character is far too big to manoeuvre out of the way. You'll be seeing the "you're dead again" screen a l...

If you dig through old ZX Spectrum, Commodore and Amstrad magazines, you'll find interviews and a whole treasure trove of information from our long lost almost forgotten past. It's slow going, plod like almost, but every once in a while you might come across something that you've never seen or heard of before, things that can't be found on the internet. For example; I've searched high and low on the internet for information about old game sales i.e. Units sold for my favourite 8-bit games, across many formats, but unfortunately this consistently turns up nowt. However, this hasn't deterred me, my mission is to seek out old information pertaining to these forgotten classics, the information is out there, but mixed up in a mass of detail. I'm quietly convinced this slug like approach has legs, heck I've even approached ex-programmers in a bid to find out as much information as humanly possible. With that in mind, this is what I've uncovered thus far, ...

How a new Dizzy game might look on the Amstrad CPC... I’ve always thought that the Dizzy series, when taken in its entirety, is as wonderful, wacky and varied as anything you see in a Sonic or Mario adventure. But our egg-headed friend desperately needs a comeback, and a Mario game mixed with the speed of a Sonic adventure might just be the ticket to bring Dizzy kicking and screaming back from the success of the 80's. Dizzy is a sleeping giant; why can't Codies see this? He should be up there with Sonic and Mario in terms of brand and mascot; it's almost criminal to keep him under wraps like this. Now for the weird part... He could be revived on the Amstrad CPC, the true home of Dizzy. He could use the Amstrad’s hardware scroll, as seen in Killer Cobra - look at the speed that game runs at! Now just imagine replacing the main sprite with an egg, then force upon him the laws of gravity, stick a rocket up his arse and watch him go. I can just see him now, rolling, bounci...

Blimey! I'm back again, with yet another potential divisive subject. You know me, I'm a plain speaker, none of this sensitive protective rubbish, so with that in mind, I’ll move elegantly on. Every system has its fair share of crap games, but in 2016 the Amstrad CPC massively stole the crown! It was a great year in terms of content, nearly every genre of game was released for the CPC, but by god the majority were dreadful. This is partly due to the CPC RetroDev competition that runs each year, now in its fourth year. People are given a set number of days to go away and program the next killer game for the CPC; some are really good and impress me no end, but the majority play like dogshit! Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying the CPC's renaissance, but 2016 was both a good and bad year for the CPC. There were some truly great games the likes of Magica, Defence, Vector Vaults, Dooms Day Lost Echoes and Outlaws, which I urge people to play if they haven't already...