CPC timeline

Important events related to the Amstrad CPC.

<wtl inline startdate="24-3-1947" enddate="30-12-1992" caption="CPC Timeline" display="CPC Timeline" color="red">CPC Timeline</wtl>

• 1947-03-24: Alan M. Sugar's birthday

• 1968: Amstrad gets founded
• 2007-07: Amstrad taken over by BSkyB
• 2008-07: Alan Sugar steps down as chairman of Amstrad

• 1984: CPC464 introduced
• 1985: CPC664 introduced
• 1985: CPC6128 introduced
• 1990: 464plus and 6128plus introduced
• 1990: GX4000 introduced

Operating systems and programming languages

• 1984: Locomotive BASIC 1.0
• 1985: Locomotive BASIC 1.1
• 1985: MAXAM, the popular assembler

Famous games (both CPC-only and ports)

• 1986: Gauntlet released; well-known conversion of the popular arcade
• 1986: Donkey Kong released; another arcade conversion for the CPC, and a really good one at that
• 1986: Elite released; sci-fi trading game where you can freely roam the universe
• 1986: Spindizzy released; isometric action/puzzle game
• 1986: Turbo Esprit released; free-roaming driving simulation with (for the time) amazing graphical detail. The grandfather of modern games like the GTA series, except in GTA you play for the other side.
• 1987: Gryzor released; side-scroller known for its nice graphics
• 1987: Pirates! released; like Elite, it's set in a dynamic world where you can go where you want and become who you want to be
• 1988: R-Type released; famous shoot-'em-up, unfortunately the CPC version had sub-par, Spectrum-like graphics, but gameplay was still faithful to the arcade.
• 1989: Emlyn Hughes International Soccer released; pretty much the definitive soccer simulation for 8-bit/16-bit machines
• 1990: Prince of Persia released; impressively fluid animation, the CPC version can hold its own here even against the Amiga.
• 1990: Rick Dangerous 2 released; platformer with comic-style graphics
• 1991: Turrican 2 released; run-and-gun with impressive graphics, mainly known as an Amiga game
• 1992: Mega Blasters released; extremely popular game from the demo scene

Other

TBD

This page should probably use the Mediawiki timeline extension eventually, like this.