ZX Spectrum PORTS to Amstrad 

The reason that the Amstrad received so many Spectrum ports was because they shared the same processor and that the Amstrad simply didn’t sell in as many numbers, so a lot of developers didn’t want to spend the money making a new Amstrad version of a game when it could quickly get a game up and running using the Spectrum versions assets.

Something’s gone wrong with the final entry in your video. When it comes to _The Flintstones_ the 128K Spectrum version does have music in it (maybe you were playing a 48K version?), but when you went to the Amstrad version the footage is of a completely different game that is also based on the same licence: a game called _Yabba Dabba Doo!,_ whose gameplay and look is markedly different.

I must be the only person that likes The Fury .. really enjoy playing it on the Speccy

I was expecting _Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone_ and _Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade_ to be in this list; in both cases the Amstrad CPC is a Speccy port that runs painfully slowly (especially _DD3,_ which is especially sluggish and has horrible scrolling). The Amstrad CPC version of the latter is so blatantly a Spectrum port that it even uses the same colour as the actual Spectrum version!

I loved Fury on the CPC. The game was rather easy, but it made it easy enough for me to understand what to do. (I didn't understand English then.) The game is buggy, however, and randomly crashes after a time. And all the DSK dumps I tried either on emulators or on real hardware crash too. Too bad, i remember having been able to buy the most expensive car and thus kind win the game.

It was the same problem with MSX, Spectrum port where so much under the performance of the MSX computer and ruined it all.

I still don't have a clear opinion if the Spectrum conversion helped or harmed the CPC. One one side, it helped to get the number of games up, on the other side, they often made the CPC look like it's a slower Speccy clone with worse graphics. One thing I really don't understand is the usage of the word "good" for those conversions. In my definition a "good conversion" is a conversion that is not only simply converted to the target platform but also properly adapted to its capabilities. But for almost all Speccy to Amstrad ports, its almost always "worse" and we can be happy, if the conversions are at least not much worse than on the Spectrum. I would call those, that are playable and at least close to the original "acceptable" or maybe "conversions that don't suck" - but not good.

it's interesting that the 4-colour cpc games do not seem to make much use of the colour grid. they often just use the same 4 colours across the whole screen. maybe there is a technical reason for this, but if so i've not heard of it.

I remember being so disappointed with Olli and Lissa, it seemed impossible to time the jumps. I'll go with Alan Sugar's advice of going down the pub and getting smashed!

Often users don't realize the complications of a port from the ZX Spectrum. While the Amstrad CPC might seem a more powerful machine all around, it wasn't. It had better color modes but these modes also used more memory and required more CPU time to render graphics. The Amstrad screen takes a big amount of RAM leaving almost the same available RAM as in a ZX Spectrum. Besides, the graphics of the game also used more storage memory leaving the Amstrad at a slight disadvantage on most games. They shared the same CPU at the same speed. That makes the Amstrad twice as slow rendering graphics than the ZX Spectrum. The consequence was that the games that used the ZX Spectrum hardware to its maximum possibilities could hardly be converted to the Amstrad keeping all the features, speed and also improving the graphics. The developers had to deal with slower rendering and less memory for the graphics. The Amstrad should have used a faster CPU or hardware assisted rendering, and at least an additional 16KB for the screen. Then it would have really been a better computer in all aspects to the ZX Spectrum. Ports would have been easier and improving them would have been always possible. Anyway, there were bad games in the ZX Spectrum that didn't make good use of the hardware, and those could have turned into decent or good conversions in the Amstrad, although this didn't always happen. Teams that would do a choppy job in the ZX Spectrum would probably do the same for the Amstrad. There were bad games in all computers of the era.

I owned _She Vampires_ when I was a child and it's a terrible game. Both it and _Dandy_ have a 'bug' that means that the game is much more difficult to play if you use the keyboard instead of the joystick. I think most of your opinions of the other CPC ports are fair. My brother bought _Badlands_ when our family went on a trip to London. It was a few days until we got back home to our CPC, only to find that it was a huge disappointment! My parents, bless them, bought _Garfield: Winter's Tail_ for us. It's a terrible game as well but I persevered with it because we didn't own many other games for the CPC at the time. _Deactivators_ is a game that really doesn't get the recognition it deserves on the CPC. I discovered it a few years ago (I can't remember when) after being put off because I thought it looked very complex. Once I got into it I found it quite engrossing,. It's a really original concept. I'm looking forward to watching the second part when it's uploaded.

I loved Trapdoor the series and was well happy with the game too on the Spectrum. Great times. Good video and a few games here I've never heard of on the speccy.

Enjoyed the video. I'd recommend Supercars and Audiogenic World Class Rugby as two good Spectrum to CPC ports. RE Flintstones. I think that is footage from two different games ? ( there are two Flintstones games but they are both Spectrum ports )