SPOILER ALERT : it's an april fool !

I knew JB le Daron as a youtubber, I discover today that he isnt just that, but also a musician.

CPC 4 Ever is his project : the best musical themes of your favourites Amstrad CPC games are remixed, with piano for example. There are already 5 tunes available on the site. Personnaly I like them very much and is awaiting for more ! See you on Twitch the 4th April at 22:00.

Often in games, the music is either written by Tom et Jerry or McKlain.

For the music of El Tesoro Perdido de Cuauhtemoc by 4Mhz, it's the turn of McKlain (listen to the music on Soundcloud).

Some parts of the music makes me think of elite's music.

The original Amstrad notepad NC100 emulator was written by Russell Marks. Nilquader has modified it, and Gnarz has modified this modification.

Gnarz's modification features :

• removed the vgalib and terminal versions
• made the gtk version compile with GTK+ 2.0
• made the sdl version compile with SDL2
• made the menu key available on modern keyboards emulate the NCs menu key
• changed the serial port emulation to allow it to use devices other than stdin/stdout. For example, the command socat -d -d PTY,raw,echo=0 PTY,raw,echo=0 creates a nice serial device emulator, whose ends are output by the command. You can specify the open end with -s, and use the other end with cat or sx or what have you... stdin/stdout is still available by passing - as an arg to -s
• some cleanups in the Makefile
• added ncconvert

Back to commercial games Xyphoe is showing Thunder Blade, an arcade game by Sega in 1987, converted on Amstrad CPC in 1988. It's a game with 2 phases, either a vertical shoot them up game or with thir person view, piloting a helicopter. Xyhpoe first tests the arcade original game, then the Amstrad CPC version at 5 minutes 30 seconds.

Colin Pitrat is the author of a port of the Amstrad CPC emulator Caprice32 initially programmed by par Ulrich Doewich.

Caprice32 features :

• Complete emulation of CPC464, CPC664 and CPC6128
• Mostly working support of Plus Range: CPC464+/CPC6128+/GX4000 (missing vectored & DMA interrupts, analog joysticks and 8 bit printer)
• Joystick support - it can be fully used with joystick only, thanks to an integrated virtual keyboard.
• Joystick emulation - joystick-only games can be played using the keyboard
• English, French or Spanish keyboards
• DSK and IPF files for disks - VOC and CDT files for tapes - CPR files for cartridge
• Snapshots (SNA files)
• Direct load of ZIP files (all formats except IPF)
• Custom disk formats
• Printer support
• Memory tool to inspect and modify memory (peek and poke)
• Experimental support of Multiface 2 (you should prefer using memory tool)
• Text mode graphics (using aalib or libcaca)

The CSW2CDT tool suite is a set of three programs whose main purpose is the encoding of computer tapes used in the Sinclair ZX and the Amstrad CPC families during the Golden Age of European videogames (1982-1994), when tapes were the most popular distribution method of commercial software :

• CSW0 is a command-line program that reads WAV audio sample files and writes CSW V1 packed samples
• CSW2CDT is a command-line program that reads CSW1 V1 packed samples and writes CDT/TZX tape images
• CSW2CDT-UI is a dialog-driven program whose graphical user interface simplifies the usage of the first two tools.

The general procedure is divided in several steps :

• The tape must be sampled as an uncompressed WAV audio file whose quality should be at least 22050 Hz. Mono and 8 bits are preferred over stereo and 16 bits
• The resulting WAV file must be fed to CSW0, that will measure all the square waves and produce a CSW V1 file. Optional flags can be used to perform band-pass filtering on the signal
• This CSW V1 file will be handed to CSW2CDT, whose task is to scan the data blocks within and build a CDT/TZX image. Again, optional flags allow for increasingly complex processing of the contents
• The CDT/TZX image ultimately needs to be tested then in an emulator that can play tape files back, such as CPCE and WinAPE for Amstrad CPC titles or FUSE and UnrealSpeccy for ZX Spectrum softwares

CSW2CDT-UI eases the procedure because its graphical user interface is more comfortable (although less flexible) than the command line : choosing the sample, generating the CSW V1 file, and encoding the CDT/TZX file can be performed by pushing buttons and choosing options. It also allows for the reverse procedure of playing back CDT/TZX images into CSW V1 files and WAV audio files with some few mouse clicks.

Dlfrsilver, loyal alphatester and main inspiration, wrote the French and English handbooks.

The last Youtube video by JB le Daron is about an Amstrad CPC adventure game with graphics by Ubi Soft : Omeyad released in 1989.

The description given by JB le Daron and the test of the game on CPC Game Reviews should make you playing the game (well if you understand french of course). The story takes place in medieval Arabia in the city of Omeyad. You will have to meet several of people of the town who will give you missions to complete. Of course you will have to use objets to do that. The town and its people are reacting to what you do, which is rare in games!

I didnt write yet about all Amstrad games released for the CPCRetroDev 2016 contest.

The Legend of Anubis by Core Studio is one of these games (arcade). It was written by Adrian Gonzalez Herrera, Mateo Bernal Montoya and Jose Roberto Martinez Gras.

You enter an old pyramide facing many dangers and traps with one goal in mind, to get an ancient relic : the mask of Anubis, the god with a chacal head, governing the land of death.

Another WIP game, Rafael Castillo started one month ago to write Baba's Palace announced on Twitter. Graphics are realy nice.

Using CPCTelera Salvador Cantero is working on Red Planet 2 for Amstrad CPC. Red Planet 1 was for another platform.