VIVE LA CPC!
David Crookes looks back at the huge CPC scene that flourished in France.
David Crookes takes us on a journey across the channel and looks back at the huge ‘French’ CPC scene.
In the UK, owners of the Amstrad CPC could feel a little hard done by. Friends with Spectrums and Commodore 64s would spend most of their time lobbing stones at each other in the playground. But then they would unite against the humble voice who spoke about the merits of Alan Sugar’s machines.
We’d daydream of a world in which the CPC was dominating; of a land filled to the brim with fun coloured keyboards and monitors that matched. We’d yearn for dozens of exclusives rather than put up with the ports. If only we’d all known what was happening across the English Channel.
In France, the CPC dominated the home computer scene and, as late as 1990, more than 50% of all the games sold in France were for the Amstrad 8-bit range. The country had its own division — Amstrad France headed up by Marion Vannier — and within two years, more than 200,000 CPCs were nestled nicely in French homes.
“We created a French keyboard and a Frenchlanguage manual which was almost unheard of in any computer at the time,” says Roland Perry, Amstrad’s then group technology consultant, by way of explaining part of the reason for the success. “Having a French distributor and a good marketing campaign helped the CPC to become popular.”
Amstrad France marketed the CPC well. Its strategy revolved around a cuddly crocodile used in all adverts for the CPC in France, creating a brand awareness that sent sales through the roof.
Unfortunately, Sugar believed it was also negatively impacting the rollout of the PCW 8256, so he pressured Vanier to drop the mascot in 1985. Even so, the mascot continued and went on to promote the GX4000 console in 1990. By that point, however, Amstrad had been firmly established in France.
The CPC 6128 was the model of choice for the French.
Now, we said our daydreams would be filled with coloured keyboards, but, in reality, it wasn’t quite like that. It seemed the French preferred the convenience of floppy disks over cassettes, which meant the 6128 was far more popular than the 464, accounting for around 80% of sales.
Consequently, it led to a larger number of disc-only games being released in France, but the higher capacity and faster loading times ensured gems including the Ubisoft epic adventure Iron Lord benefitted well from the 3-inch floppy medium. What’s more, it also ensured that a reasonable number of games created in France would make use of the extra 64k of the 6128 — safe in the knowledge that they’d only be cutting out a relatively small number of CPC users (unless they were intent on selling in the UK, in which case, they wouldn’t fare as well).
For example, Freedom, published by Coktel Vision, was able to fill 128K with a bold adventure mixed with strategy, courtesy of Muriel Tramis. Meanwhile, Ubisoft’s B.A.T. became a disk-only, 128K masterpiece — an ambitious adventure by Herve Lange from 1991 that also boasted some of the best graphics to ever grace the CPC.
Those splendid visuals showcased another French trait that was definitely not unique to B.A.T. For if there was one thing that French developers were renowned for, it was putting on the style whenever they could. Exxos’ Purple Saturn Day, published by
Infogrames, sent jaws dropping to the ground with its four space games that showcased the immense skill of the French coders and their ambition in pushing the boundaries of the CPC.
Then there was Titus which would code its games on a CPC first and convert them to other machines later, pulling rabbits out of a hat with the likes of Knight Force. Released in 1989, this game used an overscan technique that filled every part of the monitor as it stretched across the border, and the detailed graphics were a treat.
So why did the CPC dominate? Well one explanation is that there was a lack of serious competition, and this lasted for a few years. Sure, the Thomson MO5 home computer had been released in France in 1984 and sold well, but its lack of traction outside of the country meant it wasn’t as well served by software. Likewise, Sinclair and
Commodore failed to make great in-roads in France and that’s due to a lack of organisation and Amstrad getting in there early. Amstrad backed its machine with its own label, Amsoft and it also sought developers to work on the creation of new games.
Those emerging French software houses worked hard for the CPC. Many of them cut their teeth on the Amstrad. The Amstrad exclusive Fer Et Flamme was designed by Lange and became Ubisoft’s breakthrough game in 1986. Loriciel made such a big splash on the CPC that the computer accounted for 40% of its sales in 1992.
Certainly, having homegrown software worked a treat for the CPC’s fortunes in France and, as in Britain, computers shops began to spring up across the country. In 1986, one computer shop owner in Paris said he was selling 200 programs each day for the CPC. People were meeting in these stores, discussing techniques and coming up with great games.
“From a programming perspective, the CPC was a very interesting machine,” says acclaimed coder Vincent Baillet, who worked on Moon Blaster and Turbo Cup among others. “It was simple, clean and had lots of ways of using the hardware differently. I had a lot of fun programming it.
Many of the French games made their way to the UK. French titles were also present on the GX4000 console including Crazy Cars II and Copter 271.
But there were some titles that didn’t journey across the Channel, particularly in the earlier years. Games such as Le Diamant de l’Île Maudite and Coktel Vision’s La Malediction De Thaar spring to mind and the exclusives extended to hardware too.
The Loriciel West Phaser, a lightgun that looked like a revolver, was only available to import
into the UK — it was never officially released here. What marked it out from other lightguns was the user’s ability to code their own games for it.
It was interesting developments such as this which no doubt had French gamers yearning for each copy of the country’s most successful Amstrad magazine, Amstrad Cent Pour Cent. This publication debuted in February 1988 and lasted five years, selling more than 50,000 copies each month at its height.
What helped sales of the mag and software was that CPC owners in France had little trouble getting hold of games. The shelves were always well-stocked throughout the 1980s and early 1990s and, while the country didn’t have much of a budget market, making games more expensive in France, stores would go big on in-store duplication. To that end, software remained available on the high street even when the popularity of the CPC waned.
So what of today? Well, for many
CPC owners, France remains a territory ripe for exploring, serving up a host of retro games that you may never have come across when you were playing on the machine the first time around. A competitive streak among coders also led to a flourishing demo scene and you can still see the results of their work by hunting down ROMs online.
In fact, France has long offered users a golden opportunity to see how far the CPC can be pushed, particularly with the legendary efforts of the demo group The Logon System which made use of many dazzling hardware effects in their work (check out The Demo).
French coders certainly made their mark and their work has to be celebrated. Vive la révolution, as they say.