ChinnyVision - Ep 539 - Stainless Steel - Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad CPC 

That death scream is classic.

In a world where greedy and lazy executives did not exist the CPC Mode 1 would no doubt have been put to much better use. Alas, this was not the world we lived in. The very saddest part being that there was no reason for the game to be slow on the CPC. Leveraging the machine vertical hardware scrolling would have only required a few days of work: - scroll the whole screen vertically with the CRTC: done under a (literal) microsecond, - copy up the left and right sides by one pixel withe CPU but be smart about it since only a few elements of them really need to be copied - then enjoy almost half of video frame to animate enemies: that is more CPU left than the Speccy had Would have cost just a couple of days of work, maybe less for an experienced CPC coder. 😭 Thanks for the great video Chinny!

Dave Perry did better later on the Amstrad CPC. He is probably best known on that platform for Trantor the last stormtrooper, Savage and Dan Dare 2 and 3

Not to bad for the Speccy, and yes, the Amstrad should have had more colour and much better frame rate as well lol. Definitely should have been a budget game too, thanks for sharing mate 👍

This was a childhood favourite, believe it or not. My copy came on a collection with three other games across two tapes (each side had a different game on it) - Battle of the Planets, a sort-of Elite clone based on the anime series (known in Japan as Science Ninja Team Gatchaman); Bubble Run, an isometric action game reminiscent of Screwball Scramble (and "coded" by the infamous Harry S Price); and Discs of Death, a Tron-inspired game where players launch deadly frisbees at each other while shielding themselves from damage and hopping from platform to platform - reminds me a bit of Tron Deadly Discs for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. Back to Stainless Steel... the premise sounds like something out of a cheesy Italian sci-fi/horror movie from the era, like it was cobbled together after watching a few episodes of Knight Rider while drunk. Our hero looks a bit too buffed-up to be a teenager if you ask me. The goals for each level (or "zone" as the game calls them) are such: Zone 0 - get to your discount flying DeLorean "Nightwind" at the top of the map Zone 1 - defeat all enemies Zone 2 - same as Zone 1 in addition to destroying all enemy submarines by nuking them (I think you can hold down the fire button to drop a bomb on the subs) Zone 3 - same as Zone 1 The game's ending, if it can be called that, is disappointing as hell. Overall, not a great game (on the contrary, I think it sucks), but I suppose everyone must start somewhere.

Thanks for the Cubby Broccoli/Kevin McClory Easter Egg.

Freeway Fighter, an old gamebook from Ian Livingstone. It's nearly the same cover.

A German Games magazine had this listed as C64:ZX Spectrum and CPC, probably just assumed a C64 conversion was coming?

3 Weeks In Taradise, that jogged some memories.

I wonder why they didn’t release a C64 version, it could easily have been done.

Well, at least it's stainless?

At least the scrolling was ok on Amstrad. Did notice the screen tearing/rippling on the last ZX Spectrum level. I seem to remember the Amstrad version doing that as well unfortunately

Actually liked this game in the Spectrum. Good controls and a mix of slow and fast pace with the nice addition of the radar. Too slow on the Amstrad. It's funny that bad games in the Amstrad get labelled as lazy ports, like the Amstrad couldn't have bad games or even games which were hard to implement on its hardware. The Amstrad was underpowered for its video hardware.

Id still be disappointed if I bought it at budget.

Is this same Dave Perry who lost his sh*t on Gamemaster playing Super Mario 64???

world's worst rap intro achieved