 Welcome back to Classic Replay. This one is Fire and Forget by Titus Software. It was released on the Amstrad CPC, the ZX Spectrum, I believe the Commodore 64 and some of the 16-bit computers and consoles as well. And just quickly before we get into the whole thing, in a nutshell, restore peace on Earth and collect a high score while doing so in the first one of Fire and Forget games by Titus. Fire and Forget is a racing game in which you have to complete courses by blowing up various enemies and avoiding obstacles on the road. The different tracks are located all over the globe. There are six courses within each level of difficulty. You have an infinite amount of lives but when your car runs out of fuel it's game over. So be sure to pick up all those power-ups. So the clues are really in the title of this game, Fire and Forget. And for some that's probably where you'd want to leave it and file this game under Perfectly Named. But you see for me it's personal. I've never completed this game. I've always wanted to complete it. And as crazy as you might think I am I need to tick it off the list. Even if I only get one view and the whole thing turns out less than memorable. But I'm gonna talk about other things whilst I'm playing this game. There's a lot going on in the retro community and especially on the 8-bits including the Amstrad CPC. So the homebrew scene is probably where the main focus will be just to break up the time. We'll also take a look at what the critics, the industry critics magazines of the day thought of this game how they rated it. Also the tune that's banging in the background. It's part of the loading screen when the game first boots up and it's like a digital rendition of a futuristic rock track. And it's no bad. Right then. I've put the kids to bed. I've left my wife to munch on a box of chocolates. The door to the games room is firmly shut. So then it's time to fire and forget like it's my last day on earth. And here we go. The speed of this thing for an Amstrad CPC. Not so much now but back in the day it did surprise me. And I know there's people out there that think that it's a poorly programmed road blaster variant which is easily forgotten. But I quite like it. I quite like the graphics. I like the speed. It's a shame there's no in-game music and the sound effects could have been a lot better. Let's be honest. I don't think it's fair if people claim that this game isn't fun to play. I think what they probably mean is it's difficult. But then so was R-Type, Rainbow Islands, Robocop and I don't remember being able to get anywhere near the end of Ghosts and Goblins. But that's another game on my list for another day. So don't think for a minute I'm trying to justify this game and say it's anywhere as good as those titles I've just mentioned. And I can't be asked to fight its corner. But what I want to say is it's not crap. But what do you think? I think the graphics are decent. I mean god the gameplay is shallow. You just blast everything in sight whilst avoiding enemy fire. I think it even gives the ST and Amiga version a run for its money. So it's fast, it's furious but there's big question marks over its lasting appeal. But it is a good mixture of racing and shooting. So how do I clarify? It's a well-programmed bare bones adequate. Drive them up. So I think I'm already on war three. The difficulty here is just trying to avoid those tanks that come towards you. You've got to, you can stay on the right for large swathes of the track but you do have to poke your head out to get the pickups and they run down quickly especially if you get hit. And you'll get hit a lot. Like with road blasters the turrets at the side of the road can be a real pain and the sheer speed that everything heads hurtles towards you up makes it difficult to react to the oncoming hazards. The battle rages on. War four now. So far so fun. This is definitely not the box of badly packed spammers everyone will lead you to believe. But don't get me wrong I mean compared to what you can play today especially with all these mini consoles mini computers and access to main. Unless you're a tequila slamming ardent petrolhead desperate to experience anything that resembles Mad Max. There's lots more fun to be had elsewhere. So let's have a look at the ZX Spectrum version to the top right compared with the Amstrad CPC. It's your typical fast monochrome affair. The car looks quite detailed. It plays exactly the same as the Amstrad CPC version. The graphics are nothing to write home about but like with the Amstrad thanks to the unusual setting it proves good fun in small doses. So let's have a look at the Commodore Amiga 500 version as well. So the Amiga version looks terrific. There's an abundance of color but unfortunately like the rest this racer is pretty shallow and the difficulty is ramped up even more on the Commodore Amiga. So it's even more short lived probably not one you'd want to buy back in the day but maybe you want to swap with your mate or get on a pirated floppy. On the Commodore Amiga this was more of a game that's made of the numbers really. It had quite nice looks for the time but when you consider the Amiga and its back catalogue it's library of games. It didn't have the playability and there's plenty of other games of this style on the Amiga. Mad Max style driving games through cities and streets that are far better. It also reminds me of Overlander. Now they're all rip-off of roadblasters no matter which way you look at it but I played that on the ZX Spectrum and I thought it was really enjoyable. In fact Yorsin Claire in October 1988 gave it 90% and like Fire and Forget it gave a fair few hours of blasting. Ace magazine in October 1988 for the Atari ST gave that version 83%. Don't get me wrong it's no chase HQ and I seem to remember having fun. Also whilst we're doing the whole Mad Max driven to destruction. Does anybody remember roadblasters on the Atari Lynx? That was a fantastic arcade conversion. They really captured the speed of the coiner not a patch on the Sega Mega Drive conversion but both are well worth a look if you want aggressive automobile action. Just look at the speed of this thing it's no slouch and I was proud of owning an Atari Lynx. It had some fantastic little arcade conversions so we're doing well here. We're on war six. Are you not entertained? Just checking you're still awake there. I feel like I'm wrong in some way to be enjoying this game when everybody out there including the magazines of yesteryear pretty much pundit so beware of nostalgia. Nobody in the right mind would play this today. I get it there's the Steam Deck, there's the PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch. Gaming in theory has evolved it should be infinitely better so I can't explain why I'm doing a YouTube video about this game and enjoying it. I'm on wave 7 and mad for it. Sticking with the carnage and destruction. How good was roadblasters on the Amstrad CPC. I remember that wide screen it used and the speed update the pseudo 3D that came towards you. It was fast as anything. It reminded me of the tremendous speed update that you got in Supercycle. I'm not going to pretend it was perfect. The controls were a bit sluggish from memory but for US Gold this was good. I personally thought back in the day it was a terrific blast and I think I only paid $1.99 for it on the kicks label. It's not too hard and you get a good go at it. The only thing I hated about the arcade version was that when you lost it was expected that you gave way for somebody waiting behind you and they'd always put their coin on the side in front of you so that you knew that they were waiting. With the Amstrad CPC version I just played for hours and that's probably why I enjoyed it because there was no looking over my shoulder and I could just get on with it. But if you dislike this sort of 3D race come shoot them up you're never going to like Fire and Forget or Roadblasters. I guess you could say about Fire and Forget and Roadblasters and any of its type. They're not terrible games but they're not great either and I mean that about home computer versions. The arcade version of Roadblasters I was playing just only the other day. For me that's a timeless classic no question. So before moving on to other things whilst I'm playing this I looked on magazines from the past wiki and for the Amstrad CPC they gave it an average score of 60% so I tracked down the Amstrad action issue issue 39 that did the review and ended up reading it cover to cover for about two hours. I mean what a fantastic magazine I used to love this magazine back in the day. I had a subscription to it in the first couple of years and I think it went on until 1994 1995 something crazy. They actually gave Fire and Forget 60% and in the second opinion section they even cited that they felt it was better than Roadblasters. So in keeping with the retro vibe what is it I've been playing of late? Well Horizon Chase 2. Yes it's a modern game but it's built on a retro engine and as with the first game the music and the speed of this thing is equally terrific. The only downside is it's only available on iOS arcade which means you can play it on your mobile phone iPad and I believe Mac. The other versions including Nintendo Switch and PS5 and PC will be with us in 2023. Another game I've been waiting for patiently with Baited Breath is Formula One Retro Racing. It only has a small team behind it that have developed it. The rumor is that the PC version will run at 120 frames per second and there's meat to this game believe it or not but I'm hoping it's as tough as it is rewarding. It's out December now back to the Amstrad downsizing things a little bit we've got a new release called Car Racer. It appears to be an old Tiger Electronics LCD game reprogrammed for the Amstrad CPC. There's a link to download this game on Indiretronews.com Now I'm not going to cover every new or potential upcoming Amstrad CPC game on on here but just the ones that have caught my eye and would you look at this mighty Street Fighter on the Amstrad CPC. Now Amstrad owners never got a Street Fighter 2 game we were promised it by US Gold and Amstrad Action but it never materialized until now. There's no official release date but once again head over to Indiretronews.com where you'll be first to see any updates. Now this one I'm really looking forward to. Tokyo on the Amstrad it was supposed to originally have been released for the GX4000 but for whatever reason it never happened but now finally we're guessing it on the Amstrad and I'm really excited. I'm excited because it looks like it's got full scroll and the color palette looks to have been used to Amstrad perfection. So war 10 already I'm feeling the pressure trying not to make any basic errors. Now did anybody play fire and forget 2 on the GX4000? The reason I ask is because I thought it was an absolute pile of poo. Yes technically it was better better to look at but the levels were long and drawn out and tiresome. Amstrad action sold out with the review on this game as well. Awarding it a console stunner whilst computer and video games and me machines massively slated it. It was an early scare of what was to come for the GX4000. Titus just didn't put the effort in especially when you consider how powerful the GX4000 was. Even at its best as you can see there on the Amiga 500 they just didn't put the same amount of effort into the playability as they did for Sega's 8-bit console. In fact Amiga Joker a magazine of the day in 1990 gave it 38% and power play in Jan 1991 gave the Amiga version just 20%. It was anything but a memorable experience on 16-bit but it looked absolutely terrific so it's not all bad news for fire and forget 2. There was light at the end of the master system tunnel but let me quote this from me machines November 1990 they gave it 82% and they said I prefer this to battle outrun and chase HQ. They went on to say in those games you just had to bump the enemies off the road here you can let rip with machine guns and blow up everything that gets in your way. The action is very fast and pretty tough almost to the point of being off-putting at first however once you get used to the speed of the things you start getting into the action and rise to the considerable challenge. The graphics and sound are both brilliant the road is particularly smooth and convincing and the update of the sprites is excellent and must for addicts of highway violence. So I went out of the strength of this review and purchased the master system just for this game. It was second hand and came with World Grand Prix and hang on I still had my Amstrad CPC but the Sega Master System is brilliant. In fact the more I think about it I'm definitely going to do a video on the Master System and its best games. On to War 12. Doing well here. Proper nosebleed territory now. I'm going to set myself a little challenge here I'm going to try and score around the 500,000 mark. Now what I want to just talk about is a game called travel through time volume one Northern Lights. Now it's a 128k Z-Expectrum driving game. I actually purchased the physical copy. You get a poster rolled up, a CD, a data CD with the tape and disc images on it, instructions and then MP3 and AY music. Natalia Zatova who's responsible for programming this game also sends you a letter saying thanks for buying our products blah blah blah blah blah. I actually begged her to release this on the Amstrad CPC and fair play to her she got back to me and said unfortunately not and they only released products for the Z-Expectrum. And that's sad because we all know how great games like this look in mode zero. My hope is they'll have a change of heart in the not too distant future because the reality is this is a fantastic game and there's nothing else like it on the Z-Expectrum let alone the Amstrad. So the game starts as you play in a guy called Sven Larsson, a young man from a Swedish village. In the 50s Sven begins to participate in amateur car racing and it takes you through the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s and there's various race types as well there's just drive, there's time trial, there's challenge, there's check points, dual and chase and chase is basically chase HQ. You hunt down the car and then you've got to ram it off the road so you can see why I'm desperate to get this on the Amstrad CPC but the Z-Expectrum isn't having it all its own way. Vespettino from Batman Group three years in the making is due the latter half of 2023. It's rumored to work on a stock Amstrad CPC 464. It's from the same guys that brought us Pimbal Dreams. If it ever does see the light of day we could be in for one of the biggest shocks on the Amstrad CPC. I imagine real life is getting in the way and that's probably why there's a holder. It could be that the game is near completion but now they've got to bug test the life out of it. The Batman Group have made some big claims about this game and some massive big bold statements about the Amstrad CPC being the best 8-bit. In fact they suggested that no game whatsoever so far as even utilized or pushed the CPC anywhere near its true potential. Call me gullible, call me old-fashioned but their words have got me all excited. I mean look at that a masterpiece that eclipses them all. They certainly succeeded at drumming up the excitement but Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey would you take a look at that. So we've got two choices. It's coming or it's coming. Now to some maybe most that will just read like hyperbole but when you see what's coming next wow oh my gosh did you see that and this is an old video from 2019. I can only dream I can only imagine how far how advanced this game is now but more importantly how amazing it must play. Right we're getting on a bit here. War 14 now the difficulty is ramping up to the point where if you miss a fuel cell it's pretty much game over. Even one hit now pretty much ends the game so I've got to be really careful tread really carefully here try not to stick my neck out too much. There's a couple of games as well that I just wanted to mention. Corsair which is a vertical scroll shoot-em-up that runs at 50 frames per second. A demo was released at the first level and the end of boss probably a year ago. I completed that and did a video on my YouTube channel so check that out. The other one is Hyperdrive. It's a shoot-em-up a vertical scroll shoot-em-up. I haven't seen much of it yet. There's a demo doing the rounds at the moment but I watched a video of it at the first level and it looks tremendous. Also if you haven't played CPC Soccer on the Amstrad CPC a new footy game well I say new but it's been out probably a year now or maybe just over but I actually bought that game I've got a physical copy and I'm not going to lie to you it's fantastic it's definitely up there with Emily News International Soccer maybe better but it plays more like a cut-down version of sensible soccer and again when I say cut-down I mean for the 8-bit computers so these times are really exciting to be into retro gaming especially if you're an 8-bit fan. The Amstrad CPC has never had it so good and the same can be said for the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum but of late I'd say over the past six months the Amiga 500 has spearheaded high above all of us in regards to homebrew and that's for another video but I just wanted to mention it check out the Amiga scene at Indiretronews.com it's well worth a look so I know this is an Amstrad video but I just wanted to show Robocop on the Amiga 500 the AGA version early days this is update 6 but it's arcade perfect from the looks of it I'm doing that thing where I'm trying to cram probably too much into the video and sticking in the first thing that comes into my head as I alluded to at the beginning of the video this will either be a spectacular car crash or a moderate success but anyway back to Robocop look how smoothly everything's running the graphics of the buildings and there's ed 209 it just looks spectacular and it's on an Amiga 500 I've even read that they're porting this or another similar version to the Sega Mega Drive so my score is going up not quite 500,000 yet but I'm on the way war 15 I love the graphics of the car in this game one of the things I loved about Outrun was the detail the graphics of the car on the Amstrad CPC version loved it and the thunder bolts or whatever it's called looks bloody good looks like they've really put the effort in I sometimes look at the graphics of the road and the background and I think I'm playing crazy cars I've also been playing reliving some classics of late I used to play this one religiously back back in the day Turbo Esprit what a game the father of Grand Theft Auto I do have to be careful about this game though because I load it up and then two three four hours later I'm still immersed it's not time lost it's just time I don't have I'd actually like to play this a modern day take on it so the same game but with updated graphics still mad for it the other game I've been playing is Prince of Persia it uses rotoscope animation and it's probably the best 8-bit incarnation known to Amstrad I've never completed it so I've had a good go at it and I've got a lot further than ever before so watch this space for a video on Prince of Persia but I'm hoping to do something different with that game something a little bit more experimental and hopefully the end result will be something that comes out the other end and is watchable last night I dabbled with X out now I've never completed this game without cheating and last night I laid down the gauntlet and I thought to myself I've got to complete this game I've got to invest the time to complete it without cheating and I did just that I invested the time it was difficult it was tough but the thing that surprised me most about the game is you can complete it so there's so many games I didn't complete as a kid that I need to revisit also mr. Helle I never completed this as a kid either it's one that I paid I think 10 pound for but I wasn't disappointed with this arcade conversion for the time it was a corker and if you're new to the Amstrad CPC scene and you're thinking where are all the shooter maps this one an X out should be first on your list so another quick short sharp and punchy preview of what I've got planned for Amstrad fans so quickly going back to fire and forget if you think about it I'm already on war 16 and I believe there's another level after this fire and forget to there was only five stages so this is a much bigger game and more bang for your buck I do want to stress though I'm making this look easy and it's anything but it's taken a lot of practice according to the manual I'm almost at the end there's only two levels left so proper nosebleed territory it looks like it's snowing just try and be brave but at the same time cautious I'm not a fan of the sound effects when you pick up the fuel molecules helicopters tanks everything's detailed but it's blink and you'll miss it action a bit nervous now holding it together let me know what you think of this game and let me know what other games you like that are very similar or your favorite racers now naturally chase HQ is probably going to be top of everyone's list but there might be something else that you would like me to cover this level seems to be dragging out a bit now should almost be at the end I've nearly completed my target of 500,000 trying not to get dragged into a fight here or lose concentration important to be disciplined completely off topic but I've been watching Rings of Power the new Lords of the Rings episode on Prime Amazon Prime and it got me thinking about the Amstrad CPC version we had the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings I remember loving the books and then buying the game but being massively disappointed that it was an adventure game but I've gone back in recently and it's really good the pass is really good and it stays quite close to the books so a little bit more of a reveal of what I've been up to which is nothing much there we go the end of war so I think that could be the final level oh no actually there's one more I think this is the last so here we go yep there you go confirmation there this is the last level fingers crossed come on then just play it safe don't lose it now see this one hit and it's almost over I got lucky there come on there's plenty of power-ups so to get that energy level flowing back to somewhere near normal it's just stick just stick to the right as much as possible I've come too far I've come too far to blow this now there better be a fantastic firework display at the end of this I'm looking for a massive send-off but yeah this is I've never got this far this is as far as I've ever got in this game and like I say it's taken lots of practice and I'm a little bit cheating here by sticking hugging to the right-hand side but you can still die strange there's less enemies the final level and you'd think there'd be more enemies I don't feel like anybody's firing at me come on come through come through save the world save the day but I think you can literally just hug that right-hand corner poke your head at every now and again and bish bash bosh jobs are good almost there almost there hoping praying that I'm going to meet reach that 500,000 mark it's not looking good I've not shot anything in a while but things are firing look you can just see out the corner of your eye I'm expecting the car to spin wetland man style and the music to start blasting the victory parade a nice Titus end game screen come on I don't know what's going on here that looks a bit weird three white doves it's taking us back to the beginning oh my god not good well I'm gonna get the score as high as I can and then call it as soon as that hits 500,000 job done as far as I'm concerned massive disappointment there not to have an end screen considering the work that I've put into this not happy not happy about that but that was most Amstrad games they just loop over and over especially Titus games crazy cars I think was the same crazy cars too there was no ending it just crashed and crazy cars three pretty much ended the same way as this so poor show there Titus poor show well I hope you enjoyed the show and until next time this is classic replay over and out bye