Acolyte CPC Prototype Released in Preservation Push

In the retro gaming scene, preservation work keeps turning up pieces of software history that nearly vanished. The latest is an early Amstrad CPC prototype of Acolyte, a cancelled arcade adventure that was developed first by Video Images and later by Clockwise.

The prototype was shared by preservationist Dean Hickingbottom, through the Games That Werent archive. It is an earlier build than the full Amstrad CPC version already recovered, and it appears to be missing some enemies, with slightly different title screens. There may also be changes to the map layout.

Acolyte was intended for release through a publisher such as Alternative Software, but that never happened. The game was close to completion, yet it remained unreleased, which is a familiar story for many British micros projects from the mid-1980s.

Dean Hickingbottom has already played a key part in bringing the game back into view. He previously recovered and released the full ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC versions around 2017. The ZX Spectrum release later reached a wider audience as part of a double pack from Psytronik, included with a Kickstarter for the Crash annual.

For anyone interested in the technical side, Dean has noted that pressing Q and F allows interaction with the back screen routines. That kind of detail helps show how these prototypes were built, and why each surviving version matters to preservation work.

Read more retro news on our News page, and see the original report at Games That Werent. You can also visit Spectrum Computing for more on classic Sinclair and Amstrad software.