Be Excellent To Each Other

I was just flitting around Youtube looking for footage of a game I might review for the site and came across a stunning screenshot of what claimed to be a CPC game. Having never heard of it I clicked on the link and was presented with this:



It's a French game from 1991 called Xyphoes Fantasy. It doesn't require a Plus machine, just 128k and a disc drive.

Doesn't it look and sound stunning? Full digitized music on the title screen (in crummy 4 bit audio, but the AY was never meant to do sampled music!), lush graphics, large sprites and a whole world away from the dreadful Speccy ports we were lumbered with at the time here in the UK.

Obviously it's a Shadow Of The Beast rip-off and therefore has the same shortcomings as that game, but as it's rare to see a commercial game where the programmers actually use the CPC's abilities. The use of colour throughout is superb and although it still looks slightly garish it's nice to see the CPC's pallette put to good use.

What can be achieved if people just try! Sigh.

Wow the in game music brings back my youth.

Prehistorik 2 was another technically impressive one. I think Flack was an advocate of the CPC and how it handled graphics, wasn't he? The machine never really made an impression on me (only knew a coupla people with one) but, when I hear how nice Locomotive BASIC is supposed to have been and think about how much the Speccy keyword fandango retarded my early programming efforts, I wish I'd had a bit more of a play about with the thing.

Actually, it looks a lot more fun. Odd music, though—like a cross between JCH and Steve Rowland SID tunes and a cat being slowly strangled.

But that used the Plus hardware (although it would run on a standard CPC, it was nowhere near as impressive). Xyphoes looks like it ran on a standard CPC (well one with 128k and a disc drive anyway) which makes it more of an achievement.

Gosh, that does look good. I blame the French.

I'm sorry, but 1991? I should hope they'd got the hang of 8-bit systems by then.

The point is that in France the C64 and Speccy had no market share, the CPC reigned supreme in terms of 8 bits. Therefore French software houses wrote for the CPC from the ground up, no shonky ports.

Those who wrote properly for the CPC in the UK did do some very polished games, but it was quite rare. More profitable to write a Speccy version at the same time.

The Oliver Twins developed their first Codemasters game, Super Robin Hood, as CPC only. After that they did joint CPC and Speccy development because it saved time. Just look how polished Super Robin Hood is compared to their later Codemasters efforts!

"Help me Robin"

Malc

Looking into the reason it never made it to these shores, not only was the game disc only but it took up both sides of two 3 inch discs.

The French market was very much geared towards disc based releases so this wouldn't have been a problem, but here in the UK where only larger software stores stocked discs it would have been a flop. Not only that but again in France 128k only games were quite common whereas in the UK it was regarded as commercial suicide. There were only a few 128k only games such as The Addams Family.

As impressive as it looks, a number of factors would have ensured that it wouldn't have sold well in the UK.

Still, 2 discs, that's 712k! Quite big for an 8 bit game!

I've always been annoyed by backwards compatibility. I reckon if commodore had released a super duper version of the Amiga 1200 and not stressed about making all the old games work, they might have stood a chance. After all, the A500 couldn't play c64 games, could it?

I had an A500 and an A1200, I sold my A500, and I included all the games that no longer worked on my A1200, there were quite a few, some I wasn't very pleased to have to get rid off.

Malc

Nothing's really changed.

Would never have happened. Commodore were already cash strapped and one of the reasons the A1200 didn't get a sound upgrade was because the AGA chipset was rushed out to try and shore up the flagging fortune of the company.

But my point is, the leap from 8 to 16 bit didn't have any baggage and people were willing to make the jump. Why didn't they release a brand new 32-bit monster to compete with PCs and the console brigade? I'm sure the loyal Amiga fans would have gone along (in 1992 anyway)

Edit: Chinny, you posted while I was typing

Is one of them Amstrad?

Back when C+VG used to publish the all formats top 100 games every month it's true that the CPC only really had a look in around the bottom 50 positions.

Compare that with France where the CPC reigned supreme in a way that is unimaginable to British people. I remember going to Virgin in Paris during 1992 and being blown away that the CPC had a games section of equal size and prominence to the Amiga and ST. Amstrad Action even went on a daytrip to France and showed games sections of hypermarkets of a size that we in the UK could only dream of. And most of the games available on disc as well!