Archives for the month March 2024 of Genesis8 Amstrad Page






WIP Papy Commando for CPC+/GX4000 by Studio Vetea, Fano and Shiningbzh

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You can already download a WIP version of the action game Papy Commando by Studio Vetea, Fano and Shiningbzh. The video below of Papy Commando is by Xenomorph.

The other productions of Studio Vetea are on their Itch.io page.



New CGA card, MCE2HDMI, RGBtoHDMI and Amstrad CPC(+), video by Retro Erik

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Retro Erick is presenting in video the a new CGA card wi tested with the MCE2HDMI. This card is able to do CGA composite and can be bought on Aliexpress. The MCE2HDMI can be bought on Serdashop (where I bought several things, including a few weeks ago two waveblasters card to get MIDI on my PPC 640 without connecting my Roland expander). You can see another Retro Erik video presenting the test of the MCE2HDMI.

You must know that the MCE2HDMI is none other than the RGBtoHDMI by Hoglet67 which exists for many others computers (8 and 16bit), not only for PC with Hercules/MDA/CGA/EGA, but also the Amstrad CPC and CPC+. A list of vendors of the many RGBtoHDMI is available.



Joyce v2.5.2 by John Elliott, an Amstrad PCW emulator

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The Amstrad PCW emulator Joyce v2.5.2 by John Elliott already available for unix, windows and MacOS. It's a development version with Improved LocoLink emulation.



Los Elfos de Maroland, a graphical adventure game by Dwalin for Amstrad CPC and PCW in english

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Los Elfos de Maroland is now also available in english. It's a graphic adventure game written by Dwalin for Amstrad CPC and PCW, msdos, C64, MSX1 and MSX2, Amiga and Atari ST. It's a conversion with DAAD of its game previously written with PAWS in 1993.



CP/Mish by David Given for Amstrad Notepad NC200, January version

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CP/Mish by David Given has been updated, last version is from the 7th January 2024.

All CP/MIsh sources are on Github for Linux.

The available memory is 60 Kb by using all the memory available (128 Kb) but please check the NC200 readme for more informations especially the warnings about files in RAM (lost after notepad is off), the disk cache (chance disk only at CP/M prompt, and switch off the notepad only at prompt or you may loose write disk accesses).



Abalore in three words : OS, wifi and Amsteam

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Abalore in three words it's :

  • the past in one word to start AbalaoreOS about which I didnt write in time (it started in February 2023). And yes, it's a WIP operating system for Amstrad. You can see video about it on CPCWiki and his Youtube channel.
  • the present in two words first a wifi card which leads to its use Amsteam which is the streaming of Amstrad CPC games.

What will he bring us for the future ?




Oh Chute, an Amstrad GX4000 and CPC+ in digital and physical version by Cwiiis

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Cwiiis has just released his arcade Amstrad GX4000 and CPC+ game : Oh Chute (web site to order a physical cartridge of the game).

You are Ron Danger, stunt person and extreme sports enthusiast. You just can’t get enough of sky-diving, but the local helicopter pilots have had it with your antics and are out to get you… It’s up to you to show them who’s boss!

Choose one of four different levels of varying difficulty and see how long you can survive. Sky-diving is hard enough alone, but those darned pilots aren’t going to make it any easier for you. Keep an eye on their movement and choose the right time to open your ‘chute and manoeuvre to one of the designated landing zones.



New CPC/Plus-focused tile-map editor by Cwiiis (and more)

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Cwiiis is the author of Maped, a python utility to edit Amstrad CPC(+) tilemaps (see on CPCWiki and Github).

On his Github you can find two other Amstrad CPC related utilities : dsk2dir (creation/extraction of .DSK) and cprtools (concatenate ROMs in one .CPR).



Présentation by Retro Erik of the PicoMEM ISA card created by FreddyV

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Retro Erick is presenting in video the PicoMEM ISA card made by FreddyV (FreddyV on Twitter).

This card is a must for all PC XT, even for 286, 386 and 486+, its features are (and more are on the way, see the github) :

  • integrated BIOS
  • less than 640 Kb ? You can fill up to 640 Kb (16 Kb granularity), it's possible to have up to 736 Kb of conventional memory
  • EMS memory (2 Mb)
  • up to 2 virtual disks drives and 4 virtual hard disks (up to 4 Gb). The images are on a SD card and can be created directly from the BIOS (recent feature)
  • USB mouse but you must use a USB OTG hub with its own power !
  • NE2000 network card support using wifi (it's better to be near your wifi router)
  • POST code for PicoMEM cards rev 1.1 and 1.11 with this Sparkfun screen


Becoming the next Titan with Multipaint 2024.3 ?

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To make so beautiful Amstrad CPC loading screens like Eric Cubizolle (Titan), it's easy, you just need to use the same painting program : Multipaint by Tero Heikkinen AKA Dr. Terrorz, and maybe a bit of talent and mostly a lot of work.

Titan is describing Multipaint as a mmix of OCP Art Studio and Deluxe Paint for windows which offers the possibility of using the resolutions and palettes of a whole bunch of old computers including the Amstrad CPC (mode 0 and 1, overscan possible in mode 0).

Two videos presenting Multipaint (beware they are both from four years ago, so not about the latest version and features) :





New firmware v1.20 for the Picogus by Ian Scott for your ISA PC XT/AT

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Ian Scott has released a new firmware v1.20 for his ISA card PicoGUS which supports the sound card Gravis Ultra Sound (and much more). This firmware replaces the Adlib mode with a SoundBlaster 2.0 mode where Adlib support is better, and also a fix for the MPU-401 emulation mode. The new firmware can be downloaded on Ian Scott's Github.



Joyce v2.5.3 by John Elliott, an Amstrad PCW emulator

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The Amstrad PCW emulator Joyce v2.5.3 by John Elliott is available for unix, windows and MacOS. This emulates another proprietary communications interface : the PCW Linkit which links two PCW (click on the link PCW hardware information) whereas the LocoLink did link a PCW to another computer with its parallel port (PC, PcW16 or a PCW 9512 with a third-party software). The Linux build also has another feature : you can now use JOYCE as a terminal to your system's command line, so you can use MAIL232 (or other PCW terminal program of your choice) in the same way that you would an xterm.




Rodolfo Skylarriente 2 by Sakis Kaffesakis, an Amstrad CPC adventure game

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Rodolfo Skylarriente 2 is a graphic adventure game on Amstrad CPC by Sakis Kaffesakis, Manossg (music), Brundij (digitized screens) and MiguelSky (traduction). It is available in english, french, greek and spanish.

A video of presentation in french is available (soon also in english, check his Youtube channel).





Eleventh Amstrad CPC score contest on Goatfish organized by Border 0

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Border 0 organizes his eleventh score contest on the game Goathfish (action game par Ervin PAJOR for CPCRetroDev 2020) till the 30th April 2024. See the site for the rules, you will have to use the WinAPE Amstrad CPC emulator to record a SNR file.



Ghost NOP, an Amstrad CPC demo by Pulpo Corrosivo et Futurs (Revision 2024)

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Pulpo Corrosivo and Futurs have released a new Amstrad CPC demo : Ghost NOP (local download) during the Revision 2024 demo party. The code is written by Toms and Offset, graphics by Rexbeng/PA and Hwikaa, music by Zik.



Programming in basic on many computers with ugBASIC by Marco Spedaletti with an IDE

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ugBASIC by Marco Spedaletti is a compiled basic which works on many computers including the Amstrad CPC(+). In fact this compiler write the code so a program works whatever the features of the targeted computer, a feature which doesnt exist in hardware will be managed by software. For ugBASIC's github it's here, an official Facebook group of ugBASIC and even an ugBASIC forum.

There is also an IDE for ugBASIC still by Marco Spedaletti available on Itch.IO.



Amstrad CPC artwork by Colin Thomson

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A suggestion by Youtube and I stumbled on Colin Thomson's channel where you can see two gorgeous Amstrad CPC screens being drawn :



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