Because I’ve been asked to contribute a technical comparison of the two machines for a book (speaking of which, I really should get the final touches done to that over the weekend), this week I’ve been playing quite a large selection of games for both the C64 and Amstrad CPC. All well and good, except that for some bizarre reason the title that has grabbed the majority of my attention isn’t something decent on both machines like Mission Genocide or even on just the one…

On the C64, Radius is an almost archetypal budget label scrolling shoot ‘em up; it doesn’t recycle the eight sprites at all and has some three colour scrolling trundling past in the background, all the graphics are okay but could have been better (considering one of the graphics people involved was Rob Whittaker, they’re actually on the disappointing side) and the budget didn’t quite stretch to commissioning a decent soundtrack so there’s just spot effects and the classic “hum” on the titles page. But despite not standing out from the crowd in any particular aspect and having been geared very squarely on the unforgiving side of the difficulty fence (memorising the enemy waves is an absolute must and there are some extremely cheap deaths hidden in the waves) it isn’t really a bad game as such, just rather nondescript.

And on the cosmetic level at least, Jason Falcus’s Amstrad CPC conversion of Radius looks fairly similar – the sprites are a little smaller than the C64 versions, granted, but the backgrounds are there and AY equivalents of the SID sound effects are pretty much present and correct… but then it starts to scroll and words like “jerky”, “shuddering” or even “argh, my eyes they burn make it stop” (perhaps just screaming would save time) honestly aren’t going to do this thing even the slightest amount of justice. It’s almost as though the C64 game is being emulated on the Amstrad and the result works at around one fifth of the regular speed – it’s slowed down to around the point where more attuned gamers can probably count the frames off as they’re updated. Yes, I know that horizontal scrolling isn’t exactly something the CPC is famed for of course, but even considering that the bloody thing is utterly dire… so my still playing the damned thing is probably conclusive proof that I’m a bloody masochist.