Amstrad GX4000 System Review | Nostalgia Nerd
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- The Amstrad GX-4000 was Alan Sugar's attempt to enter the game console market during the early 90s. It bombed, mainly due to a lack of games, but also because of the dated hardware used. This video features all the GX4000 games, an introduction to the system and it's life story. Enjoy!
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My Mam took me to Dixons to get a console when I was about 6, they had a display with this console on. I remember vividly telling her yes I want that one, I want that one! However the sales assistant convinced her it was a dead system and that I should buy a Master System... wherever that man is now, I owe him a debt I can never repay.
I was the poor kid who's dad went to Dixons alone and bought me a GX4000 instead of a Master System!
Navy Seals and Burning Rubber were my life for the next year.
Finally got a Master System II (beautiful beast) but then everyone else had Megadrives, SNES's and Gameboys etc. and I was stuck with Alex Kid in Miracle World for the next year.
mom*
@Trevor lmao poor you
I went through a phsse of wanting one too and I think I sae it Demo'd in Dixons too. I got the Megadrive instead and that ended well, lol
Hey Levi, there's this thing called regional variation. People say things differently in different places.
My dad worked at Amstrad at the time. That was a disappointing Christmas lol. I had a copy of Barbarian II with mine which struggled to work.
I feel for you, dude. I did used to have Amstrad stereo system back in the 80s which I still miss to this day, if that helps any.
I'm soooo tempted to pick up one of these. It looks like rubbish, but I volunteer for a local gaming expo and would love to set one up in the console free play area!
+The Obsolete Geek The rubbish things are the MOST worth picking up! I've put this one on fleabay (as I know I'll probably never use it)
It explodes
@@scorpioengine4797 Yep, there was an issue with that.
"How many copies did this game sell?"
"2"
"2 what? 2 million? 2 thousand?"
"No, just 2. 2 copies."
Arthur Fowler bought Martin one for Christmas in Eastenders. No wonder he turned to a life of crime.
The first half of the 90s was a weird time for the console market. So many companies throwing their hat into the ring without even the slightest understanding of what makes a successful platform. Nowadays it's understood that it's corporate suicide to go toe-to-toe with the big dogs if you're new and untested. There's really ever only room for 3 at the top, maximum.
true i just wished Sega didn't die i was starting to like them but they did and i went to Nintendo and never looked back
Amstrad was a relative big boy, in the UK and Europe when they made this! The reality was that they should have gone down a completely new system based on 16bit chip not based on the 8 bit Z80 and a continuation of the CPC line. ALternatively they should have come out with their plus sytem 1 or 2 years earlier rather than just as 16 bit was taking the market. Hindsight is wonderful.
Nvidia makes some great consoles but no one really knows about them in mainstream.
I think I'll summarize most of 90's weirdness in one word:
Tiger.
Lets be honest, we all dreaded the moment one of those came out of a gift.
Sega did really well with the Megadrive. Even took Nintendo in sales after a few years. Then they dragged it out on life support with the 1993 Mega CD (I had one and it had a couple of good games but nothing to justify the £300 price tag in the UK) and then the 32X which was just a joke. Why weren't they concentrating on the release of the Saturn instead of trying to make the Megadrive do new tricks? It was just insane.
The Saturn flopped on release and at the same time, Sony's 1991 cancelled add-on for the SNES, the Playstation, miraculously jumped into the ring as an independent console and blew the Saturn right out of the market. If it wasn't for Sony I still reckon the Saturn would still have killed the N64 but Sony just killed them all. Nintendo still only just compete alongside Sony and Microsoft even now.
Wow, this is a blast from the past! I actually owned one of these things back in the day! My uncle was the manager at a Currys (or Comet, i forget which one) and, knowing that I was into games, he gave me one of these Amstrads for free, with about 5 or 6 games bundled with it. They clearly weren't selling too well lol. I remember him saying at the time, "this system is discontinued now, so you won't find any other games for it". He wasn't wrong lol.
I can't actually remember what games I even had on it (almost certainly Burnin' Rubber though), but at the time it didn't seem to be too bad of a console! Admittedly, my only point of reference up till that point was the Acorn Electron, but the Amstrad was still pretty cool.
I wish I still had it now. It's one of many systems I had that just disappeared one day and I barely noticed (I blame my parents lol)
I'm looking to buy one now and they've become quite expensive. Some new games are being made for it today!
I don't know if this port of Ghosts n Goblins is still being worked on, but I do hope they finish it as it looks excellent: th-cam.com/video/begnxQ6KqYw/w-d-xo.html
It looks to be much more accurate than the other port of Ghosts n Goblins for the system which is nevertheless finished and released already.
Burning Rubber was barely even an original game too, most of the code seems to be from WEC LeMans .
+Larry Bundy Jr There's a striking similarity there! Especially in the car sprite!
Nostalgia Nerd
I did have one as a kid, I also had a killer cartridge, a copy of robocop 2. everytme i would plug it in, it would fry the machine, went through three f thde beofre getting a refund!
+Larry Bundy Jr a genuine copy?! Good god! Was there smoke? Fire??
Nostalgia Nerd
Nope, just a lot of dead GX4000's. But they're prone to frying themselves anyway, did you notice that big green sticker on your box? Big staple of the later machines!
The one in Spanish? I'm noticing it right now. I noticed that the internal packaging on this one seems to have improved access to the Burnin' Rubber cartridge.
Alan Sugar ACTUALLY said regarding bits:
If we followed the bit rules, we would of been dead and buried a long time ago.
The end user doesn't know whether it's 16 or 8-bit,working with gas,steam or elastic bands.
It works till you're competing against the megadrive... :3
We actually had one of these awful things back in the day. My parents bought it, but then decided to go for the Sega Master System instead. The GX4000 just sat in the attic for many years and I powered it up recently - still seems to work!
I remember the Megadrive came out at around the same time as the GX4000 and unlike the GX4000 the Megadrive had a 2 year head start from its Japanese launch an a year since the genesis launched in North America so had quite a library!
The design of the console isn't that bad and they had the foresight to design actual gamepads for it, unlike Commodore with the C64GS.
+Holammer True dat
+Holammer Depends if you like gamepads or not, personally I still can't stand D-pads or analogue sticks when playing computer based retro games to this day - give me a proper joystick any time. The C64GS came bundled with a joystick - but by most accounts it was "a bit naff" & "fragile" so I'd imagine a replacement was bought by many a C64GS owner (sorry parent).
The tennis games were probably the most playable of the lot! 😂
I remember one friend having one with Burning rubber and thinking, "hmm this is poo!".
I only somehow found your channel recently and I'm enjoying going through all of your vids!!! Great stuff!!
Hey...I like the Werewolves of London reference! That was my favourite game on the speccy lol.
Tnx for video , you got us spoiled, keep them coming !
+Idimi Dodjimi Thank you! Many more in the pipeline ;)
I've got one of these somewhere at my parents. We got it for about £15 in the mid 90s. God knows where all the parts are. Had 4 games, Burnin' Rubber, Batman, Barbarian II and Robocop II. This video has reminded me just how shite this was!
I've always found Amstrad & his products a bit crap. I've never bought anything from Amstrad as other products were better.
I remember my dad buying an amstrad PC back 8n the 90s and what a load of crap that was.
I owned that car toy racing Sim back in 1984-86. it was the bomb
*the bomb*
ain't it weird how it's got a, faster CPU than a snes .... the snes really should of had a faster CPU lol
That one kid on the box has the "What is this shit?!? look, but he's forcing a smile because it was a 'very nice' gift from grandma"
I never heard of this console lol, i still however have my master system and about 45 games and one of them is fire and forget 2 xD f&f 2 isn't that bad LOL.
I only discovered this system because I was setting up Retroarch and the various romsets (the entire romset for the gx4000 is only 75MB)
What about its tendency to... EXPLODE?!?!?!?!?!
I only remember the Amstrad GX4000 and the Commodore 64GS as they were covered in the first few issues of MEAN MACHINES magazine, the console spin-off of CVG magazine back in 1990. I did have a Commodore 64 computer anyway which was already a good 5 years old anyway so you could probably get hold of one cheaper than the C64GS console anyway and the games worked on both.
I do remember seeing a bumper sticker around the time saying "My other console is a GX4000" which me and my friends found hilarious at the time.
Mean Machines covered it,as they expected lots of magazine advertising revenue as companies like Ocean,Amstrad etc would be putting in single and double page ads in each issue to promote the console and it's software
Loving that charity shop TV matey 😉
I think the biggest problem with this is that it's completely compatible with everything that has been released for the Amstrad CPC range up until that point and would continute to be released until 1993, but is just physically restricted because it only has a cartridge port. (only having 64kb limits it a bit more too)
Anyone else think this looks like a Hoth snow speeder from Empire Strikes Back? This turd slipped under the radar, was enjoying my imported mega drive at the time.
Think NES games looked better and they filled more of the screen and better sound, The Amstrad GX4000 was released after the Sega Megadrive.
looks like certain star wars ship...
Up yours Sugar. Who's the mug now?
We had a gx4000 and its a rather sad story. i was about 8 years old at the time and I had got a megadrive the year before. Mum and dad got my brother the GX4000, and i was really excited for him too... And we couldnt wait for christmas so we got it out... And i put it together for my brother... powered it and... nothing. The magic smoke left the box :( I felt really terrible about it i broke my younger brothers new toy :(
Looking back on it i cant see if I had done something wrong, or if there was a voltage switch and might have been set to 110v :(
I still feel a bit shitty about it even today....
Spare a thought for the editor of French Games magazine, who declared the GX4000 was winning the console war in France and each game released would sell 20,000 copies
great review :)
+Odd pod Thanks dude! I try my best :D
8 bit systems were more than long in the tooth by the late 90s ;)
holnrew More like late 80s
Yep, the GX4000 came out in 1990 which was the first year of the 1990s! By the end of the 1990s the whole home computer thing I.e. 8bit/16bit was effectively dead and replaced by PCs.
They were still making SMS and Nes games well into 1993/94.
P Ferreira so that'll be the early mid 1990s then yeah?
About that but not 1990.
The Sinclair spectrum +2 you show while telling Amstrad copied this design for CPC... it was the sinclair designed by Amstrad after they purchased Sinclair and redesigned the speccy range to look like CPCs. Speccy48 or 128 weren't supplied with built in Tape/Disk and had very different keyboards.
+macdeath69 I think that was my point. The +2 looked like an amalgamation of the + and the CPC
Used to see this as a "come-on" on those slightly illegal Jam Auctions that seemed to pop up at seaside towns on the last days of your holidays!
And to this day...why is Lord Sugar regarded as some sort of great business guru when the large majority of his product were either "late to the party" items like this or unmitgated pieces of crap like his E-Mailer?
I don't know how Titus managed to balls up Fire and Forget 2 so badly when they had done such a good job with the Master System version.
Dude you need to get a bigger apartment :S you run out of space soon.
In July 1991 Dixons dropped the price to £19 with their buying director saying they were getting out of it, it certainly fell short of their expectations.
Amstrad blamed poor sales on the UK recession, however console sales for Sega and Nintendo had been huge.
one of the owners of a chase hq 2 cartridge should get the ROM onto a computer and post it online and share it with the WHOLE WORLD!
Well somehow they would have to extract all the files and compress it into an emulators readable .zip file.
Problem - Somebody would need to make a specific Cart -> PC reader to read the data from cartridge. Considering how obscure this console it's probably not the best documented machine and if there would be need to read data directly from chips, the cart would be permamently ruined.
I just got given one from my grandparents today that they found in their attic
Ah I got one of these from Dixons for £30 at the end of their life. I got just Barbarian II (along with Burnin Rubber) and never found any more games in stores before I lost interest. Wonder where it is now...
ahahah.i remenber i wanted it so badly back in time.....well in fact i wanted any console so badly,but this one looked a serious thing to me .a console produced by a computer company,kick ass !!!
This is such an odd little console. The thing looks like a spaceship! :P
This seems to be basically a Sega Master System with a lower resolution. Does the GX4000 have any capabilities that the SMS didn't have half a decade earlier?
And it being 8-bit might not have been a problem; after all, the PC Engine/Turbografx 16 was technically an 8-bit system and it had capabilities comparable to the Mega Drive/Genesis and Super Famicom/SNES. The GX4000 just looks like it was a shitty system, regardless of the "bit-ness" of its CPU.
EDIT: On further research it looks like it had quite a bit more RAM than the SMS at 64kb vs 8kb (although RAM isn't that important when you're dealing with directly-addressable ROM cartridges) and its overall palette was larger at 4096 colours compared to the SMS's 64 (although it could only display 32 of those colours on-screen at any given time and 16 colours per sprite, the same as the SMS.) If it had been released in 1985 it might have been a decent alternative to the other 8-bit systems, but in 1990 I can definitely see why people ignored it.
The CPU of the PC Engine was 8Bit, but the GPU was 16Bit!
It was a consolised computer, a CPC464 Plus with no keyboard, so not really comparable to the SMS. Since it was really a computer on the inside, it had a lot more RAM and had a bitmap screen, whereas the SMS was a proper games console and used a tile plane screen.
And since it was a commercial failure, most of the software it received leaned heavily on its backwards compatibility with old CPC code, so didn't really use the system very well. Homebrew coders are doing more interesting things with it these days.
Ive got one of these in perfect condition only been used a few times and probably never be used again 😂
NIce vid, I remember when this came out and even as kid, I knew it was a lemon.
I think Switchblade is the only game on this system that I played through that actually ended instead of going on forever.
Seriously who the fuck even did that in the 90's anymore ? That's like a 1986 thing at the latest, it just makes you look super lazy to not even bother to program in an ending screen if you're releasing games after 1987.
Totally here because of watchmojo. A fan of the channel now
That's not an endorsement.
u dont launch an 8bit machine in 1990
As much as I love my old Amstrad CPC464, this sytem sucks. Pretty much the same games than a regular CPC, but in carts and more expensive. No wonder it failed.
7:01 - Is that Panzer kick boxing?!
0:52 Yooooo I haven't seen that thing in almost 30 years!!!! I didn''t think anyone would have one since it was a cheap generic product.
I don't know why you insist on claiming the graphics for GX4000 > SMS > NES, when in your footage World Grand Prix for SMS (256 x 192 res.) appears to run at about twice the framerate of Burning Rubber (160 x 200 res.). The worst aspect of the CPC line was the way the graphics subsystem interfaced with the CPU and RAM, it was far less efficient than the GTIA/ANTIC and VIC-II of the Atari and Commodore 8-bit systems. As a result most Amstrad games had terrible FPS and made snail racing look exciting. On the plus side, it did have a lot of color, I think each pixel in lores mode could be one of 27 colors? Also the basic dialect, documentation and keyboard were quite good, and the CPC units seemed very robust and well made.
Special mapper chips to enhance GX4000 cartridge games could probably be designed in some way, like Nintendo did with the NES.
Stick a Raspberry Zero inside the cart and stream graphics data from ROM banks to area of the cartridge that is visible to the CPU, in response to data requests by the CPU, something like that. (hand-waving) I don't know enough about the Amstrad architecture.
But that GPU - RAM - CPU pipeline will still slow things down. I have never seen a 50 FPS action game with music and sound, like you would find on the SMS or NES. A dungeon crawler or strategy game would be more appropiate.
That was a terrible system and I am glad that it didn't make it to the U.S. I spent money on the Commodore +4 computer and that was a waste of money and I soon dumped it on a friend who just wanted a computer to do math, write letters and a little more. I still have my C-64 system and loved it. I blew money on other systems also including some from Tandy.
Did you forget about the PSU issue that is causing these things to break? There are higher quality PSUs that the old one could be replaced with now.
The stock ones are of ultra cheap, ultra shitty quality, to the point that Guru Larry called it a ticking time bomb in a Fact Hunt episode.
I live in America, so I never heard of many of these systems.
Be careful of when you buy an old PC off of EBAY, as these things can contain some startling surprises. Porn being one of them.
I remember the amiga coughing up blood when the pile of shite cd32 landed... “here! Buy all these 5-6 year old games you already have on CD now!!! And we GIVE you Dangerous Streets, rated by amiga power magazine as the 3rd or 4th worst game of all time!!!”
Hey mumz can I borrow a few quid for rent? I just gave you a bunch last week junior....where did that go? Well I found a gx4000 I had to have!! Well if you wasted all the money I gave you on a spaceship why don't u live on it? But I can't fit mum? For the amount I gave u last week you better be able to...if you end up not liking it theres a nice dumpster next to the McGuinties atleast the people that lives there before became the bonglord.....sorry meant to put this in a reddit post lol
We need Chase HQ 2 for the Amstrad GX4000 to be dumped online sometimes anytime soon. (9:50)
A friend had an Amstrad computer with that controller and Burning Rubber. I remember the blisters from that d-pad.
Yeah, didn't you have to push up the whole time if I recall? I had one, and only ever had Burnin' Rubber for it.
Given how many companies tried this and how crazy atari was I'm surprised they didn't try to make a console/multimedia set top version of the ST.
Look up the Atari Panther, it was literally a cut down ST as a console unit, we were lucky that Flare convinced Atari that their Jaguar technology was far enough along to skip the panther or we'd have had a rubbish consolised ST instead of something interesting like the Jaguar
@@medes5597Project Robin (the ST hardware in an XE style case, with ST conversions of old Atari arcade games was the ST Console attempt, pitched by Rob Zybdel) Panther was new technology, designed to take on the SNES and MD
@@thefurthestmanfromhome1148 that was it. I knew there was a consolised atari at in there someplace.
Chase HQ is so rare it’s not even on Wikipedia’s list of titles for the console.
Such a shame, it's like at the turn of the 90's Alan gave up. What with releasing this with the Megadrive around and when the playstation would follow soon. Not to mention slagging of ipods and exiting mobile phone manufacture before it got massive.
+nudisco300 Yeah, I think he'd earnt enough and thought, bugger it. Time to release the shit!
7:30 - better graphics at half the frame rate..
ehhh how did he take the design of the speccy +2 and make the 464..... the 464 came out like 2yrs before he bought the spectrum
"Dick Tracy," "dick" being the operative word 😊 lol 😂 💕😃🤘👊👌💕
Lucky Martin Fowler received one of these from his wonderful Uncle Pete Beale for Xmas 1990 in Eastenders. :)
And here we are, 3 years later in 2018, and it's now becoming quite collectible. Ebay prices have shot up from around £30 - £50(max) 2015, to £75 for a unboxed one, and £120 - £150 for a nice boxed one, and that will keep going up now.
To be honest, this isn't a bad machine. If this was released in the mid 80s then it would have been amazing - spec-wise - to other 8-bit machines. One can only think of what programmers would have got out of it had it been released in, say, 1985.
Are You kidding?
If this video is showing right the consoles games look super choppy when anything onscreen moves?
Stuff that. This console was a step backwards (even by 8-bit standards). Not good in any way?
This console had one big flaw ... was compatible with CPC system. So games quite often looked like total crap for the year they were released. Publishers went easy way, only to deploy some game and take cash.
The Tennis Game has impressive graphics. That Machines wasnt Bad technically.
At least it was a upgrade from the 464 computer. Some great games on it but like the c64 gs about 5 years too late
E.A refused to support this and the C64 GS as both were too European :-))
Please please please can you do a review on cartridge add-ons back in the 90's when I owned a Snes I found an advert for cheap Megadrives and the PlayStation, which hadn't even been released in the UK and all imported from Japan, anyway it turned out to be a guy in Milton Keynes, he was doing his business from his bedroom, he actually let me go to his house to by a Super Wild Card, which cost me over half a month's wages, but he did have a Playstation which to my friends envy made me very happy for a long time as the PlayStation was months from the UK release, But anyway please do a video on add-ons, I already know it'll be great and well researched. thanks, I love the shows.
Played Burning Rubber on one of these at the excellent Cambridge Computer Museum this weekend. Had never heard of this console before but thought Nostalgia Nerd would have a review of it
you do know that the singular spectrum +2, was based on the amstrad design. if memory serves me correctly this was after amstrad purchased sinclair computers from Clive sinclair. not vice versa as you claim.
can we talk about the system EXPLODING if not plugged or unplugged correctly?
worst controllers ever? I like the machine though and most of the handful of games that uses the hardware. A pity so little games where devoloped and only 128 KB cartridges where used by Amstrad for the games. Toki, a quality port was cancelled because of this, it just couldn't fit within 128kB. The machine can use cartridges with 512 KB memory.
+Ivar Fiske Ahhh, the controllers are like dog shite.
Your INPUT magazines are in surprisingly good condition given they're over 30 years old!
Switchblade was good though!
one of the selling points was it could play cpc464 carts, but there were bugger all of those either, its a shame its so niche an everdrive type cart for this would open up the cpc library to the console.(wrote this before the end)
and with bigger modern eeproms the bigger disk games should work too.
I had one of these bad boys with RoboCop, think I payed £30 from the winners store (a very cheap discount shop in North east of UK)
Isn't the GX4000 sound better than that of the ST?
Stereo?
DMA based so it's independent of the CPU or something?
Compared to the Sega Master system, the PC engine and even the NES, this Joke 4000 doesn't even come close.
I saw this for about £40 just a few months ago and I was tempted to buy it on a whim (I had no knowledge of it at all). I'm glad I passed on it now lol
160x200 resolution has 32 colors.
16 background
15 sprites
1 border
+Vincent GR You are correct. You can also increase it using interrupts.
I think the first time I saw this was in Boots and I thought the console looked awesome and when I played Burning Rubber, I thought it had great graphics so I wanted one. 😂
"all 26 games" then you show only 3 seconds of each. Hmmm
I remember tandy were selling these off in 1991 for only £19.99 hoho
had one as a kid with robocop to replace the Master system... we soon went back to the master system and the GX has been in my parents attic ever since.
I almost had one of these as a birthday present. Collectors item or not, I am now glad I did not have it.
Thumbs up for mentioned Werewolves of London. Great game!
it wasn't the successor to the cpc464....
That machine failed because it had AMSTRAD written on it, it's as simple as that. I remember when this came out. As a kid we want things that are cool and Amstrad wasn't cool, their logo alone is enough to put any kid off. Think about it what did Amstrad actually do, make some abscure home computer and fax machines, that's not cool is it. Sega was cool because they made arcade games so we were already brand loyal. You were cool if you owned Nintendo or Sega, if you had an Amstrad you were a freak who only owns an Amstrad because his accountant dad got sold into the whole family computer concept. ZX Spectrum is obviously completely different.
Not that I tend to trust the opinion of someone who can't even spell the word "obscure", but the facts are that the Amstrad CPC was far from obscure. In fact it was one of the most popular home computers and gaming machines in Europe and has a huge following even today with games still being made for it. Its technical specs were also either far beyond or on par with systems of the time which were much more expensive.
You seem to have a rather immature and shallow obsession with "cool" which (assuming you are of an age to remember these machines) is a little pathetic for an adult and screams of insecurity. However, you fail to realise that being "cool" is subjective and a matter of personal taste, and due to your quite obviously low IQ, I think you may have a rather narrow minded and overly inflated opinion of your own moronic viewpoint.
what was the racing car game that was used for contrast at 7.34 on another system?
This was my first console. My dad got it from a friend of his and i was so dissapointed. Had one crappy racing game,i think the car was red?
Okay just saw the red car game, its as bad as i remember.
Why does that remind me of a trilobite?
It does look like a trilobite
Holy crap a Titus logo in fire and forget?
Yup they did
fun fact that superman game was on Commodore 64 as well..... ugh.......
They made good games. You can't say they're terrible just for one game.
Can you make a review of Amstrad home computers? Nice to know more about this shit box!
Definitely, they're on my list of machines to review. I should mention that it's quite a long list. But they'll be fairly high up
+Nostalgia Nerd great, never got the chance to play on a real one and I would like to know more about them.
Любишь редкие игровые системы ?... попробуй заиметь ЭЛЬФ (Белоруссия) (ALF TV Game)