News about Amstrad CPC, PCW, Notepad NC100 NC150 NC200, PDA600 and also Amstrad PC






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





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


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.



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.



My upcoming birthday present, a special phone flip case

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I think I just found my perfect future birthday present, an Amstrad CPC phone flip case on Ebay.

Amstrad CPC phone flip case