Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC is a home computer originally released by Amstrad in the UK in 1984. It competed against the Commodore 64, the BBC Micro, and the ZX Spectrum. The Amstrad CPC successfully established itself primarily in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and the German-speaking parts of Europe.

Six different models were released, ranging from the 464 model with 64 KB RAM and a built-in tape deck and the 6128 model with 128 KB RAM and a built in floppy disk drive, to the Plus models, which also had a cartridge slot to make it compatible with Amstrad GX4000 games.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) A huge library of games, consisting of over 2,000 titles.
 * 2) Many adventure games.
 * 3) Depending on the model, the computer came with either an intergrated cassette recorder (464 model) or a built-in floppy drive (664 or 6128 models), unlike its competitors, which required buying those separately.
 * 4) In addition to either the tape deck or floppy drive, the early Amstrad CPC models also came with a monitor (either in green monochrome or color), when most of the competing computers had to be connected to the TV.
 * 5) There were lots of various peripherals released for the Amstrad CPC, ranging from floppy disk drives and memory expansion modules to hard drives and even modems to connect to the internet.
 * 6) The keyboard is really comfortable to use with a reasonable layout, especially on the 664 and 6128 models.
 * 7) Most Amstrad CPC games have incredibly colorful and detailed graphics.
 * 8) Software ranges from programming language implementations, databases, word processors and spreadsheets to drawing tools and even 3D modelling.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Since the Amstrad CPC shared the same Z80 processor as the ZX Spectrum, some games were just straight ports of Spectrum games with less colors and slower gameplay, and also suffered from attribute clash.
 * 2) As the Amstrad CPC had so many screen modes, most people found it difficult to program games on it compared to the Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum.
 * 3) Somewhat primitive sound quality, although not as bad as the ZX Spectrum.

Trivia

 * The Amstrad CPC was originally going to have a 6502 CPU, like the Commodore 64, but the people who worked on BASIC Locomotive were more experienced with Z80 code, and so the Z80 CPU was ultimately chosen.

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