WinApe. The emulator for Amstrad

If you are one of the people who enjoy "vintage" games and enjoy old games, this may be your solution.

Until a few years ago, people who enjoyed video games in their spare time, or were dedicated full-time to these, had no eyes for old-fashioned and outdated games. There was only room for innovation, new consoles, and keeping up with the latest technology.

Anyone who didn't have the latest console was out of fashion.

But this changed dramatically. And it was a process that was generated by several things. First, consoles started to stagnate, with less and less innovation between consoles, and there was also an appreciation for the old games.

You don't have to be interested in those games because of their graphics or environments. You are interested in them because there is a certain nostalgia or because you can appreciate a good game, no matter the quality of its graphics.

In short, there are thousands of reasons why you may like old or "vintage" games. Today we bring a pretty specific tool for playing Amstrad CPC computer games.

The Amstrad CPC was released in 1984, so it has its years and was launched to compete with the Commodore 64, among others.

One of the many fundamental differences with today's Windows is that it has a processor that runs in 8 bits instead of 32 or 64 as the current ones.

The best-known games on the Amstrad are Chase H.Q., Contra, and Barbarian II: The Dungeon of Drax.

But to play these games on your modern Windows computer, you must make your operating system support all of these games.

And that's what Amstrad CPC emulators like WinAPE are for.

I will not say the features because they are not many. It emulates an Amstrad CPC operating system inside your Windows computer.

To use it on your computer, you must first download it.

The latest version released to the public is 2.0b2, and the letter b corresponds to the product's Beta version. The Beta version means that it is not a stable version, but it has the latest possible developments. This version was released in 2016. You may find the last update half old, but when you can finish emulating the entire operating system (which is currently a simple system), you no longer have new releases to make.

Then you must download games.

Emulators generally use dsk files, the compatible versions of the Amstrad disks. Some also use sna files. But most of the games you will find in the dsk format.

The penultimate step is, having downloaded WinAPE as a zip file, and you have to unzip it. This zip file contains many other files. You must unzip it so that it can work and then extract it from the folder.

Finally, it would be best if you ran WinAPE. For this, you must go to the folder where you have unzipped it, and you must go to the WinAPE icon, which is a monkey.

Once you have everything established and configured well, you must, with the Windows Firewall, or the native firewall of Windows, accept access to the Internet of this one.

To enjoy the games, you can try to run Amstrad Basic or basic.

For that, you must enter the application. You will see an option to choose between Amstrad Basic or CPC Plus cartridge Burnin Rubber. The latter option will start by default if you don't use the numbers to choose something, so you must select the numbers from the basic one.

Then you'll have to look at the section on how to suit the games for the environment, but at least I've given you some instructions to get your Amstrad CPC system running on your computer.

Conclusion:

If you want to enjoy this retro experience and play Amstrad games, this is the best way you can do it on your Windows computer.

There are browser versions available, but it's not the same feeling as having it on your computer running as if it were native.