Archives for the month December 2016 of Genesis8 Amstrad Page





Tower Toppler v1.1.6 for windows (2012), a Nebulus remake

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There is a new version of Tower Toppler since I wrote about this remake of Nebulus, with one more mission of several towers (tower toppler v1.1.6).



XY-MEM Flasher by Chany (Nul Part System), an Amstrad CPC 6128 utility

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XY-MEM Flasher by Chany (load screen by Kukukcan) is an Amstrad CPC 6128 utilkity to flash your ROMs on your X-MEM or Y-MEM both made by ToTO.

The Y-MEM expansion is also made by TotO. It's a similar expansion like the X-MEM. The difference is the addressing of RAM and ROM. While the X-MEM addresses the lower ROM, ROMs 0-6 and 8-31, the Y-MEM addresses the ROMs from 32 to 63. The X-MEM allows to access 512 KB RAM using the port &7Fxx. But the Y-MEM addresses another 512 KB using the port &7Exx. Using the X-MEM and the Y-MEM together provides 1 MB of expansion RAM and 1 MB of Flash-ROM for the CPC or Plus computers.

Click on the source link for downloading it.




Phoenix arcade emulator by Norbert Kehrer

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Norbert Kehrer wrote an emulator/conversion, of the classic arcade game Phoenix from 1980 for the Amstrad CPC. The original arcade machine was made by the American company Amstar and had a 8085 CPU. So, the Amstrad CPC can directly run the original game program on its 8085-compatible Z80 CPU. In order to emulate the arcade machine's video and sound hardware on the Amstrad home computer, he wrote specific Z80 routines for that. These are still a little bit buggy now, and the sound is still bad.

He made two versions of the game. One with sixteen colors but lower resolution (file "phoenix"), and a second one with the original resolution but with only four colors (file "phoenixh").

You can download a disk image with both versions of the game from Norbert Kehrer's homepage.



Test of Super Monaco GP by ChinnyVision

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A new video by ChinnyVision on Youtube about Super Monaco GP is available since 11th November. The game was out on Amstrad CPC in 1991 by Sega.

He also tests it on Amiga, ST, Sega Master System, Spectrum and C64.



Roland Radio, an Amstrad CPC radio internet now with an Android application

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Roland Radio is an internet radio, and its program should interest you : only Amstrad CPC music.

There is now an Android application for Roland Radio.



Street Fighter II CPC still being developped

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Street Fight II CPC is still being developped by Augusto Ruiz (programmation), DaDMaN (graphics) and McKlain (sound). Here is a new video of Street Fight II CPC below, after the two of 2013 :

Dont expect a final version in 2016, but a beta is possible. The target is an Amstrad CPC 6128 with 128 Kb, sorry no CPC 464.



ZEsarUX v4.2, an Amstrad CPC 464 emulator (other computers like ZX Spectrum too)

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ZEsarUX v4.2 is a multi platform emulator, Amstrad CPC 464 included. You can compile the unix sources directly or get a binary for :

  • linux 32/64 bits
  • Mac OS X
  • Windows
  • Raspberry pi (raspbian)


Saboteur's remake by Cliff Townsend on PC, MAC and android

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Cliff Townsend, the original author of Saboteur has written several months ago a remake of this game which impressed a lot of people at that time. It's one of the game I finished on my Amstrad CPC.

The free version (PC, MAC and Android) has limitations (time, no saving of scores and progression). The full version costs only 3,99 €.




Test of Motorbike Madness by ChinnyVision

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A new video by ChinnyVision on Youtube about Motorbike Madness is available. The game was out on Amstrad CPC in 1988 by Mastertronic (ZX Spectrum version on the same tape). It's a 3D isometic moto game.

He also tests it on Amiga, ST, Sega Master System, Spectrum and C64.




CPCGamesCD updated by MiguelSky (December 2016)

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CPCGamesCD (created by MiguelSky) is an ISO image including several emulators (Amstrad CPC and PCW), and a frontend to launch the included games, which comes from the NVG FTP.



Dragon Attack by Bitplane Technomantes, fourth place at the CPCRetroDev 2016

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Bitplane Technomantes won the fourth place at the CPCRetroDev 2016 with their game Dragon Attack. It's an arcade game (think galaxian). Your fighter can only be destroyed if its middle is touched, but the dragons are shooting everywhere on the screen ! And of course it's no less the future of the Earth which is on your shoulders...

Dragon attack is the collective work of :



VirusDog par CPC-Power, third place at the CPCRetroDev 2016

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CPC-Power won the third place at the CPCRetroDev 2016 with their game VirusDog. It's a reflexion game where you must save the life of your dog by pairing the same virus near each of them.

VirusDog is the collective work of :

  • code and idea : Kukulcan
  • graphics : Kukulcan, CED
  • music : Tom and Jerry (GPA)
  • cover and manual : Ixien
  • tests : AST, Galamoth, Lone, Maxit, C. PETIT, Fredouille


Outlaws by Retrobytes Productions, first place at the CPCRetroDev 2016

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Retrobytes Productions won the first place at the CPCRetroDev 2016 with their game Outlaws, an arcade game with a cowboy in the wild wild west. It looks like Cabal or Operation Wolf. It's a nice game with good graphics.

Outlaws is their first Amstrad CPC game, but I invite you to check their previous games on ZX Spectrum on their homepage.

Outlaws is the collective work of :

  • code : Toni Ramírez
  • graphics : Alxinho
  • music and FX : José A. Martín
  • tests : Toni, Alxinho, José
  • traduction: Toni Ramírez


Samdisk v3.8.9 by Simon Owen, Amstrad CPC disks tranfers on PC

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SAMdisk v3.8.9 by Simon Owen is out since the 18th December.

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.

  • fixed clipping extent of non-error sectors
  • fixed raw .2d file reading (thanks Tatsuyuki Sato)
  • fixed HD track error during 2DD to 2HD promotion (thanks Tatsuyuki Sato)
  • fixed use of scanning data rates not supported by FDC
  • fixed --offsets crash if 2 stored copies were present
  • changed gap indicator from g to +, added - for short sectors
  • added support for double-density MB-02+ disks (thanks Jan Kucera)
  • added --step-rate speed option (0=slow, 15=fast, 10=default)



8BP v027, a RSX library to develop Amstrad CPC games in Basic

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Jose Javier Garcia Aranda has written a new version of 8BP v27 (8bits de poder : 8bits of power), a RSX library for writing Amstrad CPC games in basic (26 Kb max). You can download 8bp on github.

This v27 version has 2 new features :

  • RINK RSX for ink animation
  • change state for sprites (badly translated from spanish)



The story of Dinamic Software

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Pixel Thing is talking about the spanish publishing house Dinamic Software on Youtube in english.



Caprice Forever v0.30, an Amstrad CPC emulator by Frédéric Coste for Windows

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

  • Fix FDC engine to pass most of Kevin Thacker's acid tests
  • Add option to cold reset at real speed (see Hints)
  • Load disk and tape from ZIP archives files
  • Add disk menu to manually update and reload disk image
  • Add disk menu to manually update and reload disk image
  • Fix Tape to load The Last Mission
  • fix minor bugs


Merry Christmas 2016

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Merry Christmas 2016 to all.



CPC Basic 3, an IDE for writing locomotive basic programs and compiles them in Z80 asm

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CPC Basic 3 is an integrated environment for developing programs for Amstrad CPC. It works on Windows, Linux (Mono) and Mac OS (Wine).

CPC Basic function is to allow input and editing a program and compile it to to generate the necessary machine code and run it on a Amstrad CPC computer or an emulator.

Programs are written in Basic language based on Locomotive Basic with a number of differences required because it is a compiler and optimize the speed of code produced.









Happy new year 2017

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I wish you all a good and happy new year 2017. Good health for all you love. And also a year 2017 as rich as it was in 2016 for the Amstrad CPC.



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