CPCE v1.85 fixes a serious bug in the Symbiface 2 IDE (reported by Jarek Adamski), allows disabling the tape speedup if CPCE does it wrong (for example with "Balloonacy") and the Win32 version is a bit smarter now to handle ZIP archives.

A new version of the Amstrad CPC emulator CrocoDS for the Nintendo DS is out.

Kevin Thacker has made a conversion of Balloonacy, a C64 game. The complet game will be sold by Cronosoft . You can donwload a démo of the game for tape and disk.

A new version of the Amstrad CPC emulator AmeDS for the Nintendo DS is available.

FutureOS documentation (new OS for the Amstrad CPC) is available now in german AND english on the web site.

You can download the invitation for the Castellum meeting 2. The meeting already took place.

Symbos v2.0 is out :

• SymbOS has been ported completely to the Amstrad PCW/Joyce (screensaver works now, too).
• 1024KB support on all platforms; 24 applications can be loaded and executed now at the same time.
• "SymbOS extensions": This module can optionally be loaded during the booting process and adds new functions like the "Security" dialogue to the operating system.
• Richtext support and additional 16 colour controls
• SymbOS supports the handling of shared services. These are processes, which run in the background and provide their functions like accessing external hardware and other things to multiple applications at the same time.
• The file selection, info and confirm windows have been enhanced with several new options.
• SymShell includes new control codes for better VT100, VT52 and ANSI terminal emulation.
• The CPC version includes an optimized Mode2 screen driver and now operates nearly as fast in 640x200x2 as in 320x200x4.

Read allnews here, and PCW/Joyce screenshots here.

Rupert Murdoch owner of the U.K. media group BskyB has launched an amical OPA on Amstrad for 185 millions €, it will permit to BskyB to lower its costs, as it was buying satellit numerical video decoders from Amstrad. Alan Michael Sugar will stil be the manager at Amstrad, and will still keep 28% Amstrad actions d'Amstrad after selling a part of his actions for 34,5 millions of pounds. Alan Michael Sugar is now 60 years old.

Elite was one of the best Amstrad CPC games, and Elite II on PC was a good game too. Frontier 1337 is a port for Sony PSP of Elite II, which I couldnt try at the moment though.

Groops is an Amstrad CPC reflexion game by Binaries Sciences, and a nice one. A new version without non important bugs will be out soon.