Archives for the month March 2019 of Genesis8 Amstrad Page





Relief Action finished 31 years later, a 3D wireframe game using stereoscopy by Loriciels

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About 31 years later after trying for the first time at 10 years old, Jaymanu did finish the game Relief Action by Loriciels released in 1987. You should read the thread on CPCWiki for the informations, pokes and a SNR file to replay his game on WinAPE (put the emulation speed at 400% for less slowness).

There is an article about Relief Action by Sylvestre (french) on his site.



Samdisk v3.8.11 by Simon Owen, Amstrad CPC disks tranfers on PC

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SAMdisk v3.8.11 by Simon Owen is out since the 18th May 2018.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

  • added read and write support .qdos (QL) disk images
  • added --irregular option for blind output image if first track isn't regular
  • added --fill to set filler byte for regular formats
  • fixed setting perpendicular mode for 1Mbps data rate
  • fixed reading directly to single-sided formats from a:/b:
  • fixed short data indicator showing on no-data sectors
  • fixed raw output not using source format fill byte for missing sectors
  • changed raw output to allow blank head 1 to mirror head 0 format

There is also a Samdisk 4.0 beta version on github for windows, linux and MacOS.



Push hardware to its limit, the speaker of the first PC

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What is the common point between the PC speaker and the Amstrad CPC : Fantasy World Dizzy.

In a interesting article on Habr, we learn how the simple PC speaker is allowed to make music despite its obvious limitations.




West Bank by Adolfito, an android remake of the Amstrad CPC game

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West Bank is a spanish arcade Amstrad CPC game released in 1986 by Dinamic Software. An english version was released by Gremlins Graphics in 1987. Three doors in front if you, will you be fast enough to shoot the desesperados without harming innocents ?

After the windows remake FitoWestBank by Adolfito, it's now an Android remake by the same author which has been released in January 2019.

cover of West Bank provided by GameBase CPC





Nanako Chronicles, two games of 2009 by the the Mojon Twins upgraded 10 years later

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Nanako is a game character first seen on ZX Spectrum, and later in 2009 on Amstrad CPC en 2009 in two game by The Mojon Twins which we find once again 10 years later upgraded in a compilation called Nanako Chronicles (sold by BitmapSoft) :

  • Nanako in Classic Japanese Monster Castle, a reflexion and platform game, get up the tower in 25 levels to save your sister
  • Nanako Descends To Hell, in this action/adventure game, you must find 4 parts on an artifact to save her village





CPCEC, an Amstrad CPC emulator for windows by CNGSoft

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CPCEC (windows) is a new Amstrad CPC emulator by CNGSOFT released two days ago, which replaces CPCE (dos/windows).

This emulator was his final project for the Computer Engineering postdegree at the Distance-Learning National University (Universidad Nacional de Enseñanza a Distancia, UNED), a project directed by professor José Manuel Díaz Martínez and ultimately awarded a 100% and the right to a mention of honour.





Orpheus 8-bit for Android by Bitlines, a remake of the Amstrad CPC adventure game Orphée

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Orpheus 8-Bit by Bitlines is a remake of the adventure game Orphée released in 1985 by Loriciels. It was one of the two games I bought with Sorcery+ with my Amstrad CPC 664 the same year, sweet dreams. The video is done by Tarodius.




Two interviews of Jane Whittaker who programmed for example Flying Shark

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I will let you read two interviews of Jane Whittaker which are interesting :

The programming of Flying Shark was done just with the mother board of the arcade game, no more, no less. Graftgold had to find an arcade box and a TV set and play, play, play to write the Amstrad CPC conversion.



What is right up your Amstrad CPC 6128 disk drive ? What if you could change it ?

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You dont even think about it, mais there is something just up your 6128 disk drive :

memento Amstrad CPC 6128

It isnt very sexy, so why not giving your loving Amstrad CPC a cure of youth with something more complete and beautiful made by Frédéric Bellec of ACME web site ?

new Amstrad CPC 6128 memento

He also has another project of change :

another new Amstrad CPC 6128 memento




Arcade Game Designer v0.7.3 for Windows by Jonathan Cauldwell

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Arcade Game Designer v0.7.3 is a Windows (32/64) utility by Jonathan Cauldwell to write games for Timex/Next, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Acorn Electron, Dragon/Coco and Enterprise, without any knowing of programmation.

This new version adds : Windows 32 bit version, option to import AGD/AGDX games from TAP files, new options in the script generator, new tool to check for mistakes, 2 default fonts, numerous bug fixes, support for Acorn Electron, Dragon/Coco and Enterprise, updated documentation.

There is a forum about AGD.



An interesting way of using an Amstrad Notepad NC100

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Michael Wessel is using an Amstrad Notepad NC100 link with the serial port to a vocal synthetizer DECTalk DTC01 dating from 1984 in a youtube video.

In another video, the DECTalk is singing this time with a Tandy TRS 80.




The PC That Cracked Europe, Amstrads PC1512 and 1640, by RetroManCave

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A new video by RetroManCave about the Amstrad PC 1512 and Amstrad PC 1640 which started the compatible PC train in Europe.





Caprice Forever v2019-03, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Frédéric Coste for Windows

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Caprice Forever v2019-03 by Frédéric Coste is a modified version of the Caprice emulator (by Ulrich Doewich) for windows.

  • Fix FDC read failure detection
  • Fix FDC regression to load MegaBlasters
  • Upgrade Graphics Explorer GUI
  • Improve Memory Editor
  • Preliminary CT-RAW image disk read
  • Add 4M RAM expansion
  • Add Digiblaster audio channel
  • Fix minor bugs



CPCEC, an Amstrad CPC emulator for windows by CNGSoft, fourth release

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CPCEC (windows) is a new Amstrad CPC emulator by CNGSOFT released some days ago, which replaces CPCE (dos/windows).

It's the fourth release : Onscreen indicators (hide them with -O); fixed bugs in ZXSEC that slowed emulation down when the frameskip wasn't zero, and another bug in audio recording on WAV files.

There is a graphical menu since the third release.



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