ChinnyVision - Ep 530 - Stryker In The Crypts Of Trogan - Amstrad CPC/Plus, Spectrum, C64

ChinnyVision - The Retro Game Review Channel

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Stryker In The Crypts Of Trogan (or Striker if you read the printing on the tape) is a 1992 game from Codemasters coded by the same team that gave us Switchblade on the 8 bits.
It looks like a fairly run of the mill platformer on the Speccy and 64, but on the CPC there's a few hardware tricks on display that lift the game. But if you have a CPC Plus, you get the full 4096 colour experience with a copper effect sky and extra colours!
This is the only example of a budget game released that uses the Plus machines extra hardware and a glimpse into what might have been if Amstrad hadn't pretended the extra features could be accessed from cartridge only.
All on real hardware as usual.
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00:00 Titles
00:15 Introduction
02:13 Amstrad CPC
03:43 GX4000
04:18 Spectrum
05:36 C64
07:06 GX4000
07:40 Amstrad CPC
07:58 Spectrum
08:26 C64
09:50 GX4000
10:20 Spectrum
11:42 C64
12:52 CPC Plus
13:54 Amstrad CPC
16:00 Spectrum
17:47 C64
19:11 CPC Plus
21:37 C64
23:23 Conclusion

Игры

Опубликовано:

16 июл 2024

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Комментарии : 37

@OperationPhantom 7 месяцев назад

Pretty neat to see an Amstrad game that uses the hardware really well! The other versions are definitely more run of the mill but still seem OK. A nice curio this one.

@gubbins1622 7 месяцев назад

I'm gobsmacked at what they achieved, why on earth would Amstrad hide that from developers 🤯, a budget game too 😮

@federicocatelli8785 7 месяцев назад

To sell more cartridges 😁

@icewhite1981 7 месяцев назад

I had a demo of this game back in the day off the cover of AA Magazine. It was still called the crypts of chaos at that point

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

I'd forgotten that!

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

The name change I mean. I had the tape.

@jimwright98 7 месяцев назад

Considering a lot of titles I had on my 464 seemed like afterthoughts from the Speccy version, it's nice to see the Amstrad version clearly as the leader here. It's got the smell of a marketing wheeze since the market for the extra features would have been tiny; gx4000 owners out, and the 6128plus didnt have a native tape in feature. So you're mostly looking at 464plus owners to drive the sales, even if it still looks pretty mighty on the standard CPC hardware. Maybe it gave the Codies a few extra column inches in the press and a bit of publicity ? Like you say the speccy and c64 versions seem to have gone through a PC dev studio churn-em-out process, so maybe they were cheap to produce. ACTUAL AMSTRAD SCREENSHOTS EVERYWHERE!

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

It seems like a low effort thing for them to do as they had the knowledge and Codemasters went "why not". And like you say, it got them the cover of Amstrad Action that month.

@RichardTroupe 7 месяцев назад

I had never heard of this game before this review so I'll definitely be giving it a play on my GX4000. It looks interesting, especially for a budget release.

@zawtowers 8 месяцев назад

On the C64 version, the music/fx toggle is on the title screen - press left for music, right for fx (default is fx) This incidentally isn't mentioned even in the instructions, having checked my cassette original.. Still very strange where there was no hardware scrolling involved and it became flick screen, possibly something to do with the enemy respawns on each screen as you progress, but still. Without question the Amstrad version is the original and by far the best one - regardless of the enhancements for Plus/GX4000 owners, the game just looks like it makes the right use of the hardware and seems much more playable on that.

@WhatHoSnorkers 8 месяцев назад

That's quite astonishing, and the Amstrad version is so much better than the Spectrum. Fascinating on the chip. And only £4 too!

@craigwalker3194 7 месяцев назад

Didn't know there was a Spectrum or c64 version of this game. As you said the Amstrad version seems the best.

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

Clearly been aimed at that system. Which is nice for a change.

@herdware 7 месяцев назад

Heh, hadn't even heard about the CPC Plus machines before this (except the GX4000 ofc).

@purplezebrahoover 8 месяцев назад

I remember Amstrad Action had the first level as a demo on their cover tape, and they did a big feature on it as well. I only had a monochrome monitor for my plus so the whole 4096 colours thing was lost on me :D

@CPCGameReviews 7 месяцев назад

I first experienced the game on the _Amstrad Action_ covertape as well (issue 80, May 1992), but I have never understood why Amstrad sold the Plus machines with a monochrome monitor. The enhanced 4,096-colour palette is clearly intended for use in games, so why completely negate the effect with a monochrome monitor?

@slider271 6 месяцев назад

Like others have said. I’d never heard of this. I guess I’d stopped buying Amstrad games at this point, shame it never had a real GX4000 release! Switchblade is one of my favourite games on the console, spent many hours originally and then again recently when I dug out my old CRT Scart monitor :)

@slider271 6 месяцев назад

Also, I’ll just add that your end comment about how people would look at the CPC differently if this had gone further…games like Get Dexter and its sequel showed that the basic CPC was an absolute powerhouse when used correctly :)

@MephProduction 7 месяцев назад

Look at that amstrad version 😎

@OnafetsEnovap 7 месяцев назад

CPC/Plus versions look the best and sound great - both in joint first place, though the scrolling effect gives me a headache. C64 and Spectrum are joint second (the transitions from screen to screen are less headache-inducing, at least). I can only imagine what it would have been like had this game gotten a 16-bit release.

@davidspencer7254 7 месяцев назад

Yeah, think you are right, PC based dev toolkit. Every time you show the Amstrad version I think for the breifest of moments im looking at a speccy game.

@jasejj 7 месяцев назад

Looks to me like it's doing something similar to the pinball game. They weren't really able to keep the game going while scrolling but there's a very brief interrupt window where they can redraw the player sprite before the screen updates and the illusion of the game continuing would be lost (the pinball game is similar in that only the very small ball graphic changes). Still an impressive-looking illusion though!

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

Wish more people had used it. Games like Turrican would have benefitted.

@EgoChip 7 месяцев назад

This is a great game, it was the CPC's swan song. Even on the regular CPC this, and Switchblade were amazing games.

@craigwalker3194 7 месяцев назад

Yes it is nice that the Amstrad here comes out on top Because so many games on that System are poor.

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

Well that's a hot take.....

@AnthonyFlack 7 месяцев назад

There's no particular reason why the gameplay should pause when the screen scrolls, it just depends how you code it. Some games that use a hardware push scroll without pausing gameplay include Ghosts n Goblins and Boulder Dash. It works fine.

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

Doesn't Ghost n Goblins use a horrible restricted mode palette though? I recall Ste Pickford was told he couldn't use all 16 colours when creating the graphics.

@andyc8257 7 месяцев назад

That's not related to the scrolling though, it's just a trick to allow sprites to be drawn quicker using XOR without getting nasty on screen colour effects when passing in front of background objects

@AnthonyFlack 7 месяцев назад

I think that animated wizard on the title screen requires 128k?

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

I think I point that out later. Hence the caption. Its that and the music.

@RodHull_TFW8b 7 месяцев назад

Egg!

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

He said egg!

@AnthonyFlack 7 месяцев назад

The game also doesn't seem to know if it's the Crypts of Trogan or just the Crypt of Trogan.

@chinnyvision 7 месяцев назад

Or indeed Stryker or Striker.

@andyc8257 7 месяцев назад

People often laud this as a great example of a game using the Plus hardware, but it's actually a bit lazy. There's really no reason for the push scrolling on those machines, not for the messy colour changes in places. Could have been so much better if it had targeted the hardware specifically rather than just minimal effects on top of a generic CPC game.

@MrDaveP75 7 месяцев назад

For me, an average game with pretty sky colours is still an average game. Then again, I got bored of Switchblade quite quickly once I'd got past it's technical achievements.