|  2003 - The Year in Review | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-31 |
Face it, 2003 is gone. I'm not sure if this counts as a yearly tradition yet, but for the second time I will look back at the past year and offer my thoughts on a few topics.
The news in the real world was full of hard times (to put it nicely), but to our pleasure the World of the Commodore Plus/4 was much more peaceful and productive.
Let's start with emulators. Unfortunately few of us have the pleasure of being able to actually fire up the old black box nowadays, but most of us are in daily contact with PCs. Emulators help us keep in touch with the plussy. Minus4 is unfortunately no longer developed, but we saw its source code released. Flamingo and CP4 have their source code available as well. The Forever emulator had a few updates this year. VICE became a very viable emulator for the Plus/4. The need for Plus/4 support in VICE was first requested by MagerValp in 1996, and the issue popped up again in 1998. It came after such a long wait, but better late than never. We'll be keeping an eye on it for sure. However, there is no denying that this year was the year of YAPE. It went from version 0.42 to version 0.53, and there's a huge jump in the quality of emulation. We know from many people that YAPE played a big part in them getting interested in the Plus/4 once again. Which brings us to the next topic.
The Scene. This year was the year of scene revival! Our scene members attended many parties (SceneCon, Function03, etc). We even had a Plus/4 party: 4ever03; which had to be the peak of this year. At the party, Lavina's C16 democompo became reality, with many quality productions. Lots of programmers and groups from all over the world came together and once again coded on the Plussy. Old scene members found their way back to our community including Udo Gertz for a brief moment, old friends are in touch. Several new cross-platform utilities were written. That old "buzz" is back, the scene is alive, such as it is.
Our little home, Plus/4 World keeps growing. Another 1200 programs got added to our ever-growing software database. The number of messages posted on our forum this year increased by a thousand. The number of cover scans went from 150 to a whopping 800. That's five times as much! We really got into collecting scans this year, didn't we? Our menu bar gained 6 more entries, most notably the Publications and Hardware sections. But probably most important of all, we count at least 60 new releases this year, versus 42 for last year.
It has been a good year for us. What more can we ask for? For all the people who helped us in so many ways: Thank you. We sincerely wish all of you a successful and happy 2004! |
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| | New Scans and TAPs from Ulysses | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-30 |
  Two days to go till 2004! We will finish this year's long line of updates with a pack from Ulysses777. First up is Volume 3 of Four Great Games. This (previously unknown) compilation has Ack Ack Attack, Battle Star, Future Shock and Lunar Docking on it. Besides the cover scan we now have the TAP files for each of these games. (Note that we are still looking for the individual release covers of Battle Star and Ack Ack Attack, if anyone has these, please send it to us!) We have another compilation added today: it's Voidrunner + Hellgate, two Jeff Minter games on one tape. Next up is the original U S Gold release cover scans for Beach Head. The Death River cover scan has been replaced with a full size one, plus the TAP file is there as well. Finally there are two more new TAPs available for your downloading pleasure: Golden Baton and Cuthbert in Space. Many thanks for these to Ulysses! |
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| | New Coverscans Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-29 |
   This Monday starts the last week of the year. Hopefully some of us are on holidays, while others are still at work... Crown didn't rest though, as he sent us another pack of goodies. We now have the cover scan for Bounder and Planet Search, and also the TAP files for each game. It seems that Gremlin only ever released these games on this compilation, so we marked the individual games "As Compilation". (This means that they will not be counted in the statistics as missing covers.) For our Gremlin collection, this leaves only the Jetbrix cover missing...
Also new is a full scan of 3 Konami Coin-op Hits. Just like the counterpart with 4 games, the full name of this release is on the side cover. Finally we have received the cassette cover of King Size from Robtek. Many thanks for these scans to Crown. Enjoy! |
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| | New Rare Oldie Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-22 |
  Plus/4 World takes pride in being the home of all Plus/4 related stuff: we're building THE definitive software database, for example. So it's always a rare moment when we find something that was never even mentioned on our site (nor anywhere else on the net, at least not in this context) - and yet, it's a commercial release. All right, without further ado here it is: Junior Maths from Tynesoft. It's (of course) a maths educational title, indended for 5-11 year olds. While it's not like most of us will spend much time playing with it, it's still good to have it in the collection. So there, enjoy! |
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| | 4 New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-20 |
    What, news update on a Saturday? Well, it's the season for giving, so we took the time... Plus Crown did it once again, adding four more beautiful cover scans to our collection. Let's see them: Chopper War from Illusion Software, Steve Davis Snooker full-size replacement, a Saboteur! release from Durell which has the C16 and Plus/4 version on it, and finally another alternative cover for Tower of Evil. Check 'em out and enjoy! |
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| | 3 Classic Commodore 16 Game Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-19 |
   Crown shares his recently acquired treasures with us. We start off with a rare cover scan from Solar Software. Wait, didn't we have all of those already? It seems that we did not, as this rare Galaxions cover shows. We have established before that this company had released two different packaging styles. Some of the covers have "Rounded Corners", with the logo at the bottom; while others have a distinct style with "Dithered Graphics" - the first release version, with logo on the top (and many of those have the "100% Machine Code" text on them too). To sort all of this out, we added a little table to the Solar Software page - maybe in time we will find more alternative covers. Crown also scanned a full sized replacement cover for Twin Kingdom Valley. Last but not least he sent in the Vox cover.
On top of all this, the three games now have their TAP files as well. For VOX, there are actually two different ones: one has a yellow loading screen and one is purple. They came from two tapes, and while the game is essentially the same, it's interesting to see this difference. |
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| | More Covers And TAPs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-18 |
    Ulysses777 sent in another nice pack of cover scans and TAP files. First off we finally cleared up the mystery about that 'alternative berks cover': It's infact a cover of Baby Berks, even though the cover artwork simply says "Berks". This confusion is even noted in Zzap C16 on page 3. Next up we have some long awaited covers: Hyperforce and Diagon. Both games now have their TAP files as well. The fourth new cover added today is for Steve Davis Snooker, it's the Blue Ribbon release cover. Finally there are two more original TAPs: Shoot It and Golf 16K. Many thanks to Ulysses for these! |
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| | 3 New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-17 |
   Only two weeks left from this year, but we're still going strong. Today's addition brings cover scans and photos for three more games. Plus4Vampyre has sent in the German release cover for Pogo Pete. This cover is yellow (versus the English release, which was white). Sidius sent in two things: one is the Italian version cover for An Introduction To Basic Part 1 (titled Introduzione Al Basic). The other is for the classic text adventure Zork I: we have box front and back photos, plus a scan of the map that was distributed with the game. Many thanks for these guys! Enjoy! |
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| | Ghost Town DX release 1 | | Posted by MIK on 2003-12-16 |
 BB Software has just released a preview version of his forthcoming remake of another outstanding game from Udo Gertz! It's called Ghost Town DX (GTDX), and it's the remake of the classic Ghost Town!
At the moment the game is around 40% complete, but this gives you a unique chance to see whats going on. As of yet sound and gamepad support have yet to be added so play takes place with arrow keys and space for action with ALT+X for Quit. Hit the link below and grab yours now! |
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| | More Rare Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-15 |
Have you ever played Waffenslinger on your commodore? Well, maybe you have, you just didn't know it! Waffenslinger is infact the German release name for Gunslinger.
Plus4Vampyre has sent in a very cool cover scan pack which includes such rarities as that one. Let's see them in alphabetical order: first we have Die Seefahrt (Seafaring) disk cover and instructions. Next is 5 Computer Hits, which is the first, not the fifth in this series from Beau Jolly. We have the Americana release of The Incredible Hulk, it's the C16 text only version. Olympische Winterspiele - that's actually the German release name for Winter Olympics from Tynesoft. We also have the disk cover scans for Quiwi. And last but not least is Waffenslinger. So start slinging your waffen (or linging your waffens), and enjoy these cool covers! Respects to Plus4Vampyre!
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| | New THRUST Remake! | | Posted by Noro on 2003-12-12 |
 Fans of one of the greatest multi-platform classics THRUST should head over to Thrust 2K3, a brand new remake of the game. It has cool graphics and many new levels, but it requires a fast PC and it's a 27MB download. Be warned: This one is damn hard to play! |
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| | 4 Hungarian Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-11 |
    Crown is back with not less than four cover scans and TAP files for a few rare Hungarian release programs. Three of these are from the "other" Hungarian software distributor, Apisz. Soliter is a logical board game. Torpedó is yet another battleships game implementation, and Vipera is an arcade game. The last addition today is for Tányértorony, an interesting brainteaser type game. Many thanks for these. Enjoy! |
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| Three Terrific T Tovers Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-10 |
   Maybe it's just a coincidence, that all three covers scans added today are for games that begin with the letter T. Or is it?... Anyhow, Stephen Mansell sent in the alternative cover for the great C16 classic Timeslip. Very nice cover artwork, definitely 'louder' than the English Software release cover, worth checking out. Next we have a somewhat weatherbeaten cover for Ten Little Indians, but we all know about the quality of Paxman Promitions covers. Finally we see the cover scan for Tablets of Hippocrates, a rare - and strangely tape only - adventure game. These last two covers are from Lando's collection. That's all the news for today, thanks for these covers guys! |
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| | 3 New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-09 |
   Today we bring you a little mix of covers from different people. First up is Pancho, and older (but fun to play) CBM game. This nice cover was sent in by Sidius. Pancho is a Q-bert style 3D jumping game, and its probably the best one in this genre. Colorful graphics, cute tune, but most importantly good playability.
Next we have the Superman game cover scans from Lando. From looking at this game it's hard to believe it's actually a commercial release. It definitely does not bring justice to such a cool cartoon character. Still it's good to have the cover in our collection.
Finally we have the Audiogenic release of Paintbox added to our site from Ulysses777. The software is the same as the Kingsoft German release, but the TAP file is recorded with a faster turbo. Plus it's good to have the instructions in English.
Many thanks for these contributions! Enjoy! |
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| | New Stuff Arrives! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-08 |
 Ulysses777 sent in yet another pack of cool goodies... The first addition is the second issue of C16 Plus4 Computing Issue. The editorial is definitely an interesting read. Next we have the original TAP and cover scans for a not-so-well-known CRL game called Sun Star. Up until now all we had was the TTL crack of this game, which contains the title picture, the game and an intro all wrapped into one (making his version C16 incompatible). This is the first time we see the original. We also have the cover scan for Games Designer and the full Instructions Manual that came with it. Finally we have the TAP files for Panik! and World Series Baseball. The first one is a C16 only version. Many thanks to Ulysses for these! |
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| | SCART cables for C16 and Plus/4! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-12-07 |
 This could be a god send for those of you screaming for a better picture on your new age TV sets! Jonathan Hayward based in the UK creates and sell scart cables for all your classic Commodore machines from Plus/4 to C64 and a host of other machines from his website.
Jonathan has been supplying them all over Europe, they are popular with gamers who are fed up of spending ages fiddling with tuning modern TVs into getting a picture from 15-20 year old hardware. Check out his homepage and take a look for your selfs!
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| | 3 New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-05 |
   You don't have to wait any longer, straight from Lando's collection to Plus/4 World: the new covers are here. Even though these are old classic C16 titles, their coverscans have yet to appear anywhere on the net. First up is Ian Botham's Test Match from Tynesoft. The other two games are CBM releases: Locomotion (with HUGE instruction sheets) and Purple Turtles. Our cover count is now up to 417. Enjoy! |
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| | Club Info 78 is Here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-03 |
 The mother of all diskmags continues it's unparalelled run: the 78th issue of the German Club Info is here. The usual articles talk about all the latest stuff (like the all-important release of Questionmark). There is also a complete description of Hyper Sports Plus. The B side has some new(ish) games like Orthopede. Download it now! |
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| | Rare New Stuff | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-02 |
   Okay, show of hands... Who's interested in a never-before seen commercial release on our platform? How about three? Those of you who actually raised their hands get some extra points for the spirit, but here they are anyway.
We cannot stress it enough how rare it is to get our hands on a commercially released program on for this machine that was not even listed or mention anywhere before. And now, thanks to Ulysses777 we get three... We start with System-8, a football pools forecaster for UK football pools, released by Blue Ribbon. The other two releases come from Macsen software: Blockbusters Goldrun is a stand alone game similar to the original, and we also have the Blockbusters Extra Questions Database (now there's a long name). This latter one is sort of an expansion pack for Blockbusters. All three releases are complete with nice coverscans and TAP files. Check it out, and respects to Ulysses! |
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| | Treasure Island Single Release Cover! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-12-01 |
 Treasure Island... Now there's another MAJOR classic Commodore Plus/4 game. Regardless of what one may think about today's gaming standards, this title is very well made, and has every ingredient to make a memorable classic. Nice colorful graphics, memorable music (in fact, the poor two channel square-wave sound is expertly used to create the sound of a harmonica/accordion, which fits the mood perfectly), but most of all, fun gameplay. With practice, you can find the path all the way to the treasure, and then get chased back to your ship by Long John Silver... Well, thanks to Gaia we now have the single release cover scan for this game. Check it out! This makes our CBM cover collection 8 out of 10. |
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| | Lone News 15: party report issue! | | Posted by Luca on 2003-11-29 |
 Did you miss the 4ever03 party in Szeged? Gain much much much more anger reading about people and facts involved: paprika fishes, astonishing previews, neoromanic monuments, sidcard projects, demo compo charts, hungarian pizzas... All this and more in the 15th issue of Lone News! Miss it at your own risk! |
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| | Fire Ant Single Cover! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-27 |
 Sidius contributed to our CBM collection with the single release cover of Fire Ant. What a nice classic game, much talked about, especially when people are mentioning their first memories with computer games. The cover artwork is very nice, and we are indeed happy to have this in our collection. We now have single cover versions of 7 out of the 10 tapes. We may be soon getting the one for Treasure Island, but that still leaves Icicle Works (of all games!) and Number Builder. Thanks to Sidius! |
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| | New Covers and TAPs | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-25 |
   Ulysses777 brings us this week's first update. We now have the wholewave TAP of Enigma, TAP files for Munch It and Climb It (for each there is a C16 only version), a turbo loader TAP for ACE 16. We have some new covers as well. First up is a single box release of C16 Classics I. That's right - it seems that besides the cool two tape release, Gremlin also had this one, all 4 games on one tape. We have the single release cover for Mayhem (which still leaves a few missing from our CBM collection). Next up is the cover (and TAPs) for Sandcastles and Paramaths, a compilation tape. Finally we have the box scans, TAP files and instruction scans for Trojan Light Pen. Excellet stuff, respects to Ulysses! |
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| | A Few Leftover Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-19 |
Today three cover scans were added to our collection. These were submitted quite a while ago, but they just "slipped through the cracks". Anyway, you can now enjoy the covers for 4 in 1 Hit Pak (from Lando), Plus-Paket 16 (from Mermaid) and the cartridge box cover for Viduzzles (from Ulysses777). Thanks guys!
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| | Cover Scans from Ulysses | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-13 |
Ulysses777 is here again with his new pack of expertly scanned covers! We start off with the box scans of C16 Tutor, the keyboard tutorial cartridge. Next we have Auriga cover. "Wait a minute, didn't we just add that yesterday?" - you may be asking. If you're not asking that then start paying attention! We did in fact add one Auriga cover, but this one is different, actually an earlier release. Why are there two different covers - that's a mystery. Next we have four new covers for CBM released games, but this time for the single releases. The games are Crazy Golf, Harbour Attack, Number Chaser and Space Sweep/Invaders. The trend seems to be that each of the 10 tapes released with the Commodore Plus/4 Bundle had a bundle cover (the plain one) and a single release cover for the shops. This stuff is so cool, that we compiled a little list of these covers and added it to the CBM page, check it out here. So we are still looking for 5 more of these single release covers (there's one for Fire Ant, but it's bad quality) - provided that they exists... Many thanks to Ulysses for his continued support of our site!
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| | YAPE 0.53 is here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-13 |
 Faster, better, more accurate. It's hard to believe that the new release of our beloved Commodore Plus/4 Emulator for the PC achieved all of those. True PAL Emulation is here, a much asked-for feature. Now you can enjoy demos like QuestionMark in all their glory. On the speed-front, the new YAPE no longer renders skipped frames, which means switching to a lower FPS will give an even bigger performance increase on older computers. Plus tons of bugfixes and neat little additions as usual... It's time to visit:
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| | Mermaid's Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-11 |
   This time it's the multi-talented Mermaid sent us some covers. Let's get right into it: We have Razorsoft's Mega Zap and Raider covers. For Raider, it's an alternative cover, as we have another one as well. The third one we added today is the original release cover for Football Manager. There are a few more she sent, but they will take a while to be properly cut up and stuff, so this is just for starters! Many thanks to Mermaid for the covers. |
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| | PixelShop V1.01 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-10 |
| The new version of PixelShop is here. The biggest addition to this cross-platform graphics package is the support for the FLI graphic mode. Unfortunately the old read-me file is gone, and all we get is a link to AbcuG's website, which at the moment appears to be empty (hopefully it will be online soon). Graphicians, grab your mouse (or keyboard) and let's see some nice FLI pictures! Cheers AbcuG! |
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| | Two Hungarian Game Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-10 |
 Who's that angry man with the knife? Well, we have received a very rare cover scan! It's for the Hungarian game The Invincible (A Legyőzhetetlen). Written by The Mad, you know it uses his trademark extended border. The game itself is a platformer: you have to make up the word Invincible by finding each of the letters (in order!) and breaking them up in a knock-out style sub game. Anyway, it's one of those covers that we though we'd never see again... But Pavel came to the rescue. We also added a very high quality replacement for the Legicsata cover, courtesy of Lacus. Thanks, guys! |
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| | New Kingsoft Cover | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-08 |
 Our database now correctly lists Legende Im Eis (Legend at Ice) as a commercial Kingsoft release from 1986. We have found an original copy of this game, hence the new cover scan. It's the usual plain-blue-Kingsoft-style. The game itself is German language graphical adventure written in Basic. Having a rainy afternoon this weekend? Then it's time to grab your German dictionary (or use this one), and let the adventuring begin! Many thanks to Crown for supplying the game information and the cover. |
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| | PixelShop 1.0 Released | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-05 |
Head on over to AbcuG's new homepage at abcug.freeweb.hu. The previous cool, unique, platform-related name (Plus4Shop) got changed to a generic one which gets you 10,000 Google hits (PixelShop). Nevertheless, it's good to see this project released, so all the graphicians can get working!
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| | Zoom4Gr Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-05 |
 Programmers, listen up! Papa bubis has released Zoom4Gr, a package supporting the Zoom4 graphic mode. (Call it QFLI - Quadruple line FLI - if you like.) Let's you color each pixel at 80*50 resolution. A very cool example effect is included. Most importantly the source is included as well, ready for you to explore it or use it in your own demos. Cheers bubis! |
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| | New SIDCard in the Works! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-11-05 |
 Good news everyone! Mr. Museum has sent us word that there is a new - and yet to be named - SIDcard currently in development as of 2003 November. The status of the card: it actually works! :-) (Although not perfectly.) The card is being developed by C16DOC/Unlimited (the brother of Mr. Museum). The final revision will be put directly on the TED Chip, as it's a internal card. That's all the info we know so far, and it sounds very promising! |
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| | New Covers Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-30 |
     Ulysses777 is hard at work once again to finish the gaps in our ever-growing cover collection. Let's see what today's addition brought us: Arrow of Death 1 (the C16 version of course) cover + TAP, alternate cover for Gridtrap + TAP, plus the covers of Bridgehead 16, Tazz, Hoppit, Invasion 2000 AD, Zip, Gullwing Falcon (alternate). Finally he also submitted the covers for Scooby Doo, both Elite and Encore versions. This particular one was sent in by a few other folks as well, but his was the best quality.
With Invasion 2000 AD added, the only Solar Software cover left would be Tank Attack, but Gaia sent in his scan of that one too, making this series complete. Woo-hoo! Good work everyone, and respects to Ulysses for yet another amazing cover pack.
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| | QuestionMark Blasts Onto The Scene! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-29 |
 Better late than never: here's the official newsbit about what everyone already knows. BSZ of NST released a brand new demo called Questionmark (which happens to be the exact same name of a Ceekay release).
Hard to find the words to describe it, just take a look. A true demo scener will know that the code that sits behind this magnificent production is nothing short of phenomenal. The author is a master of fast-loaders. It is so very rare to get something this beautiful and this polished on our platform. How some people decided to vote 8's and 9's on this is beyond me.
Congratulations and thanks to BSZ for creating a demo that will be always remembered. |
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| | Orthopede Comes 17th | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-28 |
 Well, that news heading already gave away pretty much everything there is to say! Orthopede (that name still cracks me up) came in 17th out of 63 games on the 2003 Minigame compo. It received some very nice comments. Unfortunately 1 and 4 kilobyte entries were all mixed together. When excluding those 4kb games Orthopede scores on the 4th place in the 1kb field. And while it was somehow forgotten a little, we had another contender from our Scene: Luca has made the music (on a plus/4 with a SID card actually) for the 4kb Arkanoid clone that ended up on the 6th place. Many of the reviewers cheered hearing this great tune from Luca. We can all feel good that our platform and scene was represented. Congrats to Gaia and Luca!
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| | Lots Of New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-24 |
Ulysses777 did it again! Without further ado, let's get right to the point: Azimuth Head Alignment Tape covers + TAP, C16 Super Games 1 an Italian Compilation release cover, Flight Zero-One-Five TAP (finally!), Commodore 16 Games Pack I and Commodore 16 Games Pack II all TAPs - both sides, plus all individual programs and covers for the second (whew!), Diamond Mine II covers plus TAPs, including a special Plus/4 Only TAP, Astro Plumber cover and TAP. That sure was one long sentence.
Finally we have a real gem: C16 Plus4 Computing, a tape based magazine from Argus Press Software, full of goodies. Could be the very first mag ever. At this point we don't know whether this was accompanied by a paper version or not. Many thanks to Ulysses for all this cool stuff! Enjoy!
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| | Ghost Town DX Latest Screens! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-10-23 |
Udo Gertz Ghost Town like you've never seen before is heading to a PC near you! BB Software has revealed some awesome images of his work so far and there is word that the game may change for the better with new ideas being added for good measure!
Looking at the graphics you can only say WOW! This does look like it will turn out as one hell of a remake indeed and we can't wait to see the finished game in action! Hit the link below and take a peek:
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| | Manic Miner saved with NovaLoad??? | | Posted by MIK on 2003-10-23 |
 Yes it's true! The Blue or rather Black screen of death that Manic Miner suffered with having being save with no Turbo Loader is no more! Little did I know and I'm sure many of you out there that Manic Miner was re-released by Beau Jolly Limited as part of their Five Star Games 2 compilation and the good chaps at Beau Jolly didn't waste any time and resaved the game with NovaLoad.
They didn't do half the job either as they also added in the control screen which was also present on the original. We owe a big many thanks to Crown for hunting this one down and above all for creating this TAP image for all to enjoy! Many thanks once again for opening up this long lost secret! 
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| | Plus/4 and YAPE on Television! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-22 |
 Yup! This clip will blow your mind! ...Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the world lies a small unregarded country... Hungary it is! Anyways, abcug and Mr. Károly Balogh went down to a cable TV station (called FixTV). They have a retro section in which every week a new machine is presented. Our felllows did a little show about the Plus/4 and YAPE. The damn thing is in Hungarian, but you gotta watch it anyways... They used Pigmy's Megaload and show Heartfixer as THE demo for the plussy. (Quite fitting, too.)
Funny stuff that got lost in the translation: they didn't know Gaia's name. It's Attila Grósz, damnit! Second, they said: "We have a central database with all softwares and stuff, it's plus4.emucamp.hu (sic)". Later they correctly show the address (free advertising for us!) as plus4.emucamp.com. But the emphasis is on WE. Brings a tear to the eye, to feel this much embraced. All right, enough of this, just go and watch! (Many thanks to Jedi for hosting the video.)
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| | New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-21 |
We're back in the old routine, adding new covers to the database. Crown has purchased a lot of tapes off of ebay, and thanks to him, these cool cover scans are now available to everyone. The new ones are: Commodore 16 Games Pack I, Classic Adventure, Enigma, Five Star Games II, Jet Set Willy, League Challenge, Pogo Pete. Finally there's this rare orange weirdness: Lone Survivor/Wacky Painter, which is apparently a two game compilation from Tynesoft. These were all on our WANTED list.
We also have some new TAPs: Canoe Slalom (the first working copy!), Enigma, Jet Set Willy (the Plus/4 version), Lone Survivor, Wacky Painter.
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| | Jedi's 11 | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-20 |
 One of our new members, Jedi, submitted a nice pack of old classic games. All 11 of them are now on the New Uploads page. From the feedback that has been coming in right after they went online, it seems that they brought back lots of memories for some of the folks... Indeed, some of them are those games that most of us played back in the day, and then forgot. It's surprising that they only just made their way to the archive - but nevertheless, it's good to have them. Some of the cool games are Slirp, Rambo-C16, Nasa Simulator. There are even some utilities like Super Peek and Type-A-Tune. Many thanks to Jedi! Enjoy! |
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| | From DCD's Archives... | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-16 |
| This time it's DCD (AKA Genius) the one that dusted off those old disks... He has sent in a nice big bunch of programs - many of his own - that we did not have in the database and were not available on the internet. Now they are. Let's see what we have: an interesting (but Hungarian language) magazine called Info (we have issues 5 and 9), and possibly Skoro's first demo, one called To Be 15. We even have a new one from the GOTU Team called Amiga! Yes! Ok!. Cool stuff, good to have. For the complete list, head on over to New Uploads. Many thanks to DCD for these! |
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| | New Map Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-13 |
 BB Software is definitely active in Plus/4 related areas! Not only he's working on Game Remakes, and he has just sent in a map as well! Head on over to the Maps section, or directly to the game, which is the old Tony Kelly classic: Big Mac. Thanks for the map to Roland! |
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| | New YAPE Rocks! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-09 |
Don't have to hold your breath any longer, the new YAPE is here! Version 0.52 makes it THE Plus/4 emulator. All the improvements delivered a DEVASTATING blow to those few games and demos left, which still refused to run on any emulator... Yes, the Holy Grail of Classic Plus/4 Demos: Infinity and +4 Mania Forever now run (which means it's screenshot time)! The added G64 support means our only G64 game runs as well (which is of course Raetsel). The scroll-bug has been fixed, which means all those vertical scrollers like Legionnaire and XCellor8 can be enjoyed in their full glory.
To top it all off, the new YAPE is actually faster! On a Pentium II 350 Mhz, it runs at almost 200%, which means it should perform well on almost any machine. Are you still reading this? Go and download now, this is historical!
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| | Rare Stuff Coming At You! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-08 |
 Well, we are glad to see that the folks on the scene are digging in their software archives. Even though we have just recently surpassed 4000 programs listed, more stuff keeps coming in. As it should! Let's start with the contribution of a new member, Suto: Extended Screen and Vages Basic utilities, the much-sought-after Newton Almája game, Magyarország which was the last missing piece in the Geography Educational Series, Monszun, Spedy V2 (a rare tape turbo) and a special version of Tape Messias. Now on to the rest: Lacus sent in a rare game called Bip-bip (from the makers of Bigyulabolt). Lavina actually found the demo Genesis, which deals with the Book of Genesis. Finally Litwr found and submitted a German translated version of Super Cobra. Thanks to everyone for these, and keep 'em coming! |
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| | Mail Madness! Party 6 Invitation! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-08 |
 Pardey people, listen up! Check out the new invitro from Mr. Museum of Unlimited: Mail Madness Party 6 Invitation! This party will be held in Germany in December. If you want to get in touch with the German scene, start making plans today! Visit Mr. Museum's website for more info (altough it seems to be in Germany only for the moment).
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| | New Plus/4 Release! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-07 |
 Gentlemen Software released Lunacy 9 (hun)! Where is Lunacy 7 or 8, you ask? Well, we all definitely have lots of digging to do in our archives to get all these (and the other lost pieces of software) out, but trust us, it existed. It's a Magazine/Demo type thing, and this latest issue has a party report from the 4ever03 party! At the moment it's only in Hungarian, but the authors has promised to release an English version very soon!
Edit: This just in! Only a few short hours after mentioning the lost Lunacy 7, Ati has found it and sent it in! Thanks!
We are always happy to see new software for the Plussy. Keep the scene alive! |
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| | C16 Classics Series Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-07 |
   We are proud to present you these beautiful covers of the C16 Classics Series! Three compilation tapes, each containing... Well, C16 classics (d'oh!). They are definitely rare and have some interesting facts about them. The first part, C16 Classics I is one of the few compilations that actually came on two tapes. When you placed them next to each other, you could see the full cover artwork. This was probably too expensive, so the other parts of this series came on single tapes. C16 Classics II had yet another 4 games on it. So did the last part, C16 Classics III, however, this was released under the Star Games label rather than Gremlin Graphics. The back cover of this tape has that infamous ad about Avenger, claiming that it exists for the C16...
Thanks to a new feature on our site, all compilation tapes are now linked to the single release (and vica-versa).
These beauties came from our main scan suppliers, Ulysses and Lando. This addition to the ever growing cover collection finally pushed the stats over 66%, which means we have 2/3 of all the covers out there. |
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| | New Hungarian TAPs and Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-06 |
   bszggg, a newly registered member, sent us some rare items from his collection. We now have TAPs and cover scans for Bigyulabolt, Szerpentin and TV Játék. He also provided some great replacement scans for the old classics Battle and BMX Simulator. Plus one more TAP: Turbo Former, which is a rare tape turbo. Many thanks to bszggg! Enjoy! |
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| | New Club-Info is out | | Posted by Gaia on 2003-10-05 |
| The news is just in from Mr-Museum: the latest edition (#77) of this German Commodore plus/4 disk-mag Club-Info has been released yesterday. Get your copy from the Club-Info website. Also available are some old magazines: Odds&Sodds, Pluvi Hardware and all issues of Tapemags Hacker and User. By browsing through the latest Club-Info I have come across the URL of Solder's website, and it seems to be full with plus/4 goodies, just check the link to the left. |
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| | Huge Cover Update! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-03 |
  Crown has added some nice new covers to our collection. The list is quite long, so let's get started with the new ones first: the original Magnificent Seven release cover of Indoor Soccer. Original Elite release of Frank Bruno's Boxing. We now have 3 covers for this one: the original, the encore re-release and the special edition cover. A cover for Basic-Kurs and the Kingsoft game Quiwi.
He has also added some full size, high-quality replacements: Street Olympics, Strip Poker and Cave Fighter. Enjoy! |
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| | Plus4Shop First Preview! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-10-01 |
 AbcuG (AKA St. GLS) has sent in the first public version of his upcoming crossplatform graphics editor called Plus4Shop. It supports the basic graphics modes of the C16,C116 and Plus4: hi-res and multicolor (maybe FLI support will be included later). It can edit a bitmap which is 6 screens in size in any alignment. It has .PRG support so that the saved bitmap can be loaded directly to YAPE. Version 1.0 is coming up within a month, depending on how much time the author has. |
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| | New Remakes Page | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-30 |
 There has been enough of these to justify a new page... Remakes! Cool rewrites of old classics. If you love some of the old C16 Plus4 classic games, and wonder how they would look if they were written today... Then this page is for you. Check out our new Remakes page, listing many of the already available games. Even Kichy's lost Rescue From Zylon remake has made it to the list, his website is gone, but the file is now also on our servers. The remakes are cross linked with their creators and the original software.
Taking a look at the list will confirm that Tom Thumb is the #1 game on our platform of all time! It has inspired a record 3 remakes already.
If you know of any more remakes of our games, don't hesitate to post it on the forums. Enjoy! |
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| | Plus/4 Entry in 2003 MiniGame Compo! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-29 |
A new game release has arrived (brace yourselves): Orthopede is here. It's Gaia's submission for the 2003 MiniGame Compo, and it's the only game out of the 57 that represents our platform. Once you finished laughing your arse off about the name, check it out: you will find a centipede clone squeezed into 1024 bytes.
It's the perfect opportunity for all those folks who were shooting their mouth off about community this-and-that. A fellow Plus4'er needs your votes. Last year Csabo submitted 4 games to this compo, only to receive virtually no votes from anyone on the scene (*), even though the scores were so close that only one additional vote would have meant being in the first three. Hopefully history won't repeat itself. Just go and vote.
(*) Except SVS, whose votes were unfortunately lost. |
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| | Dateimanager Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-26 |
  Only one new TAP + cover this time, but it's a nice one. Dateimanager is a german language database program for the C16. It was published by a german company that still exists, let's hope they don't mind us putting it up on the web. This was submitted by Crown, many thanks to him. |
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| | VICE 1.13 released! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-09-26 |
A new version of the Versatile Commodore Emulator has been released today. Plus/4 emulation was officially added in the previous release and now it was time for improvements. The most important changes from the official release notes are the following:
General
- Added new Scale2x render.
- Fixed NMI line emulation bug.
PLUS4 changes
- Many TED fixes (clocking, sound, palette, etc.).
- User port parallel cable.
The official website has also been updated, but you can aswell head straight here to grab your copy! |
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| | 2 News Tape Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-22 |
  From Lando's collection, we have added these two new covers. Lazer 900 is an old shoot 'em up from Yes! Software. Baby Berks is the 4th Berks game, the one that's not part of the Berks Trilogy. With this addition we have all the Berks covers though! Enjoy! |
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| | Educational Tapes 'O' Level | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-22 |
   Ulysses777 recently won a bid on ebay. These three rare tapes are educational programs from Paxman Promotions. They are Chemistry 'O' Level, Mathematics 'O' Level and Physics 'O'/'A' Level. The covers mention a 4th piece in the series, which would be Biology - perhaps someone will find this one as well. Each program has TAP files and cover scans - two for Physics. Many thanks to Ulysses for sharing this with Plus/4 World! |
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| | Truly Rare Treasure Found! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-19 |
  The Real Stunt Experts is a new game for most of us in the sense that we have never seen it before. It's hard to find the words to describe the feeling that a true C16/Plus4 fan feels, when playing this game for the first time.
The cover tells us the same old sad story: the wonderful C64 version got cut down, as the C16 version only has one event. Still it's iteresting to play, and it you've played all the other thousands of games already, it's a must. It's a unique action game: you play the role of a stuntman. Instead of lives, you have cash in the bank and insurance to pay for every stunt attempt. You have 8 levels to go through, before the game will tell you... Well, you'll just have to find out for yourself what happens, when you finally complete that very last stunt.
Everything is there: TAP, program file, covers, map, cheats. Many thanks to Gaia for contributing the game and the cover scans. Enjoy! |
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| | 4 Compilation Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-18 |
    Ah, the good ol' days, when you could buy 10 games on one tape... These compilations definitely packed value. We have some beautiful cover scans added today for Computer Hits 3 and Computer Hits 4 from Beau Jolly. We also have the covers and instructions (huge!) for Omnibus and Omnibus II, which are from Star Games. What is Star Games you ask? It's Gremlin Graphics' software label. The bottom line is: 4 covers down, 200 to go... Enjoy! |
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| | YAPE 0.51 Hits The Streets! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-18 |
| Or the web, at least. The list of things fixed in this very latest version is quite long. However, at least one thing is definitely worth mentioning: all timer based defenders now work! This means that some programs that could not be opened with anything are now ready for you to play with on your PC. Another world first! Some examples: Lavina's Robo mutant or TLC's excellent Outrun (you really have to listen to that one). Plus the "sparkle" on the border makes the feel so much more authentic - sometimes very little things mean a lot. Head on over to YAPE homepage and grab your copy. |
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| | Hyper Sports Plus Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-17 |
 Have you ever played "Triple Jump" or "Long Horse" sporting events on your C16 or Plus/4? Well, now you can with Hyper Sports Plus. The original game contained 6 events, but it had two major drawbacks: the events loaded slowly, and you could only play them in sequence. That is you had to be able to qualify each event before moving on. This made the learning curve extremely steep, and we doubt that many players actually were able to see all the events. This new version aims to help that. An additional menu has been added, which let's the players select the starting event. You can also get back to the main menu by pressing ESC. This is a tribute to the original: now everyone can see what is hidden in this rare game. Enjoy! |
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| | Slippery Sid And Tycoon Tex! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-16 |
  We are going to be adding quite a few new covers to the site, so be prepared... To kick-off this cover marathon, we're going to start with Slippery Sid and Tycoon Tex. Slippery Sid is an old-old basic commercial game from Citisoft, and our friend Tex is the title character of that Gremlin Graphics classic. Both covers are from Lando's endless collection. This means we have all the covers for the Micro Projects titles!
Another new (and rare) cover came from Crown: it's for 4 Konami Coin-Op Hits. Very similar to the other one on the site, but this one has 4 games on it, not three. The one in addition is Green Beret. Also from Crown we have a Power ball cover replacement, a Pizza Pete replacement, plus a temporary black and white scan of Invasion 2000 AD. This leaves only Tank Attack from Solar Software without a cover - does anyone have this? It seems that even our cover gurus don't own an original of that game, so let our cry be carried over the world: We want Tank Attack cover!
Thanks for these covers and stay tuned for more! |
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| | Couple of Rare Ones | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-15 |
If you check out the New Uploads section, you will find quite a few rare scene-produced titles that have just been added to the database. These came from the dusty disk archives of Gaia, Crown, Lacus and Csabo. The most notable addition is the fully working version of Bigyulabolt (now there's a tongue-twister), that we know lots of people were looking for. Another interesting one is Save New York, which was coded by Mucsi - quite a long time ago, indeed! Cool to see that the person who came to develop titles like Extasy, or created the very first FLI effect on the Plus/4 started with this one... Or check out this old one from Pigmy: Musics of Games. Also worth mentioning is the recent addition of very cool but very rare game from MC called Hydroines.
Thanks for these rare ones folks! |
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| | David Whittaker confirmed being author of Space Sweep! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-14 |
 At last nights Back in Time 4 (LiVE concert of C64 remixed music) I caught up with David Whittaker once again for a brief moment! Before I could even ask the question he said that after Back in Time 3 he went home and hunted down his long lost game which he had forgot about! As I expected it was indeed Space Sweep. David also added it took less than a week to create.
Attila may be pleased to learn that he used Yape to confirm his finding. He soon got hold of a Plus4 which died on him within days, but he is currently in the middle of getting hold of another! It's amazing to hear David has a soft spot for the plussy and more amazing to learn that he was the dude behind this very game! After doing so much on the C64 side we have at last something to shout about and if your a C64 fan and love David Whittaker then here's one title that maybe missing from your collection! Many thanks David for putting a face to this game. Cheers!! :-) |
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| | D64 Recall - The Original Games!! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-11 |
With the winter months heading our way we thought we'd give you something to dig your teeth into! As with our other collection of D64 images we offered, this time it's the Original Games. This archive contains commercial released games, many we already have, but what is unique here is that these are cracks which have never been leaked onto the net before! They also contain stuff not found in our database as of yet so there is much to enjoy here! Once again we owe many thanks to Mike Dailly for sending these goodies our way, but with that in mind we owe a great deal of thanks to Marco Polo - SYN (Synergy) because he is the dude swapper of the Plus/4 scene who not only has all these images on floopy back at his parents home, but copied every single one to PC and what you see here is part of that collection! Enjoy Marco Polo's awesome Games backup!
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| | BBSoftware's Tom Thumb v0.01 for PC!! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-10 |
Let us take you back to May 2002 when we told you about BBsoftware's release of Big Mac for PC. It was around this time Roland K of BBsoftware was working on another remake project of Tom Thumb. Although we got to see screen shots of his work we couldn't at the time download his version because he was changing web hosts. As time passed it skipped our memories until now! Roland got in touch regarding Plus4 World today which in turn reminded us of his remake and YES this time it's up for grabs!!
Being version 0.01 this is more a preview of his Tom Thumb. The preview will take you upto the first door which lets you have a good look at whats going on and there is also some funky SID type music being played along side. We can only hope Roland will return to his Tom Thumb, but for now head on over to BBsoftware's homepage and grabs yours!
PS. I've just received an email from Roland and he says work continues on his Tom Thumb! The hardest part is creating Udo's single enormous level to 16bit. He has also added new music and the graphics are forever changing! We wish you the very best and look forward to seeing your Tom Thumb adventure in the near future Roland. Cheers! :-) |
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| | 4ever03 Party Pictures from Lavina! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-09 |
| Visit the Features section to see 43 pictures taken by Lavina on the 4ever03 party, complete with thumbnails and comments. He has also taken sereval portraits of sceners, which have been added to the Faces of the Scene gallery. The new ones are: DCD, Fred, Impy, Moldi, Stinky, TGMS and two more recent photos for Ninja and Nukeman. Thanks for the pictures! Enjoy! |
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| | New Covers and TAPs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-09 |
  Ulysses777 dug up quite a few more tapes from his amazing collection, and took his time to create some high-quality scans and perfect TAP images. Let's see what's new: Cover and TAP for Arena 3000, cover for Leaper, TAP files for Loco coco (one from each side of the tape). Also new are the Four Great Games and Four Great Games Vol. 2, two compilation tapes released under the MicroValue label. Not only we have the covers, but all the individual TAP files for 4 games on each compilation! That's a lot of new stuff for you to check out and enjoy. Many thanks to Ulysses777 once again for his contribution! |
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| | 4ever03 Party Report | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-08 |
Check out the Features section for MC's party report, available in English and Hungarian! Maugli's party photos are here, a lot of fun to view, but the size (29MB) prohibits us from copying them all to Plus4 World. Also check out DCD's pictures here.
The new demos released at the party are now being added to the database. Congratulations to the winners: T.M.R. and the Cosine team (C64) won the 16K Democompo with their demo Ikaruga. bubis won the 128 byte democompo with his Raindrops entry, part of Your daily 128 byte intro. |
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| | Minus4 Source Released! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-09-05 |
Ever wanted to know how a Plus/4 emulator looks like inside? Or to learn more of the inner life of the Plussy? You now have the chance, as Mike Dailly released the source of his great emulator Minus4w. Go to the Minus 4 Homepage and download your copy!
Here is Mike's original release note posted on www.plus4.com:Okay, I've decided to release this now... I'm not gonna be changing it any, so I thought it was as good a time as any. So head on over to my minus4 site and download it if your so inclined... Enjoy! |
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| | 4ever03 Party! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-04 |
4ever03 will be a huge C16 & Plus/4 party happening this Saturday in Szeged, Hungary! The party will be the final chapter of the long avaited 16K DemoCompo. All of the entered new C16 demos and 128-byte micro-demos will be officially released. Since it's a competition, there must be voting. Those of you who can't attend can still participate by voting online. Visit edc.freeweb.hu and see the "voting" section for further instructions. Online voting opens September 5th at 17:00 CET, and closes September 7th at 00:00 CET. This means you have 31 hours to cast your votes. If you're going to attend the party at Saturday, please DO NOT download and check the nominations, because you're ruining fun!
Some people that will be attending the party (in random order): Luca of FIRE, Nukeman (!!), Gaia, TCFS, St. GLS, Ninja, Lavina, Harry & Paul of GOTU, ATI, DCD of WLS, Impy of UTG, Murphy of Exceed, Coyote and TLC of CNS, Enigma, Fred, Jimy, Maugli, MC of EDC, Stinky and BSZ of NST, Rachy, Crafty of HFX, some Amiga & C64 sceners and other various visitors. |
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| | Mega Cover Update! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-03 |
   We have quite a few covers that were sent in but haven't made it to the site yet. So we're getting to work on them... now. Let's start off with three covers from Christian Kohlrautz. He has sent in Berks, Fortress Underground and Sextett, a newly added Kingsoft compilation, with not less than six games on it. The Berks cover makes the Berks series almost complete, we are still missing the covers for Baby Berks - does anyone have it?
   Next up we have some cool ones from Snoopy. Bongo gets yet another cover - this one claims to be Bongo Construction Set. According to the different covers, there must be an official version of Bongo out there that does not contain the editor, right? If anyone has this, please send it in! We have a full back & front replacement for Roller Kong and Triple Decker 5. Finally he has sent in the Thai Boxing cover scan as well.
  We close up with 4 new ones from Ulysses777. He scanned Favourite 4 and Football Manager both complete with instructions. He also scanned the instructions of ACE +4. It's a beautiful cover, and to do it justice, here is the HUGE version. Finally we have the A.C.E. cover and original TAP file as well!
Thanks for all of you for this cool stuff! |
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| | Two Special Cover Scans | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-02 |
 The Shoppekeeper of Ye Olde Infocomme Shoppe has generously allowed us to use scans from his amazing vault. We have received two specials scans from him. First up we have Scott Adams Scoops, a very rare compilation release. This confirms that two more games from the Scott Adams Adventure series did in fact exist on the C16. These are Voodoo Castle and Buckaroo Banzai. We don't have them yet, but it's something for the true collectors out there to look for. The second cover is a big and beautiful replacement scan for The Time Machine.
With these additions, we now have just over 60% of the covers or all commercial releases.
Many thanks to the Shoppekeeper, and visit his cool site if you are interested in trading some original games. |
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| | Two Scans from Sidius | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-09-02 |
  Sidius sent in two more rare scans to add to our collection. One of them is the german release cover of the great Udo Gertz classic Bongo. From the side cover, you find out that you are Bongo, the supermouse... The rest is too german for most of us. The cover artwork is quite different from the Anco release though, and we are happy to have this scan as well. The other cover is for Can of Worms which - as it turns out is a commercial release (the database is slowly getting better and better). It's the 4th game we know of from Livewire Software, and it's a 6 game compilation. As the side cover says: "And now for something completely different". Unfortunately no Monty Python stuff on the tape, but six fun smaller games nevertheless. Thanks to Sidius for the scans! Enjoy! |
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| | Feast your eyes on these beauties!! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-08-31 |
We will use every word in the book if we have to just to exspess how awesome the cover collection is becoming! Yes indeed the covers universe is never ending and once again we take a look at the stars of old! We have new and replaced covers with instructions to match all waiting to be found! Steer your telescopes towards: Mission Mars, Moon Buggy, Space Freeks, Timeslip and Xargon Wars, but don't be fooled by all these intergalatic games as we have a host of covers which are more down to earth with titles such as: Wimbledon, Sports 4, Knock Out, Quick Draw, The Boss and a rare cover of Who Dare Wins 2 released by Alternative Software Limited!
Last of all we have finally got hold of the Triple Decker 6 cover thanks to none other Julian Jones the author of Panzer Duel where we have also shared this very cover with his game, (see why on the Panzer Duel page). Enjoy! |
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| | Lando's Time Machine? :-) | | Posted by MIK on 2003-08-30 |
 This should take you back too 1986 when all things on C16/Plus4 where rocking! Lando has added to his page a neat picture of himself and his son (Daniel) in what can only be called a Time Machine!! Lando and his son are in fact sitting in one of the most loved arcade machines of that time named Out Run. Although these machines are becoming very rare he took this golden opportunity to show his son the real thing. Maybe some day they both will look back at this snap shot (taken in Margate/England) and say "I was there", but some how Lando looks twice the age as when he first jumped on it back in 1986. ;-) |
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| | 5 New Maps! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-25 |
| Game Maps don't come around that often, since it usually takes a lot of time to create them. Still here they are: five brand new maps. Ulysses777 created two beauties for Rockman and Bmx Racers. The latter one is one of the tallest ones, all five courses are in one image. If you have previously overlooked Rockman, this is the time to check it out: it's more complex than it first looks. Next we have the Battery levels maps created by TCFS. Only the first two levels for now. Finally Csabo made two news maps for Exorcist and Bölcsek Köve. Enjoy! |
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| | 7 Unique Covers and 1 Replacement! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-23 |
       Indeed we are taking the cover updates to the extreme, but just to prove that we are still far from having all who can remember some of these forgotten classics? First up is Auf Wiedersehen Monty, not the best offering but a welcome sight by all means! Does anyone have the official Auf Wiedersehen Monty map? Check the reverse for more info! Adding to that we bring you Future Shock, Gunslinger, Jail Break, Jump Jet, the rare Room 10 and Torpedo Run.
Last of all to round up today's instalment we have totally replaced Panik! for much better images! Many thanks to a guy named Stuart for scanning these much wanted covers! Enjoy. |
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| | Even More Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-22 |
If you listen very carefully, you just might be able to hear the Unix servers complaining: "Oh, tell me they are not uploading yet another cover scan!" Well, we sure are, and hopefully you all will be happy to see them! This time start off with 4 more Commodore cartridge box scans. Atomic Mission, Pirate Adventure and Strange Odyssey are from Ulysses777, and Jack Attack is from Attila. These were taken from the international release. Sidius sent in two more rare ones from his own collection, that cannot be found anywhere else on the internet! So feast your eyes on Gullwing Falcon and Heebie Jeebies from Livewire. As an added bonus, you will notice that all these scans are of the highest quality.
With the addition of these, it finally happened: we've reached 300 games that have covers. Check out this little statistics page to follow the climb to 100%...
Many thanks for everyone for these scans, and don't mind the servers, they will get used to it. Just keep 'em coming.
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| | 6 Move Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-21 |
Sidius strikes again! Okay, maybe he didn't strike anything, but he did send us these 6 cool covers which are much appreciated. We have the three famous cartridges: Atomic Mission, Pirate Adventure and Strange Odyssey. (It's good that we now have them separately and also as the Cartridge Triple Pack. Also we have Autobahn and Canoe Slalom (from Tynesoft) and Corman. Many thanks for these nice covers! Enjoy!
Please note that the three cartridge box scans were taken by James C, and they originate from cbm264.com.
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| | Commodore Cover Scans | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-21 |
Flashy they may not be, but here they are anyway. Due to popular request, we're adding these original Commodore cassette cover scans. May people have already offered to scan and send them, we will use Ulysses777's scans. There's 9 games in total from the 10 that came with the computer, the 10th being Fire Ant (which we already had). Enjoy!
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| | New Exomizer Release! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-21 |
Magnus, the author of Exomizer has sent us word that there is a new version available. Let's see what's new: there's a -p flag that limits the number of optimization passes and there's a new autodetect sys-address feature for the -s flag.
The flag combination -p1 -m1024 gives a healthy speedup in crunch time at the expense of the ratio. This is particularly useful for people that use Exomizer in make files or build scripts and compiles
a lot of test versions where the speed of the edit/compile/test cycle is more important than the size of the file.
Please also note that his email address and website was changed. Go to the tools section to download your copy! |
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| | More More Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-20 |
This time it was Sidius from Berlin, Germany who sent us a missing cover: Atlantis from Anirog. A very cool classic C16 game indeed, and now we have the cover artwork to go along with it. Many thanks Sidius!
Crown has found a few more covers, which are not the best quality, but definitely welcome additions: Xargon Wars, Winter Olympics and Mt Vesuvius. The last helps out the Tynesoft collection, but it's far from complete. More is need, we say! :-)
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| | More Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-19 |
     
Ulysses777 continues to send us amazing stuff from his seemingly endless collection of original C16 game tapes. This time we have some very nice additions as follows: Galaxions and Meteorite from Solar Software, Space Escort from Atlantis Software, Circus and Mansion (Adventure 1). Each of these now have the TAP files plus the covers. Also new is the UXB cover and the Imagine release cover of Yie Ar Kung Fu.
With these additions, the Solar collection is almost complete (only 4 more missing!). The Atlantis Software collection is complete (at least the releases we know of).
The Circus cover is something very interesting, check it out. It claims that it's Mysterious Adventure #7, but everywhere else this is actually known as #6.
Crown managed to get a much better version of Triple Decker 7. Finally Attila sent in the cover for Space 2. That's a whole lot of new stuff for you to enjoy! Many thanks for these cool submissions, guys!
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| | Quiz Results | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-18 |
 Our first C16/Plus4 Game Quiz is now over. Many thanks to everyone who played, we hope you enjoyed it! To find out what the right answers were, and who got the most right, visit the Features Page once again. |
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| | 5 New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-18 |
| Continuing our quest to collect all covers! Crown found some covers on various ebay auctions. These are now proudly displayed, until someone comes along with a better or bigger scan. First we have Triple Decker 7. So that series is not quite complete, is it? We just assumed it only went up to 5. We also have Alien Attack from Solar Software, this company's scans are slowly growing too. We have Major Blink and Berks 3, and Panik! from Atlantis. (For Atlantis, only Space Escort's cover is missing.) Thanks for these covers, and if you have more, don't hesitate to send them in! |
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| | Two TCFS Maps! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-14 |
 TCFS has created two sets of maps for two of his own games: Battery 2 and Hexenkuche. The maps, just like their game counterparts are immensely detailed and beautiful. For Battery 2 there are three maps, one for each level. For Hexenkuche, there's a map for the forest, and two maps for each underground tomb.
If you haven't played these up until now, then now is the time, and these maps should help you along the way. Many thanks to TCFS for creating these maps and the games! |
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| | The Other Side Of Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-13 |
| Lucky for us, Spector has fired up his scanner once again. This time he scanned the back covers of the three games he recently scanned the covers for. This means now you can read the original instructions (and plot) of these games: Cuthbert in Space, Gridtrap and Shoot it. Our cover collection now has not less than 375 cover images covering 272 games. Thanks to Spector for the scans. Enjoy! |
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| | Updated Utilities! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-12 |
| MC has sent us word that both his utilities have been updated. AP4, his Integrated Development Environment is now up to version 1.1.5. It includes many changes and new features, check out the text file included in the package for all the details. He has also released an improved version of FarD64 plugin (for the Far Manager). This should be able to handle every D64 image, even hacked ones. Thanks for MC for the utils and the news! |
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| | Our First C16/Plus4 Game Quiz! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-12 |
 How well do you know your C16/Plus4 games? Are you a true gamer? It's time to put your knowledge to the test! Plus/4 World proudly presents our first Game Quiz!
There are 20 pictures for your to identify. There are no prizes, it's just for fun. Visit the Features page to play. |
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| | Tutti Frutti SID! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-07 |
| Waz/Padua (Wazzaw on our forums) has sent us his version of the Tutti Frutti game music for SID! If you have SIDPlug installed, you can listen to the tune when visiting our Tutti Frutti page. (You can grab SIDPlug from here.) If your browser doesn't support SIDPlug, you can also download the SID file and play it on your computer. Thanks Wazzaw! |
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| 12 TAP Files And A Funeral (I Mean Soundtrack) | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-07 |
We've received another gift from our friend Ulysses777. This time he has sent us a total of 12 TAP files. They are Hercules, Ian Botham's Test Match, Netrun 2000, Ninja Master, On Cue (Containing both On Cue Pool and On Cue Snooker) and Punchy + Rolf Harris Picture Builder + Starter Chess from that Commodore demo tape. He also sent us the Berks Trilogy taps, which are also available as separate games: Berks, Major Blink and Berks 3.
About On Cue: as this was really one release, we have combined the previously separate records of On Cue Pool and On Cue Snooker into one. However, this made the downloads links a bit confusing. Therefore we introduced a new feature to the site, which lets us categorize the downloads that belong to one release, so it is clear which file you are downloading. Check out the On Cue page's downloads section to see what we mean. This also means that we have all the Mastertronic covers!
Hercules was another tape which had a free audio soundtrack on it, from H.E.X. (or House Electronic Xperience.) You can listen to it in whole (2.5 MB), or we have a much shorter but still enjoyable version for modem users here (450 KB). This track is a medium tempo, reagge-ish song with female vocals. "Wake up in the mooorning'..."
Many thanks to Ulysses777 for all this cool stuff!! |
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| | Tutti Frutti - Music Hearing! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-08-07 |
If you've already seen todays news about Warren Pilkington's (Waz/Padua) Tutti Frutti SID then it's time to hear it all over again on your Plus4 or YAPE using the great music tool called Music Hearing V1.0. By the way this was put together for fun and gives you a chance to try something new if you haven't played with anything other than games like me ;-)
For newcomers here's how (using YAPE):
1. Set YAPE so the Sound settings is "Enable SID card emulation".
2. Load up Music Hearing from the .D64. Press Space to pass the title screen.
3. Once loaded press F3 so you select "SID CARD".
4. Press F1 to get the .D64 directory, press Arrow Up to select Tutti Frutti 64 followed by Return.
5. Now Press Space to Play!
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| | YAPE V0.50 is out! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-08-06 |
| Good news: Attila Grósz has released the new version of YAPE! Even though there isn't anything groundbreaking in this release, the list of bugfixes and improvements is quite impressive. For example, the bug in saving wholewave TAP files is now fixed! This, and all those improved things make this a must have for all C16/Plus4 enthusiasts. The release also comes with a nice README file, which should be helpful for new users. Cheers to Attila, and visit the YAPE Homepage. |
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| | 16K Democompo Reminder | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-30 |
 Don't forget that Lavina's 16K DemoCompo is just one month away! For those who don't know: you have to write a demo that will run on an unexpanded, stock Commodore 16. The entries will be shown at a party, the location is yet to be determined. If you are planning on attending, then this is the time to cast your vote. Besides the 16K democompo, there will also be a 128 byte(!) democompo. The idea is to code a demo in 128 bytes(!). To give you an idea on how small that is, the text of this news entry is about 4 times that much! Should be fun to watch.
Remember, the success of this compo, and the future of the scene depends on how much YOU get involved. So put aside whatever projects you are working on, it's still not to late to create a piece of art and submit it for this compo.
Visit the Gotu Homepage for more details. |
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| | Spid-R-man Cover and Manual! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-30 |
 Crown sent us the cover picture and the original manual for the C16 version of Spiderman. It's cool stuff! Among other things, it has descriptions of all those copyrighted charaters The manual explains the basics of adventuring, and has a list of useful words. It also speaks of the planned 12 Questprobes, but as we all know, only the first three were made. Check it out! |
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| | 8 Covers From Mosh! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-24 |
 Mosh has answered our request for the missing covers, and sent us a few that finally close some the series. Triple Decker 4 (and a better quality Triple Decker 2) means that series is complete. We also have the Killapede cover, which means every Players release has one. Hurray!
Defence 16 and Stellar Wars - Blitz (a compilation tape from CBM) are also new.
Finally these are from Solar Software: Suicide Run, Winnie Witch's Superbroom and yes, Monkey Magic. This latter one is an interesing read. "Realistic Sound?" Well, that's a matter of opinion... It also speaks of a Quest 2 coming soon (and according to the cover this IS quest 1) - which was never made. This makes it 9 out of 16 Solar game covers... Many thanks to Mosh for his contribution! |
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| | More Covers! (Who Would Have Thought?) | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-23 |
 As the rappers would say "And you don't stop..." Well, we didn't. So here are a few more covers for your visual pleasure. We kick off with the original release of Hollywood Poker, coming straight from Master Lando's collection. It's huge and beautiful... Look at those Amiga screens... Khm, anyway, where was I? We've also found an Auriga cover laying around, and with these two added, we have 11 out of the 12 covers of Players games. The last one missing is Killapede - let's hope someone has it.
 We have the Bomb Jack cover and the Encore re-release cassette cover for Commando C16. These were kindly donated by Ulysses777. He has also made some pretty good scans (or photos?) of the Cartridge Triple Pack box, another beauty.
Finally check out the alternative cover for Robin to the Rescue. If you count Triple Decker 5, then that's 3 different covers for this one game... Amazing... Or not. Many thanks to everyone who sent in the covers, and keep them coming! |
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| | www.monkeyheaven.com | | Posted by MIK on 2003-07-23 |
Monkey Heaven is a tribute site of the cult classic TV series Monkey and they have paid tribute to our now famed C16/Plus4 version of Monkey Magic thanks to Warren Pilkington (wazzaw from our forum)!! He has also cooked up his very own neat set of cheats to help you on your quest and will also be sending a very cool replacement cover for Monkey Magic our way in the very near future! So until then head on over to Monkey Heaven and check their own slice of Monkey Magic Commodore 16/Plus4 style!
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| | 4 New Classic Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-21 |
Thanks to the secret tape stash of Ulysses777, our cover collection received these new additions: Danger Zone, Wolf Pack, Xargon's Revenge. Also we have the cover for Triple Decker 3. This particular release series from Alternative Software Limited is slowly filling up too, but we are still missing 2 and 4. Many thanks to Ulysses777 for these high quality scans, and stay tuned as we have a few more covers coming soon.
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| | 5 New Tape Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-16 |
Lavina hunted down 5 covers for our collection. While they may not be the best of quality, it's still good to have them, especially with the addition of Quick Draw, which is the first cover we have for the letter Q. If you happen to have larger or better quality versions of these (or other covers we are missing), don't hesitate to send them in!
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| | New Game: Fast Food! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-16 |
 We are proud to announce that Skoro of Assassins alias Gábor Varga has created and released a new game for you to play and vote on: Fast Food! It's a maze/action type game, Skoro called it a Nostalgia game. You control a dizzy like character, and you have to find and eat all the food while the baddies try to catch you. This new software of course it is absolutely free of charge! What more could you want? :-) Go and check it out now! |
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| | Commodore 16 User Manual (Scan Format)! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-07-16 |
 This is a great and unique opportunity for those of you who are in desperate need to catch up on the ins and outs of the beloved Commodore 16! The offical Manual that came with the C16 has been scanned by Mosh (a regular visitor of Plus4 Wolrd) for your viewing pleasure. Every page from this bible is there in its full glory and what must have taken a life time to scan at that!
Although the manual doesn't cover everything, it does offer all the basics and reminders of how to get the best out of your beast. To newcomers and emulation only users this scan archive will be a valuable download indeed. Don't forget that what you learn from this can be used without question on a Commodore Plus/4. Many thanks to Mosh for having the patiences to scan this useful book. Cheers! |
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| | 3 More Scener Pictures! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-14 |
 Lavina got us three more pictures for the Faces of the Scene gallery (which now has 69 pictures): Action of GOTU, Brazil and last but not least Nukeman. Nukeman used to be a central member of the scene, good friend to many. He visited Hungary lots of times and even helped out Hungarian scene members by providing them with hardware equipment. Nuke, if you are reading this, please contact us! |
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| | (Game) Solutions Section Opens! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-14 |
As you must have already, we are expanding. Here's something new: a solution, hint sheet and a map for the game Salvage. This stuff belongs to our new section: (Game) Solutions. Here we will collect the hints, maps and complete and partial solutions for all the games - an adventurer's dream! You will notice that to start out we don't have that many, but your submissions should help. There are a few good ones there already, e.g. check out our exclusive solution for the C16 version of Finders Keepers.
We know that there are many other sites that carry solutions for C64 or other versions of our games. However, we don't want to simply just copy/paste their stuff (especially since there sometimes differences between the game versions). But those can give you tips, and help you to write your own solution. Even more important than the solutions are the hint sheets: these can answer those tricky questions, and still lets the player finish the game on his/her own, without spoiling the experience. So if you have any maps, hints or other stuff that belongs here, send it to us! Enjoy. |
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| | Forever Plus/4 Emulator V1.19! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-11 |
What's "Forever" you say? The answer is in this nice letter we received from Litwr. Read on, it's going to be interesting...
I decided to inform you about the new release of my C+4 emulator. In 1997 I stopped the development of my emulator for 3 reasons: (1) I understood that I couldn't achieve 100% performance on my 486DX4-120, (2) I got the VICE emulator from the internet and thought that VICE team will soon :-) create the perfect emulator for any Commodore and for any platform (3) I had too much work.
In 2002 I decided to place all the files for my emulator on the internet and just forget about them. But after that I got a letter from Attila Grósz and soon his great enthusiasm made it impossible for me to abandon my old project.
By 2003 I completely forgot most of the details of my program. I wrote it in a very tricky way, trying to achieve maximum performance. This year during my holidays I spent some time and gave it a more modern look.
I released two files to download, available at http://litwr.boom.ru
p4_119.zip - sources, DOS-executables, documentation, and some extras
cbm264a.zip - boot 3.5" disk image with FreeDOS, PLUS4.EXE, C+4 programs (46 games, 5 demos, 2 cartridges, and 2 other programs), and several appropriate DOS utilities.
I think this release of my emulator has several strong points:
- it's the fastest
- it comes with free source code (under GPL)
- it can use Ad Lib FM sound synthesis which produces better quality non-digital music
- it's most compatible - it even runs on any Intel 80x86 processor (P200 or faster) based PC with floppy disk drive and standard VGA card.
- last point shows that my emulator may exists for a relatively long time without maintenance and maintainers (I know several good programs for Linux which disappeared without regular support, situation for Microsoft Windows is well known)
- for some games (like Xcellor8) it's still the best for emulation of the scrolling effects.
I am going to completely rewrite my TED subroutine which contains some bugs that can't be simply corrected, and if I can find time in the future then I plan to add many other improvements. Also maybe sometime I will port my emulator to Linux (there is only one problem - time).
I'm sending this message to you as to a key figure of the former +4 users world so that you can properly inform others about this event :-). I created my emulator as single user (community of +4 users in Russia was very small even in the late 1980th) for my private use and don't know how to inform others about my results. By the way, I only found out about the wide spread of C+4 in Hungary at the end of the 90s... I bought my computer and programs in 1987 in Poland.
This is the first version of my emulator with a name. It needs one, because now it is not so lonely as it was in 1997... So I called it 'Forever' :-). Well, now you all know. Even WindowsXP and 2000 users can use the bootdisk he provided to run the emulator - it works! He also requested that we'd mirror the files on his site. So visit the Tools section to download your copy. |
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| | 4 New Scene Pictures! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-10 |
| We have received some pictures from various guys. TLC sent us a newer picture of Fecoshy of MTV. Ati (not the YAPE author) has taken two photos at a meeting at Budapest a few weeks back, here they are: W-Man and Murphy, W-Man, Murphy, Tiger and Lacoste. Finally through Lavina we've put our hands on a picture of Pigmy maestro himself! Thanks guys for these cool pictures! |
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| | YAPE V0.49 Has Arrived! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-10 |
 That's right, the fresh new YAPE is here. Several new things and improvements as usual, most notably full 1551 emulation. This means that all those 1551-only Csory adventures are now playable! :-)
Head on over to YAPE Homepage to download your copy! Congratulations to Gaia for creating the Best Plus/4 Emulator.
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| | 5 New Educational Taps! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-09 |
Lacus kindly sent us another big batch of Novotrade TAPs, complete with their covers! These are all in Hungarian, and they were used as educational tools in elementary schools (probably why the cover artwork is plain). This brings up our cover total to 317! Many thanks to Lacus! Here they are:
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| | More SceneCon Party Pictures! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-08 |
 We have received TLC's batch: 28 more pictures from this party... Once again check out our Features section! On the left is the trophy that the creators of Metapharstic received for the 2nd Place of SceneCon Retro Compo. Nice, isn't it? Makes a Plus/4 scener proud :-) Thanks guys for the pictures!
Also check out the official results and download all releases from here: SceneCon 2003 |
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| | SceneCon Party Pictures! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-07 |
 26 of them! Lavina has taken a whole bunch on the party, and he has sent it to us. To properly display them, we've opened yet another new section here at Plus/4 World, simply called Features. We will use this to publish any stuff, that doesn't fit into any of the already existing pages (articles, galleries, etc).
From these party pics we have gained 5 more additions to the Faces of the Scene gallery: old school graphics artist Jeva of MB, hardware guru BSZ and digi guru Sensor of NST, coder-extraondinaire Murphy of GS. The 5th one is Jimy of EDC, which we got from MC. We now have 64 pictures! Thanks for the stuff guys, and go look at that gallery already so that you can get into that wonderful party-vibe, even if you couldn't attend! |
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| | SceneCon Report | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-06 |
This is MC of EDC reporting events of SceneCon2003.
This party has been held at Salgótarján, northern Hungary between 4th and 6th of July. I got up at 4 o'clock in the morning this Saturday to get the first train to Budapest, where I've met TLC of Coroners to be given a lift to Salgótarján. TLC has been also giving a lift for Coyote and his wife. Salgótarján is something like the end of the world, it is absolutely hard to approach, so it is a lousy location for a party... We were wandering around the small town for a whole hour to find the location Traveling from Budapest to our destination was also funny, because TLC got fined twice in 15 minutes. First for some licenses not being current, second for driving too fast. (The policeman's question to TLC: "Hey Mr. Hársfalvi, have you seen that flash?" became a real adage that day ) 5 minutes later TLC's car lost one of its wheel trims. We were absolutely ROTFL about these unfortunate events. Lavina was already at the partyplace when we have finally arrived around 12 o'clock. Bubis arrived an hour later, then came Murphy. Sadly we didn't manage to finish any kind of release for the compo, but Beast and Lavina saved the day: they were working hard in the previous days, and put together several parts with cool effects. We have accidentally met BSZ & Sensor of NST and the all-famous Jeva at the party!! Both BSZ and Sensor agreed to join the scene revival, so i hope we'll hear about them soon!
Later, during the party Lavina, TLC and bubis were struggling to substitute the TED music in Lavina's trackmo to a SID one. They finally made it, but the music was not really appropriate: slow and short with a long pause at the end. We had other problems, but the demo was finally presented to the audience, and it was a success. Apparently most people were absolutely surprised to see a Commodore Plus/4 up and running Bubis and Murphy presented their cool FLI graphical modes, and the sceners were stoned "Much better than C64" and "F*ck yeah" were typical reactions. At around 4 o'clock in Sunday morning, results were announced. The Beast + Lavina production made the second place in retrodemo category, Csabo's multichannel track got 3rd place!
I send my greetings and congratulations to everyone involved in these activities that finally showed that our little scene is alive once again! Lots of pictures were made, I hope they will be uploaded soon. |
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| | Sqij Covers and Soundtrack! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-04 |
 We now have high quality coverscans for this old game: Sqij. As the cover boasts, the original tape actually contained a free audio track from H.E.X., or House Electronic Xperience. Now we can all enjoy (or, at least listen to  ) this tune! The full version is not less than 5 minutes long, and it's a 4.5 Mb download, so we've created a shorter version as well, which only plays the first minute and is a bit lower in quality. Still it's only a 535 Kb download which should be easier on modem users, and it will give you the idea.
If you look at those cover scans carefully, it speaks of an upcoming conversion of the C64 game The Equalizer. Never happened, as far as we know it...
Many thanks to Lavina for the scans and the soundtrack! |
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| | Sorcerer With Pictures! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-03 |
 We are happy to announce the arrival of a new conversion for the Plus/4: The Sorcerer of Claymore Castle is here. This is the 13th in the Scott Adams Adventure series. While the game is essentially the same as the commercial C16 text only release: The Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle (note the different spellings!), this release was converted from the C64 version and so it has pictures as well. This marks the 17th new release for this year: last year we had 41, and it's already July! So everyone, follow the example and start releasing stuff. Enjoy! |
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| | 4 New Taps and Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-07-02 |
Thanks to Pigmy and Crown, our collection has received 4 more original Hungarian programs, complete with TAP images and cover scans. They are Angol Teszt, Magyar Abc and Assembler. Finally we have a real gem: Mestopri, a language education tool, which is completely in Russian. Thanks guys!
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| | New Adventure Game Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-25 |
 A freshly converted game is here for your enjoyment... Adventureland +4. It's the first one in Scott Adams' classic adventure series. Converted from the C64 version, this release has pictures to go along with the story. Cool! |
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| | A new emulator has been released! - VICE Plus/4 | | Posted by MIK on 2003-06-15 |
VICE or Versatile Commodore Emulator has been around for some time and is one of the daddys of 8 bit emulation. As you may have seen it supports a whole range of Commodore 8 bit machines, (C64, C128, VIC20, most PET models and the CBM-II), but as of now and for the first time the team have officially added Commodore Plus/4 support!
Althought it's very early days in the development stage a lot of features are up and running. The core behind this emulator itself can achive a great many things and in time VICE Plus/4 will become a very useful tool to the scene. Already many thousands of users have been enjoying VICE and now with our beloved Plus/4 added all eyes will be looking our way which in turn may help our scene to grow even bigger!
So without delay head on over to the VICE home page for your copy now: http://viceteam.bei.t-online.de/ |
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| | Exomizer Update! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-14 |
| The best cross-platform cruncher just got better. Magnus Lind has sent us word that today he has released the V1.1.2 version of Exomizer. This update (among other things) now has a "-n" option, which removes the 'decruncher effect'. Download the update and see the included documentation for more details (and don't forget that it comes with full source!). Thanks Magnus! |
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| | New Release From Unlimited! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-12 |
 Mr. Museum of Unlimited has sent us word of their new release, Vision 2003 Pictures! This disk side picture show lets you take a peek into the German Commodore scene: the pictures were taken at Vision 2003 (obviously ;-). Read the included note file to find out more about the pictures. Thanks to Michael for the news! |
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| | YAPE V0.48 is Out! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-11 |
 The new YAPE is here! This version emulates our beloved machine even better: almost all FLI effects are perfectly emulated (see the screenshot on the left, the Muffbusters part from Cracker's Demo 2, sadly, their last work on the plussy). But even some of the ClassiX are better: who likes Terra Nova or Paperboy? ;-) So stop reading now and head on over to download your copy! |
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| | New Graphics Converter: DFliConv! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-11 |
bubis has released his DFliConv - Double Line FLI Converter. With this tool, you can convert any JPG or GIF from your PC to a Plus/4 image! Thanks to the FLI effect, this routine can display more colors per character than the regular graphics modes. The bottom line is: it looks amazing, but we'll just let this picture speak a thousand words. (Yes, your C= can really display this.)
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| | New Skoro Releases! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-11 |
 It's a beautiful day, and we've received a brand new game for the Commodore Plus/4. Simply titled Bars, from the hands of Skoro of Assassins. It's a nice logical game, a bit like Tetris. High quality work, as always. The new issue of Mini News is also out, this one is Mini News 08. The third diskmag, that's still alive! (The other two are Club Info and Lone News.) It's in Hungarian, so get your dictionaries, Luca ;-) Everyone should check it out though, at least to read the greetings in the scroll! |
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| | Mega Cover Update! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-10 |
The covers just keep arriving... In fact, some of them were sent in by more than one person (in this case, we kept the one with the best quality). So today brings 32 new covers for 17 different classic games, some of from the stash of Lando himself ;-)
From Lando: Aliens (huge!), Auto Zone, Blockbusters +4, Dark Tower, Dirty Den, Olympic Skier, Pacmania, Survivors, Treasure Hunter, Varmit, Williamsburg Adventure.
From Mosh: Escape From Pulsar 7, Salvage, The Time Machine, The Wizard of Akyrz, Waxworks.
From Ulysses777: Video Classics. We also have a TAP version of this game! He sent in quite a few more covers, but we ran out of time for today. Stay tuned! |
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| | Two Classic Games! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-07 |
 One could say that this latest submission from Ulysses777 closes the final chapter of Jet Set Willy. We have the cover of Two Classic Games, a compilation release from MicroValue. MicroValue was apparently a TyneSoft label, although to date this is the only thing from them that we know of. The compilation has Ian Botham's Test Match and Jet Set Willy on it. So along with the cover, our friend submitted a TAP version of the game.
Now even those of us who never owned an original copy can enjoy it to the fullest: Read the back cover for the story, and load the TAP version to play the true original. Thanks Ulysses777, and enjoy! |
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| | New Covers From Crown! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-06 |
    VICE guru Crown has taken the time to scan a few tape covers from this collection. These are from the Hungarian side of the C16 / Plus4 releases. Yes, that means Novotrade Magyarország. We have 13 covers out of the 63 releases listed under their name. We've also received a better quality version of Csodalatos Simon and even the back cover of Legicsata. Many thanks! Enjoy! |
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| | Ninja is Back! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-05 |
 ...to the scene, and he has released a brand new demo, called Ninja is Back! Marking the 12th release of 2003, this is already the second demo from Gentlemen Software. It's nice to see that people are active again, let's hope that more folks will follow! |
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| | Three New Maps! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-05 |
 Noro sure hasn't been sleeping, as we've just received another beauty of a map from him. It's for XCellor8, a classic Patrick Strassen game. (For non-native speakers of the English language: if you've ever wondered about the title of this game, it spells out "accelerate".) XCellor8 has very cool futuristic looking cover artwork, and it's one of the few games where the in-game graphics lives up to the cover. Very nice work!
Also a Future Shock and Jet Set Willy map from Csabo. Enjoy! |
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| | Future Knight Map! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-04 |
 A brand new addition has arrived today to join our collection of game maps. This one is for Future Knight, created by Noro! It's his 14th map.
If you've previously dismissed this game as just another brainless platformer, then you'll be surprised. There's more to this game! It's just that some of the things you're supposed to figure out aren't at all obvious... Please note that the map contains the solution.
Very nice work, Noro! Click here to download the map. |
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| | Software Updates | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-06-03 |
István Bozsik sent us and updated version of his tool Plus4Lst. V1.1 adds one very cool feature: all line numbers in GOTO, GOSUB, etc. statements are converted into hyperlinks. This makes debugging basic programs even easier!
TLC has made some minor updates to the documentation of TLCPlay. (Note: There is a demosong created with this player floating around. The demosong uses a 4x player and it sounds, well, just amazing. This release of TLCPlay is 99% identical to the one used in the demosong, so it's the real thing. Look in the source code of DRIVER.ASM and uncomment the commented lines to create your own 4x player.)
Lavina sent in some rarities: Bosszúvágy, Ürkaland and an original copy of Imagine/UTG. Finally we have a picture of Steve from SCN. (Thanks, Unreal!) |
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| | Let's Hear It! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-29 |
TLC has released his powerful music player for the TED: TLCPlay. The player is somewhat similar to SIDWinder, at least in the sense that it gives you full control over the TED. While this release is aimed at programmers, everyone should download it to listen to the demosong included (it starts with SYS6144). You'll be surprised to hear what one can achieve with those two square wave channels.
This is not the final version, but it's just in time for the C16 DemoCompo. Feel free to use this player in your games and demos, and send your comments/suggestions to the author. |
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| | A New Demo From GS! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-28 |
 Ninja of Gentlemen Software has released a new demo called Picmover! The demo scrolls 8 multicolour bitmaps, which is an equivalent of a 2560 x 200 sized picture. All in 64K! Following the traditions of the scene it's PAL only (but the NTSC folks can still watch in on an emulator). The demoscene is slowly waking up...
Speaking of the scene, here's a picture of Foozy of SCN, the 58th addition to the Faces of the Scene gallery. |
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| | All The Firebird Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-28 |
Our desperate call for covers has once again been answered, this time by Ulysses777. It sure is nice to see which covers are there on the company release lists. So our friend looked at Firebird Software Ltd., saw that 5 were missing, and sent us all 6. What's that? Well, the 6th one was Zolyx, which was not listed under Firebird. The game itself (including the TAP version) has absolutely no marking of any kind to give a clue about the makers, the year, etc. Only someone with a copy of the original could have known this! Well, now it's there, and this means that we have all 13 Firebird covers! Many thanks to Ulysses777 for these. Beautiful, aren't they?
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| | Copyparty Produces Rare Stuff! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-27 |
 We are happy to report that an old-school copyparty had taken place in Debrecen, Hungary. Unreal, Beast and Lavina once again dusted off some old diskettes and transferred some rare stuff to PC. Here are two piccys of the guys (1, 2). First of all we have Global Chaos, a two-disk-sided gem of a megademo, full of amazing effects. This was the sequel to Syndrome, and was originally released at Global Party II back in 1994, but never really spread. Note to the demo: the 5th part is not working, this is how it got released.
We also have a previously unreleased Methabolix production: Plastic Dreams. Finally there's Logo Demo/TDD (different from CSM's Logo Demo). Cool stuff, guys! |
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| | 5 Classic Game Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-26 |
"You want more? You got more!" - is what Lavina may have been thinking when he decided to dig up, scan, cut and send us these beautiful classic game covers. Good thinking, buddy. Let's see it then:
  We start off with two Firebird releases: Shark Attack and Into the Deep. An interesting fact is that Shark Attack's cover calls the game simply "Shark", while the program itself displays Shark Attack. Also, the side area of these covers lets you follow the order of these Silver Range releases: On Shark Attack, there's only two. By the time they released Into the Deep, there were five.
   Then we have Solo from Bug Byte, and Trizons from Bubble Bus. Finally there's Zodiac (Anirog, 1985). Note that the side cover claims the game is joystick only, while the back cover lists the keyboard controls as well.
These are very good quality scans, and definitely some of the nicer covers. To 'celebrate' this, we've added a cool little feature to the site: if you are viewing the release list of a company, you can now see which games have a cover (and click the cover link to actually see it). For an example, check out Mastertronic, the covers are all there! Many thanks to Lavina, and here we go once again: if you have more covers that we are missing, then fire up that scanner and send them in! |
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| | Classic Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-25 |
  On the left you can see two fresh covers for two classic games. Lavina has dug up the cover for Dork's Dilemma. The cassette cover's side has some nice Gremlin Graphics ads on it. Plus it also finally confirms the year for this game - 1985. James C has contributed two covers, one is for Suspect, the other is for Complete Course in Basic Programming.
Also, Attila found an old utility, Sys Cracker. I can almost hear some of you saying: oh yeah, that one. Didn't we already have it? Well, it's nice to have this one in the archives now. We bumped into it (or into the fact that's missing) through the Mail Archive search. If you searched for Sys Cracker previously, you would have gotten nothing - no mention of it anywhere. However, now that the search is extended to the Mail Archive, it popped up in a post (Lacus was looking for it).
Thanks guys and keep it coming! |
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| | Unreal Stuff! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-24 |
 Unreal is back! It is a widely accepted opinion that he is one of the very best graphics artists ever to work on the Plus/4. Well, now we have a recent picture of him, and a website link, which is recommended to everyone who wants to see some quality visual imagery.
Unreal's old disks contained some very cool and almost lost stuff, and he is sharing them with us now. First of all, a full working version of the 3-disk wonder Cracker's Demo 3. Yeah! Also the full version of Kryptonite, plus SCN News 6, Scoll Demo II/CSM and Hyperbyte 1/CSM.
Thanks Unreal! |
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| | New YAPE Rocks! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-24 |
Well, it's been a long 11 days, but for those of us who are dying to get our emulator fix, Attila Grosz once again rushes to the rescue with YAPE 0.47. Oh, how I longed for the day when I can run all those belowed disk-based games on my PC. Borrowed Time, Bard's Tale III, Karateka, Tass Times, you name it, it works, baby! There are those who speak and those who act, and thank god this guy delivers...
There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind, that YAPE is the BEST ANYTHING EVER, but maybe I'm just euphoric. Udo Releases, TCFS is coding Lemminx again, tons of scene members are back, two news items on one day. What's happening around here? Never mind, Battle Chess has just loaded up... |
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| | DisAss Re-released | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-23 |
There seems to be no shortage of programming tools popping up all over the place. I (Csabo) thought I'd join the fun by re-releasing my DisAssembler. I developed and released this tool back in 2000, but it didn't generate much feedback then. I've improved it since then, and it's been a very useful tool to me for debugging Plus/4 applications (I used this to disassemble Oblido to find its bug).
So here is version 1.00 of my tool. I've promised that everything that I do for the scene will come with full source code - and so does this one. It's written in Delphi 5. Learn from it, modify it, rip it apart, I don't care as long as you use it and benefit from it! I'd also be happy to suggestions and comments. Happy DisAssembling! |
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| | AP4 V1.0.1! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-22 |
Today MC has released an improved version of his Plus/4 Development Environment, called AP4 (Assembler Plus 4). This is targeted towards those who want to create programs on our beloved platform once again (or start for the first time) in machine language.
AP4 features a built in assembler. This release now has a single-keypress compile and run feature, making the development process smooth and fast! It runs the compiled programs in YAPE.
Click here for more details and to download your copy! |
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| | The Flamingo Flies Again! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-21 |
| Khm, excuse the cheesy headline. After a pause of almost two years, Rachy has released a new version of his Plus/4 Emulator for the Amiga. V1.53 has some bugfixes and improvements, and also faster screen rendering. Grab your copy from Aminet or from Emucamp! It's nice to see some activity among the Amiga emulators. Thanks, Rachy! |
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| | New Plus/4 Utility for the PC! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-18 |
| We've received a real surprise from a veteran Plus/4 fanatic, István Bozsik. He's the author of such games as Hexaeder (if you haven't listened to the 8 channel sound in this game, do it now). The new utility is called Plus4Lst, and it's a command line utility for Windows. This tool renders any basic program into an HTML document. It uses a nice and acurate font, too - read the document included with the release for more on that. This is great to publish a basic listing, or to debug/study an older program. Many thanks to István for this! Download it now from here! |
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| | YAPE 0.46 is Out! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-13 |
This version marks a very significant improvement in Plus/4 Emulator history. YAPE now has cycle exact drive CPU emulation! For the first time, you can load and run games like The Goonies, Battery 2, Hollywood Poker Pro, etc! Also some hard-core demos are now running well - and exclusively - on YAPE, such as Silence and Amiga Mania. (Both are real gems, if you haven't seen them, check them out!) Not everything is working, but this is definitely a giant step in the right direction.
For more details and your download head on over to Ati's page. Cheers and kudos to Ati! |
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| | Scene News | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-10 |
Thanks to Lavina, things are stirring up in the Plus/4 scene...
First of all we got in contact with an old Plus/4 freak, Crafty of Hypoflex. He sent us two of his pictures along with his personal info, and promised to send us more of the Hypoflex stuff - all we got from this team at the moment is one lonely demo.
Does anyone think Csavargas a Gombak Birodalmaban is the best game the 7501 ever moved? Well, what if I said that we have tracked down the dude who wrote it? Yes, it's only one person. I know it says copyright (C) Greensoft, but that's no other than András Laczi alias Brazil from  Hungary! This fella has been there from the beginning (remember Hős Lovag by M. Tihor? It says in there thanks to Brazil for the help. Later the two of them developed Idolabirintus). He's going to put an ad about Lavina's C16 retro compo in a Hungarian computer newspaper. We are in the process of getting his permission to PD this game, so eat that Nevertrade. (A cover scan and a TAP file would be nice too.)
Although this is not 100%, but so far the following people said that they will participate in the C16 democompo: Luca, Lavina, bubis, me (Csabo), Maugli, MC, Ati (yes, the Mr. YAPE himself), Steve, Crown. Maybe's: Ninja of GS, TLC, Crafty.
I left the best for the last. TCFS is coding again! You heard that right! Word is that he's developing a new, powerful and flexible sprite routine for the plussy, possibly for a game!
So come on everybody, let's get cracking and start (continue) coding again! |
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| | All the Small Things #2 | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-07 |
Just a few newsbits for those interested... We have received a re-release of Imagine/UTG from Lavina. It's not the real version, but rather two parts compiled together by Lavina. It's still worth checking out if you've been craving demos... Load it up on your old friend and watch the show.
An old, but not forgotten utility has resurfaced as well: Char-Editor V1.1 from CSM. This release was under their later group, Anarchy (unlike the first two, which was released by Vortex). The increase of the version number is well deserved: this version can edit charsets several different sizes, all the way up to 5x5.
Plus we have an updated (more recent) picture of Omega. Enjoy! |
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| | 4 New Classic C16 Game Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-02 |
   We've received four new covers scans for our collection. They are Fire Ant, Indoor Soccer, Triple Decker 1 and finally Frank Bruno's Boxing. This last one is different from the one we already had, it's a special commemorative edition. One more note: while the Fire Ant cover is not much to look at as it's Commodore's plain white design, we've decided to add it to make to collection complete.
Many thanks to Paul for sending us the covers!
For those who are wonder about the jump in the total number of covers (we now have 211), it's because we have switched to counting the total number of cover scans vs. counting the number of games they are for. |
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| | Dan and Fireant Pictures | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-05-01 |
  We open this month by getting you acquainted with some Plus/4 enthusiasts. These two fellows (Dan and Fireant) were kind enough to send us their pictures for the Faces of the Scene gallery. It has now grown to 54 pictures, which is pretty impressive. Go check it out now. Thanks guys! |
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| | Version 0.45 of Yape released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-04-30 |
| The most notable features are the initial FLI-support (check the database for demos) and a couple of bugfixes among which one is making it possible again to play the Winter Events and Summer Events TAPs. As always, you can read the full story and the download the new version from the author's website and its download page! |
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| | All The Small Things | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-04-29 |
We have a few interesting news-bits to report.
Dan from  Germany sent us word that you can download all of his releases from www.bo-anerges.de. This includes the FlexGrid intro, which we were missing for a while.
The Best Poetry is yet another rare work of the infamous Korak from Hungary. Those who speak the language should definitely check it out, it's good for a few laughs.
Finally please welcome Fireant (Paul Footman) from  England, the newest member of Plus/4 World. He has promised us some additional info on Soccer Boss. |
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| | Soccer Boss Cover! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-04-27 |
  A new cover scan for this 1987 soccer manager type game is here. Many thanks to Fireant for scanning and contributing this to Plus/4 World! The software details on this title are also complete, year, original price, etc. So check out the Soccer Boss page now! |
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| | New Club Info Out | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-04-24 |
 The 74th issue of the German diskmag Club Info is here. The release marks the 10th new program for our platform this year. Besides the usual tons of articles, the B side carries lots of new stuff, including the new Heartfixer demo and some newer games.
Also new from Unlimited: all issues of the old diskmag Video Plus/4 are now online at the Unlimited website. Follow this link to check it out - soon to be part of our ever growing database.
Many thanks to Michael (Mr. Museum of ULTD) for the news! |
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| | Gotu Homepage Updated! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-04-18 |
 Lavina is back to the scene life, and today he has updated the Gotu homepage. Check out the Contest section for an update on the C16 DemoCompo! We also have a deadline in sight, which is September 2003. Will this mark the start of a new era of demos for our beloved platform? Only time will tell... Meanwhile, let the coding begin! |
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| | Omega's Pumpkin | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-04-07 |
 We have found another old program that no-one seemed to have: it's Pumpkin Plusz (yes with a Z, that's the hungarian spelling). This Hungarian language text adventure is one of the very few games written by Omega. He was the official funnyman of the legendary group EVS, and one of the best graphicians of the Hungarian Plus/4 scene. We have a portrait of Omega, and check out his page for a little gallery featuring some nice logos and images by him. |
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| | Plus/4 Emulator v1.16 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-04-02 |
 Say hello to Vladimir Lidovski (Litwr), the developer of the very first Plus/4 emulator. He has been added to our members database, and he's the first Russian Plus/4 enthusiast among us! Vladimir has made some further improvements on his emu, increasing the version number to 1.16. Download it from his website. He as also sent us a picture for the Faces of the Scene gallery. With some help from Ati, we now have .PRG versions of 4 of his softwares, also available on his site.
Cool stuff, thanks guys! |
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| | Zophar's Domain seized by US government | | Posted by Gaia on 2003-04-01 |
We all knew this would happen sooner or later... Zophar's Domain was seized by the U.S. Goverment for violating the Copyright Law. I can't really find words to express my feelings, because I'm stunned for the moment.
(That was of course an April's Fools joke ) |
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| | Yape 0.44 is out! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-27 |
| Version 0.44 of Yape is released! Among the new things are improved TED sound and some more fixes that brings us another small step closer to the real thing. For the full story and the download hit this link. |
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| | "Graphics" Docs Update and Demos | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-26 |
The documentation for Graphics utility has been updated to V2.1 by SVS. The <-ARC function is now fully documented. He has also translated some BASIC demos enclosed in the package, and written some brief programs to demonstrate the power of this package. Download them all in a ZIP file here.
If you've looked at this utility, you realize that it's really a wonder that this was created. Easy 3D is BASIC on the Plus/4. We hope that the original creator of this package will be found one day. Until then it's just one more of those unanswered questions we've all been searching for... |
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| | Ati Improves M.E.S.S. | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-25 |
| Ati has submitted a patch to the code base of MESS emulator. The new code improves the TED emulation of playing digis. It has been accepted and incorporated! (View it here.) We've also heard some rumors that a new YAPE version is going to be out soon with super digi-sound emulation... We'll keep you posted. |
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| | Lone News 14 out now! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-24 |
 Luca released the 14th issue of Lone News +4 diskmagazine.
It contains news, reviews, an interview and the how-I-found-a-gem chapters.
Get it on rulez.org, or from the Lone News Page here at C=+4 World. |
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| | New stuff from Skoro/ASN and Tron Lamer Team! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-18 |
Tron Lamer Team released some fresh digi stuff in order to warm both your TED and your SIDcard.
Skoro of Assassin Crew finally finished his old Memory project. He also released the 2nd half of his big games cheats collection, called Help To Games 2, and a new issue of Mini News is also out. Too bad that this last one is in Hungarian, because it contains some comments regarding the infamous Reddi/SCN story from years ago...
All this and more now in New Uploads link. |
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| | Heartfixer Released | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-17 |
 Well, we're a bit late on reporting this news, but better late than never. Luca and bubis have released their cooperation demo "Heartfixer" (named after Luca's music that's featured in the demo).
There are simply no words to describe this thing, it's one of the best single file demos ever written on Plus/4. The quality of the effects, the style and the execution in this demo is just unparalelled in our scene.
The demo won 1st place in the mixed compo in FOReVER quattro, well deserved. We can only hope to see more productions like this in the future. |
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| | A Rare Package Discovered | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-15 |
 This newly discovered package will amaze you! (Probably) never before seen by almost anyone... SVS has found this rare gem, an graphics utility package, simply titled "Graphics". The name may not be too imaginative, but it can do wonders!
We don't know at this point who developed this, but some of the basic commands the package implements are in Italian. We are also not sure about the year, SVS says it's 87-88.
Check out the details page for the download, documentation and an image gallery! Two things to remember: all of these images were created with this package with only a few lines of code. Second, the documentation by SVS is still not complete, he is still working on reverse-engineering it. I took the liberty of converting it into HTML though, since some of our visitors can't read the .DOC format. |
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| | 3 New TAPs up for grabs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-08 |
Many thanks goto Ulysses777 for creating and sending in tape images of Gnasher, UXB and Wolf Pack so they could be archived and made available for all to see!
He has also scanned the game covers for UXB and Wolf Pack which will be added to the database in the very near future. At the same time we'll work on getting the instructions added for all 3 so watch this space! As always we are pleased to receive support which in turn makes Plus4 World a bigger and better place for us all. :-) Cheers once again Ulysses777. |
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| | PSYCHEDELIA - A Light Synthesiser | | Posted by MIK on 2003-03-06 |
 Psychedelia has to be one of the most unique titles ever to land on the C16/Plus4. For the first time you never got the chance to kill anything, there where no goals to reach and you could not lose. So what the hell did we have to do?
Psychedelia was infact a tool or as Jeff Minter said "an entertainment" where you could create your own light show in-time with music. This in itself is a concept that has never changed since that day! Take a look at WinAmp or Media Player, they all have plug-ins and in a similar way all display colourful graphics in-time to music. Of course with the limited spec of computers back then Jeff could only do so much, but what we do have was a remarkable achievement way ahead of its time.
Many thanks go to www.ukretro.co.uk for sending this title our way which in turn has allowed us to add the cover and full instructions for Psychedelia to our database! You may be surprised to find there is a whole range of options to play with and even the facility to record over 5 minutes of joystick inputs to memory! You can find the latest Psychedelic update right here! |
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| | Two Covers Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-05 |
  Today we've added the cassette covers for The Catacombs and Death or Glory. Two rare Commodore 16 games. Thanks to Hendrixe and Luca for the cover scans! This was long overdue, sorry for the delay guys. Still we are now up to 180 covers! |
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| | Various News | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-03-03 |
 The extremely rare C16 gem, Death or Glory is here thanks to Luca. Cool eight directional scrolling shooting fun from 1987 by CRL. Download your copy now!
The first official release of 2003 on our platform, Club Info #73 is also here from Unlimited. Download from here. We have also received an email from Mr. Museum/Unlimited. He sent us the current memberlist of their group, which counts 5(!) active members. |
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| | Another Novotrade TAP! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-02-17 |
 Kalandozás a Fizikában (Adventures in Physics) is here! Once again out of nowhere we bring you the whole nine yards for this Novotrade release: the TAP file, the PRG version, the cover scan, the cover inlay scan, plus author and price info! This is the second educational title from Novotrade in Physics. Thanks to Lacus for all this! |
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| | TrailblazerDC Beta 1 released. | | Posted by MIK on 2003-02-16 |
Reaper2k2 ported this classic over to the Sega Dreamcast and was released FEB 13th, but FEB 14th he decided to quit the Dreamcast scene due to several issues placed upon him by different members of the dcemulation forums. Reaper decided to delete everything he had, including his websites in response to this. All this and more can be found over at: http://www.dcemulation.com/
Hoping no one minds we hold a copy of his release here just for safe keeping, and for those that may not get the chance to see it I've also kept a screen grab for future reference.
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| | Vegas Jackpot C16 or 16k only in TAP format! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-02-12 |
The following below was taken from our Forum posted by Ulysses777:
This is a TAP that I made from my own copy of Vegas Jackpot, which, unlike the one on this site, works only on a standard C16/C116. When run on a Plus4/C16+64K, it suffers the same corrupted graphics problems as Rockman, Tower of Evil etc.
I haven't seen this version available anywhere for download, so I thought someone might be interested in it
All we can say is wow! We are more than pleased to see it which is something unique in itself! If you check out what Csabo has to say as a reply you can find out why and how along with the difference of the Vegas Jackpot TAP I created some time ago! Many thanks to Ulysses for bringing this to our attention! |
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| | Out on a Limb.tap ? | | Posted by MIK on 2003-02-10 |
 Today was meant to be a special day and something that I'd been looking forward to for a very long time. However things have just been turned upside down in world of C16/Plus4 TAP images. I have just found out that a TAP of Out on a Limb has been uploaded to www.funet.fi that is unique to VICE at this time, meaning it will only run using the as yet to be released version of VICE Plus/4.
But for the books, today we have added here at Plus4 World a working version of Out on a Limb that not only works with YAPE, but with Artifex and VICE too!!
So today is indeed a cool day, but in the mean time I'm still left wondering who's right and who's wrong and where are these hidden bugs in the TAP format comming from? In gerneral this isn't an issue at all, but with the problems of 1/2 wav and the very rare Turbos as used by Out on the Limb we can hope we are doing the right thing. Anyways enough of the chit chat because it's time to grab one of the coolest tap images you could ever wish to find and that my friends is waiting for you right HERE!
I would also like to thank Attila for his very kind help in making this TAP available to you, without his support it would not be here now. Cheers buddy! :-) |
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| | New Yape, new homepage!! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-02-09 |
Attila author of Yape has released version 0.43 today! The new version features completely rewritten and enhanced 1551 emulation with more bug fixes along the way although some many not of been noted. But we can tell you that The Catacombs (ADV.) now displays perfect! As always the full story can be found on the Yape homepage.
Please note: Yape is now being servered to you by an all new host so don't forget to make a note of the new address below.
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| | Westfront Correction | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-02-07 |
| It looks like we had some confusion about Dunric's game(s): Westfront. It turns out that he has two games that work on the Plus/4: Westfront 64 and Westfront to Apse II. The latter one also works on the C128. The version I uploaded yesterday turned out to be the C64/C128 version, so if you downloaded that please download the correct files again. Visit Dunric's C16 page for more details. |
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| | Hidra Cover Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-02-07 |
 The cover for this Novotrade release game has just been added! It originally sold for 290 HUF (today that's the equivalent of peanuts). It looks like they didn't spend much on the design artwork, since the cassette cover is made up of company logos and a screenshot! Still it's a cool piece to be added to our rapidly growing collection. Not only do we have the cover, but also the cassette inlay (in Hungarian - now all we need is someone to translate it). Thanks to Lacus for this cover! |
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| | Merlin's Quest and Westfront +4!!! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-02-06 |
 Breaking news! I have just received in the mail about an hour ago a package from Dunric (Paul Panks). He was kind enough to send me a copy of his two games: Merlin's Quest and Westfront +4! The first thing I did with them was backed up and uploaded the D64 images. Two brand new adventures for you to play with. (They work on the real machine, but the emulators might have a problem with them.) Check 'em out now!
Big thanks to Dunric for sending me these cool programs! |
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| | More New Stuff | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-02-05 |
 We may be running out of ideas for news item titles, but we have lots of cool stuff that has just been added. First up is two new covers from Pawel. King Soft Daten Bank is a German database application. (All we need now is the program itself...) He has also sent us the Kingsoft release cassette cover for Space Pilot. This one too bears the Kingsoft logo, and is complete with German language instructions.
 Next we have our first Novotrade TAPs added (from Lacus of course). Fizikai Összefüggések (Relationships in Physics) was intended for elementary school grades 6-8. We have the .TAP, the prg version, the original cover, the cover inlay and even the original price! This rare proggie originally sold for 398 HUF (Hungarian Forints). With the current rate, that's about 1.7 USD or one pound. Although back in the day, the Forint was stronger... Anyway, where did this info come from? Believe it or not, but Lacus got his hands on an original Novotrade price list! (Coming soon ) |
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| | RetroChat Forums | | Posted by MIK on 2003-02-04 |
If you are intrested in the wider scene of emulation and retrogaming from the 80's, then head on over to www.retrochat.com which is a forum dedicated to the yesteryear of computing and covers a wide range of machines.
Thanks to the webmaster for this news. |
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| | One very rare cover - Out on a Limb! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-02-04 |
 Plus/4 World are proud to present the cover and instructions to one of the best loved games of 1984 Out on a Limb!
Although there are a number of cracks available for this cool game, we are in the meantime working on getting an original TAP image made. The game does however use one of the worst turbos ever created. Being a 3 part multi-loader, we can only hope to pull the impossible off! If that happens you'll be the first to find out here at Plus/4 World, so stay tuned! |
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| | 2 Awesome Anco Advertisements from 1986! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-02-03 |
These will make your eyes pop! The adverts are just over 16 years old and both are from one of the greatest games ever created for C16/Plus4 which is Winter Events.
You can tell Anco were keen to show this game off as the first of the adverts has 3 screen shots which were beta screens as seen from the Winter Demo and inside cover found on the Anco's release of Space Pilot.
The second of the 2 adverts which was printed 3 months later is more upto date and having the final release version of screen shots, but take a closer look at the Down Hill event! You can only imagine that Udo Gertz was in the final stage of development as the art work for this very advert would of been created the month before this advert would of gone too press, (not forgetting you got the September issue in August). And if I remember correct it was around September 1986 I got my hands of this awesome game |
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| | The Catacombs (ADV.) has been made available! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-02-02 |
 After a number of hours of testing on different machine setups and emulators we finally agreed to release this crack as it is which was created by Floppy Robby! The crack itself is fine, but has been made to work with a machine using 16k of memory. It will run on a machine above 16k so please read there "Description" found on The Catacombs page for the full story.
Users of emualtion may find the game displaying with the wrong character set, (upper and lower case are round the wrong way) and plans to get this small bug fixed with YAPE are already on the cards.
And last of all we would like to thank Marco Polo who has made this game available for downloading even though he may not know it. |
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| | Hungarian Covers and Zone Control | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-31 |
 Here is the next Hungarian cover was sent to us by that Hungarian fellow... It's probably time to introduce him! László Bozsó (or Lacus) has been involved with the Plus/4 since 1986. He has even posted on our forums a few years ago. Well, now he's back with some very cool and rare stuff, that he managed to put his hand on from his old high school (yes, they had plussies in their computer labs!)
The cover for "A Hős Lovag" is extra special since this was the very first Hungarian adventure release ever. Not only we have the cover, but also the cassette inlay which has detailed instructions on how to play the game (it was necessary, since most people who bought the game were not familiar with the adventure genre).
In that post I mentioned he was looking for a few old games. Since then, Plus/4 World has managed to find almost all of those, except Zone Control. Lacus had this one as well, though! We'd like to thank him once again for all these contributions!
In the next few days I will be add more of these covers and programs, so stay tuned. |
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| | More New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-30 |
  The good stuff just doesn't stop. Pawel Kubacki from Poland was kind enough to scan some of his original covers for us. Visit his polish Plus/4 page here. The newly added covers are: Berks Trilogy from CRL, Cruncher from Solar Software and the Kingsoft release of Legionnaire, complete with german instructions!
Thanks, Pawel! |
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| | New Exomizer Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-29 |
| Exomizer v1.1.1 has been released by Magnus Lind. The new version has important things for us C16/Plus4 fans, for example the decrunch effect was invisible in some cases, which has been fixed. Exomizer now also allows "$" prefix for hexadecimal addresses. For more details on the new version and to download your copy, visit the Exomizer Homepage! |
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| | New Hungarian Cover(s)! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-28 |
 This month is turning out to be an amazing one! Out of the blue, we have just received a nice and rare collection of original Hungarian softwares (TAPs, too!), and the original covers. This is an exciting time for those who have been waiting for the Novotrade covers to come in... The first one is a new program that we didn't have in the database called "Egybeírjam? Különírjam?" It's an grammar educational software. (Our first cover for the letter "E".) Check it out!
There is more stuff coming but our free time is limited so stay tuned! |
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| | VICE 1.11 is out! | | Posted by SVS on 2003-01-27 |
Version 1.11 of VICE has been released today. Click here to read the list of changes. This version does not have any new feature on C16/Plus4 emulation, but we have our fingers crossed!
Visit the VICE Homepage for downloads. |
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| | More covers with full instructions added! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-01-25 |
   Hot off the press are Legionnaire, Fighting Warrior and The Way of the Tiger for your viewing pleasure.
It's been a long time coming but the Fighting Warrior cover has completed the C16/Plus4 Mastertronic lineup! Yes, you read correct: we now have them all! |
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| | Forum Search feature added | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-24 |
Our forums are now searchable! This allows us to access the wealth of information that the community has contributed in the past 40 months. This new feature is connected to the regular search form, and any matches from the forum will be displayed as a link. This way the regular search doesn't get cluttered, but you will still get a result even if you search for something like 'Krieg'. It will also be helpful for new visitors: the may find topics that have been asked and answered before.
With the help of this new feature it is now confirmed that Tom Thumb is the most talked-about game of all time! :-) |
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| | The FINAL version of Skramble is here! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-01-23 |
Going back to what was said two days ago about how this game didn't make it in TAP format, well that's all changed thanks to Attila whose only had a copy in TAP format hiding on his PC! It's always nice to complete an entry and what a better way to finish off, thanks Attila
Grab yours from the Skramble page now! |
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| | 3 more covers with full instructions added! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-01-22 |
   As you can see from the right we have just added 3D Time Trek, Bridgehead (64k version) and Classic Snooker covers.
Full instructions have been added to all three which is a new trend where we want to add more attention though-out the data base in time. Also 3D Time Trek is the first cover in the 0-9 index! |
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| | The definitive version of Skramble is here! | | Posted by MIK on 2003-01-21 |
 It's still the same old Skramble we all know and love, but this time we've put the books straight once and for all by bringing the low down and how the game was meant to be seen! Of course this is the original release by Anirog from 1985 (English). Your notice this time the score upon loading is 290 which is true to the master copy on cassette I have here
Sadly this game won't TAP because of the nature of the turbo used, but this is as close as can be. The cover and full instructions are there to be had, so before you all Skramble off for the download remember your be wanting the version here at Emucamp.
Right, I'm off for another bash :-) Enjoy. |
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| | 5 New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-20 |
    Niila T. Rautanen was kind enough to let us use his C16 classic covers from his site. These cool scans will fit right in with the rest of our growing collection. Where's the 5th one you ask? Check out ACE 2 for a rare GameBusters casette release cover!
With Joe Blade 2 and Yie Ar Kung Fu added, "E" and "Q" are the only two letters left with no covers. Does anyone have an original Enigma or Quick Draw casette hanging around? ;-) Tack, Niila! |
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| | First New Release of 2003! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-13 |
 The first new program of the year is out! A converted adventure called Adventureland is here (original by Scott A.) It has been sped up with AustroSpeed. The author wishes to remain unnamed for now.
It's a good start, let's hope we will see a nice crop of new releases for 2003! |
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| | 5 More New Download Sites! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-10 |
Who knew this many websites carried Commodore 16 and Commodore Plus/4 games? Today we have added not less than 5 new sites to the Plus/4 Internet Archive. As you will notice, that page has received a facelift: the listing is better and the sites have been re-ordered so the more relevant ones are at the top, and the sites that are no longer updated are at the bottom. Visit Ozkan.co.uk, Stephan's Retrocomputing Site, TQ-Gaming, a German site and The Acmenet Commodore Plus/4 Computer Collection. This last one has some very nice pictures including hardware and commercial games.
We have also received three more SVS programs: Visual RAM 1541, Visual SEQ and USR File Read. Check the New Uploads section. Thanks, SVS! |
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| | Finders Keepers Map!! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-09 |
 This Mastertronic classic from '86 is a well known game. It was the first in the successful Magic Knight series (Knight Tyme, Spellbound and Stormbringer), which was published on Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and C64. Unfortunately it's the only one that was released for the C16. It's no wonder so many people like the: the controls are easy to pick up, the rooms are challenging and the graphics are colorful and cute. Once you get into the trading, however, you realize that this is more than just a platformer.
Csabo has created a detailed map of the game, download it here (107KB). It's invaluable to those who want to finish it. The C64 version has three possible endings. We've only found one so far in the C16 version, the rest probably had to be cut out because of memory. A detailed solution will soon follow. Enjoy! |
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| | Anco Advertisement Sheet. | | Posted by MIK on 2003-01-07 |
 Advertisements related to the C16/Plus4 are slightly rare and something we haven't looked into before. Most if not all were to be found in magazines, but this fine work of art was printed back in 1987 and shipped with Summer Events!
On the face side you were shown images of four classics from Anco and these them self also held the front cover art work to each game. On the back side was black and white text with the quick low down on some of the goodies they had for sell including that all important price tag from the day. As yet we don't have a home for these images so until then you can find them below.
Download scans: Small Front - Small Back - Large Front - Large Back. |
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| | New Club Info! | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-06 |
| Club Info 72 is out. The 2002 December issue is now online at C16doc.de, download it from here. |
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| | More software | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-04 |
| 13 new pieces of software has been added today, including some games, demos and utilities. Check the New Uploads page. There are a few very interesting ones. Talk about ambiguous file names! We have two "Star Copy"s, one 'Star Copy' and a 'Plus4 Star Copy'. Both are tape utilities. The plain Star Copy was written by Istvan Bozsik, the author of Archivum and Hexaeder. It contains a voice sample (the author's own voice), which is played back when the copied programs are loaded from the tape. We have two "Sprite-Converter"s. One is from A-System, the other one is from TCFS (the latter one has a version number added to it). There's even a "new" game called "The Invincible". No, it's not the well-known platformer from The Mad, it's an entirely different German adventure game. Whew! |
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| | More Links | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-02 |
Two more new download sites have been added, raising the total number of links to more than 7000.
  The first site is in german, and it has 5 games online zipped, but carries games for other platforms as well.
The second site has more than 100 classic games online, plus 3 'walkthroughs' (maps) taken from Plus/4 World. |
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| | Let's get this year started | | Posted by Csabo on 2003-01-01 |
I hope everyone had a nice new years and had some rest, but here we are back to work. Today the game screenshots update has been completed. The pages that use game screenshots (games, covers, tapes, cheats and index) have been updated to use the "ThumbURL" field. While this won't look any better than before, it does mean less load on the server and faster page loading. The Cheats page also has a new design. The forum has been updated: the date columns are wider (wide enough to hold the date without breaking them into more than one line). When viewing topics, notice that the top section is changed: a lot less clutter. We also added about 30 more screenshots (still lots to go) and digged up two new games: Unscramble (the original English version) and a german adventure: Caverns in Mountain.
Lastly there's a new download site added to the database, a polish one. This means more than a hundred more download links (we're almost up to 7000). Enjoy! |
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