I wish you all a happy new year 2024, health and success, for you and those who count in your heart (other also). And of course a lot of new Amstrad CPC programs, new hardware expansions and why not a CPCNext like the Zx Spectrum Next or a CPC-X64 which we are lacking news since a moment.

Personnally I am for a CPCNext which would incorporate all hardware expansions which exists already with an HDMI output for a simple reason, our Amstrad CPC won't last forest. Giving them a new corporal enveloppe will ensure a longer life (well till our own end at least :-). And no need to extract components from existing CPC, there are already replacements for the gate array and the AY-3-8912 sound chip, other will come certainly later.

Recommended by Stefan Vogt, The Ruin of Oceanus Pr1me by Marco Innocenti is a science-fiction text adventure for Amstrad CPC, PCW and many other computers.

While reading Scali's blog, I saw this demo by the finnish group Alumni written by Terwiz : Three shades of Grey (local download) which is using the Hercules video mode which isnt often used (see video below using an Amstrad PC 1640). I invite you to see their other productions including Wild Scene which is an humorous video. I don't know but I feel I like this person, but why ?

Tube Time has done many things, you can follow him on Twitter or Mastodon, and his github is a gold mine, notably :

• EGAMemory his last project : a 192 Kb of RAM for a 64 Kb EGA card so you can get EGA high resolution (for a PC 1640 you needed the ECD monitor, the CD monitor was only low EGA resolution, whereas the MD monitor was only MDA and Hercules)
• Quapple, a clone of the Quadlink card sold in the past to run Apple 2 programs in your PC with an ISA card (see this video on Youtube testing the card)
• The Graphics Gremlin : an ISA retro video card using a FGPA which supports MDA and CGA with a VGA output and the original video port
• The Snark Barker : a clone of the Sound Blaster 1.0 (with CMS support)
• Orchid Tiny Turbo 286 Accelerator Card : a clone of the original card transforming your PC XT in a PC AT with a 80286. This isn't the only card who existed. There is also the Microsoft Mach 20 Performance Enhancement System (1988) or the card by Intel (first link and second link) which adds a 80386. The first page on Dos Days mentions other accelerators)

Recommended by Stefan Vogt, A1RL0CK by Marco Innocenti is a science-fiction text adventure for Amstrad CPC, PCW and many other computers. You have to play it before The Ruin of Ocenaus Pr1me which I wrote about 4 days ago.

A video by Duke the author of the wifi M4 board for Amstrad CPC of an upgraded version of the ANSI Telnet client for M4 Board by Fergus Leen.

Retro Erick presents in video the FreeSP utility by ChartreuseK (link to github or local download) which is useful to accelerate disk reading (with the DIR command) under FAT16 with msdos 4.0 and more. It's not useful with a FAT12 disk and/or msdos 3.x as DIR then doesnt calculate free space and msdos 3 keeps more informations in memory). But with FAT16 disks the DIR commandand (msdos or 4dos) is slowly calculating the free space, so the two following utilities will do the trick :

• freesp (not TSR : Terminate and Stay Resident) : put the command freesp c: (drive A to Z) in your autoexec.bat and forget it (one disk only)
• freespt (TSR) : it intercepts msdos interruptions msdos 21h/36h and can manage up to 18 disks, put the command freesp cdef in your autoexec.bat to manage drives C, D E and F (in my case the C: disk by the PicoMem and my ZIP drive as D:)

ACE v1.26 by Offset is available. It is available in french, english, german and spanish (thanks to the translators).

Prospector is a ZX Spectrum game by AMCGames using the AGDx engine. It has been ported on Amstrad CPC by Ayor61. It's a platform game with 30 levels where you have to save a team who went into a mine, but its local inhabitants are maybe not so peaceful... Video below by Xenomorph.

Disk Image Manager v2.8.0 by Damien Guard is an application for examining and manipulating disk images in the Standard and Extended DSK format used by many ZX Spectrum, Amstrad PCW and CPC emulators.

The last version of multi platform assembler for Amstrad CPC RASM (v2.1.6) was released two weeks ago on Github.

This multi platform assembler for Amstrad CPC (for linux, windows, and also for MorphOS on Amiga) let you program for Amstrad CPC. It's recommended to use it with the new emulator also by Roudoudou : ACE-DL released today, to get symbols and breakpoints importation and much more.

Prevtenet is the author of Zym an interpret of Infocom adventure games using the Z-machine for SymbOS. He has converted public domaine books (including the bible in different languages) to the .HLP format of SymbOS.

The PicoMEM 8bit ISA card by FreddyV has now its own Github with firmware updates, documentation and drivers. The last two features added are mouse support (put it on an alimented USB hub, not directly) and network.

Mananuk (on Twitter) has released the next episode of the Mandarin : the Mandarin 2.

Playing to Wolfenstein 3D on a PC XT in CGA was your dream, James Howard did it. Several video modes are available :

• 4 colour RGB mode with red palette (default mode)
• 4 colour RGB mode with magenta palette (start WOLF3DC.EXE classic)
• Composite CGA mode (start WOLF3DC.EXE composite)
• Tandy 160x200 mode (start WOLF3DC.EXE tandy)
• LCD inverse monochrome mode (start WOLF3DC.EXE lcd)

James also wrote a web navigator : MicroWeb for Intel 8088 or compatible CPU, CGA, EGA, VGA or Hercules compatible graphics card, network interface (it is possible to use your machine's serial port with the EtherSLIP driver), mouse is desirable but not 100% required, 640k RAM is desirable. EMS/XMS are not required.

• Wolfenstein 3D CGA in vidéo by Al's Geek Lab
• MicroWeb in vidéo by Al's Geek Lab

As announced on Twitter by Cepeceros Podcast, thanks to Syx you can download a version of Nebulus where you can choose your level instead of playing linearly.

Also the remake Toppler has changed its web address and is now version 1.3.

And to finish, two music remix of Nebulus :

• by shrekmeuse
• by Alpisofr (see below)

Robocop is an action game on Amstrad CPC by Ocean Software in 1989.

On OursoN Retrogames's youtube channel, Kukulcan is showing a speedrun in 15 minutes on Robocop.