Super Sylvestre wrote a new article (in french), this time about cars and Amstrad CPC, not an usual one.

RetroVirtualMachine v2.1.4 by jcgamestoy was released the 19th January 2023. It's an Amstrad CPC emulator for MacOS, Windows and Linux.

Longshot has released version 1.4 of the Amstrad CPC CRTC Compendium which is a documentation about the CRTC 6845 (and some others circuits). Note that the CRTC is a generic component used in several computers including the IBM PC.

It is possible to check if an emulator is good with the SHAKER tests by Longshot. SHAKER is a program designed to run on CPC machines produced by AMSTRAD in the 80s-90s. The objective of this program is to carry out extensive tests on the video circuits of this machine. These video circuits are the GATE ARRAY and the CRTC 6845. AMSTRAD produced several series of GATE ARRAY and used CRTC models produced by different manufacturers (HITACHI, MOTOROLA, UMC, AMSTRAD). This has been causing compatibility problems on operations that exceed the functional specifications of these circuits. The identified CRTCs are numbered from 0 to 4.

Tenebrae by Haplo is a reflexion/puzzle game for Amstrad CPC. You are moving in a roguelike environment with an important twist : you can only do it a lighted zone... It's an interesting game, I recommand to try it. It exists already for ZX Spectrum, Commodore and PC. You can see two video of tests :

• Tenebra by Passion Jeux Vidéo TV
• Tenebra by Amstrad CPC World

These last years several expansions allows you to use mass storage (USB or sd...) on Amstrad CPC, each needing a ROM to use it correctly.

And if you use two of these expansions, you will need to load two ROMs, so less RAM for your Amstrad CPC.

So Offset did write UniDOS and drivers to be able to use another expansion, needing only one ROM with features being the same whatever the expansion. Unidos can manage actually :

• Albireo by PulkoTronics
• M4 Board by Duke
• X-Mass by Tot0
• Symbiface II by Dr.Zed
• Nova by PulkoTronics

Offset also wrote UniDOS Cartridge Creator (v1.4) which is an utility to create Amstrad Plus cartridges equipped with a patched firmware which allows to add UniDOS and its DOS nodes. You can furthermore configure up to 30 additional tool ROMs (such as Utopia, Maxam, Protext..) in the cartridges (compatible with ParaDOS and Burnin' Rubber) without requiring a real ROM board. The tool also let you automatically download the latest UniDOS ROMs from the official web site.

Unidos v1.50 is a major release with a lot of visible and invisible modifications. All DOS nodes were also updated. For the end user, the most notable update is the full time and date support as well as new RSX. For the developers, new BIOS and node API came up.

Also, since the release of the ACE Amstrad CPC emulator in v1.25, several plugins were upgraded : DK'Tronics speech synthesizer, Techni-Musique and SSA-1 speech, Willy, Nova, Amdrum, Mirage Image, MultiPlay and the PlayCity, Albireo.

Dire Dare by CNGSoft is a 3D isometric game for Amstrad CPC, following his game Hire Hare released for the CPCRetroDev 2017 where he won the third place. The game is available for download as tape or disk.

Announced at the start of the year, CPC Jewels by ESP Soft is now available for download as tape and disk, but also as a physical tape on matranet. It's a remake of Columns.

Penguin Attack by Pat Morita Team (who whon the CPCRetroDev 2021) is a vertical shooter game, first I thought about a Penguin Adventure remake but no. Graphics are kawai. The game is available for download as tape and disk.

A longer video is available here.

Abyssal by Cabbage_corp is a horizontal shooter, enter your bathyscaph and enter into the pacific ocean to battle its creatures. The game is already available for download as tape, disk and snapshot.

Be Witched or be Dead by Hinamam is a two player game inside platforms where you must use spells to weaken your opponent and the beat him. But magic is sometimes capricious and all what you want could not happen like you wish. The game is already available for download as tape, disk and snapshot.