Harrier Attack on Amstrad CPC 464 vintage home computer

[Glensidebhoy]

1st game a think i ever played! superb!

[DJMrRayner]

I remember playing this game in the late 80s on our CPC 464 (with colour screen). I believe it came bundled with ours when we bought it. Thanks for reminding me of this :)

P.S where is the best place to acquire an old CPC 464 in the UK? I have only really seen ebay and most seems overpriced

[SteveBenway]

@DJMrRayner I really don't know where good places are to buy retro gear other than ebay. It seems to me that shops at the very least charge the same as the "Buy It Now" prices on ebay, and those are usually ridiculously inflated. Ebay tends to be very reasonable if you just use auctions.

[DJMrRayner]

@SteveBenway Thanks for your advice man. Much appreciated! The other thing I have a problem with is obtaining a Neo Geo Console whether it is CD based or AES. What is your take on Consolised MVS/SuperGun machines if you have seen them?

[SteveBenway]

@DJMrRayner A good one is probably worth the money, as the software for them is considerably cheaper than for the AES and faster loading than the CD versions. I imagine it's possible that some DIY jobs of this kind could be entirely bodged, so the reputation of the person who has done the conversion matters. I don't follow such things though, so unfortunately can't recommend a good source of such systems.

[DJMrRayner]

@SteveBenway P.S after watching your hardware review it was the Acorn Archimedes A3010 (unless they made a similar shaped machine). This would have been around 1996 when I started secondary school

[Hindleyak]

Ahhh, that classic 'hit an enemy craft' noise.

[MarkTheMorose]

3:17 The Argentinian's had a fleet that returned to port after our submarine sank their aged battleship General Belgrano. So it looks like you saved our submarine the bother!

[SteveBenway]

@MarkTheMorose lol... I'm a hero :D

[Xyphoe]

This may very well have been the very first ever official Amstrad game! It certainly was one of the first, but if caught last months Retro Gamer magazine which has an interview with Roland Perry (who designed the 464) he reckons that Harrier Attack may have been the first game in to them when they were putting the Amsoft label together... :) Not bad then for a first ever game on a machine released in 1984 :)

[28steryan]

This must be where Jet Strike (AMIGA) spawned from, very similar.

[duhmez]

Here is how the pros do it. You lean back in your pc chair with the joystick, and foot is on the top of the desk, and with your foot/toe you press the spacebar. Did this a milion times on the ol' C64.

[AfroedNinja]

cool game!

[lettersfromtheleft]

The sound seems pretty good. Not a bad game. A little bland, but they seemed to do what they tried to accomplish quite well.

[misterintellivision]

Excellent review Steve! :)

This machine seems better than the C-16..LOL

[Lachlant1984]

I'm not at all familiar with the Amstrad CPC machines at all, I've never owned one and I think I've only used one once years ago, it belonged to someone I knew and we couldn't get the game to work.

[SteveBenway]

@Lachlant1984 They were branded as Schneider in some territories. Not sure what they'd have been called in Australia.

[Lachlant1984]

@SteveBenway I suspect they were told under the Amstrad brand down here, my best friend's family had an Amstrad IBM compatible computer, I believe it was a 286 with MS-DOS, I never used it though. It sounds as if the game sounds come from a speaker in the computer and not through the spaker in your TV set.

[SteveBenway]

@Lachlant1984 Yes, the speaker is in the computer. It's quite ropey, but better than early Spectrums.

[dartsma464]

@SteveBenway

The Amstrads were branded Schneider in Germany. In the rest of the world Amstrad

[andyukmonkey]

heh i was playing this only the other day. I have a feeling it was written in basic.

[SteveBenway]

@andyukmonkey It wouldn't surprise me :)

[alecjahn]

Do you have this on anything else? I'm curious what the C64 version is like, but there doesn't seem to be any footage around.

[SteveBenway]

@alecjahn I have a video of it on the Oric 1 at watch?v=zmN7DLteLJI

Looking at that now, it's not as close to this as I remember it, but still near enough.

[alecjahn]

Well hey, this one's not too horrible looking despite, when you deconstruct it, how "terrible" it is.

[SteveBenway]

@alecjahn It's one of those where the sum is greater than the parts, or something like that.

It looks like it should suck, but it doesn't :)

[sonidsonid]

I remember the 464, its in the loft gathering dust! I also remember using the master system controllers or my old Atari stick with it!!!

[SteveBenway]

@sonidsonid They have the standard Atari 9 pin connector, so they'll work with a lot of different pads and sticks, which is nice :)

[Sedgwhite]

This was the first game i ever played on my CPC back in the late eighties. I played this game to death. Glad to see its as good as i remember it. Please say your gonna do a video of "OH Mummy" as well.

[SteveBenway]

@Sedgwhite I don't know if I have Oh Mummy or not. if I do, I'll be doing a video of it.

[SonyPSgamer]

They did have the Belgrano - didn't last very long though.

[SteveBenway]

@SonyPSgamer Ah yes... WWII era battleship vs Cold War era nuclear powered hunter killer submarine ;)

[DLiberator78]

Yay! Some Amstrad CPC 464. I never owned this system and I wouldn't mind buying it but it takes up a lot of storage if you have to buy the monitor with it. Is this a sort of Scramble type game? I looks nice enough but doesn't appear to have longevity as I guess could get quite monotonous after a while. Still it's good to start seeing some 464 games in action I guess onwards and upwards? Lol. The Argentinians did have ships it was just that our ships had greater range with their missiles.

[woodstock939]

wow..... memories i used to have this on the amstrad menny moons ago , along with roland on the ropes and 3 weeks in paridice ...... all thow i could never know haw to play 3 weeks in paridice . grate video mate ceep up the good work...

[SteveBenway]

@xTHExSTIGx It's funny, when comparing this with C16 games, it looks technically about the same, and people could be forgiven for wondering how come I like this, but not the C16 stuff.

When I think about it, it's very hard to define what the actual difference is.

I have no feelings of nostalgia for either machine.

All I can say is, this is genuinely good fun to play :)

[Fawltykog]

Great to see the reviews getting more frequent, t'was kinda too quiet on here awhile ago. :)

Keep 'em comin'!

[SteveBenway]

@Fawltykog Most of the stuff I've uploaded recently was recorded in one massive gaming fest a few weeks ago. That makes it easier to just upload one each day.

Finding the time to do the actual recording is harder, and that's when things get quiet.

[thejoyofsticks]

Just the sound of this brings the memories flooding back! Cheers, Mr Benway.

[THOMASSU63]

Reminds me a bit of a game on the Amiga. You fly WW2 carrier launched plane over islands, bombing and strafing and such. Can't for the life of me remember the name of it though. But it was really good fun.

[SteveBenway]

@THOMASSU63 Not sure what game that would be. It sounds very vaguely familiar, but I can't put my finger on it.

[THOMASSU63]

@SteveBenway It came to me later. The game I thought of was 'Wings of Fury'. I think there were versions for some 8-bit machines also.

[Gregz0r1]

Gooood. More Amstrad CPC games please. Could you review that AMSOFT F1 game that was advertised with the system? The one with I think Jame Hunt's McLaren, in a cockpit view, where the firts track was Zandvoort. I loved that game.

Combat Lynx by Durrell was another fave.

[SteveBenway]

@Gregz0r1 Plenty more CPC games to come, and F1 will be one of them. Not so sure about Combat Lynx in the near future. That one has a steep learning curve, and I'm saving those kind of games till much later.

[MassesVclasses]

Enjoyed this on the Spectrum.. Especially the bombing of civilians with incendiaries. :D

[ScrewAttackEurope]

This was always good on the Amstrad as it was a fast loader!

[jackobyuk]

cool your doinf amstrad cpc :-) i hope på more amstrad cpc game reviews by you...

[SteveBenway]

@jackobyuk There will be quite a few more :)

[ZXAmiga64]

Brilliant game. one of my dads favorites on the spectrum.

Do you have a green screen by chance Steve ?, id love to see the CPC on a green screen again.

[SteveBenway]

@ZXAmiga64 I don't have the green screen unfortunately. Andrea was disappointed when I got the colour one too, coz she used the green one back in the day.

For these videos though, I'm using an Amstrad MP-1 PSU and modulator to display on my LCD TV.

[kingstonlj]

Harrier Attack is a simple game, but I like it. The sound effects are really nice and the overall atmosphere feels good. Of course, it didn't take advantage of the Amstrad at all though, because it was just a simple port of a game that was already old in 1985.

Play Roland on the Ropes, that's a really nice looking and fun Amstrad game.

[SteveBenway]

@kingstonlj Roland on the Ropes is already recorded, and just waiting for editing. I like it a lot :)

[XFile2708]

Great gameplay matey - I used to love this one back in the day - one of the better Amsoft titles... :)

[markybhoyuk]

Cool vid used to love playing this when I was younger.

[DdlyHeadshot]

Can't actually see the bombs at this resolution...

Is this the computer where the joystick is built into the keyboard instead of arrow keys?

It's very glitchy - they obviously never cracked sidescrolling on Amstrads, I presume...

The plane explosion is very realistic!

The Argentinians did have a ship - we sank it!

It looks really fun!

[SteveBenway]

@DdlyHeadshot The one with the built in Joystick is the Enterprise 64, which some people speculate was the machine Amstrad copied when working on the CPC.

There is hardware scrolling on the Amstrad, they just didn't use it on this game. Many early CPC games were pretty much direct ports of Spectrum games, as they used the same CPU, and looked pretty rough.

Yes, I'd forgotten about the Belgrano. We sank it with a sub... the HMS Conqueror if memory serves, outside of the 200 mile exclusion zone.

[LeShark75]

Come back C16, all is forgiven lol.

[SteveBenway]

@LeShark75 Nonono! This is much more enjoyable.

Don't take this as being a good example of the CPCs capabilities. Even though this looks pants, it is fun to play... but the couple of other games I've tried both play well and look good.

[atombat]

I like the look of this, Wait a minute......!?!??! this isn't C16 game :)

I find it funny that the Belgrano was a renamed WW2 ship that was the only one to survive Pear Harbour.

I wonder if you have Exolon thats a pretty cool 464 game.

[SteveBenway]

@atombat I'd forgotten about the Belgrano. Still... we blew that up from outside the 200 mile exclusion zone, so the ship I blew up here must have been one of ours ;)

I don't remember if I have Exolon or not.

[ImperialProductions]

I was led to believe that the Amstrad machiens had some of the best graphics of the 8-bit era. This looks poor in comparison to what I've seen.

[SteveBenway]

@ImperialProductions The CPC does have pretty decent graphics. It's just that this game doesn't in any way make use of them. I have a version of this for the Oric, which is a vastly inferior machine, and it looks exactly the same.