Back in 1993 I was treated to a computer for my birthday. As you know, many years ago technology wasn't as powerful as it is now with Windows and tablets. Although I know tablet PCs existed in the early 2000s. The computer I had was an Amstrad CPC 464. I won't go into much detail what the CPC 464 is since you can look it up via Google and the CPC Wiki but it had 64k of RAM and was more powerful than the ZX Spectrum 48k model and on par with the Commodore 64 but the Amstrad had better graphic capability.
I remember visiting a cottage outside a local village as they were selling one in the local paper for £100. That was a lot of money in 1993. I think it was on a quite cold Saturday afternoon (I was born in January). When we got there the keyboard and monitor was set up and one of the games they let me test was Robocop. It was a good machine and since I was happy with it they let me have it for my birthday. It came with two joysticks and a selection of games. All the games were on cassette. When we got home to unpack everything there were about 30 games. This included a couple of education games like Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and Timeman One. As well as some software packages including Mini Office and Home Budget. We didn't really use the software programs as it didn't come with a printer but the games had some fun moments.
One of the first games we loaded up was Chuckie Egg and we immediately fell in love with it. I know many people say Manic Miner is a cult classic but Chuckie Egg blows that game out of the water. Simply because.
1) Chuckie Egg only takes about 3/4 minutes to load.
2) Manic Miner is an ultra hard game. Youngsters might be put off with the difficulty.
3) Manic Miner is a single player game. Chuckie Egg is playable up to 4 players.
4) Chuckie Egg had a brilliant tune if you lose a life. Manic Miner had a blip noise.
If you want to see how Chuckie Egg is played check out the clip below. I do recommend having a go via an emulator.
We were quite good on Chuckie Egg. We always had competitions between us as I would reach level 11 before losing all my lives. My dad was quite good in Chuckie Egg but I had the winning edge over him. I did have Chuckie Egg 2 for a Christmas present some time later but it didn't have the charm of the first game.
Another game we also liked tackling that came with the computer was Fantasy World Dizzy. This game was very memorable but embarrassing as we actually got stuck in the first room for hours. We used to load the game, try out the first puzzle and give up since we didn't know what to do. Silly it might sound but it wasn't that hard. You are placed in a dungeon with a troll blocking the exit with an open fire at the other end of the dungeon. You are holding a loaf of bread, an apple and a jug of water. Have a guess what you needed to do to escape the room? Actually we never thought of bribing the troll with the apple as it turned out he revealed how to escape the dungeon. I couldn't believe we were so thick not knowing how we got out of that dungeon.
When we did get out and continued through the castle my dad coined a phrase "as you know there is always a way". He would always say that when we would work on the Dizzy games. Since we liked Fantasy World Dizzy so much we managed to track down the rest of the series. All thanks to the Future Zone video game shop (which changed to Electronics Boutique, which then got bought out by GAME). I always got that phrase tattooed in my brain when I'm trying to solve a puzzle or brainteaser.
One thing my dad was, he was a strong guy. So when my parents bought a few more games later in 1993 one of them was the infamous Daley Thompson's SuperTest. I remember the cycling event you had to waggle the joystick like mad so the bicycle would pedal faster. I was so useless at that event he would do the waggling for me. He might be strong person but it definitely took a lot of his upper body strength just to beat the 45 second qualifying time.
He was also into his quizzes, more on that in another blog entry. Sometime in 1993 or 1994 (not sure which year) he bought me a game called Arcade Trivia Quiz. We were literally addicted to that game. It was based on a fictional pub quiz machine that would reward you with fake cash if you got answers right. You start with 80p and it would cost you 20p per wrong answer, whilst working up a pyramid of questions.
Sometimes we would play as one player and work together but other times we would play against each other. I would be the old guy with the glasses, whilst he would be the Wayne Rooney lookalike. Unlike Chuckie Egg he would thrash me by reaching further into the game. After each round you would have to option to collect your winnings or progress into the next round. We never took the money and would progress the next round. Basically we would keep playing until we lose all our available money. When we played as a duo we would reach round 5 before going bankrupt. In 2001 I bought myself a Speccy 1999 CD which included emulators and hundreds of games for the ZX Spectrum. One of the games was the very one we first played in 1993. Unlike years ago we would crash out in round 5. We actually made an incredible blitz and reached the dizzy heights of round 50. Due to time we had to stop but I'm sure I saved a screen grab showing round 50 and saved our progress. Just a matter of tracking it down. As with Chuckie Egg, I would recommend playing this game via an emulator, especially if you want to test your general knowledge pre 1990. To see how it works, check out the clip below. The ZX Spectrum version is exactly the same A little fact, this game had terrible spelling for the questions/answers.
Another quiz game we had was Pub Trivia. Unlike Arcade Trivia Quiz, this was a game with zero margin of error. Get a single question wrong and it would signal the end of the game. Obviously, we didn't fare as well with this since it didn't give you any second chances.
There are other things I can blog about the time we played on the Amstrad CPC 464 but I'll leave that for another time.
