Posts: 1,218
Threads: 13
Joined: May 2008
New Year's here... Let's Get Dizzy!
Fast Food
Sadly the game didn't allocate the palette properly so the sprites mix with the background meaning that they are broken (black background that affects Dizzy's sprites because the palette only uses 1 black and the other 7 colours are duplicated twice). Then how come when you look at screenshots Dizzy has a black mouth? A workaround where the backgrounds have a black pattern that happen to resemble his mouth...
Kwik Snax
This time it's like the old arcade games with the black background.
Dizzy
The OG. Weirdly the disk version has only been preserved very recently despite being a well known game. Outside of the animation order and sprite boundaries, the difference between this and some of the later games is that the mouth and eyes are the same colour as the background. It got fixed in later games apart from Spellbound Dizzy where it was decided to be more like the Spectrum version (one of the two Dizzy Amstrad games that actually match the character design on covers, as in white with the red shoes). The engine can also drop animation frames and noticed that when using something like AnimGet/ScreenGet, only used it to verify the animation order.
Treasure Island Dizzy
Sprites are almost identical to Fantasy World Dizzy, even kept the same layout too.
Magicland Dizzy
This is just like a Metal Slug/Mega Man game isn't it? Only thing that I've done compared to the above was rip the Spectrum format appear animation.
Now for some other Amstrad games...
750cc Grand Prix
It doesn't look like it, this rip took over 4 years to finish. I abandoned the sheet a long time ago because WinApe could rip the sprites but suffered from palette problems with the tires on the bikes while Caprice Forever can't because it uses what I call the rarely used "Inverted Linear" layout... basically a different endian. Give it another try on Caprice Forever and found a long time consuming way of ripping moving each 4 vertical pixel strip. Since it only affected the rider and the rival, the rest only had to minorly change the palette and re-rip the loading screen due to the scene group put themselves on the loading screen on the disk version (the game AFAIK was only released on tape). Sadly didn't have much time to do anything but the rider.
ATV Simulator
Street Machine
Also did the enemies and The Ogre King from a certain mascot, said mascot also had an update as I was unaware of the final boss sprites. It's bad design where you only have 3 chances during that scene and if you fail... the game crashes with a message and you have to reset the machine to try all over again... Imagine if you have to do that in modern gaming.
The next push for the Amstrad is going to be on Titus, Microids and a few early Ubisoft games or in other words some French made games then finishing off WEC Le Mans, Renegade 3 (the final Imagine published games as Ocean retired the name) and the last commercially released game Nigel Mansell's World Championship that was only released due to a campaign, no different than Operation Rainfall. Knowing my backlog, it could take 8 months+ to get there...
Spectrum
750cc Grand Prix
Unlike Paris to Dakar, this at least managed to have a preserved tape dump. The gimmick was when turning your bike, the screen turns too a bit like some of the M2 Sega arcade ports on the 3DS. This by comparison to the Amstrad version was quicker to rip. As mentioned on the roadside objects sheet, this game suffers from graphical corruption and there's nothing that I can do. I have checked both the tape dump and the broken Z80 savestates, it's like that in all of them.
007: The Living Daylights
It was considered a British tradition having James Bond on TV in some form around Christmas, this makes it the only somewhat festive rip this year... (Also turns out that the sprites are the same as the Amstrad version only without the extra colour and for some reason duplicated twice in the data...)
Fancied ripping Slicks except that game is considered lost... It was one of the last Codemasters games on the Spectrum, was released as part of the Super Sports Challenge compilation (not to be confused with the NES one aka Quattro Sports) and it got reviewed in the April 1993 magazine of Your Sinclair (so they'll would have got it around February due to the lead time). Was suppose to be released in November 1992 but must have got delayed. Nothing of the game is preserved at all; no tape dump, no Z80 savestate, not even the artwork. All that exists of the game is screenshots in magazines. Oh well... Found a couple of curios that I'll see if I can rip instead.
Anyway was going to have more sheets ready for the festive season (including Operation Wolf, Spellbound Dizzy and RoadBlasters for the Amstrad) but a combination of still going through my gaming collection with the amount of games that I can play/enjoy is rapidly deceasing, the usual problems, some sprite rips are in the "stuck" phase and being busy with other things meant that they couldn't be done. Ironically the past week gave me just that extra time to rip even if it meant ripping at 2AM. Hopefully within the next few months, can focus on finishing more on the sprite rips.
(Was also going to post a couple more WIPs including a certain famous time traveller on the Spectrum that's getting there but again, not enough time to whip up an upload somewhere)
Posts: 1,218
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Joined: May 2008
03-26-2023, 12:01 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-10-2023, 02:41 PM by Yawackhary.)
Have been so busy heavily downsizing my gaming collection that I haven't had much time to rip at all until recently. (goes back to downsizing)
Out of This World
The closest thing to Fantasy Zone on the computer (surprised that it didn't get a port but neither did the original Hang-On or maybe it did start off as one... since it was published by Ariolasoft who originally brought out the Master System in Germany but later pulled out). It does seem unfinished though since there's sort of only one boss in the entire game and there is no HUD and you have to press Enter to view your score and weapon (similar to LED Storm) that is a bit clunky. It is a technical achievement though since it was the first game that uses both horizontal overscan and the rarely used hardware scrolling, this was later refined in BMX Kids, the last Titus games Super Cauldron and Prehistorik 2 as well as modern homebrew.
Nova Blast
This was done for the fill the letters project, this is my first and most likely my last Colecovision rip. So that covers all of the pre-gaming clear-out rips.
Milk Race (Spectrum)
A quickie rip.
Outside of the above, the Amstrad rips are on the backburner and struggling on the Spectrum so decided to do some Commodore 64 rips. Was going to finish off ripping my Terry Gedou Densetsu sheet that I started back in November but looks like I got beaten to the punch yet again... Not complaining at all, Xinos has done a great job and one less rip for me!
As a technical note in case any one is interested. The C64 has 2 main sprite modes, one is monochrome (two colours) like the Spectrum and they are in 8x8 blocks while the other has 4 colours like the NES however has a weird size of 24x21 blocks as generally the 4 colour sprites are on bitplane 3 (but not always). Some games mix and match these modes for the sprites like Hyper Sports where one layer is monochrome and the other is 4 color. Feels weird to say sprites again since most of the other 8 bit computers don't really have them even if some games use character sets instead.
(Oh and because CSFEC uses a general custom palette for the sprites most of these have been recoloured back to how they appear in game. The sprites might not be technically 100% in terms of palette choice however this is just for the background. It's a shame that VICE doesn't have a graphics viewer at all and that's the leading C64 emulator but CSFEC is far easier to use.)
Footballer of the Year
Some games on the C64 do stretch/scale the sprites in game, this is one example.
Night Racer
Invade-a-Load!
When I was ripping Night Racer, this loading game based on Space Invaders popped up. This appeared on quite a fair bit of Mastertronic's games on the C64, even a story was written on how it happened. If only someone was aware of this then Namco wouldn't have patented the idea for nearly 20 years but then again Taito might have complained...
(The hardest thing to do was actually getting an icon, the game is just too difficult for me and getting a half decent one took about 15-20 minutes of gameplay losing 100s of lives, usually getting a Game Over with half or more of the enemies on screen. Only cleared a stage once but died on the 2nd straight away.)
911 Tiger Shark
With a name like that you'll think of a shump but nope. Considered one of the worst games on the C64, even the people who worked on the game used the words "naff" and "lame" to describe it. I would also add the words "crap", "terrible" and "broken" to that list along with "the only good thing that I found was that the Porsche sprite isn't too bad for 1985 standards and only ripped it because I was looking for a number game to add to tSR's C64 section". Then again it was a licensed game for... tires. Not the actual Porsche itself as there are good licensed games such as Porsche Challenge on the PS1 and Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed. Apparently it was going to be sold full price but copies were either dumped onto petrol (gas) stations or given away if you bought Dunlop tyres depending on who you ask. Probably because it was originally mail order but no one actually bought the game once the reviews got out.
Overlander
As mentioned the 3rd sprite suffers from graphic corruption, this is from an original tape dump rather than a cracked version. Still working on the enemies.
Lemans
This was one of HAL Laboratory's pre-Nintendo games, they did a bunch of Commodore stuff (VIC-20, C64) beforehand. Many of their early games was a clone and this was inspired by Monaco GP (with an added "pit" function when you crash your car).
Also ripped from a certain Italian drainage duo, this time a C64 adaptation of a Game & Watch game and a remake before the Game & Watch Gallery series existed. The origins are rather mysterious on where it came from but is a Dutch game done by the scene. For some reason the programmer chose the music from Roland's Rat Race for the game...
(It was actually pretty stressful ripping the MB2 sheets at the time to the point of having a shutdown but recovered the next day.)
Just as a mention; in the future and as shown in my backlog below, my main focus is going to be racing game rips. A lot of my non-racing backlog will just have to be dropped but will try to finish as much as possible. For anyone curious, some WIP progress and pitfalls:
Due to the clearout, it meant that there were brief days where there was a bit of a late night rip before going to sleep. By mistake one day at 3AM, accidentally posted a WIP post on here but was quickly deleted. Did managed to have a week to work on some rips as well as progress of ones that are on the backburner.
Max Torque
![[Image: 6jTkn4fE48Uu.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/6jTkn4fE48Uu.png)
A few sprites seems to be glitched but unsure whether they are duplicate sprites. The original tape sadly doesn't seem to be dumped, the C64 scene doesn't seem to be as interested in originals unlike the Spectrum and Amstrad scenes where they have both originals and cracks. Outside of that, just need to assemble (even though it's hard to check when the road itself uses black) and get the other palettes.
Burnin' Rubber - The latest version of Caprice Forever can rip the game (yay!) but the sprite viewer is glitchy and more messing about getting it to run as Plus/GX4000 emulation is very temperamental. So far managed to rip 2 sprites!
Yie Ar Kung Fu (Spectrum, using the 128k version) - Already ripped Buchu and Nuncha just after the Dizzy rip but stuck on Star... Just cannot find Star's shuriken anywhere in the graphics. I've tried Spectrum Analyser to see if I can find it but it wasn't much help.
Yie Ar Kung Fu (C64) - Oolong has most of the graphics ripped outside of his jump and death but needs to check the animation then to recolor the sprites.
Sharkey's Moll (Spectrum) - Some of the enemy sprites have been ripped a while ago but just stopped. What I often do is rip from a game then literally forget about it. It's harder to come back to a game when you forgot your progress.
Super Spin (Genesis) - Ripped the three portraits (one that is unused) but stumped on the font. Yet to rip from the cars themselves.
Pole Position (Spectrum) - Got a bit stuck ripping the car as the graphics are stored upside down. Ripped the signs though.
4X4 (Spectrum) - Ripped a bit of the Storm Trooper car.
Overlander (Spectrum) - Ripped the player car but have to do a check before submitting.
Road Racer (Spectrum) - Still hitting a brick wall with the sprite boundaries on an otherwise easy to rip game.. Arrghh...
Titus Classiques - Already ripped from the Space Invaders game and did some progress on Glutton (Pac-Man) and Grand Prix (their Monaco GP styled game). I don't know whether to have both volumes as one game or two...
Pitstop - Trying to find the tires and their palettes as the rest of the car is ripped.
Out Run (C64) - Reripping this one because of a bit of confusion regarding the arrangement and that it was one of my first modern C64 rips with CSFEC. As of writing, have to check the ending sprites (there seems to be only 1 ending in the game) and recolour the sprites. Also didn't realise that the US version has different graphics for the Testarossa, not sure for that to have its own game or using the same section. CSFEC currently only accepts tape and certain cartridges if it is a prg, any time that I boot up a d64 file it refuses to boot and a lot of C64 dumps/cracks/whatever are in disc format. Can however rip using the old fashioned way of C64 Ripper and booting up the US version in VICE making a savestate err... snapshot.
Enduro Racer (C64) -
![[Image: 46Ylzo3eSKDs.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/46Ylzo3eSKDs.png)
Ripped the rider but needs arrangement and recoloring. It seems to use layers on the same video mode so it would have to be assembled. Sadly I can only rip from the tape version so the improved disc version that only came out on an Australian compilation cannot be done for now.
Turbo Out Run (C64) - Partially ripped the F40 with the spinout frames left to do, partially assembled but needs recolouring. Should have it done soon hopefully, it's been a smooth rip. 
Dalek Attack - Since it's the last commercially released Spectrum game, I'm trying to wait until the Spectrum backlog clears a bit before finishing. I might have to re-rip this one because it was one of my earliest Spectrum rips.
Angel Neito (Spectrum) - Some confusion regarding the bikes. Forgot the progress on the Amstrad version...
International Soccer - On the checklist, can only rip from the 1988 re-release rather than the Commodore original.
Nigel Mansell's World Championship (Spectrum & Amstrad) - Similar reason to Dalek Attack. The Amstrad 128k disc version is partially ripped in terms of the car but the 64k tape and Spectrum versions have yet to be ripped. There are slight graphical differences between the 3 versions.
Monument - Ripped (most?) of the player however the game manage to crash on me very early on.
Spellbound Dizzy
![[Image: WgEPDTAwlkWz.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/WgEPDTAwlkWz.png)
I need to check regarding the mine cart sprites as those aren't ripped and the graphics for those aren't in the same place as the rest. It also needs sorting out however the walk and jump animations are getting there.
Renegade 3 - Renegade is coming along nicely and done most of Stage 1 enemies. Ripping from the Andrew Deakin/Ivan Horn duo games are lovely to do on the Amstrad (not as much on the Spectrum).
Subway Vigilante (C64) - Watching a gameplay video gave me the idea. The player is ripped but needs sorting out and arranging, the enemy actually shares the same legs as the player. Both this and Renegade 3 are extremely likely to be my last beat 'em up rips.
Off Shore Warrior - Ripped part of the player boat as well as some of the splash (that I have to check on) and started on the enemy boat. This was the last Amstrad game that I was working on before the clearout.
Superstar Soccer (C64) - Ripped the players however would have to check the animations.
Road Trip: Shifting Gears / Gadget Racers (PAL) / Choro Q Advance 2 - Now this is a surprise! Already ripped some of the maps, just have to sheet them.
Top Gear - Have to re-rip the backgrounds due to wrong SNES palette. If I do continue SNES ripping, I'll be offering both palettes with the old school ZSNES/SNES9X palette being the default and the modern bsnes/BizHawk palette as an option. That way it would please well... nearly everyone. As a note the rip will take some time because I know how important the game is for people, my ETA for the sheet will be around December, maybe 2024. Yes, that long but we might see it earlier fingers crossed.
Also some games that I tried to rip from but just couldn't:
Motorbike Madness (Amstrad) - Firstly the disc version wouldn't run as it stuck on the "Pasword" screen so only the tape version works. Neither Mode 1 or 2 on the Graphics Viewer match the sprites that are displayed on screen. I can rip the background tiles as they are in Mode 1 but not of the motorbike.
Turbo Charge (C64) - Crashes on the loading screen on CSFEC, tried both default settings and enabling later C64 models... Tried two different tape rips and even inserted the tape twice but no joy.
Kikstart - Cannot leave the title screen as it's a case of modern computers especially laptops dropping the number pad on the keyboard with no alternative (outside of buying an USB number pad). While I can view the sprites via debug, due to the layering on the monochrome mode it means that cannot verify the sprites. Each sprite has 4 monochrome layers (wheels, frame, saddle, rider), similar in a way to the Footballer of the Year rip.
Slalom (Tronix) - Cannot leave the title screen.
Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 (C64) - Crashes after the loading screen around 996 on the tape counter with debug popping up.
Roland's Rat Race (C64) - Crashes with a white screen with 124 on the tape counter. This is with an original tape dump as well.
Deathchase - The enemy sprites are way too small for me to even attempt and the rider seems to be glitched out. A shame since it's an iconic Spectrum game.
Posts: 1,218
Threads: 13
Joined: May 2008
Managed to get some spare time for some more rips while having a little break.
Spectrum
Yie Ar Kung Fu
Ripped mostly from the 128k version* meaning that it has better music more closer to the arcade that I believe used the same sound chip, Feedle and Chain are included, some graphical improvements and faster gameplay speed also matching more closer to the arcade (the 48K original is fairly slow and a bit sluggish by comparison, much harder too). It was only released as part of the Stars on the 128k Spectrum pack that also had International Match Day (already ripped), The Neverending Story (not ripping that) and Daley's Thompson's Super-Test 128 (hmm...). Cannot find Chain's chain anywhere as it was not in the same place as the rest of his sprites. The chain is one segmented "sprite" that is placed and causes flicker when a lot shows up. That's why Chain isn't here.
Oh and as for Blues, it just uses the same sprites as Oolong that shadowman44 had already ripped.
* - Except for the 48k only sprites. Weirdly both versions store their graphics in a different way, 48k loads all the characters and is easier of the two to rip as it requires no assembly while 128k only loads whatever character you fight mostly (did see bits of other characters loaded though) and splits the graphics up into two via 8 pixel strips. Since Feedle and Chain were made for the 128k version, even their design is different.
It's getting harder to continue with the Spectrum... sure there's 1000s of things to choose from but running out of games that I would pick due to a personal commercial era only rule and wouldn't rip from graphical text adventures or games coded in BASIC in most cases. So many problems from games that have the split bitplane mess of two directions in its correct size but despite being visible squashed with missing details when it is doubled (Mountain Bike Racer [Zeppelin], Gryzor, Cobra, Street Hawk Kays Catalogue Edition), games that are one or two 8 pixel strips but with no sprite boundaries (Emilio Sanchez Vicario Grand Slam, Sito Pons 500cc GP the latter also applies to the Amstrad version), games without sprite boundaries (both Road Racer and Days of Thunder have to be dropped despite progress, Grand Prix Simulator 2 from the looks of things) or in the case of Nigel Mansell's World Championship, the Spectrum version seems to run off a framebuffer with the only sprites that are displayed are the rival. Either that or the graphics are too small to see...
Currently in the backlog to finish off there's Motorbike Madness, Video Olympic, Speedboat Assassin, Dick Tracy and actually forgot about Fire & Forget on top of what was already mentioned.
Commodore 64
Turbo Out Run
Oh yeah! Now we're talking. Probably the peak in terms of the C64 rips on a personal note as the game is nicely presented (and has two awesome opening themes by Jeroen Tel).
Super Stock Car
Tried to play and rip from Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge but the game crashes on CSFEC and can only load a part of the intro or the handbook as the game calls it. Tried two original tape dumps (original release and the budget re-release), the first just crashes with out of memory while the other goes beyond the tape counter and just gets to a loading loop. Then tried Test Drive, cannot load Side 2, thought of ripping Super Soccer (not to be confused with Super Formation Soccer) but the control issues prevented from leaving the menu. Finally thought of Knuckle Busters to think of a K game to rip from but again crashed 218 on the tape counter. Oh and control issues with Pole Position.
Yeah... Sounds like ripping from the C64 with the limitations of CSFEC (easy to use emulator and has a high level of accuracy so far but not quite there yet regarding support/fully emulating the computer) is getting close to having enough and running low on good/decent racing games on the computer to choose from.
WIP wise... Ripped the sprites from Basket Master and Karate Champ but have to arrange them, started on Slicks and Mean Machine. Shanghai is just about done and so is Grand Prix Simulator. After those, Continental Circus and the previous post, I don't know...
Amstrad
Just a couple of Spanish racing games:
Angel Nieto Pole 500
This game has been in the backlog since July 2022 so it shows how bad it is, only a bit of the rider and half of the CPU one was done back then.
Anyway this is the closest thing to Hang-On on the computer visually (and playability wise if you enable Turbo at 300% on Caprice Forever). Until someone comes up with a homebrew game to surpass this, this is one of the best motorbike chase view games on the CPC along with Super Cycle, Speed King and the two Microids GP 500 games as Super Hang-On itself sadly is a Spectrum port with cut down colours (still better than the C64 version though). Even then visually it looks lovely and has a 2 player split screen mode!
Little known fact, the screenshots on the back of the box are doctored. Not massively so but it shows more detailed backgrounds such as having clouds in the sky and different roadside objects. They aren't from any other version either because the HUD and the bikes match the actual game.
Campeones
A quick rip that wasn't in the backlog. Not much to the game but does look nice for an early Amstrad game (it was done by Indescomp who pretty much became Amstrad Spain, famous for releasing Fred/Roland on the Ropes, Bugaboo/Roland in the Caves/La Pulga/The Flea/whatever and The Galactic Plague).
Started to think about beyond the Speccy/CPC/C64 home computer backlog. After a failed update, decided to redownload Emulicious and now it can rip MSX2 games. This means that I can finally work on The Castle of Cagliostro and The Legend of the Gold of Babylon using a more accessible emulator since it is on the to-do list for a few years. One issue, it seems to be that the MSX2 video mode for these games seems to be a bit of a hack in terms of the sprites.
![[Image: d6rGXjnnYj4f.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/d6rGXjnnYj4f.png)
If you look at the picture, one is of the outline of the sprite and the others are for the color. Probably means that it's done in layers. Weirdly enough the outline sprites makes look like some Spectrum game.
I won't be doing much on the MSX/MSX2 though (probably Lupin and some Konami games), just an idea that's been around for a while.
Posts: 1,218
Threads: 13
Joined: May 2008
Mainly just a few C64 rips, so... so... drained...
Shanghai
Very basic compared to the other versions, the C64 version should have done a better job and there are even clones that had managed to do that. Yeah, probably one of the worst official versions of the game out there.
Grand Prix Simulator
Before Codemasters started on licensed F1 games to this day, before Slicks, this is how it all began. Yeah, the cars are literally blobs in both this and the original Amstrad version (the Spectrum version changed it to slightly but looks more like a splodge). Another quickie rip.
Continental Circus
This is another game where the game stretches the sprites but this time horizontally, it makes it look blocky and not much better than Pole Position (an early C64 port). Speed King is another racing game that does this stretching with the results being blocky. My guess is a workaround for the sprite limit that only allows 8 sprites on screen, also from what I do recall some developers had problems with the sprite multiplexer but I don't think this game had any problems.
International Soccer
While Out Run US was the first game to use a newer easier ripping method, this was completed first. Since only the tape release worked on CSFEC, boot up VICE for the original cartridge version and made a snapshot. Then I imported the snapshot into SpritePad, a C64 sprite editor. So many advantages; no offset tweaking, can change the colours of the sprites since it has a built-in palette, can even overlay the next sprite (came in handy for one sprite in Out Run, wish that Spectrum tools offer this too). Downside it is more time consuming because I have to export one sprite at a time, reduce by 50% and remove the 5 pixel border that is around the sprite (and my sprite rips take FAR TOO LONG as it is).
Oh and while it was on the last stretch discovered that at first I thought SpritePad's palette was too dark compared to playing on VICE and CSFEC but then went down the rabbit hole... First I checked Spritemate on its C64 palette, it was more closer to SpritePad than VICE (but not exact). Then I checked on VICE again but changed from PAL to NTSC Sony, getting closer then finally NTSC. It almost matched SpritePad just with one value difference, a margin of error really as they both use the "Pepto" palette. Since the game is a NTSC game (developed in the US), kept the palette while offering the PAL palette from VICE and the CRL 1986 tape release palette from CSFEC. Phew...
Then again there seems to be an argument between Pepto and Colodore palettes while searching around online so I guess the C64 has a similar problem to the NES and the Atari 7800... CSFEC uses Community-Colors that I can't find much info on except in German and VICE also has that palette too.
This is also a classic as this basically inspired... well nearly every side on view football game going just like Exciting Soccer & Tehkan World Cup inspired nearly every top down football game. Without those 3 games and Football Manager... well gaming would be a completely different thing.
Pitstop
When I first started ripping this game and was one of my first modern C64 rips, finding the tape dump was really hard since most places only had cracked disk versions that wouldn't boot up. Already done most of the car but the explosion and the tires were left to do. Then tried the new method.
Funny thing, found the car sprites using CSFEC but couldn't on SpritePad yet found the tires on SpritePad but couldn't on CSFEC. Meaning that the only sprites in the game are the tires, the barriers and the pit crew while the car must be part of the character set. Again since it is a NTSC game done by Epyx, the Pepto palette is the default but also offered the PAL and PAL Eurogold tape palettes as well. The CBS release seems to be undumped but in theory should match the PAL palette.
(Again, missed the deadline... sigh... really could do with an understudy...)
Up'n Down
Remember when the player and the enemy shared the same sprites? Probably for a large chunk of people who play games they wouldn't and something that their parents or even their grandparents will remember but that's what they did back then. (Even in my day, reusing sprites was mainly for enemies in beat 'em ups for palette swaps and Jeff from Double Dragon). Oh and the cartridge version is cut down with two less enemies.
Pole Position
The graphics only look marginally better than the Atari 5200/8-bit versions but to be fair, it was an early game and despite this one of the better racers on the C64 (wonder if it is possible for someone to hack the game to improve them a bit). Managed to start the game on VICE.
Despite the success of the VICE+SpritePad combo for the likes of International Soccer, Up'n Down and Pole Position as well as Out Run, Roland's Rat Race, Chase HQ 2 and Super Bowl Sunday on the way, sadly it still couldn't load Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge on tape. At least it has opened up the C64 library a lot including the return of the two drainers.
Due to the backlog, some rips will still be done via CSFEC though because of progress wise. Super Bowl Sunday would have been done but yet to sheet due to a technical problem. Thought of using a batch conversion method on GIMP because resizing and cropping over 100 sprites manually will take a long time but somehow it doesn't view the sprites in GraphicsGale... Will try the Sprite Sheeter tool.
Oh and a couple of Spectrum rips
Fire & Forget
Motorbike Madness
Possibly my fastest Speccy rip that I've done since it took seconds to rip all of the motorbike, the rest (assembly and presentation) took far longer. As for why... It was very lucky that the bike and the mask were grouped together, all the graphics were on the same bitplane (bitplane 3) and the boundaries were 24x24. By Spectrum standards, an easy rip. Really surprised due to unable to find the graphics for the Amstrad counterpart.
Would have got more down but just seem to struggle... Angel Nieto Pole 500 where sorting out pixel strips and garbage, Sharkey's Moll with the difficulty playing the game on top of a really bad framerate (most videos online can't even get past the first level).
Posts: 1,218
Threads: 13
Joined: May 2008
Not much on the ripping front so something a bit different. Since the chances of completing these rips are extremely slim, here are some that I had to abandon, some are so close:
Chain (Yie Ar Kung Fu Spectrum)
![[Image: RzniIve7T3gh.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/RzniIve7T3gh.png)
Car (Road Racer Spectrum / Fórmula One TC2068)
![[Image: P66mI87A4PB5.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/P66mI87A4PB5.png)
Enemies (Sharkey's Moll, Spectrum)
![[Image: cmCVuaSh_o.png]](https://images2.imgbox.com/33/7c/cmCVuaSh_o.png)
Mickey (Street Gang Amstrad)
![[Image: 9aTr3Bqoj6zD.png]](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/9aTr3Bqoj6zD.png)
Pitch (Manchester United Championship Soccer, SNES)
Field (Sports Illustrated Football & Baseball SNES)
Court (NCAA Final Four, SNES)
Jet Ski (Wave Race)
Field (Baseball, Game Boy)
(There are a lot more than these)
Also a few questions:
1. How should I group the Commodore 64 Out Run versions? Split them or put them into the same game? It's done mainly by the same developers unlike many PAL and NTSC C64 games (Sega of America hacked the PAL original for graphical improvements).
This is the PAL version and this is the US version (Bearing in mind that the US palette is incorrect due to the PAL bias on the site)
2. Related to that on the Amstrad, Titus had released Classiques collections based on various arcade games having 3 games each. Volume 1 and Volume 2. Have both volumes put together like the Microsoft Arcade Series or split?
2a. As mentioned going to be working on some MSX rips. How should I approach Track & Field 1 and 2? They seem to have the same graphical style (probably split into 2 games due to either cartridge limitations, not enough time to have the full game or Konami wanting to milk the series since they had 3 Hyper Sports games on the computer).
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Still juggling between sprite ripping and clearing out yet more games...
It's been a while for another Commodore 16 rip, this time Olympic Skier by Shaun Southern. Weirdly enough it got a port a couple of years ago to the Game Boy Color that I only just found out after the rip was done. More strangely a boatload of C16 games got ported to the GB/GBC... Everything from Kikstart and Monty on the Run to blooming Super Gran and World Cup (Carnival). Have to admire the dedication.
Green Beret
Just two words to say about this game, "absolutely horrible". It feels like a game that had a few hours of work done and left it as it is, obviously missing a lot partially due to the restrictions and partially because the programmer couldn't be bothered. This is one of the few games that Ocean brought out for the C16 and it shows (to the point that this game is on many worst games lists). The C16 can do better...
Daley Thompson's Star Events
As for why Day 1 and Day 2 have different sprites, well... The C16 version was rushed out hence why Star Events rather than Decathlon (and weirdly not done by Ocean but outsourced to Micro Projects who had done stuff for Gremlin). According to a scener who later did an improvement hack, Day 2 was "a complete and professional product" while Day 1 felt like "a derivative hack" and was badly programmed to the point where if you fail, you go straight to the next event because it doesn't take account for any record. Hence why Day 1 has glitchy graphics because it was unfinished. I think this was released when Hyper Sports and its Daley Thompson counterpart Super Test were on other systems, the two things Ocean loved milking along with licensed games.
World Cup / World Cup Carnival
What's left for me on the C16 are: Hustler, Hyper Sports, Wimbledon, Airwolf (1 or 2), SQIJ! (almost had it done but accidentally lost the sheet), TV Jatek, Patric (plus4), Speed King and will try Ghosts 'n Goblins, World Series Baseball but no guarantees on those.
I won't be ripping any more after those are done. Besides there isn't much of a decent library and there are a load of Italian hacks/re-releases of existing games. Honestly, if it's a football game it's either a hack of World Cup (Carnival) or rarely Indoor Soccer, if it's an athletics/track & field game then it's Daley Thompson.
Amstrad
Even with a backlog, sometimes you find a game that you can rip quickly. Getting the palette cycle for the win on the machine (that's still WIP) and arranging the cards took the longest.
Chicago 30's
This game cannot decide whether it's Chicago 30's, Chicago's 30 or even Chicagos's 30. Same thing for the playable character being either Elliot or Eliot. Anyway this game originally appeared in a compilation however US Gold picked it up outside of Spain as a standalone release.
Funnily enough, it feels a bit like The Untouchables but the game didn't come out until a year later (yet the game hints of being inspired by the movie due to a detective called Eliot and Al Capone being mentioned in the original Spanish instructions). Wonder whether Ocean played this game for ideas...
Cosa Nostra
Finally the backlog is going down, started the player sheet as far back as August 2022. The first lot of walking sprites were layered by hand by checking the game, the walking sprites with the gun however figured out their position to do it more automated. Would have done the enemies too but the game is far too hard where getting killed on the second screen just happens nearly all the time. Then again any game these days is far too hard (even easy games like Kirby)
Crazy Cars 2
This is for the Plus/GX4000 version, compared to the standard CPC version it has a map and in this game, you'll need it. New versions of Caprice Forever can actually load GX4000 cartridges providing that they are in the folder but also used CPCEC as well (mainly because it has the correct resolution to check yet due to the scrolling of the game itself, a pixel row seems to be cropped off on the map so I had to check that...). Reason why I chose to rip the map and the new title screen was really a bit of practise for Burnin' Rubber. Also the Start/Finish markers are actually sprites so technically these are the first completed sprite rips for the entire computer range/console (since the Plus/GX4000 has hardware sprites but not many games took advantage during its lifespan) and as mentioned on the sheet, the sprites are glitched.
Still got a massive backlog to get down. Did get a bit of Trigger and WEC Le Mans done, the latter have to find those dust sprites and just can't find them. There's still quite a lot to go that might take up to a year to finish.
Commodore 64
Managed to find some original disks however they were in nib format and had to use nibtools to convert them to g64 so VICE can read them. Nothing on this computer is ever straight forward...
I've also decided due to the palette debate that Pepto NTSC (SpritePad default), Pepto PAL (VICE and Hoxs64 default), Colodore (on default settings as listed on the website since it's configurable) and CommunityColors (CSFEC default) are going to be included in most rips covering all the major palettes from this point. Only the former gets excluded if the game is PAL only and vice versa. Some existing rips have been updated to reflect this.
Grand Prix 500cc / Superbike Challenge
While I'm still ripping the original Amstrad version (or is the Thomson version the original?), at least the first Microids game to be released outside of France is ripped. This was also one of the few Microids games that were released in the US until the modern era so yeah a bit of a jump going from this to say Toki and Garfield Kart... Having 2 player vertical split screen in a racing game was novel since it didn't became much of a thing until the PS1 era but sadly there's lots of input lag in this version making it unplayable...
A theme for the C64 is that a game gets exported with a completely different name, usually from PAL to NTSC even if the game didn't get renamed on other systems. In many cases, the PAL version is the original in this case and even includes series. e.g. Crazy Cars 2 was called F40 Pursuit in the US but Crazy Cars 1 & 3 weren't released, Lamborghini American Challenge the updated version of the latter did get an US release wasn't released on the C64 at all. Even this game got a sequel on the Amstrad. I don't recall many where the NTSC original changes its name for the PAL release on the C64 (Super Bowl Sunday to just Super Sunday, Road Raiders to Motor Massacre but debatable which one is the intended name since it was a co-production between Gray Matter and Gremlin) but on other systems it has happened many times.
There's a list here but this one seems to be missing from that list...
Roland's Rat Race
Who ever thought that a licensed game could be in a way considered a prototype Metroidvania? It also used layering between 2 colour and 4 colour modes for the Roland Rat sprites.
Had to use a scene release because the original tape won't get past the loading screen on both CSFEC and VICE.
Now I have a massive C64 backlog to get down... Some of these are about 50% or more complete in terms of ripping progress while others are either stuck, need sorting out or ripped some of the sprites but have yet to sheet. A few are going to be a big surprise once they're done. There were a few that I did try to rip out of experimentation but not good news... John Madden Football doesn't use sprites at all, The Amazing Spider-Man uses compression so only a couple of sprites get loaded in at a time. Just can't play Castlevania at all...
Spectrum
Dick Tracy
One on One
Considered a classic on the C64 and the Apple II that put EA on the map but on the Spectrum? One of the worst commercially released full priced games on the computer to the point that it is one of the few games on Spectrum Computing that is voted a 0. Yep even beating the likes of Renegade 3, Count Duckula 2, the disappointing arcade ports (Out Run, Street Fighter, Double Dragon, Kung Fu Master), HKM, BMX Ninja, Ninja Master aka the bad Spectrum games that you hear about. Only game that's worse is SQIJ!
It was a quick rip to do. Don't know where the man and the woman come from, they look more detailed compared to the other graphics in the game. Now for some el Spectrum rips.
The Blues Brothers
Not the Titus game but a Spanish homebrew that is clearly inspired by it since the original game wasn't on the Spectrum. According to the author, it was mostly done in BASIC with a bit of machine code to move the sprites using a tool from MicroHobby magazine and as for how it ended up on the Internet "the lord works in mysterious ways" since it was never published and wondered how people got to play the game. Usually don't do homebrew rips but since it's nearly 28 years old and not too far off from the end of the commercial life, thought of ripping something simple. Plus The Blues Brothers is one of my favourite movies of all time so...
Oh and the second part of the game is broken. The password that's listed to load that part doesn't work and resets back to the 1982 Spectrum copyright message since it's a 48k only game. (It is rather common for 8-bit Spanish games to be split into 2 or even 3 parts. Ironically many of these games are actually easier than the first part.)
Cosa Nostra
Unlike the Amstrad version, this version is much easier to rip from due to no layering. I think if Emulicious supported tape then would have ripped from the MSX version too, well... since most Spanish MSX games were Speccy ports done in a weekend (not just the Amstrad CPC that this affects) yet this game and a few other Opera Soft games used more of the hardware, a couple were even MSX 2 and that alone was rare (most MSX2 games were Japanese with the odd Dutch game/homebrew).
Chicago 30's
Since I've ripped from the Amstrad version, might as well rip the Spectrum version since it was doable... Yet more or less an instant Game Over if I do try to play it.
Grand Prix Master / Aspar GP Master
Around 14 or so Spectrum games left for me to rip. Hopefully going to be finishing my rips of Emilio Butragueno Futbol, Fantastic American Football, Championship Run, Grand Prix Circuit, Super Hang-On, Video Olympic, Joe Blade 3, Pole Position, Speedboat Assassin, Angel Nieto Pole 500, City Connection, Galaxian, Overlander, Dalek Attack and maybe a few others that are wait and see such as the Desperado games, Bionic Commando or... giving too much away.
I've decided to sunset on the Spectrum after this. Many games haven't had any luck at all. While there are a LOT of games, it's getting towards the point where it's not fun to rip. At one point even considered to rip the unused Linda Barker from Popeye 3 but just have so many problems with Spectrum games. They LOOK easy to rip but much of the time, just isn't.
Amazing job. You've done incredible work!
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Quote:You had wasted MY LIFE... waiting for just a goddamn bunnelby model.
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Thanks Ton.
Anyway, this is it... The Spectrum Push... (Part 1)
100 Kilometri
One of the few Italian programmed Spectrum games from back in the day. The game appeared in Load 'n Run magazine, notorious for having pirated versions of commercial games on the tape that are usually translated into Italian and this is one of the few original games. It also apparently got a Spanish release too from the same magazine, the tape is currently missing though.
Also yes, that's all the sprites in this game. The bike is literally 1 sprite.
Pro Go-Kart Simulator
Nope, it's not a Codemasters game. Also a misleading name since it's more like a Power Drift clone. Weirdly enough this was one of the first racing games that was developed by the company that later became Eutechnyx who until their demise was their main focus.
Turbo Skate Fighter
Not many racing games where you literally have to run without the use of a vehicle (I think Sonic R and Mad Dash Racing being the two that I can name off the top of my head). This reminds me of an arcade game that I can't quite remember the name... No it's not Metro-Cross...
Grand Prix Circuit
Only plus compared to the Amstrad version is that it runs at a better frame rate and as a side effect just a bit better to control but yeah apart from that... this is the worst version of the game but not intentionally. For some reason, every time I play it seems to be stuck on time trials even to the point of changing the courses after a crash or complete the same race twice. On the C64, Amstrad and any other version, you qualify for a lap then a race but on here, complete a lap and report to pit in. Also you can't select your track like the others. It has the same developers as the CPC version so wonder why... Unfinished game? Developers sent the wrong build to Accolade or Accolade put an earlier build onto tape?
While getting the rival car on the graphics viewer was simple enough, for it to show up in game is a different story. It got so bad that I had to watch a YouTube video and was hard enough to find one, just to find the in game palette that luckily is the same as the background and off road (so yeah, checking every car regarding where the green ends and the yellow starts). As we know to get colour on the Spectrum is like a hack working around 8x8 blocks yet actually it was okay trying to avoid the colour clash.
Full Throttle 2
Poorly programmed game with broken sprites....
The Cycles
Uses the same engine as Grand Prix Circuit like all versions of that game but seems to crash on ZXSEC when loading the bike select, lucky that it loaded the rival to rip in the graphics viewer. Had to load it on InkSpector to play the game, yeah this is how the Spectrum version of Grand Prix Circuit should have been like (1 lap to qualify, 1 lap to race, can choose your track). Good frame rate too for a Spectrum game.
Fantastic American Football
Misleading name just like Great Football on the Master System... Also yes, there are American Football games on the Spectrum.
Championship Run
A clone of Continental Circus and is rather buggy. The player car graphics often disappear leaving just the tyres and when you go to the pits, it loads garbage where your car is. Considering that it was a full price game, people probably bought or copied more of Continental Circus anyway that would have been on clearance when this came out. Well assuming that you could still get Spectrum games from a shop in 1991 as the Amiga, Master System and Mega Drive would have been more popular, even the NES had a brief spell of popularity in the UK at this time thanks to TMNT and SMB3.
Also I couldn't get the rival as it doesn't seem to be with the other graphics at all.
Joe Blade 3
Super Cars
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Only ripped this because of a certain film that kept advertising, something about a Dial of Destiny.
Oh and the intro took one side of the tape, literally loading screen after another.
Super Bike Trans-Am
Not to be confused with Super Car Trans-Am but ended up doing so to the point where that game got renamed to American Turbo King, Mastertronic ended up re-releasing it and released the Amstrad version. Also some vector graphics for the roadside objects!
Twin Turbo V8
Uses the slightly earlier engine as the above and same way of storing the graphics (main sprite being split in half). It uses an interesting and clever way of avoiding colour clash for the player car making it not Spectrum like, but it was the only game that the artist had worked on.
Beach Volley
Desperado / Gunsmoke
Topo Soft made a clone of a certain Western Capcom arcade game, different characters* and less levels yet similar gameplay. US Gold then picked it up for UK release and branded it as Gunsmoke. So a clone became an "official port" yet the only proper ports outside of the arcade were the NES, PS1/Saturn and the C64, the latter US Gold had rights to anyway. Besides some people argue that it's Gun.Smoke so not really official for the Spectrum/Amstrad versions. There was also the Korean MSX port as well.
*-With inconsistent names. The manual is basic given just a description outside of the Masked One and Greybeard, the credits omits one of the bosses, the reviews have different names and CPC Power gives something else bearing in mind the Masked One and Greybeard have swapped positions in the Amstrad version. Made worse is that CPC Power reference an "Indian" (Native American) boss who doesn't appear in the game but rather someone who looks like Clark Gable, not using their names as a source. The player character has 3 different names! The Sheriff (manual)/Joe Faster (credits)/Mac Elrapid (Spanish review) however the last one might have been made up by the reviewer. This applies in both English and Spanish.
Also it seems that the wrong palette is shown in game for some of the sprites. Outside of the colour hack, the Spectrum can only understand two things. Ink and Paper, basically black for the ink and white for the paper as a left over from the ZX81. Some have it as black & white, while others have it in white & black. When you invert the monochrome graphics, you can see the outline more clearly. Apparently the Spanish MSX version fixes a few of these...
Bionic Commando
Simulador Profesional de Tenis
The Amstrad CPC version has been in the backlog for literally years, not much progress since 2018. By comparison, the
Speccy version was ripped much quicker as it was easier to do. Despite only getting a release in Spain, an English
translation with typos does exist. Wonder why... UK release cancelled due to a similarly named Codemasters game (Pro Tennis Simulator)? Somehow a market of English ex-pats living in Spain wanting a tennis game? It did make it in a compilation called Multi Sports where it was just known as Tenis and the packaging is multilingual. That version on the Amstrad does have the English translation on the disk along with the other games including Grand Prix Master (listed as Aspar).
As of writing; trying to find the heart sprite and assembling the enemies of City Connection, wonder where the other tire and the fallen bike graphics are in Super Hang-On despite the sheet is about 75% complete, trying to wonder why the player and enemy sprites are the same in Frontline, why are things done in 8x8 blocks in Video Olympic?, near but not quite there for Emilio Butragueno Futbol, Speedboat Assassin, Overlander and procrastinating on Dalek Attack. Also having problems with Pole Position and Angel Nieto that I might have to abandon...
Amstrad
Grand Prix Circuit
It feels like this game has a single digit framerate even when there are no cars on the screen and very jerky to control. Whether it's a rushed port and judging by the Spectrum version probably is or just too much for the computer to cope. Then again the C64 original is actually pretty good on there; decent frame rate by C64 racing game standards with better controls, sampled based soundtrack, no road breakup, working mirrors, more backgrounds with the downside is that your view is just a bit smaller on the grounds of a big steering wheel (the steering wheel is smaller on the other versions), the rival car sprites are mixed as in not as clearly drawn but more of a variety in palettes and the loading times are longer...
Actually might as well rip the C64 original, it's in the backlog...
Desperado / Gunsmoke
Another done the Spectrum, do the Amstrad routine and vice versa. Thank goodness for trainers that have infinite lives and a level select. Also Clarisse? Outside of these two, trying to get the Spectrum backlog down (sadly not down enough) hence progress has been minimal e.g. one sprite ripped on Target Plus and a little bit of of the Spanish light gun game Trigger.
While I'm here, it's been ages since I've last done an arcade rip:
Super Speed Race
Never thought that I'll rip yet another ancient arcade racing game... One that is historically important but forgotten, historically important because it was the first Japanese racing game series and an influence on Sega's Monaco GP (that I really need to finish ripping the Saturn recreation). Sadly most of the Speed Race series cannot be preserved due to not using microprocessors, uses discrete logic and/or not having ROMs (or all three). The Japanese counterpart is not dumped, it's also unclear whether its Super Speed Race GP V or something else due to both the English and Japanese wiki pages have conflicting info. The only things that still exist are flyers, a couple of screenshots and maybe if you're extremely lucky playing on an actual arcade machine of Speed Race Deluxe in Japan. Super Speed Race Jr. came out much later so at least that one can be ripped.
Interestingly the flyer has mockup screenshots but thankfully the actual game has better sprites, something that you rarely see in gaming marketing.
Also since the tileset cannot be viewed in MAME, ripped it via TileGGD.
Oh and I've ripped from Monte Carlo but... (goes on tSR) It was already ripped? Oh well...
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Need sleep...
Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix
Nigel Mansell strikes again! Ripping the rival was tough visually and took an entire day just to check the small sprites (heavily zooming on pixel level, maximising the window to scroll the graphics viewer, constantly checking on the four smallest sizes). Outside of any game on the backlog, won't be doing that again. No shadow masks in this game so yeah, the cars are only designed for the road...
Speed King 2
There was no Speed King on the Spectrum but there was on other systems (even the C16!)... So the sequel is a Speccy exclusive. In their review, Crash compared the game to Full Throttle that coincidentally was done by the programmer of the original C64 Speed King (who also made the infamous Deathchase) telling people to buy that game but in all honesty both Full Throttle and Speed King 2 are forgotten these days. Even Speed King 1 is notable for being one of the few C16 racing games along with Kikstart and Formula One Simulator (all games done by Shaun Southern) plus the speed on the Amstrad/C64 versions.
Also more unused content than used!
Cowboys: The Pistols Fighters
The title is not a typo... Only ripped it because of the graphical style. Finding the bullet took way longer than ripping the rest of the sheets, the latest version of Spectrum Analyser helped since it shows the graphics as green.
More from the Amstrad backlog:
The Cycles
Quick rip. Did look into the C64 version and the rival sprites only store what's on screen in a savestate/snapshot, to make matters worse it crashes if you make and then load a snapshot making it unusable so that's dropped.
Amsoccer
Ripped at 2AM one night and took about 25 (yawn) minutes to rip after taking nearly a year to get around to it, the players are poorly organised in the game... Considered the worst football game on the Amstrad.
TT Racer
Pretty much the first motorbike sim and was way ahead of its time, so much so that it took until the Amiga, PC and the X68000 before that genre started to pop up to the modern day where Milestone keep doing these every year due to their MotoGP license, sometimes two a year even. Considering most motorbike games were of the more arcade chase view (Full Throttle/Speed King/Hang-On/Super Cycle/Grand Prix 500cc) or top down, it was revolutionary and the next one was err... The Cycles releasing 3-5 years after depending on platform. It even had a two player link up function, again something that you rarely see until the Amiga/late DOS era PC/PS1 and some arcade games.
Aladdin's Cave
Done by the same developer as Tales of the Arabian Nights (Version 1) and reuses some of the same graphics too.
Bruce Lee
Not at Golden Harvest. Yeah, I've got that box set and watched a couple of films beforehand (Fist of Fury and Way of the Dragon). Bruce was ripped a good while ago and forgot to upload it. The only reason why was because I thought that it was identical to the C64 original however after comparing with Magma's rip, the sprites are different. The poses look similar but they are not with one pose that got dropped and the palette is different (but can be made similar on the C64 depending on the palette settings).
Now for some more el Amstrad rips.
Kong's Revenge
Find Donkey Kong child's play? Here's Kong's Revenge. BIGGER SPRITES, MORE DETAIL. Move over Mario, here's Mike. Full of masculinity, he's even got a gun! Mario might be saving a lady, Mike on the other hand is off to save his "hot" girlfriend whose even naked in the game! TWO STYLES OF GAMEPLAY. It's a platformer and a shooter. Mario would never shoot DK but Mike will kill that Kong! Since it was programmed by the finest of Spanish developers, it'll make the Dark Souls series look like a Game & Watch game. PIXEL PERFECT PLATFORMING. You need the tightest of timing to get to the moving platform on Stage 1 or you'll die, only a minute into the game! Get your copy today at your nearest El Corte Ingles dumpster.
(This is why I don't write gaming marketing)
So yeah, a very tough Donkey Kong styled game that only came out in Spain that not many people know about. The palette for this game reminds me of a CGA PC game, not quite the same but close (it did come out on PC though). Oh and managed to encounter a bug where the controls just died so was unable to get past the first level due to getting stuck where you have to jump over the barrels but can play the final level thanks to the Spanish two part setup that was common in action games.
Target Plus
This was the pack in game with the MHT Gunstick (light gun). The full spider's web isn't shown in the graphics viewer but still included it as it is part of the game.
Tour 91
Grand Prix Master
Cosmic Sheriff
Set in the futuristic year of 2023... Wait... What year is this?
Sootland
Just 4 words to describe this game, "awful, ugly and boring." Possibly one of the worst commercially sold games in Spain and there are better options for games of a similar style e.g. Cosmic Sheriff and if you're getting towards French developed games Bob Morane/Lee Enfield: Space Ace and especially the Empire City 1931 clone Prohibition.
On a technical note, something bothers me with the "sprites". If you look at a screenshot or the game icon, there is some black around the "sprites" but the graphics are in Mode 1 (4 colour mode) for the entire game so changing the black wouldn't change it. Changed the black to pink and still sees the outline. Tried Mode 2 and put the layers together, same result as just ripping from Mode 1 with more work. Only thing that I can think of is the programming that's causing it like a dodgy transparency effect to recognise the Gunstick, then again the game is bugged on Stage 3 even though there are fixed versions that have all 4 levels since 2015.
Space Smugglers
The A-Team
Yep, there's a game based on the TV show but at least it's a bit more fitting for the license compared to the Atari 2600 and the not quite legal C64 games. Then again technology wasn't able to do the license justice back then, closest probably would have been an Ocean styled licensed game where there's a driving stage with the GMC, one where Face tries to persuade the client, a stealth stage to rescue Murdoch and finally a shooting stage either Operation Wolf or Commando/Ikari Warriors style.
Trigger
Solo
I'm surprised that these two weren't ported to the NES due to the graphical design and palette fitting well but then again Nintendo's policies probably would have prevented Opera Soft and don't think that modern homebrew would do another Zapper game due to well... not many people have CRT TVs these days.
That's all the Gunstick games that I'm doing, not doing Bestial Warrior (optional) or Guillermo Tell. There are a couple of other light gun shooting games however they use different hardware (the forever in WIP Operation Wolf uses a joystick for the regular release and ironically Operation Thunderbolt doesn't use a light gun).
Black Beard
Desperado / Gunsmoke
Freddy Hardest
Considered a legendary game in Spain. Apparently influenced by Flash Gordon and Peter Perfect from Wacky Races but in more contemporary terms more like a mixture of Duke Nukem and Jay Leno with a bit of Zapp Brannigan. Also it seems to be the only version where he resembles the artwork. More recently someone has done an article in Spanish about the history of the game that involves miscrediting the character with the programmer, both the Spectrum and Amstrad versions were done at the same time, technical limitations why Freddy Hardest is not blond on the Spectrum, cutting back on animations, the beginning was a tribute to Planet of the Apes (1968) with the rest of the game inspired by films such as Alien and Enemy Mine and that Freddy Hardest in South Manhattan was going to be a different game with the same tone but only some mockups were done on the Amstrad.
There are a few more Spanish games left in the backlog that were close but lacking in time meant that they aren't ready yet. Hundra, Lorna, Ice Breaker, Army Moves (yes...), Gonzzalezz, Simulador Profesional de Tenis, Livingstone 2 and Game Over. Livingstone I Presume is the closest to completion, it's just Stanley's rope and some enemy projectiles left.
Just the one Commodore 64 rip...
Hong Kong Phooey
"Oh looky here, I've managed to sprite rip the great Hong Kong Phooey and I didn't see myself do it." I've watched a few episodes fairly recently since the last time was a long time ago and well it still sort of holds up. Sadly not even the Hong Kong Book of Kung Fu tells me how to rip the nicer looking Amstrad version.
Backlog Progress (aka the ripping pile is just too high, feels like the only one ripping, ripping until 3AM):
Amstrad
3D Stunt Rider - Ripped the bike but needs more work.
APB: All Points Bulletin - Wait and see...
Archon: The Light & The Dark - Possibly dropped
Athlete - Still figuring out the unrippable graphics...
Beach Head - The enemy plane and the turret have been ripped but the rest needs to be done. Really struggle with the game though...
Bravestarr - Got the sprites ripped but have to do some research on the characters due to unaware of the cartoon series.
Burnin' Rubber - No progress
Daley Thompson's Super Test - Pistol shoot nearly done, getting there on the Diving and Rowing sprites. Rest of the events haven't been ripped yet. Also out of curiosity, compared the loading in later versions. The Spectrum version changed the loading screen to remove Daley Thompson when Amstrad bundled the game for the Spectrum +3 but it got removed entirely on the Amstrad version when they bundled the game on the 6128 pack... Instead there's a select screen like Super Mario All-Stars or compilations on the Genesis using an obscure function so it can only load on 6128 machines (if you have the 664, it won't run resorting to directly load the game itself).
Darkman - Only just started ripping Darkman himself, again it has been considered since umm... early last year (2022). Don't worry it's better than the NES game and more similar to the Game Boy game...
Doomsday/Eden Blues - Waluigi The player is partially ripped but no good at the game.
Grand Prix 500cc - The flagman has been ripped since February 6 2022, just waiting to do the rider that's partially ripped.
Grand Prix 500 2 - Started doing the rider but it's like Tour 91 and Grand Prix Master, the default palette is not the same as the one that you actually race in but at least you can choose the colors in this one.
Green Beret - Nearly ripped the player taking a day. This was part of the backlog years ago however the disk of the game was not backed up since the old laptop died. From what I can remember, tried ripping it on WinApe but the palette was off so a sheet wasn't made.
Grell & Falla - Progress is very slow... Only ripped 1 sprite of Falla since.
Harricana - International Snowmobile Race - The rider and snowmobile are very close to completion but have to get the alt palettes. By the time it's ripped, it will be the right season since it's been in the backlog since December 2021.
Hyper Sports - Nearly done the swimming however really am struggling with the game to continue. Since there's no cheats, savestates or a trainer, unable to get past the swimming level at all meaning the rest of the events cannot be ripped (technically can rip skeet shooting and pommel horse however they have the wrong palette). It's going to be a choice of having 2 sheets since the loading screen can be done or have to drop the game.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - Sophia is virtually done, Indy is mostly ripped, no progress on the enemies or the intro.
Les Aventures de Pepito au Mexique - No progress
Mange Callioux - Just the misc needs doing.
Manhattan 95 - Started a while ago, no progress
Mermaid Madness - Started work on Myrtle and the graphics are upside down... Due to different standards, this is considered a NFSW game despite that Activision published the game when they were known as Electric Dreams and was commercially sold with no backlash surprisingly...
Miami Vice - Ripped the Daytona Spider and palette fixed since it shows the wrong palette in the viewer, yet to rip the other car.
MiG Busters - The fighter plane is nearly done but have to check to see if anything is missing. This was ripped literally a year ago as of writing.
Monument - Possibly dropped
Motor Massacre - Ripped over half of the player.
Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix - No work done.
Nigel Mansell's World Championship - No progress.
Obliterator - Possibly dropped
Obsidian - Need a day just to rip all of the palettes from both versions.
Off Shore Warrior - No progress
Operation Wolf - Sadly no progress and only started on Operation Thunderbolt.
Power Boat Simulator - No progress
Psycho Soldier - Possibly dropped, wait and see.
Return of the Jedi - Just discovered that I had done a WIP sheet way back in February 2018! Looking at the sheet, it's going to need a re-rip since it was done on WinAPE and was inexperienced.
Road Runner - The Road Runner itself is nearly done but haven't started on Wile E. Coyote yet.
Rodeo - The cheerleader has already been ripped and sheeted, the cowboy, bull and horse just needs to be finished. After a nine month gap since the sheet started, more has been ripped and is nearly done with just polishing left to do. Should be ready hopefully by the same time as Grand Prix 500cc.
Run the Gauntlet - Needs organising.
Skull and Crossbones - No progress
Spellbound Dizzy - Very close to dropping, it just depends whether I can get to the mine cart.
Sporting Triangles - Working on the player portraits.
Strider - Ripped the walking and jumping for Hiryu, yet to rip walking on slopes
Tales of the Arabian Nights - Version 1 has the playable character & some of the enemies ripped. Version 2 only has some of the playable character ripped.
Titus Classiques Vol 1 - No progress
Westphaser / Steve McQueen Westphaser - Only just started, done the dancer at the saloon and begun doing the bosses (Apache Joe is WIP). The palette seems a bit funky but apparently is correct. ETA 2025 at this rate.
Wings of Fury - No progress but possibly dropped
WEC Le Mans - Ughh... Just need to find those dust sprites, the rest of the car is already ripped.
Renegade 3 - No progress
Considered - Tintin on the Moon, Highway Patrol, Shufflepuck Cafe, Prohibition, Dick Tracy (GX4000/Plus), Into the Eagle's Nest, Beach Volley, Estimator Racer, Rick Dangerous 1 & 2, Saint & Greavsie, Video Card Arcade, Strider 2, G-LOC, some from PP15/KPP15
Possible considering - Airborne Ranger, Asphalt, Centre Court, Cobra (Ocean) if I can find the leg sprites, Colossus Mahjong, Hunchback, Street Sports Basketball, Super Pinball Magic, Terminator 2
Dropped - Spy Hunter, Harrier Attack, The Vindicator, Attack on Port Stanley
Considered but then dropped due to issues:
Aussie Games (seems to use some form of compression, can only rip part of a sprite)
Desert Fox
The Train: Escape to Normandy (ditto plus difficult game)
Hong Kong Phooey (messed up on the graphics viewer)
Live and Let Die (messed up on the graphics viewer)
Cosmo Police Galivan (the small blocky graphics makes it hard for me to see, unlike the others this may have a chance to reconsider)
Super Sports Car (can rip up/down/left/right for the cars with a glitched bar at the side but the diagonal "sprites" seem to be compressed)
Tank (can only find one type of graphic in the viewer [enemy?] but doesn't seem right)
Macadam Bumper - Only thing rippable is part of the side panel, loading screen, some numbers and the flippers in Mode 2, no ball or table. Despite being a well known Amstrad pinball game, the original disk has only been dumped since April 2023 and the UK English tape since late 2022 as all that existed were hacked versions one that even added nudity. At least I think that was a hack but you never know...
Prince of Persia - Looks how the Prince is arranged... Nope, not doing it.
Switchblade - Looks at it, nope! The graphics are stored (except the boss) in 1 column strips that don't have boundaries.
Any other game not on the list is either dropped, stalled, not considered or even a surprise. While it isn't every game, it should cover a large chunk of the library once it's down.
Spectrum
Same as before plus the two surprises.
C64
Yie Ar Kung Fu - Oolong is nearly done but there are a few issues (possible missing/unverified sprites especially with the arrow only loading what ever is on screen).
Human Killing Machine - Brutus is done, already have sprites of Kwon, Igor, Maria and Miguel but needs assembly work.
Montezuma's Revenge - Should be done in the near future.
Spelunker - Ditto.
Karate Champ - Have to re-rip this one. Since it's an US made game, will be re-ripping from the disk version in case of missing sprites on the tape version.
Quasimodo - Only because it's a Q game that can be on the site however will take some time sorting out the sprites. Also the game is hard...
Grand Prix Circuit - Have the sprites exported from SpritePad but would need to do the usual resizing, cropping, import via SpriteSheeter since GraphicsGale for some reason can't read the sprites, export, assembly, palette checking. It takes longer than it should even with shortcuts...
Chase HQ 2 - Ditto for the car.
Dalek Attack - Ditto for the playable characters. Hoping before December.
DW&TMofT - Ditto for the doctor and controllers.
Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 - Ditto for Lee Young.
Atari Plumbers - Ditto.
Konami Arcade Port - Ditto.
Track & Field - Ditto. Looking at the athlete, I do wonder whether Ocean just sprite ripped this for Daley Thompson (not Decathlon but Super Test and the C16 Star Events), C64 Hyper Sports and the C64 version of Match Day aka Daley Thompson's Kickabout. It could be coincidentally for Hyper Sports since it is a sequel and the Ocean games reused it from there.
Out Run - The cropping and resizing back to its native size, import and export via SpriteSheeter is done on the US version but still needs assembly. No work done on the original PAL version. ETA for both US and PAL, no later than December 10.
Considered: Grand Prix Master, possibly considered Green Beret & Sly Spy. Other games not mentioned had no progress or possibly even getting dropped.
MSX
Still working on Cagliostro...
Considered: Hyper Rally, City Connection, Lupin III: Legend of the Gold of Babylon, Stop the Express
Wow, now that's a to-do list!
I had no idea there was a Hong Kong Phooey game. That's awesome!
Quote:You had wasted MY LIFE... waiting for just a goddamn bunnelby model.
-The prestigious Farlavor
Posts: 1,218
Threads: 13
Joined: May 2008
All Amstrad
Estimator Racer
A racing game that's educational? Yep, you learn maths. This game is pretty rare and the English version is not dumped (since it was published by Amsoft it would have been) but the Spanish one is in a compilation. A quick rip.
The fuel powerups are handled by a computer function since they are not in the graphics viewer along with the in game font. There is another font and not the BIOS one however it is unused.
Into the Eagle's Nest
The closest thing that the Amstrad has to Wolfenstein with a bit of Gauntlet and also considered a cult classic. Strangely it uses tilesets for the characters mixing the sprites with the background, meaning that it's designed only for this scenario.
Would have ripped this one earlier however the game has only been dumped since January 2023 and only been aware of it a few months ago.
Quick Draw McGraw
Video Card Arcade
Green Beret
Saint & Greavsie
On a technical note, noticed that Core Design on the 8-bit computers seem to focus on the C64 at first in terms of graphics and why? The sprite sizes are 24x21, the same dimensions as the hardware sprites on the C64 while on the Amstrad they don't need to be (even though only the Plus/GX4000 actually has sprites). My guess is to make cross platform development easier.
Miami Vice
At least we have GTA Vice City is all I can say... This game is just broken in every way.
Strider
Seems to crash for me after Stage 1 so that's as far as it goes...
Road Runner
Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote
The other Road Runner game, forgotten compared to its arcade port counterpart. The C64 version has an awesome title theme even though it's doesn't really fit with the tone being more rock/synth, the Amstrad version though has more fitting music for the series.
Had problems with the cutscene with Wile E. Coyote doing what I call the Rudy Larriva fall (since that nearly always appeared in episodes directed by Rudy Larriva and often more than once, not all Road Runner shorts were by Chuck Jones) where Wile E. falls with an explosion or a dust cloud appears. It appears to be glitchy in the graphics viewer similar to many other games e.g. Crystal Kingdom Dizzy, Top Cat, Hong Kong Phooey, Commando, etc. It's why Wile E's sheet isn't done...
Hunchback
Dempsey and Makepeace
One of those games ripped at a night time and forgot that it was nearly done. Feels like the driving parts was coded in BASIC due to when it loads or when you crash it reloads the entire screen. Then again it was a rubbish TV licensed game that's also missing Makepeace herself, rushed out while it was still airing.
MIG Busters
Squinting at the enemy planes took the longest in terms of ripping, only done it since it was in the backlog.
Skull & Crossbones
Another one that crashes me hearties... The disk version crashes when the 2 Player option is attempted and sometimes on 1 Player. Tried a later version of Caprice Forever (one that I use for GX4000/Plus ripping), turned out that both One Eye & Red Dog have the same sprites unlike the arcade original. Managed to get stuck on Stage 1 with no way of jumping off the edge of the ship, Stage 3 crashed during normal gameplay and even teleported around the screen when it tried to scroll. Apparently the game also crashes on Stage 4 on the tape version so probably down to Domark releasing an unfinished game that really needed some beta testing and checking what else Walking Circles developed all seemed to have some sort of issue (even Lemmings!). Ended up using a yarr... trainer version to rip the rest and even then, the Evil Wizard spawned off screen during the final boss part so I couldn't check him.
A shame really because the game itself is a Double Dragon styled beat 'em up (including the back attack, similar to the elbow) that's actually quite creative.
Agent X II: The Mad Prof's Back!
A surprise! Yes, the "sprites" are broken. Yes, the game was probably made with a lot of substances within the Software Creations team and it was still rushed out. Yes, it does have a Tim Follin soundtrack. Too bad the game doesn't have Jake Blues kicking karate ducks like the loading screen.
Knight Tyme
The Curse of Sherwood
Finders Keepers
180
Strike
Sport of Kings
Kane
Hero of the Golden Talisman
Radzone
Angle Ball
Ball Crazy
The Island of Dr. Destructo
Fly Spy
There are two compilations (PP15 for disk, KPP15 for tape and includes a joystick) that Amstrad made and seemed to have dumped the pile in Italy, a lot of these games came from Mastertronic but the tape also included some Amsoft games as well. I chose a few random games to rip from. First one was Knight Tyme, part of the Magic Knight series that were fairly popular on the Spectrum and actually ripped this at night time (har, har). Most of the graphics are in Mode 2 except Magic Knight who uses Mode 1. Next up was The Curse of Sherwood, uses Mode 1 graphics (4 colours) but seems a bit blocky like they were designed for Mode 0 instead... Weirdly both the Spectrum and the C64 versions have the same graphics. Then Finders Keepers, the first Magic Knight game and the only one in Mode 0 since it's a Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy styled platformer than the puzzle style of adventure game. Looked at Locomotion but the graphics are stored in such a way that it goes against most home computer rips (the correct size for the train is 3.5 bitplanes that doesn't exist) so that was skipped along with Crazy Golf that's just BASIC.
180 is considered a classic on both the CPC and the Spectrum, but still liked on the C64 as it is more or less the template of darts games in the UK until the simulation era. Apart from the dartboard and the rival preparing the throw (partially compressed but used a workaround for the rip), it uses Spectrum format graphics. Strike was a quick and easy rip, Sport of Kings had some issues with the menus. Then Kane where the Sheriff has a lovely walk cycle. The game also uses a trick to prevent sprite flicker and weirdly displays a coding address by the overscan... Hero of the Golden Talisman, a case where the cover doesn't match the game. Could only rip the player since not all the enemies show up on the graphics viewer. Angleball was another quick and easy rip. Ball Crazy just wanted to rip Erik. Looked at Kobayashi Naru and Xcel but backed out when they were uncontrollable adventure games on a literal sense. The Island of Dr Destructo took a bit due to the bitplane shifting and it links to the next game since the C64 version was done by the same person as below...
Finally Fly Spy and this uses a lot of programming tricks, Richard Aplin worked on this game before doing all those impossible or quickie rewrite arcade ports and the really long diaries (even the manual of this game is a lot to take in, he wrote it). Formula 1 Simulator, Hollywood or Bust and Speed King were already ripped. Regarding loading screens, had to get tape releases since they were cut out on the compilations but usually Mastertronic often didn't include them anyway.
Bravestarr
Glider Rider
This was actually in the backlog for a long time but it wasn't ripped due to technical issues. Tried one more time with more knowledge and it uses Spectrum format, it was not interleaving sprites (it might have been when ripping via WinAPE but not later versions of CapriceForever or probably that I haven't ripped from a Spectrum game at that time). Mainly ripped it because it has a great soundtrack, better than the game to be honest. Not happy with the rips.
Oh and in case people are wondering... The bike transforms into the hand glider if you're on a slope and back again, can be tricky to work though.
Power Boat Simulator
Another unhappy rip but more or less simple enough. Why is because the waves are a programming effect due to unable to find it in the Graphics Viewer.
Tales of the Arabian Nights (Version 1)
There are two versions of this game both by the same publisher and year but different developers, levels and screen modes making them different games based on the same idea of an Arabian clone. Version 1 got made however the publisher was not happy so a second version got made by a different developer. This gets even more confusing... Version 1 sold about 2-3000 copies at a trade show before pulling the plug on sales. Version 2 was widely released but... the publisher also decided to make copies of both versions on the same tape. Amstrad Action reviewed Version 2 but also mentioned the event in their January 1986 issue (so around November-December 1985). Version 1 was reviewed earlier in France. Oh and Aladdin's Cave was done by the Version 1 programmer and reuses some of the same graphics. Made matters worse that Version 2 has a game breaking bug where you can't get past the first level due to the controls not working properly which begs the question how Amstrad Action managed to review the game that's broken...
IMO, there's a lot more to this game that we don't know about. Why a publisher wanted to make a second version after already selling 2000-3000 copies? Was it to match the original C64 version more? Was it all down to Keith Purkiss working on Aladdin's Cave for Artic and Interceptor didn't want to pay him? Yet it wouldn't explain the BBC Micro and Spectrum versions that he did. Only thing that I can guess was that Kevin Parker who did the music, loading and protection systems (possibly mastering too?, he was heavily connected to Interceptor aka Players) was frustrated on Version 1, claiming that he had to rewrite half the game since they got a programmer who was more familiar with 6502* rather than "a real machine like the Amstrad" and it was "so bad" but Version 2, he just said that it was much better. All of this were written as hidden messages.
*-6502 is the processor used on C64, BBC Micro, Atari consoles/8-bit and NES sort of while the Z80 was Spectrum, Amstrad, Master System, Game Gear, MSX, Colecovision, SG-1000, many early arcade machines, Game Boy sort of.
Hyper Sports
Just the swimming I'm afraid... A shame since it's an iconic game...
Sporting Triangles
This suffers from really bad loading times even on a floppy disk, probably on par with some modern games. Oh and the Mode 2 graphics all have a dotted line in terms of the graphics viewer.
3D Stunt Rider
This game has both a "3D" cockpit view and a 2D side view. While the rider is ripped, the HUD used for the cockpit view cannot be easily ripped as the graphics viewer only displays a framebuffer of whatever is on screen. Even games from 1985 use compression...
Mermaid Madness
Spellbound Dizzy
Yay! Found the mine cart graphics as those were stored in Spectrum format unlike the rest of Dizzy's sprites, didn't think that it would have been done. This and Crystal Kingdom Dizzy are the only two mainline Dizzy games on the Amstrad that use the same design as the box art with the red gloves and shoes. No green tinted Dizzy in this game! It's still a 4 colour game though... Finishing the sheet at 3: 30AM... ooof...
Was working on Airborne Ranger but know that it wouldn't be ready due to the player and the enemy use the same sprites (the plane was ripped while writing). Motor Massacre, Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix (those small sprites...), Beach Volley are very close to being finished while Rick Dangerous, Strider 2, Run The Gauntlet, Pub Games, Skate Crazy have made some progress. Even started progress on Wacky Races, Super Cauldron and G-LOC so you can tell that it's getting towards the finishing line. Also looked at Rad Ramp Racer but that one was similar to Aussie Games and Super Stock Car in terms of how it is loaded so that's a nope.
Le Amstrad
Tintin on the Moon
Blistering barnacles... The only 8-bit version that was done in France and by Infogrames themselves (technically two versions however a Plus machine can run both), the others were outsourced to Probe. Also one of the few games that actually has an intro rather than a loading screen.
Grand Prix 500cc
Athlete
Rodeo
These are the earliest games fully published by Microids (GP 500cc is around July/August 1986 while Athlete was finished in October but wasn't released until November/December and their first outsourced game). GP 500cc was also developed by the founder too, I believe it was the first to be released outside of France so a bit of gaming history here. Rodeo was co-produced by Loriciels judging by the Thomson versions and it was outsourced (Loriciel -> Microids -> Phase).
(As a note MobyGames uses the name 500cc Grand Prix for some reason but if you look on the loading screen, the spine on the box, the disk and most of the manuals all say Grand Prix 500cc. CPC Game Reviews also use GP 500cc. The Activision and Loriciels English reprints did use the other name though on the back on the box and the manual.)
Oh and had to use the tape version of Grand Prix 500cc due to some sort of copy protection issue that popped up. Plus I had to re-rerip the entire sheet just before I finished due to a palette issue with the tyre. Ugh...
Also I have given up finding the missing background graphics on Athlete, which is why the athlete sheet is just well... the athlete even if it is baked into the background. Tried editing out the athlete on the Graphics Viewer*, didn't work. Even though at least 90% of graphics can be viewed without a problem, it's just that line and part of the pool that's compressed or even part of the coding...
*- Unlike most other emulators and systems, you can directly edit on the Graphics Viewer on CapriceForever on top of changing palettes. This is how I verify sprite boundaries if it's not simple to see by drawing a line that's a different color to the sprite, if it shows up it's part of the sprite, if it doesn't then it has gone beyond the boundaries or erase a sprite to make it easier for me to rip another. Hunchback 2 and a few other games makes the screen go glitchy by doing this. At worst case scenario, it can cause the game to crash. The old NESticle emulator also lets you do this but there might be a Game Boy emulator as well. I'm sure that's how people made the earliest hacks unless they used TileEd/TileLayerPro or something...
There are a few more Microids games on the way (Highway Patrol, Shufflepuck Cafe, Grand Prix 500 2, Les Aventures de Pepito au Mexique) however they are still WIP. For Shufflepuck Cafe, it is yet to be ripped.
Harricana - International Snowmobile Race
This is also one of the first games that has a pseudo widescreen effect along with Thunder Burner by the same developer. Oh and no loading screen in the traditional sense because some of the later Amstrad games (that aren't already GX4000/Plus games due to being mostly cartridges) have a different way of loading. It might be an intro, it might be a loading break like the Topo Soft logo.
Had to dropped Lee Enfield: Space Ace due to similar to Batman: The Caped Crusader. Oh that's such a common problem both on the Amstrad and more so on the Spectrum...
El Amstrad
Hundra
Lorna
At one point Spanish games were really into blonde beautiful women as the leading roles. There were a couple of fantasy artists in Spain who also helped in terms of game art, Lorna even came with a comic. Also yeah, there are a lot of THOSE poses in Lorna or more accurately Culorna...
Around 8 or so Spanish Amstrad games left to do in the backlog...
Amazing work! You're doing an incredible job!
Quote:You had wasted MY LIFE... waiting for just a goddamn bunnelby model.
-The prestigious Farlavor
Posts: 1,218
Threads: 13
Joined: May 2008
Thanks ever so much!
Have been a bit busy with more game pruning so less rips than I would like, some were so close but an issue or two put them on the back burner. Now for some Pick and Mix.
Spectrum
City Connection
The backstory of this game is fascinating. A few Portuguese (as in Portugal, not Brazil making it more rarer in terms of gaming) developers worked on this out of passion. The game was sent to magazines and even appeared on TV, the people who played it loved the game, even going as far as saying that it's better than the arcade original (err... not quite). Considering the state of arcade ports on home computers, it is a miracle that not only that it exists but it is also a quality conversion. Due to the gaming scene over there at the time it didn't get a proper release and ended up being cancelled as the programmers were unable to find a way of contacting Jaleco. This game was considered lost for 34 years outside of a savestate... snapshot of the 48k version that was recovered from an Amiga floppy. A demo tape was found that contained the full 128k version and someone hacked that version to remove its restrictions (demo text, one life only), think of those PSN/XBLA games where you download a demo but contains the full game that just needs an unlock key.
There are two versions of the game, 48k and 128k. The former isn't properly preserved but is missing content while the 128k version has all 12 levels, music, speech, more animations and various extra touches including an animated title screen. Not too often you get that treatment as it's usually just to load all the levels and add music, even then some games were so large that it couldn't do the former. To clarify, the 128k version is the one that got ripped because that's the full intended game.
Oh and you don't get to play as the blue haired Clarice in this version rather like the US/PAL NES version. Yet it cannot decide between a man (intro and death animations) or a woman (stage clear). The stage clear portraits are cancelled due to unable to find the lip/eye animations and one line from her neck.
Frontline
Commando clone but then again when this came out, you would have most likely already had Commando at home in some form. Yet the level design is open so at least there's a change and still more faithful than Duet as in Elite's attempted sequel. As mentioned on the sheets, both the player and the soldier enemy use the same graphics.
Cop-Out
Taking a small break from the Spectrum because the backlog contains something really time consuming, the only hint is Sonny Chiba was the star of a movie of a similar name.
Amstrad
Run The Gauntlet
Beach Volley
Another done the Spectrum version, do the Amstrad version. That last sprite is unused and is all that remains from it.
Manhattan 95
An early Ubisoft game that's pretty much an unlicensed take on Escape from New York (the French name for that film is New York 1997 so the English game title counterpart would be Escape from Manhattan). Yes, Ubisoft started on the Amstrad and it is an exclusive. Weirdly only CPC Power has mentioned this game and why this is forgotten, not even the likes of Wikipedia or MobyGames have documented it and you would think considering the company is still around today. Plus there was evidence that it was released with box art, screenshots, French reviews, adverts including some in English. The English version also happens to be very rare while the French release is more common, the disk version took until 2021 to be found and even then it was on Side 2.
Mange Cailloux
Ubisoft made a Pengo clone that's literally called Eat Stones, a bit strange considering at the time they were more into adventure/tennis/original ideas/releasing compilations or like now focusing on open world series e.g. Assassin's Creed, Far Cry or the yearly Just Dance. The penguin was actually ripped on August 2022 (after Alpha Jet but before Gilligan's Gold) but the "Bonhomme Bleu" (Snobees) and the blocks just needed to be sorted out. They were still sorting out after they were ripped.
Pro Tennis Simulator
"You can not be serious!" For a long time I thought the graphics were compressed, thankfully they were not (Spectrum format with the shadow mask converted to 4 colour Mode 1) but two of the columns are either black or garbage. This is actually the basis of the NES game that was included in the Quattro Sports pack including the player graphics weirdly enough (coding would be based off the C64 version). When ripping the sheet, one of the sprites was corrupted and thought what to do... Turns out that the file that I had for the past 5 years was a cracked version to remove the copy protection and the original tape release has only been dumped in January 2023. Meaning yes, I had to look at a code sheet and type the letter on the position it told me before booting up the game. Also the cracked version doctored the loading screen calling it just "Tennis Simulator" so the picture on CPC Power is also wrong (the rip on tSR is from the tape so it's correct on here). Took nearly 12 hours to do the sheet...
I don't tend to have much luck with tennis games. Match Point either has layer problems (Amstrad CPC) or split between upper body and legs with a lot more of the former with I don't know if there's some compression wedged in between (Spectrum). Even looked at the QL version (yep, tSR was going to get its first Sinclair QL rip, one of the VERY FEW games on the computer along with the scrapped Bandersnatch) where I can somewhat rip the sprites even though some poses are cut off however the format that it was ripped on wouldn't boot up on an emulator. Pro Tennis runs on a framebuffer only loading one pose at a time. Great Courts/Pro Tennis Tour/whatever Ubisoft decides to call the game is either compressed (Amstrad CPC), only shows the sprites on screen (GX4000) or only loads the required on screen sprites cleanly in a savestate while the rest of it is a jumbled mess (C64). Centre Court also got dropped due to sprite alignment issues and that the game is... crap.
The original plan was to save Fres Fighter II Turbo as a surprise but looking at the graphics viewer; the shadow masks are half missing and many of the sprites have a non-existent bitplane. A shame since it had a nice art style...
Virtual Boy
Golf / T&E Virtual Golf
A Virtual Boy rip! Just thought of ripping something inspired by this thread and this is highly likely going to be my only one. Weirdly ripping this game is like ripping a Spectrum game just by the shadow mask unlike most other VB games.
Commodore 64
Grand Prix Master
Outside of the catchy Jeroen Tel music that was reused in some other Dinamic games (I guess they did what Codemasters did for David Whittaker for the Amstrad, make a couple of songs and jingles that were reused in other games), this is a technical disaster compared to the other versions on the grounds that it only shows half a screen. Yep and there's no 2 player mode to justify this. Yet the packaging shows the game being full screen, these are most likely mockups...
Punkt Punkt Punkt
Starting getting towards the really obscure stuff... German version of Match Game/Blankety Blank and AFAIK one of the very few games, if not the only non-mobile/PC game based on the game show. The C64 was huge in Germany, even Aldi (I don't know which Aldi, there are two in Germany unlike most of the world) infamously sold them for a short time.
(I only ripped it because it had a short catchy theme tune.)
Hat Trick
A long time ago ripped the Atari 7800 version and now the C64 version, that for some reason Capcom published even though it was a Bally Sente game. It was fairly quickly despite having the rips done at (yawn...) 3AM and finished the sheet the next morning. Only the original arcade left for a proper Hat Trick.
Pole Position 2
Weirdly the player car does not use sprites! Nope. The only sprites that are loaded in the game are the road signs, the clouds, the Atari plane, the start sign, an explosion and the rival. The car is part of the background and is pretty tricky to rip. So in case you wonder why the game doesn't play very smoothly...
Cannot find any reliable sources on who did the C64 version apart from Mindscape published it. It's also an issue regarding the palette because a) unknown developer means unknown original palette, I assumed that it's NTSC as Mindscape at the time was more of an US publisher b) whether the game actually got a release outside the US to add the PAL palette (there was a pirated Italian release on tape so that's enough to justify its inclusion).
Spelunker
Milk Race / Ten Speed
The 3 main versions have been ripped now! There's only the Atari 8-bit version left since the MSX version is a Speccy port. Also this was the only version that came out in the US with some minor changes (changing the map from the UK to the USA, the name to Ten Speed, changing from 12 to 10 gears, changing the milk bottles to cola?) and from what I've gathered, the route is fictional even though it is similar to the TransAmerica Bicycle Trial. Plus the US version is broken with the music playing too fast, the title/loading screen only pops up after a Game Over, usually only allowing about 20 seconds of gameplay and goes back to either the control select or the title/loading screen but the UK original is still fairly buggy with the same issue popping up. The two "bad bugs" is the timer bug that causes a Game Over by random and the spawning of bikes and the Range Rover seems random so you'll often crash into them, even just as you got back up.
Had it not been for the bugs, this would have been the best version of the game but is also missing a song compared to the Amstrad version. Surprised that no one has converted it to the SID chip like Banzai had been doing for various David Whittaker and Tim Follin songs.
Karate Champ
It's been a quite a while since I last ripped from a fighting game that wasn't Yie Ar Kung Fu, one of the many genres that can no longer play outside of an extremely limited selection and only rip them if all the poses are there in a savestate or on the tape/disk/ROM. So much so that brought back the credit tag. Just because it is the most likely genre for stolen sheets to pop up, an issue that tSR had whether people stole them from another site or using MUGEN rips so a rip of a rip that might have issues depending on how it was done. Fighting game rips do take more effort and why any fighting game rip that someone did themselves is pleasing to see on here.
For some technical info, there are over 360 24x21 sprite pieces to go through and for an early C64 game, that's a lot just for one character. A pose is made between 4 to 6 sprites. There were a few duplicates though...
Another part of gaming history since it's considered one of the first fighting games and the first popular one, more so since this was based on the arcade Player vs Player version. This was actually one of the best selling C64 games in the US but elsewhere, it had been obsolete as Way of the Exploding Fist and International Karate were released very shortly after. These took the Karate Champ formula and expanded on it. Yie Ar Kung Fu was also popular too. Actually I'm not sure if Karate Champ was sold full price outside of the US, all I can find is the budget Americana release and in compilations so I'm guessing that US Gold who got the rights from Data East didn't have much confidence, more so that there weren't any Spectrum or Amstrad ports.
Will I rip from Way of the Exploding Fist, International Karate or IK+? Extremely unlikely (and a strong nope for the Spectrum/Amstrad versions) but you never know...
Posts: 1,218
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Joined: May 2008
Had a bit of extra time lately to get some rips done.
There's only one thing remotely Halloween (the closest is Super Cauldron however is still WIP) but we start off with an old friend, a system that I used to be known for...
Genesis
Super Spin
Still got it! A cancelled Zyrinx game (Sub-Terrania, Red Zone) but it's just a tech demo at this point mainly showing off the smooth rotation and the polygonal looking bridges. Supports both single player and split screen 2 player. Oh and two Jesper Kyd songs too, probably one of his first Mega Drive work. Raven actually isn't used in game so found something unused along with the complete debug font and some sprites that I'm not sure whether they are roadside objects or weapons... Judging by the HUD the game would have been a top down weapons based racing game with the ability to boost but only the racing is currently coded.
The HUD was ripped over a year ago, shows how significantly behind I am when it comes to the backlog...
Don't expect too much more... In the past, would have loved to do more Genesis rips however health and time means that... not possible now. Well especially since quite a lot of the unripped games are either sports, hard to rip or specialist genres. To think at one point there were plans for a Genesis Ripping Thread like the NES, SNES and Master System ones. It's mainly going to be title screens, maybe a few things here and there but nothing big.
Even in terms of title screens, the palettes have to be hacked because changing the black to pink only affects the first palette in BizHawk while sometimes... actually more often, a developer uses black with a black background on the other palette entries. Combat Cars and Ferias Frustradas do Pica-Pau (Woody Woodpecker) are two examples but there are plenty more. Come to think of it, some Amstrad CPC games also have the black background while the sprites use black in case people wonder why my rips have the background being either "pastel magenta" pink or pastel green.
Game Boy
Pro Mahjong Tsuwamono GB 2
Sometimes seeing a game on the site that's been in a recent update gives ideas to rip.
Usually I would say some obscure fact about the game except that I'm no good at all at mah-jong or any card based game (the only mah-jong related thing that I can somewhat play is mah-jong solitaire aka Shanghai but that's more of a matching game). Only thing really is that the publisher was connected to organised crime.
ATV Racing
Wanted to rip this ages ago but most GB emulators don't support the game due to using an unlicensed mapper (either doesn't detect the cart at all, tries to detect the cart and then crashes, detects the signature but crashes before the Rocket Games logo shows up or just plain crashes the emulator). I had to use hhugboy that pretty much is the GB emulator for unlicensed and bootlegged games and there's no palette viewer but... Did some research and long story short, it can be fixed to boot up in other emulators just like what I had to do for the John Madden Football prototype regarding GB headers. Then it turned out that it was black using a black background if I ripped it the usual way... sigh...
Unlike most bootlegs, these were sold in retail in the UK and some info here. Could be the Mandela effect or something but do recall HMV selling them for a short time. Had the Space Invasion game and didn't really like it.
Race Time
This one is compressed in the ROM but luckily the cars are loaded into the tile viewer.
Pocket Smash Out
Breakout clone only with anime/manga pictures and ear piercing music. The first one looks either fan art, hand drawn or a scan but the others are pretty much screen captures with varying results in terms of the conversion. Remember this was around 2000-2001 and wouldn't have been as easy as it is now for sourcing. I don't know what anime series or film they are from... Thought that there were from Ninja Scroll or Kenshin considering the era and the feudal appearance but don't look like it to me... When this came out, anime/manga was pretty niche outside of the likes of Pokémon and even something like Dragon Ball Z took off in the early 2000s especially in the UK (Ghost in the Shell and Akira were sort of well known). Nowadays, a completely different story...
Oh and this was sold in retail, sometimes bundled with Race Time. Very lucky that this was under the radar otherwise the anime producers would have sued Rocket Games ASAP.
The 9th picture (the redheaded samurai) kept palette glitching in game, one time there was a white square and another a glitch so it shows that this was an amateur developed game.
As for the other Rocket Games... Can't get very far in Karate Joe. Full Time is a hack of Sensible Soccer (the give away is that the title screen is still in the ROM) while Hang Time is a hack of Tip Off (again the title screen is still there and ironically plenty of "licensed by Nintendo" graphics), both of these were enhanced to color and changed the music. Also Full Time and Hang Time were "developed" by the same people as Race Time that does wonder whether Race Time comes from a different source. It's weird that one is compressed but Full Time and Hang Time aren't. Not doing Painter or Space Invasion.
Amstrad
Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters
Gabrielle
Another early Ubisoft game. As the notes on the sheet say, this game suffers from colour clashing and can show garbage as a death animation but also suffers from broken sprites.
Darkman
Closest thing to a Halloween rip... I really can't get very far at this game at all and is the case of all the Darkman sprites are loaded in the graphics viewer.
Shufflepuck Cafe
A looooooong time ago, I was going to rip the Sharp X68000 version of this game but somehow never made a sheet or any progress. Forgot about it until discovering that there was an Amstrad version of this game.
Sadly this game suffers from compression meaning that the paddles, some parts of the portraits and the background cannot be ripped. Like Princess Bejin is only missing her hair but Skip Fenney only shows his face on the graphics viewer. I also tried CPCEC, another copy of the game and it's the same...
Renegade 3: The Final Chapter
Final Imagine published game, final game in the Renegade series (Kunio-kun lives though) and also one of my final beat 'em up rips... Ended in a whimper is all that I can say...
(It was planned to be one of my final rips in general but progress was a bit easier to finish than others in the backlog, mainly due to that all the enemies are stored in memory on a 6128 model.)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Surprised that I ripped this so quickly... Then again the game is more or less 3 rounds with the T-1000, two avoid the obstacles stages (that uses a frame buffer for some of the sprites) and two bonus mini games. As the saying goes, good graphics don't always make a good game. Mainly because there's not much game. Also have you noticed that the Terminator doesn't look like Arnie? I don't think Ocean was able to get the rights to his likeness for the Spectrum/Amstrad versions hence the T-800 that was in the other versions becomes the T-101.
Airborne Ranger
A classic on the C64, forgotten on the Amstrad. One of those where the player and the enemy use the same sprites. More common than you think.
Strider 2
Strider now with a transforming mech! From what I've read this started off being an original game on the Atari ST but the higher ups at US Gold wanted the game to be like Strider as it had placeholder graphics, programmer got frustrated, US Gold approved it as a Strider sequel and the programmer left Tiertex. Besides US Gold were known for arcade ports and licenses so the original game would have been altered to tie in with something anyway. At least the Amstrad version looks much better than the Strider port. Oh and there's a lost GX4000 version but probably would have been more or less the same.
As for the main character himself, it's not Hiryu or Hinjo (used in the Genesis game). The packaging mostly describes him as "the warrior" outside of one reference where he is just called Strider. Oh and thank goodness for level select cheats and the graphics loaded into memory.
Army Moves
One of the mysteries of life is why some difficult games are easy to rip while easier games are much difficult to rip? Another mystery is that the idea of playing as a jeep and a helicopter was later used in Silkworm but I highly doubt that Tecmo were even aware of Spanish developed games for them to get the idea.
Rick Dangerous
Ditto...
Rick Dangerous 2
Ditto... Not doing any more from this game... The icon is as far as I can go...
Ice Breaker
Imagine RoadBlasters as a top down game but in a bobsleigh and the Spanish level of difficulty.
WIP wise; there's some Spanish and French Amstrad games left to do, still no progress done on Burnin' Rubber, Operation Wolf and Thunderbolt. Westphaser has a bit more done. There's also some late commercial era Amstrad games that I'm saving for later. Getting closer to the sunset now...
Slowly getting Daley Thompson's Super Test ripped. I only have the penalties and tug of war left to do. The rest are ripped however they are incomplete (the cycling doesn't have the background due to not showing up on the graphics viewer, the diving is missing a sprite, the ski jump is missing the snow ball sprites). All I can say is thank goodness there's a level select cheat in this game unlike Hyper Sports.
Doomsday Blues is scrapped due to unable to get out of the cell door even when following a guide. Did however discover an Amstrad game that I can rip, one that was so influential that a YouTuber got his name from this game. Playing it you can say that it is like Shadow of the Beast if it was made on the CPC, at least the first level. About 3/4 done of the player as of writing.
C64
I was thinking of doing The Simpsons as a surprise and had already exported most of the sprites of Homer and Marge however someone had nicely ripped from that game. It would have been a struggle anyway... Did have plans to re-rip arcade Homer as a bookend but my declining skills, alas it wasn't meant to be.
Moto X Simulator
The return of the Dark Souls of racing. Seem to have a habit of ripping the same games on different platforms.
Also the game name on the C64 version is confusing. It says Moto X on the cover, Moto X Simulator on the loading screen/manual, Motocross on the title screen/tape and each place calls it a different name. Archive for X, Mobygames for X Simulator, Motocross for the Italian Ready64, scene groups and the audio SID file. Lemon64 also can't decide between Moto X Simulator or Motocross... Doesn't help that there was an earlier game called Motocross on the C64 by a different company. At least the original Spectrum and Amstrad versions just call it Motocross Simulator throughout the game but even then the packaging is just as confusing.
Knuckle Busters
Annoying beat 'em up that takes around 16-20 hits to kill an enemy that then respawns straight after and the maze level design without a map yet... has a great soundtrack with a 16 minute+ song. Seems to be inspired by the arcade game Knuckle Joe and the prototype version has the main character looking more closer rather than the American football player look of the final. It was one that I wanted to do with the older set up but the game didn't load, VICE is a lot more compatible in terms of emulation.
While the sprites were loaded onto a savestate, getting the palettes meant playing through the game... Original tape? Not very far, only Deke and the first enemy. A trainer version with 3 cheats? A bit further with the alt palettes of the first enemy and just the second one, stuck because of getting the keys. A "hacked" version by HackerSoft offering 25 cheats making the game sort of a debug mode? Got the last enemy and managed to "complete" the game.
Knuckle Buster (Prototype)
Thought might as well rip the prototype version with completely different graphics.
Subway Vigilante
More like Underground Renegade... Partially ripped during a power cut.
Dick Tracy
Infamously released unfinished. Disney was going to publish it but it got cancelled along with the Apple II version that's still missing when they realised that the movie wasn't doing as well as they hoped. As a guess, I'll say around 70% in terms of the art with touch ups needed but probably just over 60% complete overall (the levels are there but obviously missing content, no bosses in this game and apparently the game was meant to scroll). Since the Amiga version was "finished", Titus picked up the rights and converted the game to systems that were popular in Europe such as the Atari ST, Spectrum, Amstrad, even the GX4000 got a version. All Titus had done for the C64 version was to add a soundtrack, a splash screen and put it on tape* since it would have been disk only in the US but then again outside of a couple of games, the C64 version of their games were the lowest on the food chain for them. This was the same company that did a sprite hack of Crazy Cars 1 and released it as Crazy Cars 2 while the other systems got a different game.
* - Funnily enough there is a bug on the tape version where if you get a Game Over and by choosing either No on a continue or losing all your lives, it loads the rest of the tape. Eventually it loads what was done for the ending and tries to access the disk drive if one is connected.
Since it's unfinished, it means that there are unused sprites because the moves and the enemies weren't programmed. Unlike other rips that are out there of these sprites, it's not from a .jpg and are freshly ripped from a VICE snapshot using SpritePad. Oh and since it was originally developed in the US, the default is NTSC palette rather than the expected PAL palette.
Match Day
aka Daley's Thompson's Football at least on the C64. Also one buggy game (teleporting players, players who aren't suppose to be outside the goal area show up, players in between the goal posts, yellow ball that breaks up in half).
At least International Karate is out of the window as a snapshot only loads what is on screen... I think the only ways to rip this game are either really know the game inside out making a massive amount of snapshots or to make a C64 graphics tool that can view from tape/disk images (both C64 ripper and SpritePad only do savestates).
I'll say now that there's more C64 games on the way. Kung-Fu Master, both Rally Cross games, hopefully Out Run some point in November, hopefully Track & Field and the two Yie Ar Kung Fu games at least in terms of Oolong/Lee Young.
I love what stuff you decide to rip. Amazing work as usual!
Quote:You had wasted MY LIFE... waiting for just a goddamn bunnelby model.
-The prestigious Farlavor
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