I did and it was my first computer and i havent looked back since.
here is a screenshot of the start screen (notice it was made in 1984!!! thats the year i was born)
http://www.geocities.com/alspics2001/screen3.txt
As many of you know the most popular games on the Spectrum computers were the dizzy games, well its the same for the Amstrad too
here is a screenshot of dizzy in action.
http://www.geocities.com/alspics2001/dizinaction.txt
I was feeling a little nostalgic
(i realise that many of you may not have even heard of the amstrad cpc computer as it was made in britain and popular only in europe and australia not nearly as popular as the spectrum,commadore,atari st or amiga computers)
The first computer I had was a Commodore 64 with tapestation. I got it around 1987. For some reason we sold it again.
Then we had a (Schneider?) Amstrad CPC 464 computer around 1988 ... it had only 32 kb ram where as the C64 had 64 kb. Shen, the Amstrad CPC 464 did have colors, however then one I had came with a green monitor meaning all colors where shown as a green shade (cheaper than a color monitor). There where a few fun games but it was not as good as the C64 I thought. We only had the Amstrad CPC 464 a short while until we swapped it with a Commodore Amiga 500 Plus. That had 512 kb ram (the plus version had a 256 kb ram extension as the original Amiga 500 came with 256 kb ram, later on the Amiga 500 came with 512 kb ram as standard).
The Commodore Amiga computers where a technical innovation over the C64 and Amstrad and Ive had hours and hours of fun with my Amigas.
look at the top screen again cyber maze they have 64k
i think schneider was the name of the german version.
i didnt notice at the time but amstrads were really slow at games.
all sprites were software based + software scrolling + higher resolution than other 8bit computers + the same processor as the original gameboy = SLOW.
Ah, yes of course ... well its been awhile ... I only revisit the Amstrad CPC when I from time to time use a PC emulator ...
It has 64 kb ram ... however I believe only about half was available for games (maybe thats what confused me???) ... the Amstrad came with a tapestation build into the keyboard ... so thats where you had the games ... and it was really slow to load games too ... much slower than the C64. Also, the Amstrad had a buildin "pc-speaker" that played the "sound" that came out of the data the tapestation loaded (read high pitched noise).
My alltime favorites were:
1. Chickin Chase: A game where you were a rooster in a ... hmm ... "chicken yard" ... dont know the word excactly in english. In each side (left/right) were 2 doorways in the wall that made the yard. Also there were 2 sacks of wheat ... one in each site. In the middle was the "house" where the hen lived (seemed like one hen). In the beginning of the level (or when lost a live) you went into the house (a door with a heart really) and did ... "your thing" ... you know ... rooster and hen ... accompaniged by a tune. Then you went out again (this was done automaticlly). After 10 seconds then hen would come out, go up one of the ladders (one each side) and lay the egg in one of the nests (2 shelfs with 4 or 5 nests, dont remember). Now you had to protect the egg from all kinds of animals ... snakes, mice, hedgehogs and weasels come into mind. You did that by picking the animals with your beak. After a while the egg would hatch, and a chicken would come out. The chicken could not be attacked by the animals. The chicken would go down ... ring the doorbell and go into the hen. Now, if all eggs were gone (eaten or hatched) you lost a life (the hen would hit you with a big branch), so you had to visit the hen from time to time to do your "thing" leaving the eggs on the shelf volunable. You could do your "thing" more than once in a row ... how the more times the more exhausted the rooster would be when coming out (slow moving) ... wheat and worms sticking up from the ground made the rooster fast again.
2. A platform/shoot em up: Dont remember the name, but it was a sidescroller type of game where you were a soldier on missions. You had different weapons and had to take out the enemies you met. Great game really ... and hard.
3. Goldrush: Dont know excactly if that was the name. But you ran about in mines collecting gold. You were chased by bandits with pickaxes or something so you had to avoid them. Also you had to avoid mining carts. Really a great game too.
I remember doing type ins into the Amstrad basic!
My dad saved loads to tape although most were rubbish graphic demos or really slow games.
I did a few although none worked because i was about 4 at the time.
I remember there was a text adventure game that i thought was going to be really good in one of our type in books. It was about 20 pages of code and i wanted to type it myself but never got around to it. Mabye it was a little too much for a 4 year old. Anyway the amstrad had no way of checking the code so it either worked when running or it didnt.
i think the Amiga is one of the greatest machines of all time... my mate still has a tape C64 which is in real good condition, all the games work still!
Alas our Spectrum ZX81 was recently disposed of... bugger huh
old machines are so good in so many years they'll be worth a fortune to collectors
Ahhh Amigas. I remember the hours I spent trying to work AMOS out, and never did. But I also had hours of fun making gory animations in Deluxe Paint.
My first computer was a C64, I still got it somewhere, the original brown model, not the newer white one they brought out. I wish we could go back to the days when manufacturers though colours like brown suited home computers. I'd make shitty little games in BASIC, and all my mates would be amazed at the little blocky guy running round the screen.
Then I moved onto the Amiga 500, and I got into all the cool shit with DPaint, and not so cool shit with AMOS. A few months later I upgraded to a Amiga 1200. It was amazing, it had a hard drive and everything. AGA graphics were amazing at the time.
The Commodore Amiga innovated the home computers during mid 80's to early 90's (Id say around 1985 to 1992 to be precise) ... it was very sad that Commodore went broke ...
After my C64 and Amstrad (none of which I have anymore) I got an Amiga 500 plus ... it died ... then I got an Amiga 600 ... around 1995 I sold it (to my regret today) ... it had 2 boot roms you could choose from with a switch ... version 1.3 (so it worked like an A500) and 2.04 (so it worked as an A600) ... a few years ago I bought an A1200 with 4mb ram and a 200 mb HD ... I still use it from time to time plus I often use the Amiga emulator for Pc called "WinUAE" to play Amiga games on my Pc ...
When I had my A600 I bought Deluxe Paint IV ... I think it costed me around £110 or $190 back in 1992. But it was very cool ... I made some pretty crappy animations allthough I still had fun with it ... one animation was about a race with some crazy cars and a wild professor like character who won the race
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Although it's not nearly as advanced as that. No colour, for example 
