| Posted By
icbrkr
on 2014-11-08
18:42:04
|  Original Plus/4 scene?
The Plus/4 wasn't obviously big in the US, and there wasn't any 'scene' to speak of like on the C64 here.
On the C64, the scene consisted of a lot of BBSes and mailswappers to send out the latest warez, mags, demos, whatever. But how did it work in the Plus/4 scene? From the little I know it doesn't look like there's much in the way of modem software, or BBS software so I have to assume that it was mostly done at parties/through the mail?
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Posted By
JamesC
on 2014-11-08
19:08:07
| Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
The Plus/4 and C16 were pretty much off store shelves (returned to Commodore) by March 1985, and software/accessories closed out by the following June. We never really had a chance to develop a scene. 
There was a little disk swapping, but not a lot. Many of us relied on Tri-Micro and PLUG (Plus/4 Users Group) for most new software, though Compute's Gazette offered Plus/4 and C16 versions of their type-in programs now and then.
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Posted By
Patrick
on 2014-11-09
03:55:46
| Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
here in holland we had a pretty active scene. that was around the mid 80s. we had meetings and even a (almost) monthly paper magazine. but after the pc's and amigas came in most of the users moved on! we swapped tapes (!) and later disks. some users had contacts in Hungary. that was good so we had the latest software. i had contact with Ulf Winter in Germany. we swapped disks, but he needed to go into the Germany army, we lost contact. it was a good time, waiting by the mailbox for disks or tapes with the software!! i spend hours and hours in my room! love that memory!
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Posted By
SVS
on 2014-11-09
04:08:08
 | Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
Here in Europe the swapping by snail mail was the main way to send/receive new SW. I still remember the sound of the postman and the pleasure to see the directories of the new disks inside the envelopes. A lot of work followed, because the lists maintaining and because often the disks became unreadable by the snail mail handling.
After this it came internet with the mailing lists, and then finally the SITE.
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Posted By
MIK
on 2014-11-10
05:48:40
 | Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
I find for the most part mailing lists and BBS'es were more an American thing when it came to the UK during the C16/Plus4 era.
Here in the UK things were quiet when the C16 first released but by the following year the Plus/4 showed up from no where bundled with 11 games, datassette & joystick at the bargain price of £99.99. The Plus/4 was £30 pounds cheaper than a C16 to buy. Some believe the C16 keyboard kept the price up.
A handful of games had surfaced into the shops by this point such as BMX Racers & Mission Mars and by the new year games started to come thick and fast.
In short the C16/Plus4 had now become games machines over night and the UK as well as Germany both supported the systems on an epic scale creating software faster than you could buy it. 95% of all software in the UK was available in shops from Tobacco shops/Mini Markets, Video Rental stores to large Department stores. There were also a number of indie shops opening up that started to support all forms of computer software and if you looked hard enough you would find plenty with C16/Plus4 software. The remaining 5% could be bought via mail order.
The scene were friends at school who had a C16 or Plus/4 and anything you could read in a book or magazine such as Commodoer User. There was also pockets of user clubs printing stuff on a monthly bases in the UK but to be honest this was not widely known about until the internet came along.
While outsiders might think the C16/Plus4 was a failed machine, collectively there must be over 600-700 commercial releases and counting from 1984-1989. The Covers provide a good portion of them, some missing but in most cases the actual software is available. As always the journey continues to find everything there ever was... 
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Posted By
Hans
on 2014-11-09
12:04:40
| Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
Here in Germany, the Plus/4 -or better say the Commodore 264 scene- was a quite living one between maybe 1984 and 1990. There were some billboards but the most active way of interaction & communication were the various clubs and their magazines. The better part of those magazines was spread by 5.1/4", and a few came out as print magazines. If I remember correctly, none of the magazines, either disk or printed, was for nothing - for all of them one had to pay.
Swapping, in particular pirated stuff, was very, very popular. Of course. - Contacts for swapping were made either by exchange of postal addresses via the clubs, and as from 1989/1990, by ads in a special ad magazine which every German user will remember as the "Computer-Flohmarkt".
Seek-and-offer ads in club magazines and in the "Computer-Flohmarkt" were linked with the PLK:
By that time, the German postal service offered an anonymous kind of "poste-restante" service. A user of that service did not require a PO box. He just had to apply for a postal ID card, and there was no need to leave name & address for it (or, if required, any false data would have done because there was no proof required). The number of this postal ID card could be used as an recipient's address, without quoting a name or else. This ID card was namend the "PLK".
All swapping was done by surface mail, using the famous service as described above. German users might remember this as the lovely "PLK" = Postlagerkarte.
Those were the days....
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Posted By
Lavina
on 2014-11-09
12:55:49
 | Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
Yeah, Snail mail. I had literally hundreds of contacts, including most of the scene whose demos and games are listed now on this site.  I was a server when snail mail was the internet.
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Posted By
Luca
on 2014-11-09
14:03:33
 | Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
Italian scene is mostly piracy, ignorance and newsstands sold cracked games. Whereas a pretty little c64 cracking scene and game developing existed, the C16/Plus4 users have been a short term transition people which mostly used to play cracked games. I've been very lucky when I had read on a C16/MSX issue about a guy (VRN) who claimed to have 64K stuff like ACE +4 to swap: that move did allow me to get in touch with the existance of a thing called 'scene' located somewhere between Hungary and Germany.
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Posted By
Lucidphreak
on 2016-07-06
22:21:48
| Re: Original Plus/4 scene?
This is a fantastic thread... I came here hoping I could find out a little about the plus/4 "Warez" scene and how it compared to others...
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