BUILDING AMSOFT’S CATALOGUE
AMSTRAD DESPERATELY NEEDED GAMES AND HELPED OUT DEVELOPERS
Before Amstrad launched the CPC 464, it knew the computer would live or die on the strength of its software catalogue. To build a catalogue of 50 titles, its software division Amsoft asked for 50 prototypes to be created and sent to developers.
“We were tasked with making 50 hand-built pre-production prototypes which were distributed to people writing software,” recalls Roland Perry, who had just three months getting from concept to first working prototype. “Eventually, with a bit of cannibalism, we probably shipped 46 or 47 of them.”
Grey in colour, these machines didn’t carry the CPC branding. A label stated it was an Amstrad 64k micro computer and the software developers were handed a freestanding 5V power supply and an Amstrad 14-inch colour television with the tuner disconnected and a socket on the back to turn it into a clone of an Acorn monitor.
“Outside, it was indistinguishable from what became the 464 other than the inclusion of the 5V power and Acorn-compatible video connector,” Roland says. “The motherboard was also 99% the same as the final production units.” The prototypes came with a technical manual. “It was 500 pages and virtually unheard of at the time,” Roland continues.
Gill Lambert, Amstrad’s marketing services executive, was given the job of distributing both the machines and the firmware manuals. “I got to drive Roland’s Astra GTE,” she tells us. But what’s this? Indescomp founder
José Luis Domínguez has gone on record describing his CPC prototype as “hellishlooking” – a computer prone to overheating with a basic screen and lots of cables protruding from it. It doesn’t sound like one of the grey prototypes Roland describes and even Roland is perplexed.
What’s more, former Amstrad Computer User editor Simon Rockman, who still possesses one of the grey prototypes to which Roland refers, tells us, “I know what José Luis is talking about and it’s a lot earlier than the one I have.” As such, it’s proving to be a bit of a mystery. All we know for certain was that Roland In The Caves and Roland On The Ropes were developed on a prototype given to Indescomp.
There’s also confusion over which prototype was used to write Roland In
Time and Roland In Space. Gem Software’s John Line recalls developing them on a CPC 664 prototype. “It was a ‘hacked about’”
464 case with the three-inch disc drive replacing the tape drive, a bit like what José Luis describes. “The screen seemed like a production one; it was just the computer’s case which was a bit Heath Robinson.”
Roland says he’s unsure there was a 664 prototype, however. “Perhaps this is a 464 plus a pre-production DDI-1 which of course would have had an advantage over the 664 of being able to develop the software on the floppy and save it to tape.”