Knights & Demons (ZX Spectrum/MSX/Amstrad CPC)

Being a retro geek and a high fantasy nerd, seeing a new game on the ZX Spectrum called Knights & Demons (from Kabuto Factory) naturally got me all aflutter. You can imagine then, my disappointment when I realised it was actually a puzzle game based on the old Light's Out toys from the 1990s. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I did have to readjust my expectations somewhat.

Light's Out was a puzzle game featuring a grid of lit tiles, where the aim was to switch off all the lights on your board. By selecting a tile on the grid you switch the status from on to off (or vice versa) as well as those tiles directly adjacent to the one you have just selected. Knights & Demons essentially takes this concept and replaces the lights with, you guessed it, knights and demons. It also introduces 'pikes', which allow you to switch off a tile without flipping any of the other tiles around it, which is useful for dealing with individual tiles when you don’t want to switch the others adjacent to it. As you progress through the game the number of pikes you possess doesn't reset, so the game becomes progressively harder as the number of pikes dwindles and you have to rely on your skill alone to clear the gameboard.

R-Type (128K Remake) (CPC)

It's been 25 years since the release of the genre-defining shoot em up R-Type, and a quarter century on the Evil Bydo Empire is nowhere near defeated! R-Type was ported over to the Amstrad CPC back in 1988, but that version (based on the Spectrum code) was more than a little lacklustre. Now, we've already seen one CPC port made over and rebuilt into something better this year (the brilliant Bubble Bobble For CPC) and this rebuild of R-Type certainly outshines the original CPC port of the game.

A flashy intro kicks off R-Type 2012 (not its real title but since I'll be doing a bit of comparisons between the two games it's fit for purpose) and it's difficult to not make the decision that this is indeed an entirely superior remake just from this alone! A solid chiptune soundtrack underlines a palette of cool blues and blacks as the technical specifications of our R-9 fighter appear, and it's all looking very polished indeed. I imagine it's easy to storyboard a passable, bare bones intro for any game (correct me if I'm wrong!) with just a few explosions, a bit of action and, let's say, the title flying in from over the horizon then exploding, or something. In contrast, absolutely tons of work appears to have been put into this remake's intro, a slow buildup of tension leading to the big reveal of the title screen.

Retro News Update

It's all go here at RGCD HQ, and even with our new team members we've been unable to give all the games that have come out recently the full coverage they deserve! So, whilst we struggle to catch up with our backlog of reviews, here's a quick update on the stuff we've missed. There's quite a lot here, so get ready with that scroll-wheel...

Verminest '83 & Boxed Copies of Locomalito's Games For Sale! (PC)

Starting with the PC news first, our good friend Locomalito has not only released a special early coin-op 'coloured' version of his recent blast Verminest (it now looks even more like a suped-up version of Galaga), but he's also made the decision to make boxed copies of his back-catalogue of widely acclaimed games available to buy! The games themselves are of course still free to download - the boxed copies are offered as a 'gift' for people who make donations, with around 30 Euros for one game or 90 for all five. Grab yours today from here.

Bubble Bobble 4 CPC (Amstrad CPC)

Bubble Bobble is one of those games that are very difficult to dislike. It's relentlessly charming and pathologically upbeat, with lead characters that are so instantly loveable if you dropped pictures of them on a desert island whose inhabitants had no contact with society you would be guaranteed a dragon-centric Cargo Cult within seven days.

The original port of the game to the Amstrad CPC, however, was inarguably one of the poor relations of the franchise. It lacked the spirit that made the arcade version so great, and it is an unadulterated pleasure to play a new, shiny port of the game that shows what could have been done with more time and effort.

Bubble Bobble for the CPC, abbreviated concisely by the developer into BB4CPC, underlines the excellence that can be achieved by one person working alone on a labour of love, for absolutely ages, without the pressures of working in a commercial development environment with deadlines, managers and budget restraints. The bangs and whistles, the panache and the cuteness, the occasional fiendish difficulty and the pathologically infectious theme tune are all there in spades.

Edge Grinder - Official Release (C64/CPC)

There's been a couple of cracked versions of Edge Grinder doing the rounds for a while, but it seems that Cosine have finally completed the disk version of their increasingly popular 16KB cartridge shmup. Head on over to the Format War collabortition page or Cosine's site to grab your copy, complete with a groovy new title screen by STE'86 and loading music by Sean/Odie. At the bargain price of free you'd be a fool to miss out on the action.

But what's with this second screenshot? Well, CPC owners may be interested to note that there's an Edge Grinder conversion making waves in the Amstrad scene (by none other than Axelay of Star Sabre, Dead On Time and Sub Hunter fame). Which of the two is better? Well, that's a matter to discuss over on the Format War forums - and while you're there you might want to check out the progress on the GBA, SNES, Megadrive/Genesis, Atari 800, Atari 7800 and PC Engine versions of the game!

Download the C64 version here (from the Cosine website).
Run it using VICE (freeware).

Download the CPC version here (from the Format War collabortition page).
Run it using WinAPE (freeware).

Color Lines (Amstrad CPC)

Looking at the title screen and the name alone, Color Lines could easily be mistaken for yet another Tron light cycles game - at least that was my initial assumption when I saw the release entry on pouet.net.  However, don't be fooled; Color Lines is in fact a puzzler based on a 'Lines', a game designed by Oleg Demin.  Featuring two distinctly different play modes, tons of fantastic graphics from a variety of CPC scene artists and more music than you'd find on the average chipdisk, GPA's latest offering may well be another entry in an already overcrowded genre but the outstanding execution and design is enough to make it worthy of your attention.

Dead On Time (Amstrad CPC)

 
There is no arguing that (along with the Atari 400/800 series) during its short commercial life the Amstrad CPC was the underdog of the 8-Bit computers. It might have had an excellent and vibrant palette and some interesting screen modes, but the 3rd party game support was very poor and many of the official arcade conversions were (quite frankly) shit in comparison to the C64 - and in some cases even worse than on it's sister machine, the humble ZX Spectrum.