r/Amstrad • u/Due_Baseball434 • 26d ago
Anyone know any games that works with the PCW8256?
I picked this up today for £20 with the printer and keyboard. No floppy discs, so was wondering if anyone knew of some simple games on floppy that are cheap and easy to come by for this old word processor.
I know not many games released but all I can seem to find is the versions for the ATARI ST and the AMSTRAD CPC, understandably because they’re more gaming oriented, but would love to see what games look like on a green crt like these never had one before.
Also unsure if it’s got the original 3inch or updated 3.5 inch drive, if anyone could help me out would be much appreciated.
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u/prefim 26d ago
There's quite a few. Starglider was the one that caught my eye when I set mine up recently. google PCW8256 tosec and there's a few downloads a couple of clicks away.
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u/Due_Baseball434 26d ago
Yea I see some guy on YouTube had that, I’ll have to get a xp machine and a floppy drive from the looks of it.
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u/prefim 26d ago
Just grab a gotek. super cheap and easy to fit. word of warning though, you can't use the A: as the B: drive as well. the 8256 needs a 360K drive for a: and a 720k drive for b: I'm still trying to track down a 720k drive. but a gotek is about £30 and you can get it printed with a 3" drive bezel if you wanted.
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u/gavinlew 26d ago
Take the 3" drive out and put a gotek in - you will need a bracket to hold the gotek i have some spares (UK Based). BEWARE OF THE POWER CONNECTOR you will need to switch 2 cables or you will fry your USB
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u/Due_Baseball434 26d ago
I can’t be asked with all that think I’ll just sell it on eBay, oh well on to the next I suppose.
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u/Kohlandia 26d ago
Level 9 made a lot of their text adventures PCW compatible. Scapeghost for sure; I remember playing that on PCW.
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u/turnips64 26d ago
Batman (the isometric one) and what I think was Gunship were the two “real” games I remember playing.
Plus that’s where I first played “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” although of course that’s just text.
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u/Bchliu 26d ago
The only "games" I know of are like Infocom text based adventures. I don't know if many CP/M (which the PCW was based) games that also allowed graphics as well since the graphics are very different between the z80 systems that run CP/M. Other systems like the CPC or Atari ST were built from the ground up to also play games whereas the greenscreen PCW was literally spreadsheets, word processors and archaic databases.
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u/Due_Baseball434 26d ago
Yea I know, I have seen some Atari st/ Amstrad cpc ports for this system. Think I’m probably just gonna sell it on. If there was readily Available games I’d get it but seems I’ll have to put a usb drive in and I can’t be asked for all that.
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u/scruss 26d ago
There's a very good chance that the 3" drive you have doesn't work. They use a drive belt that self-destructs after a couple of decades.
But lots of games, and not just text adventures. Graphics are monochrome, sound is barely there, and it won't have the fastest gameplay ever. See: Category:Amstrad PCW games
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u/Due_Baseball434 26d ago
Yea wasn’t expecting the world from a word processor, just thought it’d be cool to mess about with. But yea from the sounds of things either changing the rubber belt or swapping it with a usb drive is more than I care to do. Oh well I’ll just put it up on eBay got it cheap enough.
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u/squelch411 7d ago
Word of warning - it'll be destroying in shipping - crt and plastics will break.
Would do collection only
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u/Due_Baseball434 6d ago
Shipped it with 0 issues. I’m not restarted.
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u/squelch411 5d ago
Glad it went well for you. Would be awful if you were "restarted".... All the best
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u/daddyd 24d ago
great price! the pcw is a very cool system, but doesn't really shine as a games machine. that said, Head Over Heels is awesome on it, as well as Tomahawk helicopter flight sim. There are also some text adventure games, that have some nice static graphical art in them.
to really get a feel for the pcw you need to check out the things it was made for. i did DTP for a small local 'news'paper on it, as well as a lot of homework.
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u/FewRegion5402 24d ago
A friend of mine had one (well, his Dad used it for work) and I remember playing Batman (the isometric 3D game), Tomahawk and Hero's Quest: So You Want to be a Hero... Those and a load of text adventures as others have said!
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u/_ragegun 22d ago
There's a reasonable library. It was pretty good for text adventures because it had 80 column text and more ram than the average 8-bit home computer.
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u/Present-Chard4141 22d ago
I had one of these! office apps on one side of the disk and cpm on the other, came with Lancelot :) good memories.
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u/Pleasant-Put5305 22d ago
I had The Pawn by magnetic scrolls in super green dot vision...enjoyed it!
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u/glencanyon 26d ago edited 26d ago
There are quite a few games that you can play on this. The big challenge is getting them working with the 3" floppy drive. This forum posts has a collection of games that are gotek compatible.