Gryzor
Gryzor was a port from the Arcade game Contra from Konami. (Also known as Probotector on Nintendo Entertainment system)
The Home Computer's ports (Amstrad CPC port too) were mostly produced by the Famous amongst Amstrad CPC user OCEAN company from England.
Gryzor Vs. Contra Vs. Probotector
Gryzor is actually a port from Konami's Contra. Contra was often renamed from countries to countries and system to system for more or less obscure reasons.
NES version was renamed Probotector, having the sprites changed from humans to robots due to censorship reasons, it was judged too violent for European children if the protagonist were humans, and would lead thsoe kids to kill peoples in the street.
Contra was renamed Gryzor because the term Contra could refers to "the Iran-Contra affair" or Nicaraguan Contra rebels... which were hot topics in 1987.
Despite those name changes, this is the same game despite in different countries, on different machines and produced by different companies (under license in OCEAN's case).
The Contra franchise is still actively exploited by Konami.
CPC version
Gryzor is probably one of the best game available on Amstrad CPC, and is probably featured in every Top10 games for this standard. This is of course not objective but quite accepted amongst the Amstrad community, Gryzor is the symbol of what a well programmed CPC can do.
This is a "Run and Gun" style game, such as games like : Robocop, Midnight resistance... With vertical, horizontal and 3d (sort of) action.
It is well known for :
- Awesome colourful graphics.
- Nice Music.
- excellent playability and fast action.
- various levels and different gameplays.
Despite this, this game is not flawless :
- lack of smooth scrolling.
- lack of a proper 2 player mode.
This is probably the best port amongst 8 bit computers, always referenced as by Amstrad CPC fans in the "8 bit war" when C64 users claim it to be a lame machine.
Even the C64 and MSX ports were somewhat inferior compared to the CPC version. The MSX version was named Contra as it was produced by Japanese company, while most westerner home computer systems had it under the Gryzor Brand-name, all of them being more or less approximate adaptations from the same Arcade game anyway.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the MS-DOS PC version was miles behind too.
Game map
Video
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