Well it looks like the holy grail of Amstrad carts, and indeed games across all the Amstrad platforms generally has surfaced for sale on Ebay!

Here’s the link to the auction –

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270644070376&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Unfortunately it looks rather suspicious – the seller “nigel7031971″ has zero feedback(!!) and no other auctions up, and there’s only one photo shown for the item that looks rather familiar….

Compare with – http://gx4000.co.uk/gamebase/games.php?game=specialcriminalinvestigations

Here’s the photo used on the auction –

http://i.ebayimg.com/21/!B4ecj4Q!Wk~$%28KGrHqUOKjkEyP+QVwDHBMqE,oUlmw~~_35.JPG

Now the photo we have on our site –

http://gx4000.co.uk/gamebase/images/specialcriminalinvestigations/pack1.jpg

Hmmm!!! Note that photo was put live on this very website in December 2008! The photo was originally taken by the only known owner of the game James Bridges several months previous which he posted on the old cpczone.net forums (now sadly defunct) – of course that is where we got it from.

Seems this Ebayer has then taken it from our site!

We will try and contact the seller to clear this up, but for the time being …. our advice is to be very cautious.

*UPDATE* 06/10/2010 09:10am

A forum member “ukmarkh” on the cpcwiki.eu forums has contacted Martyn Carrol of Retro Gamer magazine who wrote the article on the Chase HQ 2 cart and personally viewed the game that James Bridges owns. Martyn was able to contact James who replied -“Hi Martyn, it is not my one. I will be very interested to see how much it sells for! James”

So at least we now know that it isn’t James selling the cart under a different name to protect his identity.

*UPDATE* 06/10/2010 20:30pm

The seller has replied to my email. It seems that he will allow collection in person and testing on his own GX4000 console – which is good news. The worrying part of his reply is that he appears unable to take any more, or should I saw ‘new’ photos. Come on … who at least doesn’t own a digital camera or mobile phone that takes pics these days??

*UPDATE* 07/10/2010 00:30am

The auction is no longer available and has been removed.

The seller is also no longer a registered Ebay user –

http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/nigel17031971

Draw your own conclusions. What a shame and waste of time, getting everyone hopes and expectations up! Oh well …. welcome to the murky world of collecting/trading rare retro games!

New video added to the YouTube channel – a longplay of Operation Thunderbolt on the GX4000 through to completion

Hope you enjoy!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Happy new year to you all! And lots of new updates for you in the gamebase site…

• Review added for Wild Streets
  http://gx4000.co.uk/gamebase/games.php?game=wildstreets
  
• YouTube videos added for Super Pinball Magic, The Enforcer (Trojan Light Phazer), Wild Streets and Copter 271!

  http://www.youtube.com/user/Xyphoe

  
  

• Review scores revised for Copter271, Wild Streets and more!
• More full reviews for the remaining games without one being completed as we speak!
• Plus special videos for 2 brand new releases not for the GX4000 but related as they have enhanced features! One for the 6128 Plus machine (Rick Dangerous 128+) and one for 128k machines (Star Sabre 128)!

Enjoy!

Hi guys,

Sorry for a long period of in-activity on the site, 2009 ended up being a very busy year for me. Well to make up for this and as a special Xmas treat, I’ve put up a long-play video of Barbarian II : The Dungeons Of Drax on YouTube played right through to the end!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nPQiHdS5PY

Also I hope you managed to catch and notice my long-play and completion of PANG video??

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arN0KALRCds

Enjoy!!

That’s right, my YouTube channel is well up and running now! I’ll be doing videos for ALL the GX4000 games over time which will be shared in the Gamebase of course. There’ll probably be 3 different types of videos for each of the games – (1) A gameplay run-through of just an example of what to expect, (2) a review of the game with me commenting – haven’t worked out the best way to record me talking yet but this’ll come over time and (3) Walkthrough / Speed-runs – already 2 up there at the moment!

Check out my vids now for a speedrun of Robocop 2 on one life! And also each of the levels for Navy Seals!

So check out and subscribe to my YouTube channel…

Over the years I’ve managed to purchase all the GX4000 games off Ebay. I’m only missing boxes and manual for about 3 games, the Trojan Light Phazer, and of course the legendary Chase HQ 2 (more on that another time). I’ve been watching Ebay at least once a week since about 2000 and have traded many GX items to achieve my collection, which is still yet to be completed, but I believe I have a good enough level of experience here to share what I think you should be paying and what they should be valued at.

Recently there have been many ‘bootleg’ games appearing – I own some of these, and it is great to have some games on cart that were never released on this format like Gryzor, Fluff and Chase HQ, unfortunately it has led in the last few months to rarer games that were officially released being bootlegged (is that the right word?) so are you being ripped off? Does it matter they weren’t the original game that was on the cart? Again another topic for another day, but in the mean time I present you with my cart rarity and Ebay guide for you…

Click HERE to view.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.