The Amstrad - GX4000

OK now search the web, you'll find little or no information about the amstrad GX4000, why is this, well because most people don't even know it exists....but why is that....because its crap....well not crap, just a bit lame....like a horse that needs shooting.

I found mine on ebay for about £20, it actually turned up about 9 months ago, since that date I haven't even opened the box, so the decision to write this informative article made me actually get the thing out, amidst all the bubble wrap I found a note from the seller "enjoy your amstrad, thanks colin" I never expected to enjoy my amstrad in the way I suspect he meant, anyway so I continue to get all the bits out an notice that on the back of the unit there is an RF connector and a standard scart socket, yup standard scart even the megadrive didn't have a scart socket, this console must damn kick some serious silicon, surely? so now I am actually starting to get a little excited, maybe its not so crap, maybe its got good graphics and games, and it was just overlooked due to bad marketing...so I plug the thing in to the TV (yes using a scart cable) and think hell I wonder if there is a nice start up when you turn it on without a game in, like the Saturn one or something, so I hit the switch, and there it is, nope not a clean empty black screen like a snes or megadrive, but definitely something, a big fucking mess of strobing black and grey lines darting around the screen. After having a fit and being sick several times, I decide to try again, but with a cartridge in, so I go for navy seals, it works, and yes its just like socom us navy seals on the PS2, exactly the same, no difference at all, trilinear filtering, real time shadows, bump mapping everything, Jesus!!...so yeah it's a bit crap, but I'll try to write a full review of it sometime....

that all important scart slot, its also got a network hole on the front, god knows what that was for...

So one thing I notice about the system now its doing stuff, is the sound, yeah its stereo, but not in a nice enemies on left come from left speaker kind of way, but in a drums from left speaker melody from right, doors album kind of way. Then I grab the controller for my first go, and for the first time become aware of the controller, fuck me is that a controller???? what its a crappy little rectangular thing with two buttons and a D-pad that makes my thumb bleed in 15 seconds, I guess its a bit like a NES controller, but come on this is years later, when they made this console they had far better controllers to copy...it's like building a ferrari and sticking a steam engine in it....well actually I suppose I am exaggerating it probably just goes with the rest of the consoles carefully thought out design!

it did come with two of the lovely controllers in the box though.

So the amstrad GX4000 despite its futuristic looks and and use of the impressive number "4000" sold for only £99 in the UK, hardly any game cartridges were made for it, and it was a total absolute failure at retail. With sega and nintendo cleaning up with their respective consoles, amstrad decided that they should join in and make (read - lose) some cash, after all they had tried to enter the home computer market with some success.

As far as I can tell their CPC range of computers were supposed to be all rounders, some shipped with horrible monitors so you felt like you were using an expensive IBM PC despite it being a cheap piece of shit, anyway despite best intentions, games were made by the fuck load for the thing, so amstrad with their brains the size of planets came up with the idea to repackaging the old outdated CPC6128+ (a shitbox of a computer by this time) in a new sleek case, and make it a cartridge based games console, yeah kick ass....but here was the master stroke, take games that ran on the original CPC computer and put them on to cartridge, meaning almost no development costs and a huge library of games all ready for release...yes a huge library of mainly shit games with shit graphics and gameplay that didn't come close to the stuff on other systems available at the time. Let's just remember that most games on the amstrad, C64 sinclair etc. were coded by kids with no money and school to get in the way of their creative out pourings, (the oldsters were sensible and made database aps) the only reason they found success was because hell, a tape wasn't too expensive to manufacture and therefore not too expensive for a kid to buy, if it was shit it didn't really matter you could get another one the next week with your pocket money...so take these bedroom developed games and stick them on a cartridge for £30 and then put those cartridges against stuff like sonic the hedgehog with it's huge development budget and massive production team...that's right the GX4000 was totally mother-fucked from the start.

So this financial disaster cant have hurt amstrad too much, they went back to making cheap crap audio equipment (like that big 4 track tape deck thing that was the size of a bus, and came with 4 free mic's, god I used to want one of those when I was a kid), camcorders, and who could forget later products like the phone that did email, or the surf the internet on your TV box....inspirational ideas...I guess really these hard times for amstrad could have so easily been mirrored by sony, when they made the PS1, except sony hi-fi equipment is awesome, and they arent a british company, and they probably aren't stupid, or shit....so I guess amstrad always have been always will be the poor mans sony.

the box it was actually the same on both sides, what an imaginative design!

A world of entertainment, either those kids are playing something else, or they gave them hard drugs, the GX4000 only resulted in children (and adults) looking sad, no fun could be had from using this device, certainly not this much.

The other side of the box, telling you what's in your carton of fun, and telling you to buy a 14" piece of shit monitor instead of using your more than adequate TV set.

Thanks Colin!

 

some person as sad as me has scanned in the whole instruction booklet its here

some other person as sad as me has made a list of games with some scanned covers and carts here you'll see that the GX4000 carts actually ran on CPC464 and CPC6128+ computers that had cartridge slots, can you believe that they didn't even try to hide the fact that it was a home computer with less functions!

there is a clearer list here notice how long it's life was, all games except 1 were released in 1990.

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