Games
Contents
All-time top games
Article moved here
Software Houses
- Activision
- Alligata Software
- Americana
- AMSOFT
- Anco Software
- Anirog
- Ariola Soft
- Beau Jolly
- Bug Byte
- Cascade Games
- Cobra Soft
- Codemasters
- CRL
- Cronosoft
- Digital Integration
- Dinamic
- DMV
- Domark
- Durell
- Electric Dreams
- Electronic Arts
- Elite Systems
- Epyx
- Firebird
- ERE Informatique
- Grandslam
- Gremlin Graphics
- Hewson
- Hi-Tec Software
- Image Works
- Imagine
- Incentive
- Infocom
- Infogrames
- Konami
- Krisalis
- Kuma Computers
- Loriciel
- Lankhor
- Leisure Genius
- Level 9
- Magic Bytes
- Magnetic Scrolls
- Martec
- Mastertronic
- MBC
- Melbourne House
- Microids
- Microprose
- Microstyle
- Mikro-Gen
- Mindscape
- Mirrorsoft
- New Age Software
- Ocean
- Opera Soft
- Palace Software
- Players
- PSS
- Psygnosis
- Radical Software
- Rainbird
- Rainbow Arts
- Silmarils
- Silverbird
- System 3
- The Edge
- Titus Software
- Topo Soft
- Tynesoft
- Ubi Soft
- Ultimate Play The Game
- US Gold
- Virgin
- Vortex Software
- Weeske
- WoW Software
- Zeppelin Games
- Zigurat
Copy Protection
Loading music
Cassette
Loading from cassette effectively uses all the CPU's time because you have to keep checking the cassette signal to see if it has changed, and you use a CPU timing loop to calculate length of signal.
So to do music and other things during loading requires precise timing. The C64 effectively had interrupt driven loading music and the serial chip handled clocking in of the data bits and signalled an interrupt when the byte of data was ready.
I think only Firebird games had loading music on cassette. The music was composed by Melvyn Wright (www.melright.com). The music data was embeded into the data on cassette. The data was read as a group of 3 bits and 8 data bits. The 3 bits determined if the 8 data bits were for data or for music.
This list is not complete, please add more. Will upload YM of the loading music soon.
Game | Loading music |
Booty | |
Comet Game (The) | Media:Comet_game_(the)-loader.ym |
Harvey Headbanger | Media:Harvey_headbanger-loader.ym |
Thrust | Media:Thrust.ym |
Spiky Harold | Media:Spiky_harold-loader.ym |
Disc
The disc system on the Amstrad is "polled" which means the CPU has to keep checking if the FDC (NEC765) has more data to read/write. On the C64 the disc system is interrupt driven.
So to do music while loading requires careful timing and often the use of very small sectors (128bytes).
ZapTBalls
The Demo
5KB Demo 3
Games Which use hardware tricks (on old generation cpcs)
Useful if you want to dissect games to work out how they did it.
Please move to somewhere more appropiate
Page Flipping
Most good CPC games use the page-flipping technique in order to display sprites and/or scroll the playing area smoothly. In particular, two memory areas (instead of one) are reserved for the screen ram. In each frame, one of the two screens is displayed in turn, by using the hardware (exactly by changing the screen-offset, Reg 12 and 13 of the CRTC). At the same time, the next frame is being drawn in the non-visible screen until the next frame fly back signal. Then, the same cycle is repeated for each following frame.
The big advantage of this technique is that we can use a whole frame's machine-time for our code (with no animation problems that arise when we alter screen ram at the same time the electron beam displays it on the monitor). On the other hand, page flipping eats up a lot of memory area (which is crucial especially for 64Kb machines). This explains why a lot of games have very small game-areas !
Hardware Scrolling
This list is not exhaustive.
- R3 used to make an approximate byte lenght horizontal scroll (not really smooth)
- R5 used to make smoother vertical scroll (1 line)
Title | Year | Vertical | Horizontal | R3 | R5 | Confirmed |
Action Force | 1988 | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Anarchy | 1988 | No | Yes | No | No | |
Axys | 1991 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Bob Morane Science Fiction | 1987 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Builderland | 1991 | No | Yes | No | No | |
FlySpy | 1986 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Fusion 2 | 1988 | No | Yes | No | No | |
Gothic | 1988 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Ghosts 'n' Goblins | 1986 | No | Yes | No | No | |
Jinks | 1988 | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Killer Cobra | 1987 | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Led Storm | 1988 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Legend of Kage | 1986 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Leviathan | 1987 | Diagonal | scroll! | No | No | Yes |
Le 5eme Axe | 1985 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Mission Genocide | 1987 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Monty Python's Flying Circus | 1990 | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Octoplex | 1989 | Yes | Yes | No | Yes(?) | Yes |
Out Of This World | 1987 | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Paraplane | 1992 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Prehistorik 2 | 1992 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Prohibition | 1987 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Rick Dangerous 2 | 1990 | No | Yes | No | No | |
Roland On the Ropes | 1984 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Sentinel (The) | 1987 | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Skate Ball | 1989 | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Skate Rock | 1987 | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
Skate Wars | 1990 | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Star Avenger | 1984 | No | Yes | No | No | |
Stryker In The Crypt Of Trogan | 1992 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Super Cauldron | 1992 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Titan | 1988 | Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Ultima Ratio | 1987 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Warhawk | 1987 | Yes | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Rupture (or splitscreen)
A technique to split the screen into more than one block vertically. (independant videoram offset) Used to hardware scroll one part of the screen while another is static. This list is not exhaustive.
Title | Year | Confirmed |
Action Force | 1988 | Yes |
Axys | 1991 | Yes |
Dynamic Duo | ||
Enlightenment: Druid 2 | ||
Grell and Falla | ||
Mission Genocide | 1987 | Yes |
Octoplex | 1989 | Yes |
Prehistorik 2 | 1992 | Yes |
Skate Ball | 1989 | Yes |
Skatewars | 1989 | |
Snowstrike | ||
Super Cauldron | 1992 | Yes |
Turrican | 1990 | Yes |
Ultima Ratio | 1987 | Yes |
Usagi Yojimbo | ||
Xyphoes Fantasy | ||
Sol Negro(opera) | ||
Twin World (Ubi Soft) | 1990 | Yes |
Warhawk | 1987 | Yes |
Firmware
The following games are known to use firmware functions. This probably explains why they are poor. If the programmer had used the hardware directly they would have lots more cycles free which they could have used to make the game better.
This list is not exhaustive.
Xevious