|  2004 - The Year in Review | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-31 |
Can you believe another year has gone by already? As the old saying goes, time flies. And now it's time for our yearly summary of the happenings of the Plus/4 World.
The emulation scene is still dominated by YAPE. VICE and Forever were also updated. We really can't complain in this department: cheers to all the emu writers and keep up the good work.
Websites come and go. 2004 saw the introduction of the official Fire website and www.commodore16.com, which we are grateful for - the more the merrier. On the European side, this have been declining though, the GOTU homepage has been down for ages, and www.c16doc.de appears to be abandonded.
The cover and software archive is doing well, we hit 5000 programs and collected tons of nice and rare stuff along the way. These type of news items dominated the year; big thanks to everyone once again who took the time and contributed. Also big thanks to the map-makers, we had quite a few added in the past 12 months.
Software. On one hand, it's quite amazing that there are still people who actually develop for the Plus/4... is what a non-scener would say. What we say however is: more, more, more! So let's have a little rundown on what came out in 2004.
- The prolific TLT team continues to pour out digi demos. We saw 3 stunning picture shows from Larry. ATI has surprised us with two demos this year and Skoro released Killer demo. That wraps it up for the demoscene, big respects to all democoders.
- In magazines, we have three remaining survivors: Club Info, Lone News and Mini News. Cheers to all the editors, remember, there are still people out there always waiting for the new issues.
- BalSys from SVS was this years big release in utilities. It's a solid, well-done program, but in all honesty it didn't seem to have found a real user base.
- In games we had Quadrillion, (Some would say game of the year!) which did very well in the 2004 MiniGame compo taking second place! We also had a number of C64 adventures converted this year.
That's something, isn't it? There's still life. But there's a decline. The total number of releases is down from last year's 67 to 49. Although last year we had the compo, which seemed to be a good thing; we should probably have more compos.
That wraps it up. The Plus/4 World crew wishes a very successful and peaceful new year to everyone! |
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| | Perfect Visions! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-26 |
 In an unexpected move, ATI released a brand new demo on the Plus/4. Perfect Visions follows his traditions: it's a demo with exactly three parts :-) You can enjoy some very nice effects and listen to SLD's SID only remix of a Jam and Spoon song. We apologize for the delay - as you can see from the actual release, this should have been here pre-Christmas. Well, it's definitely not too late. Big respects to Ati! |
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| | Codemasters celebrate 18th birthday of BMX Simulator!! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-12-18 |
 Maybe a tad late but news of this has just landed in my mail box from Codemasters them selfs via a Christmas news letter. Here's what they had to say, "Released to mark Codemasters' 18th birthday back in September, get your hands on a downloadable copy of BMX Simulator, Codemasters' first ever game, published in 1986!". Checking out the provided link it is how ever the PC version running in at 1.60mb and by the looks of things uploaded 17th September 2004. I've yet to take a copy but can tell one and all now that you will have to be a member aka signed up with Codemasters to do so!
Also in the mail was word of Treasure Island Dizzy. Although not a genuine offical release on Plus/4 you know some of the best Dizzy games did land on our system thanks to none other TGMS. So with that in mind we'd like to feel we are part of this unique moment. Once again Codies had this to say, "As a Christmas treat we thought we would revive a classic Codemasters game, Treasure Island Dizzy. The Dizzy adventure is now available for you to play online.". By the looks of things this download is related to the CCS-C64 emulator and rolls in at 2.7mb? Ok enough said. As you can see offical freebies are up for grabs and the only way to get them are to hit the offical links which makes a change. ;-)
Dont forget you will have to be a member of the Codemasters homepage to take advantage of these give-aways. If not, then in the mean time you are more than welcome to head on over direct to thier info pages using the links below:
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| | New Release Alert! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-13 |
| You hear those loud sirens and claxons? No? Don't have much of an imagination then, I suppose. We've sounded those just in case someone is missing the fact that there are new releases to be checked out. We've got a little care package from Luca, who got it from István Sánta, better known as HIFI/TLT. We have a tape version of Bloby SID Cheat, and two older (previously missing) proggies: rock out to the sounds of Boing Boom Tschak while watching the demo Machinehead and listen to Sid Inside 2. The new stuff is: Omega 04, this omega is not the well know gfx-man from EVS, but the Hungarian band. Finally we have New Year 2005, an early new years greeting from the ever-so-productive TLT team. Cheers to the heroes of Plus/4, and may they never stop coding! |
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| | 7 Cover Replacements | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-12 |
| Crown continues to scan his software collection, so that we can enjoy full-size, high-quality covers for our beloved C16 games. Today we've uploaded these Baby Berks, Death Race 16, Green Beret, Gwnn, Lawn Tennis and Major Blink. That makes six, the 7th one is for Jet Set Willy, the back cover which was previously missing is now there. Our stats show that we are almost at 76% completed. Remember to perform a search for the term WANTED: Cover to see if you have anything YOU could contribute. Big thanks to Crown once again. Enjoy! |
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| | New Storm Map! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-11 |
| We (the members of the Plus/4 community) know right away that this news item has nothing to do with weather - what's new is a game map for Storm. It's our 11th new map this year, this one's courtesy of Litwr. It's a touched up scan, which contains ALL the rooms of the original ones - even the ones that simply don't exist in the C16 version. For those who want to sit down and play through this unique game, finding Corinne will be much easier with the aid of this map. Big thanks to Vladimir for this. Enjoy! |
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| | Super Happy Databases! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-07 |
  We have two new cover scans for you today. They are Superbase +4 and Superfile 16, two database programs. (So you see, they are super, they are databases, and when asked they won't tell you that they are unhappy, so there.) Superbase +4 still needs an original version, and the cover is courtesy of Rüdiger. The second one already has a tape image, and it's from Lando's collection. Both of them would need some kind of description of features, feel free to add them if you have the time (and the editing rights). Also Csabo converted 7 adventure games, find them under New Uploads. Enjoy! |
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| | New Cover Scans Uploaded | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-06 |
  Guess how many new cover scans we've added today... If you guessed two billion, then you are way off, and you should probably lay off the funny stuff. About six is more like it, for 4 games, starting with IFR (Flight Simulator). It's a rare and pretty much generally unheard of flight simulator for the C16, published by Academy Software. While not much can be said about the graphics, the controls and the actual simulation seem to be pretty complex and therefore more on the authentic side. Never fear, it comes with a 20 page manual. We also have some covers for Stud Poker and Stud Poker/Stud Jack. Finally there's the curious pink(!) Skramble cover. Well that about covers it, this stuff was kindly contributed by Plus4Vampyre. Enjoy! |
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| | Cover Scans and a Map! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-12-04 |
     
December is here. We start off this month with yet another addition of cover scans. Plus4Vampyre sent us the following ones: Baby Berks (an alternative cover with H.E.X. sticker), Galaxy (German Kingsoft release), Jack Attack (US release), LG-Simulator, Quizmix and finally another Tom Thumb cover scan, a relatively rare one which does not have VC-20 on it. Sidius also sent us a few nice ones: full size World Cup replacement, Beach Head (Americana release) and an alternative Petch cover. Last but not least - as the title of this news item says - we have a new map, also from Sidius: it's for Commando. Thanks for the goodies, guys! Enjoy. |
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| | CBM4WIN! | | Posted by Gaia on 2004-11-30 |
Pause for a historical moment: at last Windows NT4/2000/XP have taken their seat in the theatre of operating systems that are capable of using a genuine Commodore serial drive. After cbm4linux having been available for some time already, Spiro Trikaliotis has taken up the challenge to write a kernel level driver for the parallel port and at the same time, convert the complete cbm4linux package to the Windows platform.
The recommended transfer cables for use in CBM4WIN are the XA1541 and XM1541 multitask enhanced cables.
Important though that one must read the instructions and follow the installation steps dutifully to make sure not to screw up anything. Note, that although this package has already been tested by a couple of people, it is still not matured as the version number also suggests it. Don't be surprised thus, it may happen that your computer ends up with a BSOD.
There's a lot you can do with this package from transfering single files, complete disks, reading drive memory and issuing IEC commands. Developers can use the included opencbm library to add support for Commodore drives in their Windows programs. Kudos to Spiro for his excellent work!
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| | New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-29 |
  Plus4Vampyre is here with some important new covers. (We consider them important, because they have been missing for a long time.) Check out DizasterBlaster, Don Paint / Surround and Blaze. Blaze is the second (and final) Romik game to get its cover - however it's nothing more than a C64 cover with a C16/Plus4 sticker on it. Finally we have added Joe and the Seriff and Operation Thunderstorm, there two have got to be some of the cheapest looking covers out there, nevertheless, it's good to have them. There's lots more to come. So many covers, so little time. Big thanks for these, enjoy! |
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| | New Stuff Alert! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-28 |
 Demo lovers rejoice: a brand-new release is here. Killer Demo comes from Skoro/Assassins with Kichy graphics and SID-music. It's a single file demo with four parts, including a 320*800 picture! Make sure you have 10-15 free minutes free, then sit back and enjoy the ride... Respects to Skoro and his crew for being a doer, not just a talker. Remember to Keep The Plus/4 Alive! |
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| | Ultimate ROM Map Updated! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-24 |
 SVS just released an updated version (V1.2) of his Ultimate ROM Map, the must-have list for any programmer and hacker. Here's what's new and improved:
- Clearer and more detailed descriptions of math routines
- All Kernal routines now have complete info about parameters, flags, registers usage and outputs
- More info added to lots of existing lines
- A few more new lines added
- New folder with I/O tables (ST flags, Devices IDs, Kernal errors)
- ... and many other smaller fixes and improvements.
SVS sends big thanks to everyone who has contributed to the list. Remember, this project is still open for improvement, so send your requests, ideas and any info to the author. And Keep the Plus/4 Alive! |
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| | New Stuff From Sidius! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-23 |
 Sidius sent us a little carepackage stuffed with goodies. It's been all uploaded and added to our database for everyone enjoy. Let's have a little rundown on what's new: cover scans of Compute Mit 1988 (issues 2, 5-8). Demolition Kingsoft Cassette cover scan. Two promo items: The Hulk, World Cup Carnival. Finally there's Pensoft C16, which is the software pack released with Optelpen 16 - a lightpen from Germany. Thanks to Sidius for these, enjoy! |
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| | 5000! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-21 |
| Break out the champagne, it's five-to-da-thousand, baby! Okay, fine, it's unlikely that anyone will actually celebrate the fact that the database now contains over 5,000 programs, but since you are reading this, you're probably somewhat interested, so take notice. The last push came from a CD Jim Hehl sent me a long time ago, apologies for the huge delay, but better late than never. Once again there are many cool programs (games, demos and utilities) for you to browse through, including long-lost TCFS games, and such classics as Demo of '88/TTL (true retro feel!). Thanks to everyone who contributed for their hard work, and keep it going! |
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| | Ghosts 'n' Goblins Nailed on the Head!! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-11-21 |
 One of the most unusual games of the past was this, Ghosts 'n' Goblins. It was one game that so many of us believed could not be completed, so many of us got stuck on level 2 faced with 'the' Cyclops from hell. We knew the tape was all but run out and with the C16's limited memory we also knew the actual game had come to a sorry ending at this very point but we still never knew the true story.... Did the good Knight Arthur save his Princess?
The blue print to that very question has been beautifully turned into a map by none other Sidius, who took up the challenge of finding out the truth once and for all this week! Although his map is truly superb you may not like what you see. We've been in the dark for so long that seeing the light may make your worst nightmares may come true. Indeed this is not for the faint hearted!! ;-)
Many thanks to Sidus once again and for supporting our unique map archive with another cherished map!!
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| | New Programs Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-20 |
| Big thanks to Lacus, who sent us a boatload (okay, not boat... folderload?) of previously unlisted programs. It took 4 days to sort through and upload, check the New Uploads page. Many of them are from the Hungarian scene, but there's some good stuff in there for you to check out (and for the editors to go through in detail). With these ~70 programs, we are very near to the big 5. Again thanks for these, and remember: check those old disks and tapes, you never know what you might find. |
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| | It's all done! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-14 |
  The collection is complete, we have everything. Wait a minute, that's not quite true. It's a good thing then that people like Ulysses777 still take the time to scan or digitize stuff and send it in. Here's what his latest pack included: Hercules cover scan, The Hulk USA disk release box cover (finally!) along with an original G64 file and World Cup II cover scan. This last one is just a World Cup re-release. The list doesn't stop: we have the Splitz TAP file, plus the free audio soundtrack from H.E.X. that comes with the tape. (Check out the page for the original MP3 and a shorter - but still enjoyable - version for modem users.) We also have 4 TAP files for Easy Match/Easy Count: two tapes, two sides per tape. So maybe it's not ALL done, but we're one step closer. Thanks to Ulysses777 for these! |
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| | Snooker & Pool? | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-10 |
 Well it certainly looks like it! This previously unknown title is getting some attention. We've recently received an email from Sidius. He found an advertisement in an old Compute Mit magazine, listing this game for 9,90 DM, published by Gremlin. He even created a possible cover - by modifying the C64 cover. (The game apparently got published on the C64 as well.) Well, we can do even better, since meanwhile Rüdiger sent us an original cover! Check it out, it's complete with huge instructions in multiple languages. Thanks guys for hunting this title down. We'll see what happens once we find a program file, and we'll keep you posted. |
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| | Feindfahrt and Kroesus | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-09 |
| Two original D64 files were uploaded today, Feindfahrt and Kroesus. Both are german disk-based games by R. Lindenschmidt. They are equipped with software copy protection, you must press a specific letter to bypass it. For the second one, we don't yet have a cracked version: if anyone has the time, go for it! Otherwise you could simply work on the codes-list, we already have a partial list compiled and posted. With YAPE, saving/reloading snapshots is a snap, and you only have 26 letters to try per combination... (The game asks to press a letter or number, but so far they are all letters.) Thanks to Plus4Vampyre for these! |
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| | New Covers Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-09 |
   We're back in business... This time Crown sent us some high-quality coverscans. We have an alternative cover for Jump Jet, followed by a replacement cover for Xcellor8. Finally we have Project Nova, complete with English and German instructions. Thanks for these! |
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| | Quadrillion comes 2nd! | | Posted by Ulysses777 on 2004-11-03 |
 The results of the 2004 Minigame compo have finally been released, and Quadrillion, Csabo's excellent adaptation of Crillion, came in an amazing 2nd place out of 42 games in the 4K category! And judging by the comments (with particular praise for the great use of the Plus/4's colour), the game was very well received by all those who played it. And if that wasn't enough, the C64 entry Little Sara Sister (also 4K), with graphics and a great tune by Luca, came 3rd!. Big congrats to Csabo and Luca for doing our scene proud! :)
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| | The Commodore 16 Games Book | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-11-03 |
 Today brings us a big update - the addition of The Commodore 16 Games Book. Not only Ulysses777 scanned the covers, but he also took the time to type-in all 24 programs published in this book. It breaks down to 22 games and two utilities, and that's a lot of neat stuff for you to go through. The games include the elusive Marie Celeste adventure, hardcore adventure fans will be happy to see this game - which we knew about, but did not have - finally in our database. One of the two utilities is Sequential Circuit, a music editor by David Whittaker. Big thanks to Ulysses777 for his effort! |
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| | Compute Mit Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-25 |
| Sidius scanned and submitted the covers of his Compute Mit magazine collection. With a few excetions, it's complete up to the end of 1987. Visit the Publications page to view these and much more. The page itself has also been updated, the navigation is now better: you can filter by language and/or by publication type, and list them with or without thumbnails. (E.g. here are the German Plus/4 magazines.) It's very cool to go through these covers... You'll see the ACE cover proudly displayed on the 4/87 issue. Or did you know, that even demoscene veteran Fusion wrote a game that was published in this magazine? (Yup, it's Creature Castle.) Or you can find out what the origin of King of Kings is - it was published in the 12/86 issue. For those of you who ever wondered why that game is the first one in the database (by ID, that is), or why Lavina is the first member. Well, years ago when this guy created a little MS Access database - which eventually turned into Plus/4 World - and started typing some stuff, he decided that King of Kings was a cool game and Lavina was a cool friend. Well now you know! Anyhow, big thanks to Sidius for his scans and collecting all the info for these magazines. Enjoy! |
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| | New YAPE Version Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-24 |
Exactly one month has passed since the last YAPE update, and the a new version is here again. For the first time, V0.60 is capable of emulating both NTSC and PAL machines! With this cool feature, you can now listen to digi players like the one in the first part of Digital Brainstorm: these were designed for PAL machines, but switch to NTSC mode to achieve faster playback speeds. (What a sentence there.) Anyway, musics such as that one will now sound very authentic. The update also promises more bugfixes, so downloading is a MUST for every Plus/4 fan.
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| | 100 Publications | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-17 |
| Our Publications section has reached 100 listings. The last ones added were German books. We now have all German book cover scans and most of the info, thanks to Sidius. He has also sent us the covers for the Compute Mit series, coming soon. The New Uploads page now includes recently added publications, so you can see what's being added. |
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| | 2004 Minigame Compo Votepack Released | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-10 |
The 2004 Minigame Compo Votepack is now available. Those who voted already can now finalize and submit their votes. (Votes must be submitted, or else they will not count.) If you haven't voted yet, it's now the perfect time. You can still do it until the voting deadline, November 1st. It's worth it, there are some really cool games to be checked out.
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| | !srevoC weN | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-07 |
 .nosaer oN ?ksa uoy ,sdrawkcab meti swen siht si yhw dna ,hO !eseht rof sknaht ynaM .srednebdniM fo noisrev nailatI eht dennacs eh yllaniF .gnixoB s'onurB knarF rof nacs revoc xob eht evah osla ew ,syawynA ).llew sa hcnerF ni dellebal si gnihtyreve adanaC ni ereh ,wonk dluohs I ,lleW ?yeht t'nod ,dnuora sdrow fo redro eht hctiws syawla yehT( .cisaB-sruoC deltit ,sruK-cisaB fo noisrev )!hcnerF ,sey( hcnerF erar a su tnes eH .suidiS dneirf namreG ruo morf snacs revoc wen emos evah ew emit sihT .etadpu looc rehtona ,yad rehtonA |
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| | New Forever And A Map! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-06 |
| Forever Plus/4 Emulator has been updated to version 1.28. Besides bug-fixes, this version also adds preliminary disk support, which means more D64 files will now work. The author, Litwr has also scanned a real curiosity of an item: it's a map of Saboteur!, which appears in a Polish(!) computer mag called "Komputer". Very nice indeed! Thanks for these! |
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| | New Club Info Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-05 |
 The october issue of the longest running diskmag, Club Info 83 is here! (German speaking folks are in luck.) Besides the articles, the B side contains utils and games, including the recently converted Dark Planet +4. Cheers to Erich/ULTD for his work and to Luca for supplying the warez! |
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| | 8 New Games From Australia! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-04 |
 A very friendly fellow - hailing from the home of the Wiggles, sunny Australia - gave us a nice gift. Archived from some old C16 tapes, he sent us 8 new TAP files. They are all multi-loader adventure games by Gameworx Software. Alien and Thermonuclear Wargames were already listed, and we had them as (what turned out to be) hacks. King Solomon's Mines was also listed, but it was missing. However, Bastow Manor, Mad Mummy, Ninja, Murder on the Waterfront and Skull Island are all brand new! The games feature colorful ASCII graphics, and should provide weeks of fun for anyone who still wants to play adventures on their C=16 or Plus/4. Be warned, the files are in WAV format, so each download is around 500Kb. We don't (yet) have cover scans for these games, but they are thought to be individual Melbourne House releases. Hopefully they will turn up, or someone can provide more info about the origins of these. Enjoy! |
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| | Exomizer Updated! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-03 |
| Good news: something good just got better. The something in this case happens to be the insanely popular cross-platform cruncher Exomizer. The author has just released version 1.1.5, which promises even faster crunch times and better compression. Visit the homepage for more details and the download. |
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| | New Hungarian Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-10-02 |
  It can't be October already, can it? Well, we'd better start off this month then. Here come a few new covers from Lacus, all Hungarian ones: Karakter-szerkesztő, Magyar ABC, Music-16, Számépítő, Szerpentin and Térbeli Amőba. Szerpentin is the first release that happens to have more than one cover scan: the one we added is an alternative release. This brings up the collection to 77.8% complete. Thanks to Lacus, and keep hunting for those missing ones! |
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| | YAPE Update! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-26 |
Version 0.59 of YAPE has been released yesterday. Among other improvements and fixes the biggest new thing is the possibility to emulate 4 disk drives. To check it out and download it, head on over to the YAPE homage. In related news, VICE has also been updated, it is now version 1.15. This was last month, but we missed it. The only new improvement in Plus/4 emulation is the newly added cartridge support. Also, the DOS based emulator Forever has been updated about the same day. It seems as if FLI support was shaping up in this pioneering emulator, at last one of the files included in the package suggests this.
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| | New Covers and Tape Files | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-26 |
  Lacus sent us lots more stuff from the Hungarian side of things. Here's what we managed to add today: Bemutató Programcsomag now has individual tape files for all 10 programs on it (note that the first one must always be loaded before the others). Plus we've got two rare covers: Menekülés and Mesél az erdő. Thanks for these, and stay tuned for more. |
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| | 2 Compilation Tapes! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-25 |
 We've added Go Games 26, containing 7 Italian hacked games. It's good to have these so for the sake of completing the collection, but all the games are same as the originals. Software Club 16 however has 4 new programs on it, 3 games and one utility. Each file has a TAP, and we have the manual scanned as well. All of this is from Crown, big thanks to him for his contribution. Enjoy! |
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| | 3 More Covers and TAP files! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-24 |
   Crown is also active once again, sending us missing stuff for the archive. The three programs to receive their cover scans and TAP files are: Verem (cool tetris-clone), Lézer-Harc and Bombázó. This last one is newly added, and as the name suggests(?!) it's yet another bomber clone. Thanks to Crown for these. Enjoy! |
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| | 3 More TAPs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-23 |
| Three more TAP files were uploaded today to the archive, sent in by TLC. The first two are accompany the recently added covers for Sakk Kezdőknek and Szociometria. The third one is TLC's own MegaCopy V1.1, a very competent tape turbo + filecopy. Recommended! Thanks for these, and stay tuned for more. |
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| | 4 New Hungarian TAP files | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-22 |
| In the coming days, we will be adding a lot more programs and cover scans from the Hungarian side of things. This is the first installment, courtesy of Lacus. We have now TAP files for Menekülés, Mesél az Erdő (cool platformer, worth checking out!), Számépítő and Térbeli Amőba. There's a lot more stuff on the way so stay tuned! |
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| | Quadrillion Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-20 |
The first Plus/4 specific entry has been entered into the 2004 MiniGame compo. It's a new game that will put you reflexes to the test. Quadrillion has easy-to-learn gameplay and 20 levels. The full source code is also released, anyone who is interested in seeing what it takes to create a full-blown game can check it out. This is the 34th new release for 2004, and it contains a level created by Lando, who is celebrating his birthday today. Happy Birthday Lando!
The author would like to thank everyone for their support here on the forum and in personal messages. Now there's one more thing you can do for a fellow Plus/4'er: visit the MiniGame compo website and vote for this game as you see it fit. Keep the Plus/4 Alive! |
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| | Two Italian Publications Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-19 |
| Luca scanned some of his stuff too, and we are proud to list the first Italian book in our database: Machine Language for C16. Another new publication added is the booklet for the Music Master compilation, published by Jackson. All 16 pages are scanned and can be found here. Thanks to Luca for these! |
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| | Tons of New Programs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-19 |
| Over 100 new programs have been added to the database. Head on over to the New Uploads list to see what we have been missing. (And of course this is another good addition to the Missing Info page.) We are up to ~4750 programs, and well on our way to 5000... Cheers to Luca for collecting and uploading these! |
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| | 3 New Game Maps! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-16 |
| Game Maps are truly works of art, created by Plus/4 enthusiasts. They give you a full size view of the games, like you've never seen before. We don't receive one of these every day - probably because they take so much time to create. We are therefore extremely proud to present not one, not two, not three, I mean yes, three brand new maps for your viewing pleasure. Created by Ulysses777, they are for Icicle Works, Molecula Man and Exorcist. They have to be seen to be believed, check them out, it's a lot of fun. Many thanks to Ulysses once again. |
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| | Go Games 15 | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-15 |
| We have just added a new compilation tape to our database. It is Go Games 15 - an italian compilation, and some (or perhaps all?) of the games are hacked versions of other commercial software. (We don't judge though, we just dutifully document the past.) The 7 games on it are Zombi, Snorky, Firefox, Britt, Asterocks, Brainstorm! and Dragon's Castle. Some of the games are marked Editions Fermont. Now, where have we heard that name before?... We have also added the TAP file for Mathematik Teil 1 (a working one finally!). All these are courtesy of Crown. Enjoy! |
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| | 2 Hungarian Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-14 |
  Plus/4 World is proud to present two more cover scans, this time for Hungarian releases. We don't get one of these every day. Sakk Kezdőknek (Starter Chess) is the first one, the second is Szociometria (Sociometrics). They are from TLC, who just recently got himself a scanner. Good move! We have also added Mini News 01. Anyone who remembers the last one knows that was #10. But it's no mistake this is #1, not #11. We were infact missing this piece of software. So the good folks at Plus/4 World contacted the original author, Skoro. He let us know that he has it, but he doesn't have any equipment to transfer files to the PC. TLC came to the rescue: Skoro mailed a disk to him and he did the transfer, and it is now part of the archive forever. Many thanks to both guys. Enjoy! |
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| | 11 Kingsoft Disk Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-13 |
  Markus Gans scanned not less than 11 Kingsoft disks for us! This is quite the collection, and here they are: Demolition, Fire-Galaxy, Fortress Underground (alternate cover), Grafik Designer, Music Master, Paintbox, Sextett, Sommer Olympiade and Winter Olympiade. Two more left: Maniax and Soft 80, for these two programs his covers are the first, increasing our statistics to 77.68% complete. He also sent in the front and back covers of Das Grosse C-16 Buch (The Big C-16 Book), also by Kingsoft. Many thanks for these! Enjoy. |
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| | Covers and TAP Files! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-12 |
| Crown brings us this weekends goodies... Let's get started with the covers: we have Berks, Commando (Elite Release), Deutsch Teil 1 and Deutsch Teil 2, Football Manager (more on this one later), Harvey Headbanger, Liberator, Mathematik Teil 1, Minipedes (alternative cover), Out on a limb, Xargon Wars (alternative cover). The one for Football Manager could be the original cover, as it offers an entry form to some trip. On our existing cover this label, and the message in the corner is covered with a company logo... I guess someone won that trip already! Anyway, it's not over yet, because we've also added 4 non-turbo loading TAP files: Chicago, Commando, Steinzeit and Varmit. Many thanks to Crown once again. And that's all folks for today. |
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| | 3 More Cover Scans | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-12 |
 ...have been added, courtesy of Sidius. We have the Melbourne House release of Way of the Exploding Fist. If one reads the comments on the back side of this cover, it sounds like they are talking about a different game entirely. And they are, as the little note says: comments are for the C64 version. Anyhow, we also have the German disk version of Hollywood Poker, and Mercenary Kompendium (it's just so cool the way they spell that with a K) - German tape version scans. Cool stuff, thanks to Sidius for these! Also visit the Faces of the Scene gallery to see Graffiti's portait, which has just been added, thanks Luca! |
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| | 3 Covers Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-08 |
   Another day, another set of covers. There are still some folks out there who think that's good news, right? Crown sent us full size replacement covers for the Shaun Southern classic Arthur Noid and World Series Baseball. He also scanned the cover for a newly added program: King Size Turbo Accounts from Robtek. This one now has a TAP and PRG file for you to download as well. Many thanks! Stay tuned for more. |
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| | 4 Razorsoft/Paxman Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-07 |
    We have complete coverscans for 4 more games, courtesy of Plus4Vampyre. Mail Trail, Mega Zap, Raider and Sea Strike are budget titles from Razorsoft. They each have an original cover, which - one has to admit - are pretty cheap looking. However, Paxman has re-released them all with fancy cover artworks... Well there you go, enjoy! |
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| | YAPE V0.58 Released | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-09-04 |
Today Gaia released the latest upgrade for YAPE. The homepage mentions only a modest short list of improvements, but rest assured, this version fixes many smaller things as well which are probably not worth mentioning. However, you will definitely benefit from added stability. The option to select fullscreen resolution is also great, and it will finally enable some of us to run YAPE in fullscreen mode (since some lame monitors or videocards just don't support 400x300, the old default). Cheers to Gaia for his continued hard work, and go download the latest version now!
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| | New Games Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-08-30 |
  Plus4Vampyre sent us a big pack of covers. The pack proved to be too much for one upload, so we started with the very rare stuff. Pasta Blasta is a previously unknown C16 game. It's amazing that we are still finding these... Fric Check-up is another newly added release, it's an Italian compilation tape. Finally we have also added his full size cover scans for Mindbenders, plus the games from this title. More stuff to come so stay tuned. Also Seas of Blood was converted along with the rest of the Mt. Valley adventures. |
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| | Home Office Cover + Manual | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-08-23 |
 We have just recently added this title (Home Office). Rüdiger sent us an alternative cover for it. The complete manual (12 pages + cover) has also been uploaded. This one was scanned and sent in by both Rüdiger and Ulysses777 pretty much at the same time... It allowed us to pick the best scanned pages from each set. Thank you guys both! Enjoy. |
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| | New adventure conversion from Csabo | | Posted by Gaia on 2004-08-21 |
| Finally it seems that the new releases start sailing in! This time Csabo has taken upon the challenge to convert another classic adventure from the C64. Voodoo Castle has not been completely unknown for us, since we have already had a commercially released C16 only version for our platform. What we missed was a 64 kb version with all the graphics that would not fit in the limited memory of a C16. So if you prefer playing adventures with scenery graphics then is Voodoo Castle +4 definitely your thing. Thanks to Csabo for his hard work and keep up! |
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| | Drea-M-time XXXII! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-08-16 |
 Plus/4 World proudly presents the third installment of the Drea-M-time series: Drea-M-time XXXII! This picture show coded by Larry once again contains astonishing quality images. Download your copy immediately, and be prepared to pick your jaws up from the floor. |
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| | Mega Update from Crown! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-08-13 |
    
Here are the latest items Crown contributed to our archive. Commodore box coverscans for Easy Match/Easy Count, Letter Match - More or Less, Super Spell and Starter Productivity Software. For this last one, he also scanned the 25 page manual, plus we have all the 5 utilities added. In other words, that's the complete package. The same thing goes for Experiences in Software: we had the cover scans, but 14 page manual is new, and so are the 14 programs (each with TAP file). There's more: we have a high quality cover scan for Exorcist (the single release), and he created two TAP files for Classic Snooker (one is for the C16, the other is the enhanced Plus/4 version). Excellent stuff, thanks to Crown! |
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| | Retro Games World - THE LIVE RETRO EVENTS PORTAL! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-08-09 |
THE LIVE RETRO EVENTS PORTAL
Retro Games World is a new project thought up by a few of the live events organisers including Chris Abbott and Mark from Retro Vision. It is basically a one stop portal of infomation about all the live events going on. The idea can be furthered to include advertising from games companies etc...
They hope this becomes a useful page and with a little help in spreading the word it will become a worthy page indeed. Any help you can give in order to make the site known, gathering event info etc will be apprecieated. So without delay head on over by clicking the link below and check out whats going down now!
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| | Two new TLT releases! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-08-07 |
Luca sent in two 2004 releases by Tron Lamer Team. They are - as some of you have no doubt guessed - digi demos. The first one is +4 Forever, a demo celebrating the 20th birthday of the Plussy. The second one is Delta 2004. "Delta" (in this case) is a scientific TV programme in Hungary, the demo plays its theme music.
After a slow start, it looks like this year will be productive after all. At the moment according to our count we are up to 21 new releases this year. Keep 'em coming! |
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| | Club Info 80, 81 and 82! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-08-06 |
 We have just received three issues of Club Info, including the fresh August 2004 edition. German speakers are in luck, 6 disksides of Plus/4 related stuff to read through and play with. Thanks to Luca for supplying them! |
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| | Two New Programs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-26 |
  Another rare moment: two previously unlisted programs have been added to the database, thanks to Ulysses777. The first one is Biology 'O' Level from Paxman Promotions, this is the fourth and final piece from their educational series. As the name suggests... it's biology. The second one is even more interesting: Home Office is an Audiogenic release, developed by Navajo Software. It is a productivity "suite", with a database and a word processor. Remember, it's from 1985. Both programs are complete with TAP and PRG files and cover scans. Very nice additions, many thanks to Ulysses777! Enjoy. |
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| | Uno, Due, Tre More Scans From Italy | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-16 |
   Continuing the Italian Cover Craze, we have three more new ones to present today. The first two comes from Sidius. Serpent 16 is apparently a never before seen commercial release, a Nibbly-like snake game written in basic. Space Wars is next up, it's the Italian release of Stellar Wars - from Sound Acustic Design. This company is the second from Italy that has been added to the database, besides Armati of course. It seems that SAD was more careful to change the names of their releases from the original - could that have been because they did not pay royalties to the original creators? Well, perhaps we will never know. Anyway, our business is preserving, and these covers are just as much a part of the C16/Plus4 history as anything else. The last cover comes from Luca Maestro, and it's called Vorks. As it was discussed on the forum, it's actually Berks. Thanks for these covers, guys! |
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| | Tons of Italian Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-15 |
       From Sidius comes a set of cover scans which are most definitely rare. They are Italian re-releases of C16 classics, 13 scans in all. Without further ado, let's see what we have: Beach Head, Calcio (World Cup), Commando, Enigma, Gullwing Falcon, Kikstart, Pole Position (Formula 1 Simulator), Raccolta C16 (Favourite 4), Scooby Doo, Space 2, (Daley Thompson's) Star Events, The Magicans (Magician's Curse) and XCellor8. Enjoy!
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| | Club Info 79 is here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-14 |
 The first issue in 2004 of the longest running diskmag has arrived. It's a bit late; the mags usually come out every two months, and by now we should have them up to 81. Unlimited's Club Info download page hasn't been updated for a while, they don't even seem to have 79 up yet. This is a good excuse for us to introduce our new page which we created for the Plus/4 magazines: Magazines Page. It's still under construction, but it works. |
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| | Three More New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-12 |
   We are finishing up Ulysses777's cover pack from last week. Once again we have a Questprobe release box cover, this time it's for Spiderman (which is making a killing in the box office nowadays). We also have two more high-quality replacements for Mastertronic classics: Spectipede and Vegas Jackpot. Enjoy! |
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| | BalSys development system released | | Posted by SVS on 2004-07-11 |
 A great release for both coders and users: BalSys v. 1.2 is out! Not a program, nor a game: a new improved Development System for Plus/4.
As written in LoneNews #16 issue, we went beyond a new frontier of the black box:
- more than 100 commands for BAL language (plus hi-level non standard ones)
- pseudo commands in direct mode
- 34 different error detections
- 3 different IRQ lines
- 3 types Alarm ability
- Breakpoints
- StepRun mode
- Debug monitor
- 2 display panels
- Console signal lights
- Preferences file
- Disks or tape devices
- Realtime clock
- Realtime signal monitoring ability
- ... and much more!
All-in-one package: Write/Debug/Run environments for programs written in expanded :) B.A.L. language.
By SVS of [FIRE] italian crew.
Download your copy, together with large manual and example BAL programs from here. |
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| | Three New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-08 |
   Ulysses777 scanned some cool covers for us once again. The first three of a sixpack made their way online today. We have the Questprobe release box cover for The Incredible Hulk. We also have two high-quality replacements for two Mastertronic classix: BMX Racers and Formula 1 Simulator. More is coming, so stay tuned! Many thanks to Ulysses once again. |
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| | LoneNews #16 is out! | | Posted by Luca on 2004-07-06 |
 A new issue of LoneNews is ready to be read people! This well known mag edited by Luca of [FIRE] italian crew supplies you with a ton of reviews, interviews, info, news, charts, and more about the Plus4 scene. Download your copy now from here. |
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| | Retro Remakes Compo 2004 | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-02 |
| This is a bit off topic, but still interesting. We all love those remakes, right? This year remakes.org once again is holding a competition, where the goal is to create remakes of old classics. So this is our call to all of those who know how to program the PC to create a new, updated version of a C16 or Plus/4 game! There are some very cool prizes to be won. The compo ends Sept 30. To learn more, head on over to remakes.org. |
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| | Rare Atomic Mission Cover Found! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-07-02 |
 About three months ago we mentioned Atomic Mission here. It's the last piece of the Scott Adams cartridge trio that needs it's Australian Release cover. Sidius is once again the one to find us a cover scan. Unfortunately it's partially blocked and not the best quality, but the collector in all of us can rejoice to have it. At least it is now 100% confirmed to exist, all you hunters can look for it. Many thanks to Sidius! |
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| | New adventure games for the C-64/C-128/Plus 4/C-16! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-06-29 |
Paul's Commodore Adventures page contains adventure games he has written on the Commodore 64, 128, Plus/4, C16, and VIC-20 (8-bit) computers. All are in the public domain, and are free to download and play. Current games available for our system include Orathan, Esotera - The Stones of Esotera, Sea Hunter, Merlin's Quest, Westfront to Apse II, Westfront 64/+4 and Wizard Castle.
You know where to find them! Hit the link below and head on over to Paul's page for the full story. Many thanks to Paul for this news. |
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| | A new plus/4 emulator for Linux | | Posted by Gaia on 2004-06-22 |
| Linux users be in awe, there is a new plus/4 emulator on the horizon. Its author is István Varga and it is downloadable from http://www.sharemation.com/IstvanV/plus4-1.1.tar.gz. (it does not have a dedicated webpage). You shall need SDL and the ALSA library to be able to compile it. Although the emulation is yet quite rudimentary, it is always nice to see some competition. I have succesfully compiled the source for Windows (albeit, without sound), so if there is some demand, the EXE will be put up for grabs and more people can play around with it. It comes with source, so anyone may feel free to improve it. |
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| | New Stuff From Kichy! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-06-20 |
| We're received a nice letter from Kichy. He dug up some old disks and shared the treasures found on them with us. Visit the New Uploads page to see the list of the more than 30 programs added. Among the more interesting ones are Dynamoid Original and the previously unreleased intros for Time Cristal: Time Cristal Intro 1 and Time Cristal Intro 2. (If anyone doesn't know the story, just ask Luca ;-) He said that nowadays he is still at least a bit active on the scene, creating graphics for Skoro's games and demos. Many thanks to Kichy for the stuff. Keep the scene alive! |
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| | Mini News 10 Arrives! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-06-20 |
 Finally, another new release this year: the 10th issue of Mini News is here. If you don't speak Hungarian, you are not completely out of luck. Sure, you will miss the actual magazine text, but it's still worth checking out for the cool digi (or SID) music. Another reason is that the magazine has changed to a new format. Many thanks to Lavina for supplying us the program and Skoro for creating it! Keep the scene alive! |
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| | More Covers From Sidius! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-06-19 |
    We're finishing up with the latest cover pack from Sidius. We now have the Americana Release of Spid-rman cover scanned. The second game to receive its cover is Winter Olympics. And not just one, but three in fact. There's the Tynesoft release, a Playsoft release (Italian!) and the German Tynesoft release: Olympische Winterspiele. Nice ones, check them out! Many thanks to Sidius for these! |
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| | The Collection Keeps Growing! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-06-14 |
  We have managed to add a few more items to our ever-growing collection. From Crown we have a full ACE 2 cover replacement, and the Gamebusters release covers for ACE. This latter one completes the series, we now have the Gamebusters covers for all three ACE games. This very same cover was also sent in by Sidius (almost at the same time), many thanks to both of you! The first cover added from Sidius' pack is the long-awaited Raffles from Tynesoft. Finally we've uploaded the original TAP for Music-16, this one is courtesy of Gaia. Enjoy! |
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| | New Covers From Crown! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-06-13 |
   Crown sent us this weeks supply of covers. The first one added was High-Screen-CAD, along with the D64 file. This is a German graphic utility, showing a more serious side of our beloved computer. However, we are still looking for documentation for this title. We have also added an alternative cover for Plus-Paket 16, and the German disc cover of Winter Events, labelled Winter Olympiade of course. Many thanks to Crown for these! Stay tuned for more covers to come. |
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| | Commodore16.com Competition News!! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-06-11 |
Commodore16.com proudly presents the first competition on the website. The prizes are software based on the C16/+4 format and have been kindly donated by UKRetro.co.uk, thier brilliant sponsor. The competition will be in the format of ten questions based on the system and will run for a month. The first prize is a amazing collection of brand new (never used) C16/+4 games, second prize is a £20 voucher redeemable at UKretro.co.uk and the third prize is a £10 voucher also redeemable at UKretro.co.uk.
To have a chance to win this wonderful collection of games and vouchers head on over to Commodore16.com and join in the fun. No other website is offering the chance to win anything like this, no strings just a great opportunity to win our loved childhood games.
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| | 4 New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-06-09 |
Rüdiger sent us 4 new rare covers. First up is a previously unknown compilation release from Anco, called 6 of the Best. The other three are german utilities: CSJ Turbo Tape, Datei C16 and Lottosysteme. The quality of the covers is not the best, but it's still good to have them in the collection. Thanks to Rüdiger for these! Enjoy!    |
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| | "The most amazing game you will see on the C16" | | Posted by MIK on 2004-06-04 |
Those were the very words that Probe Software used to promote Defence 16 way back in 1985! Yes, it's Advertisement time where the once loved companys of yesteryear showed off thier goods in full colour glory. We have a handfull on offer, some will shock, some will amaze and some you won't believe!
First up is the advert for ACE, a unique one this which puts the C16 on the map showing off that the migthy C16 version was the very start of better things to come for all systems that later graced this beautiful game!
We also have adverts for Defence 16 as already said, Golf 16k with its almost copyrighted to George Lucas (Starwars) C3PO head look alike and Steve Davis Snooker.
And we will leave you with 2 adverts from Anirog. Now these go back a bit! The first one is one of the earliest adverts we could get our hands on for Tom Thumb being available for our beloved machine! We are talking mail order only at this time and to our surprise one game is being displayed which is not even listed in the datebase! The second advert shows some of the best offerings of the day in which most were ported from the C64. Little did we know these guys would turn into ANCO, but thats another story for another day. |
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| | Patrick Strassen: The Authors Original Game Stories!! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-06-01 |
Classic news put back into the spotlight!
Patrick Strassen and with many thanks sent in some time ago scanned copies of his original game information notes he sent to Gremlin Graphics in 1986 along with production artwork for Xcellor8! These beauties along with other titles have been tucked away from our viewing pleasure on the old done and dusted version of the site and without delay it was time to put things right! For newcomers these are a must see as they tell a story of how Gremlin Graphics and Mastertronic changed the game stories forever!
Also as above, we have the notes for Power Ball. Mastertronic once again changed Patrick's original story!
And last of all we have the notes for GWNN, (GAME WITH NO NAME) also from Mastertronic and we still haven't found out Patrick's cheat mode password that was not only added to this game but all his releases! Adding to GWNN which completes the story is the real name behind the game itself! Go check it out now!! |
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| | Exomizer Updated! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-05-29 |
Magnus Lind brings us version 1.1.4 of Exomizer, the best cross-platform cruncher. New things in this release:
- Normal decruncher source improved, now 11 bytes shorter and somewhat faster. (Hooray!)
- A contrib directory, for now containing the assembler source of a 4k-demo exodecruncher by Ninja (C64 guy!). This is for the c64 but contains many tricks to reduce its size that can be useful for the c16/+4 as well.
- Auto mode for -l flag. This will automatically calculate and use the highest possible load address of the crunched file that won't corrupt in-memory decrunching.
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| | Ultimate Airwolf Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-05-29 |
   We now have all the Airwolf 16 cover scans you could ever ask for, thanks to Ulysses777. He sent in a replacement scan for the original release, and an alternative version of that as well (which does not have the "Crash Smash" logo on it). He also scanned the rare Encore box release, front and back. The artwork is similar to the other ones, but this one has the newer, bigger Encore logo on it. This stuff is just the beginning of a larger pack he sent in, so stay tuned! |
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| | Did we forget to mention that? | | Posted by Luca on 2004-05-20 |
 Hey hey hey! We're talking about another 2004 marked Plus/4 release, what the hell! Chizman has merged a couple things we love, Bonanza Banzai & our preferred blackbox, into this '80ish digi demo. Download it here right now, I say! |
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| | The Third "Y" Game! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-05-17 |
 That headline probably needs a bit of an explanation. Even though our huge software archive is nearing 4400 titles, you simply could not find games under the letter Y. Well, besides the commercial classic Yie Ar Kung-Fu and the freeware Yazzi. Now however, Yttrium joins this list as the third "Y" game. The author of the game is unknown german programmer, perhaps someone out there knows?
Yttrium is the name of a metallic atom (atomic number 39), and the game does involve atoms as well. Your task on each level is to depress all red buttons, then find and recharge the atom. While you do this, you must avoid touching the electrons, which are running around. After recharging however, you MUST touch one (your color will change to purple), and then escape the level through the purple gate.
The controls are bit too sensitive, and the graphics is mediocre - but fits the mood very well. There are 10 increasingly difficult levels waiting for you to explore, after which you can see a small endsequence, which is a big plus. Well, there you have it, if you are into C16 & Plus/4 games and have some free time, check out Yttrium today. |
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| | YAPE 0.57 is Out! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-05-16 |
| We all know that as soon as you read that headline, you will be heading on over to the YAPE Downloads page without delay. Cheer up everyone, we can all be grateful that this already superb emulator is still getting better! To sum it up quickly, the new improvements are SID emulation and fixes/improvements to the YAPE monitor. Respects to Gaia! |
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| | Roll Cover and New Programs | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-05-16 |
 It's very rare that we receive a Hungarian cover scan, but today we add one courtesy of Lacus. Check out Roll, which is a pretty cool logical game, now complete with scans and TAP file. Lacus also went through some tape archives and sent us a whole bunch of new (old!) programs, head to New Uploads to see them. Many thanks! |
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| | Oldschool Gaming - New games review site!! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-05-07 |
| Except that this time it's for more than just one format; two-man reviews of recent and current games for the Plus/4, C64, Oric, Spectrum and more as well as links to developer resources and general articles about game development, news of new releases for the classic machines, a forum to discuss programming, design and ideas and as much more as we can come up with! Many thanks to T.M.R for this news! |
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| | The Flowers Have Arrived! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-29 |
 Plus/4 World is proud to present this very hot (0-day) warez for your demoviewing pleasure: Flowers by Ati/GS! The demo displays two beautiful pictures taken by the author with a FUJI S5000 camera, using the MultiColour FLI mode. Check it out! Many thanks to Ati for this new release! |
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| | *** www.commodore16.com *** | | Posted by MIK on 2004-04-27 |
Ladies and Gentleman roll up, roll up! The offical grand opening of www.commodore16.com has just started! Chris who managed to snap up the domain www.commodore16.com has been true to his word and launched an all new C16/Plus4 related web site for your viewing pleasure!
The full story and more as to why Chris has dedicated his awesome URL to our beloved platform will all become clear once you head on over and with respect its great to see such a URL being put to good use! So what are you wainting for? Hit the link below and bookmark it now! |
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| | New Covers and TAPs from Crown! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-26 |
Crown continues to contribute with excellent items to our collection. Let's see what today's new pack brings: Bomb Jack: full Encore release cover and TAP files for both sides. Diamond Mine, Droid One: cover scans and TAP files. Fortress Underground: Cassette covers and TAP file which for the first time, a is non-crack version of this game. The Way of the Tiger: full Gremlin release cover replacement. Das Rätsel der 7. Kolonie: TAP file has been added. Many thanks for these!
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| | Tom Thumb Editor! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-24 |
 Now this one is truly a total shocker: there is actually a Tom Thumb Editor in existence! And not a bad one either, plus it even runs on a C16! Visit this site c16.xw.hu to find an English language homepage about the C16, some tools, and yeah, two previously unknown programs. Well Tom fanatics, this is what you have been waiting for! Let's see who can make a new pyramid for Tom fans to explore. Big thanks to Crown for finding this treasure! |
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| | 2 Rare Ones from ebay! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-23 |
  Before the next set of new stuff makes its way online, we'd like to bring these two covers to your attention: Mindbenders and Icicle Works, both hunted down on ebay actions. Obviously they are not the best quality, but they will have to do until someone finds a better cover scan. The Icicle Works (Single Release) cover is especially interesting (and obviously rare) - even the old veterans have NOT seen this cover artwork, as most people have the Bundle Release (no graphics). The single release of the game also has the C64 version on it (hence the label "Multi Soft"), just like Locomotion. The cover is now added to the CBM page, and the only one left missing is Number Builder. Thanks to James C and Crown for these! |
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| | New Stuff From Crown! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-20 |
 It's been a while since Crown sent us some stuff, but better late than never, so here it is. Let's start with Graphics Designer - as it turns out, this was actually a commercial release. Kingsoft sold it in Germany under the name Grafik Designer. We now have the covers (translators needed!) and the TAP file. Next up is Legende Im Eis, we have the front + back covers and the TAP file for this one as well. The final two items are full-size cover scan replacements for Ikari Warriors and Tomcat. Thanks to Crown for these! |
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| | Big Mac for Windows v0.10 | | Posted by MIK on 2004-04-20 |
BB Software has just released a 2 level demo of his Big Mac remake which now runs under windows! The full game is promised to be released some time in the future so until then head on over to BB Software's homepage and check it out now while its still hot!
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| | 3 New Unlimited Releases! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-20 |
| We have just received word of 3 new software released by Erich/Unlimited, all of them are converted C=64 basic progams. Ninja 2 and Resident Evil are ASCII movies, fun to watch. (Warning: these programs contain images of violence and coarse language. Viewer and parental discretion is advised.) The third one is a game called Wurf 1K. These new proggies raise the number of releases this year to a whopping 8. |
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| | New Stuff From Sidius! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-19 |
   Sidius brings you some new and updated covers. First up we have a nice scan of Phantom by Tynesoft. Next up is the Kixx re-release cover for The Way Of The Tiger. This is the second C16/Plus4 game we found from the Kixx label. We're closing up with an alternative cover of the Trojan Light Pen package. Thanks for the stuff, enjoy! |
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| | A Few Rare Demos | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-18 |
| Good new demo-lovers: Plus/4 World is once again the first to bring you some old Plus/4 demos that were forgotten - until now. They are courtesy of Ati/GS: Back To Life, Digital Disc, Digital Sides, Famous Demo and Qtopia. But the real rarity is the debut demo from Gentlemen Software: First Demo (GS). Cool stuff! Remember to search through those old discs, you never know what you might find! |
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| | Two More From Ulysses777! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-17 |
  We have two new covers and TAP files for you, coming straight from our good friend Ulysses777. Tower of Evil now has a TAP file which is the C16 & Plus/4 version, plus a cover replacement for the Alternative Software release. (This game has a lot of covers, as it was re-released twice.) Our second item is Soccer Boss, we have new cover scans and the TAP file for this game. The cover scan is for the Alternative Software release, just like the one we already had on our site, but strangely the cover artwork is different. Many thanks to Ulysses777 for these (and sorry for the delay). Enjoy! |
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| | 4 Rare Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-17 |
  Rüdiger dug up some more suprising rare covers for us. We have two Microdeal cover scans added today, Jerusalem (Adventure 2) and Ultimate (Adventure 4). This finally completes the Microdeal Adventure Series - unless there is a 6th one out there that we don't know about. Anyway, moving on to Operation Hawaii, a German adventure game. Haven't even heard of that one, eh? It's time to look it up then! One cool thing about those German games is that they always mention the C=116 on the covers. Finally, and probably the most interesting piece is Masterbase covers. Instead of going into details, just go and take a look. Many thanks to Rüdiger for these rare ones! Enjoy! |
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| | Drea-M-time Reloaded! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-16 |
| That's right, Larry/WLS follows up with another picture pack. These five piccies have been apparently converted with version 2.4 of his converter, and (if possible) they look even better than the previous ones. What can we say about this release? No demo, but the image quality is simply mindblowing. So check out Drea-M-time Reloaded! |
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| | Tom Thumb goes Techno crazy! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-04-13 |
Once again Tom Thumb's classic tune is the subject of another remix and this time he's gone Techno crazy! This remix uses the essence of the Tom Thumb theme tune to bring you a Robert Miles (Children) style track with a hint of Udo's Ghost Town slapped in for good measure.
A part of the Ghost Town's tune was hidden in Tom Thumb itself, if you remember you could stand on stairs and the like where a little ditto tune would start playing and in the right place would play part of the Ghost Town theme. Bringing this into play its amazing how much of Udo's musical work has been squeezed out which suits this track style so well. Anyways enough of the chit chat, strap on your dancing shoes and grab a copy of Tom Thumb Techno (mp3 format) now and hear it for yourselfs!
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| | An Easter Surprise From Larry/WLS | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-13 |
| Drea-M-time 2004 is here from Larry/WLS! It's not quite a demo, but rather a collection of standalone images converted with the author's new FLI converter (version 2.1). However, the color definition (okay, here it comes, watch out now, we will say this publicly) puts the C64 to shame. Check it out, it's your Plus/4 nearly at it best - at least in the graphics department. |
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| | New Stuff From Ulysses777 | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-08 |
  Here is your daily cover scan + TAP file fix from our good friend Ulysses777! First up we have a new cover for Ace +4, this one is the Gamebusters release. (Some of you may recall this company's name popping up when we added an Ace 2 cover from them.) Next we finally have a nice cover for Alien Attack. We move onto Pheenix, and this one is also brand new never before seen, plus we have the TAP file as well. Space 2 is next, we have a new front/back cover, and this one does not have the German instructions added like the one we already had. Last but not least here is the original version of Torpedo Run. We can now see how the game looked before "JopaSoft" cracked it... Cool stuff, and there is more to come so stay tuned! |
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| | Rare Pirate Adventure Cover Found! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-07 |
 Yes, we have major backlog with the already submitted covers (we thank you for your patience), but this one cover just HAD to be added. For one it was easy to add and it relates to some recent news. Anywho, Sidius strikes back with the Australian(!) release cover of Pirate Adventure! Hmm, is there a pattern to this? :-) We might as well mark Atomic Mission with "Australian Release cover wanted", since that one is the third of the trio of Scott Adams adventure cartridges. At any rate, it is nice to see this previously unknown one being added. Many thanks to Sidius! |
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| | Invaders by Livewire! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-06 |
 Allright, another cool new one! Ulysses777 sent in a new pack of stuff, and this is the first item (the rest to be add later). It is once again a never-before-seen game, called Invaders by Livewire. Yes, the name tells all, but don't dismiss it too quickly. It is actually very nicely done (even the tape loader is cool), an enjoyable game. Wooh baby, where have you been hiding all this time? Check it out, we have the works (cover, tap file, etc). Many thanks to Ulysses for this discovery! |
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| | Astronomy 1 from SVS | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-05 |
We are pleased to announce that April will NOT be another month to pass without any new releases for the Plus/4. SVS of FIRE is here to save the day with Astronomy 1. It's an English translated + improved version of Astronomia 2, an older release. As you can expect from him, it's well done and high quality. Check it out!
Main new features info and a more explaination of program could be found on Cbm264 site: http://www.cbm264.com/svs/svsindex.html |
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| | MasterBase and MiDos added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-05 |
I came across this one disk among the hundreds of Plus/4 floppies collecting dust on my shelf. One side has Masterbase and the other has MiDos on it. I had them for more than a decade, and knowing that we've been collectively working on this database for about 5 years, I thought they must already be online. Wrong! Neither have been mentioned... Well, I quickly backed them up (amazingly the disks were still good), and now here they are. Both are German language utilities, pretty cool ones at that. Original documentation and covers would be cool!
Let our call be heard once again: Plus/4'ers of the world, it is your sacred duty to check your disk archives, and backup ANY and ALL old software before they are forgotten or lost! |
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| | Rare Strange Odyssey Cover Found! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-05 |
 It's always such a surprising (but good) feeling to find a little part of the Commodore histrory that was previously unknown. These programs and pictures won't mean much (if anything) to others, only the real Plus/4 fanatic is happy to see them. Well, we're a site for Plus/4 fanatics, aren't we? Good. So without further ado, go and check out this Australian release cover of Strange Odyssey, with totally different artwork from the other two covers. One must be real lucky to have this in their collection. Big thanks to James C for hunting the cover down and Kirk (the owner of the image) for giving us permission to use it. Cheers! |
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| | New Emulator Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-04-01 |
Good news emulation fans! What some of you have already heard is true: the good people behind YAPE, VICE and ARTIFEX have joined forces and created the ultimate Plus/4 emulator: YICEFEX is here! After what reportedly been months of development, the existing codebase libraries have been merged into one. It's a glorious day for us indeed: in one package you get the accuracy of YAPE, speed of VICE and the advanced debugging features of ARTIFEX. We have tested it with all the "heavyweight" demos (which are known of their complex CPU and TED usage), and if there are any bugs, we have yet to find it. What, are you still reading this? Head on over and download your copy today!
(Another April Fools joke  ) |
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| | Kikstart 2 - One of the last Mastertronic games have been found! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-04-01 |
Sidius has found the Ultimate collectors game on eBay.de - Kikstart 2! Kikstart 2 was released back in 1987 and as you may know this was towards the end of Mastertonics awesome line up of games they released for the C16/Plus4.
As stated over at The Mastertronic Web site in a special report Kikstart 2 for C16/Plus4 was produced but only a limited amount was created after the master tape/copying hardware became faulty. It took a number of weeks to repair and within that time many more C64, Spectrum and Amstrad games were waiting to be pressed. Sadley Kickstart 2 for C16/Plus4 was put on the bottom of the pile because of the time lost with such demand for the other systems. Kikstart 2 for C16/Plus4 never made its way back into production because at the time the commercial profit that could of been made from our machine was all but gone.
For now Sidius has been most kind and has uploaded the cover for your viewing pleasure! PRG, D64 and TAPE images are to follow. We will let you know as soon as that happens! Many thanks to Sidius for hunting this one down!
(This was an April Fools joke, of course ) |
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| | YAPE 0.56 is out! | | Posted by Ulysses777 on 2004-03-16 |
Gaia's Commodore Plus/4 emulator has been updated once again, mostly a bugfix release. In Gaia's own words on the YAPE Homepage:
"This 0.56 version fixes a couple of bugs and glitches that were making their way to the previous release, and introduces an option to select either the Windows messaging or DirectInput for keyboard and joystick emulation. Latter is cycle exact but for compatibility with older computers an input method with the trusty old Windows Message Queue is also available."
Get your copy now! |
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| | Disk Based Text Adventure Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-03-12 |
    Sidius sent us four text adventure box scans, plus some original game supplement scans for these classic disk based text adventures: Zork II and Zork III (which completes the Zork series), Starcross and Suspended. Beautiful stuff, check it out! Many thanks to Sidius for these. |
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| | YAPE v0.55 is out!! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-03-08 |
In the words of our good friend BB Software "The best Commodore Plus/4 emulator was updated with some nice things", and that she has! Lets take a peek at the new:
- cycle based TED and SID sound
- WaveMapper sound option
- cycle based keyboard & joystick emulation (via DirectInput)
- improved a few SID waveforms (noise, triangle)
- tweaked clocking of the 1541, even more disk turbos work
- enhanced the autostart feature
- bitmap fetch reload fixed
Unfortunately the update that was currently in development for PC joystick emulation to the new DirectInput interface has missed this version, but fear not as Gaia hopes to fixup a release sometime in the near future! As always head on over to the homepage and grab your nows. Cheers to BB Software for this news and many thanks once again Gaia for your continued support into YAPE! |
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| | Plus4Lst Updated! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-03-05 |
Those of us who still hack games have most likely already used István Bozsik's great tool, Plus4Lst. (You may know him as the author of Hexaéder.) With this utility, you can turn a regular C16/Plus4 basic program into HTML listing, with all the GOTO etc statements turned into hyperlinks.
While playing around with text adventures, it occurred to me, that it would be great to be able to generate lowercase listing. I fired off an email to the author about this idea, and today I have received the reply: an updated version of Plus4Lst (Version 1.2), which has this new feature built-in! Now that's what I call good customer service! :-) What this means is that uppercase words will be printed like "Object" instead of "[BJECT" (where [ is shift+O). Very useful, check it out! Big thanks to István for this! |
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| | 4 Brand New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-03-03 |
    The covers are still pouring in! This time we're happy to announce 4 more from Sidius. We now have the original Elite release cover scan for Bomb Jack. Also added are Petch, Joey from Blue Ribbon and an italian cover, C16 Super Games 2. Excellent stuff, many thanks! |
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| | 5 Cover Scans From Crown! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-28 |
 Crown brings up a new pack of high quality cover scans for the site. First up we have two replacements Auf Wiedersehen Monty and Panic Penguin. Thai Boxing now also has the definitive covers: front/back in high quality, separate UK and German releases. The others are brand new: we now have a Catacombs cover and for the first time an original TAP. This (unlike the cracked version) lets you select which character you want to play. And last but not least we have the scans and the TAP file for Super Gran. Thanks to Crown for these! Enjoy! |
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| | The First Releases Arrive! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-28 |
| The wait is finally over, the first brand new pieces of software finally made their way to Plus/4 World. Cool Pod and Summerjam are two digi demos by Hifi/TLT (who else?). They sample music from P.O.D. and The Underdog Project, respectively. This is hopefully the first in the long line of new demos, games and utilities that are to come this year. Cheers to TLT for keeping the scene alive! |
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| | Retro Gamer Issue Two - Out Now!! | | Posted by MIK on 2004-02-28 |
 It's not every day you find a magazine that contains pure retro gaming content and it's here were Retro Gamer aims to be the UK's first regular gaming title dedicated to vintage video games. I first found out about this new magazine last month. Being a printer I learned that a printing company called Polestar Colchester had won a 40,000 print run of Retro Gamer, that being issue 1 at the time. From what I can tell issue one was deep with Sepcturm and Mastertronic related features and knowing it was a 40,000 run the chances of finding it would be impossible sadly. :-(
Anyways, I have issue 2 here in my hands and it looks very cool indeed. As you expect it covers all kinds of machines and if they can they share the same topics with all the platforms that were graced with the same software such as starting out collecting with a title we all know as Manic Miner along with its follow ups. Here they list the selling price for no less than 14 machines! Manic Miner for C16/Plus4 came in at £3-£5 which is fair I would say. Issue 2 has a big section devoted to Commodore and yes even the C16/C116 and Plus4 made its way in the mag! Not too much was said but enough to keep you happy with machine comments for C16, "With 16k of RAM, it is remarkable that this machine survived" and for the Plus4, "The Plus/4 was a modest success, even with a little dedicated software base". Those were the last liners but at least they never put us down as so many have done in the past due to ignornace of not knowing anything about our system at all. They even have a fun and intresting wirte up about, "Eight shades of black". 127 or 128 colours? 
Last of all I found that these nice people also added a Commodore Web Resourse page with 3 links on offer for our system with those being, www.plus4.org, www.xeo3.com and lastly our good selfs here at Plus4 World. So if you've landed here because of Retro Gamer then a warm welcome to you!
I just might have to subscribe and keep a close eye on any other C16/Plus4 installments. If you fancy grabbing a copy for yourselves then head on over to www.livepublishing.co.uk and pop your name down for one. |
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| | 3 More Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-26 |
   We've got a nice surprise in the mail from Rüdiger. He wanted to know if we would be interested in a few of his scans to add to our collection. We all know the answer to that! :-) Let's see the new goodies: first up is European Games Disc Cover from Tynesoft. One thing to note about this is that the cover artwork is almost identical to the cassette version, except the athlete's right arm is down instead of up. Could there be a deeper meaning to this? While you all come up with your own conspiration theories, let's continue the list. Next up is Two To One from Kingsoft. We believe this to be the last commercial game released in the golden days. Last but not least, we have a new cover scans for a previously unlisted Audiogenic compilation release: Power Pack. Very cool new stuff! Many thanks to our new cover-supplier for these! Enjoy! |
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| | German Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-22 |
  Sidius - hailing from Berlin - sent us todays new cover scans. First up is Stone-Castle release #5: Steinzeit (that means Stone Age). He also sent us perfect quality replacements for Safari and Gärtner.
Some of you may have noticed that Vokabel C16, a previously unknown piece of software was added not too long ago. (All we have currently is a poor quality scan, which was hunted down on ebay by Crown, btw.) While we still don't know much about this particular release, Sidius did send us yet another new coverscan: Text C16. Can a software title be any more generic? Anywho, Text C16 is apparently a powerful word-processor for the good old Commdore 16, released by CSJ - Computersoft Jonigk, and produced by RushWare. The design on these two cover scans are almost identical, so Vokabel C16 could be a CSJ or a RushWare release. Of course it would be good to have the actual programs as well, not to mention all the Stone-Castle games. Thanks to Sidius for this cool stuff! Enjoy! |
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| | New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-21 |
   Our cover scan collection of commercial C16 & Plus/4 software is growing by the minute, and the race is on to grab those hard-to-find covers. This time Crown brought us a pack of covers, among them a few firsts. We now have Fire-Galaxy from Kingsoft and Water Grand Prix from Tynesoft, both complete with TAP files. We also have the first release cover of Killapede from Players. As we have seen with Auriga, they had two different cassette cover artworks for some releases, and now Killapede is one of those. Perhaps there were more? Crown also send us a full size cover scan of Space Pilot, and separate TAP files for the game and Winter Demo.
Finally we have the scan of Compute Mit Sonderheft, which was a special edition tape released with this German language magazine. Hopefully more info on this (and progam files) will follow. Thanks to Crown for this excellent stuff! |
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| | Mega Mercenary Update! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-19 |
   We now have all the Mercenary material you could ever hope for! Ulysses777 sent us these goodies. Let's see then: a replacement cover for both Mercenary games (Mercenary and The Second City). For the original Mercenary, we have an alternative cover as well, which (as the label says) had both the C64 and Plus/4 version on it. Last but not least comes the box covers of a previously unlisted release: Mercenary Compendium Edition. This compilation has both games, plus the Targ Survival Kit and a novelette called "Interlude on Targ". These latter two were added to the Publications section, which is now fully linked (back/forth) to corresponding related software. Very cool stuff, many thanks to Ulysses777 for these! |
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| | Forever Emulator v1.24 is out | | Posted by Gaia on 2004-02-18 |
| The first ever Commodore plus/4 emulator for DOS has seen another update recently. Visit the website for your copy and the source code, although the download does not seem to work at the time of this writing. It is basically a bugfix release with one new feature, a hardware reset. Many thanks to Litwr for keeping up the good work! |
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| | Tomb Of Tarrabash Revealed! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-13 |
 This unique release from Audiogenic was one of the elusive ones, we just could not get our hands on an original copy. Well, the wait is over: Ulysses777 brings you the cover scans and TAP files for Tomb Of Tarrabash! This cool platformer may be a little hard to get into, but it's definitely a game that can keep you occupied. If you haven't been in the tomb yet, this is the time to check it out... We have also added the TAP file for Solo. Enjoy! |
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| | 2 Covers From SVS! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-12 |
  That's right, the utility guru himself actually took time away from coding his utilities to scan the covers of two... utilities. (What, did you really expect game covers?) We now have the Italian cover for Script/Plus, along with an advertisement page, and also the cover for Calc/Plus. Jim Hehl's Calc/Plus documentation is also on-line. If you haven't played with this yet, now is the time to check out what these can do. Thanks for the scans, enjoy! |
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| | FIRE homepage online now! | | Posted by Luca on 2004-02-11 |
 Last week a cruel flu had stopped me, and I was forced to rest in my room. Hence, catching the bouncing ball, I designed a commemorative homepage dedicated to crew of mine. After so many years spent in the Plus/4 scene, FIRE surely deserves a site containing all the stuff released under its label. There will be a new URL under the plus4.net hierarchy for it soon, you'll know when it will happen; while waiting, lemme know if you like it or not. Now enjoy! |
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| | Two More New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-11 |
  Plus4Vampyre scanned two more covers for us. The first one is C16 Star Games Classics, which is yet another repackaged compilation tape stuffed with classic C16 Gremlin Graphics games. The second is a scan of Witness, an Infocom text adventure. He also sent us the D64 image for this game as well. Excellent stuff! Enjoy! |
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| | The Stone Castle 4! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-10 |
    Plus4Vampyre brings us the covers for the famous "Stone Castle 4"! These four German games actually have product codes as 1,2,3 and 4. Let's see them: Chicago, Digger, Gärtner and Safari. Now all we need are the actual games! Many thanks for these! |
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| | Full Size Cover Scan Replacements! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-09 |
| Crown re-scanned several covers for the site, so that now we can enjoy the full size versions, plus the back covers. Today we added 3D Quasars, Dingbat, Way of the Exploding Fist, Loco-Coco and Yie Ar Kung-Fu. The last new cover is for Cyborg, this game now also has a TAP file as well. Many thanks for these! Enjoy! |
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| | New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-05 |
    Sidius, whose picture recently got added to the Faces of the Scene gallery, sent us some new coverscans for the site. Let's start with Gremlins - this scan is for the cover of the original tex-only release of course. We now also have the Kingsoft release of Bridgehead, apparently their tape contained BOTH the Plus/4 and the C16 version. Finally we have the covers for two Stone Castle releases: Deutsch Teil 1 and 2. Many thanks for these! |
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| | Tons of TAPs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-02-03 |
| Today's second update comes from Crown, whose datasette must be burning after transferring this many programs from tape. Let's start with Math Games and Word Problems: we have added not less than 8 TAP files, one for each game that's on this compilation release. Next we have the TAP for Panik!, this time the version that works both on the C16 & Plus/4. We also have a new Paintbox TAP file: this actually contains a demo picture after the program! See the details page for loading instuctions on that. Finally we have Music Master's TAP file for the first time, but even this one comes with an added bonus, there's a demotune recorded after the program. Load it (instructions are on the details page once again), it's nice to listen to. Many thanks to Crown for these! |
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| | Lemuria + One Cover! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-31 |
  Have you ever played Lemuria on your C16 or Plus/4? Most likely not, as it is a rare German text adventure that was just sent in by Plus4Vampyre. We have the cover scans and the D64 image for this game (as it is disk-based). It's not the traditional adventure, the 'map' seems to be randomly generated every time you run the game. Grab that German dictionary and check it out anyway. The other new cover is for Anco Power Pack which is something rare to say the least as the UK company have shipped thier own label into Germany. They crammed no less than 10 games into this compilation. We have the disk cover scanned. With these additions we close the first month of 2004 at 73% cover completion, the highest so far. |
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| | New VICE Version Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-30 |
| Version 1.4 of the Versatile Commodore Emulator has been released today. Unfortunately there were no changes in the Plus/4 emulation, but audio and video can be saved into AVI files. Head on over to viceteam.org to download your updated copy. |
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| | Mini News 09 Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-28 |
 We've just got this Skoro release in the mail. However, before you let out that sigh of relief that it's the new year's first release, look again: it's from last december (containing holiday and new year's greetings). While it's good to read this (for Hungarian speakers at least), the thought in the back of our minds that this month will pass without a single new Plus/4 release is not a pleasant one. Come on scene, do something! |
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| | More TAP files and Cover scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-22 |
  Ulysses777 continues to send us more great stuff, here's what today's addition brings us: Original TAP files for Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, Purple Turtles, Autobahn and Dark Tower. The last two are C16 only tapes. For Hulk, he has also scanned the HUGE! cover instructions, beware, this single image is 280KB.
Two more tape-related programs have been added as well: King Size Turbo Tape, a tape turbo, and Robcom Alignment System. Both are from Robtek. The second utility is yet another tape head adjustment package, complete with instructions in 4 languages. As the double covers show, the company's name was Robcom originally, before they changed it to Robtek. Thanks to Ulysses for these! Enjoy! |
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| | Souvenir from Szeged | | Posted by Luca on 2004-01-19 |
 Better latter than never! Here you can find some photos taken during the nice weekend at Szeged (4ever03 rules!), most of them taken walking in the city. I hope these pictures will push you to join us (maybe!) at the 4ever04! |
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| | 5 Rare Scans from Plus4Vampyre! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-19 |
    
Yes, that's right, let's get this week started with pretty coverscans of oldie-but-goldie Commodore 16 games. We have two brand new scans for Zone Control and Central Command, these are from Paxman Promotions. They are consistent with the other Paxman release "quality": the Zone Control tape apparently has a "Zonal Control" label, and Central Command is Control Command on the cover.
Next up is a Reelax release of Raider. Yup, that's the third cover for the game... We also have a very rare "staircase artwork" cover for Twin Kingdom Valley. On other platforms the two different cover artworks were known to exist for this game, but this is the first time we see it for the C16. Finally another rare compilation tape from Ozisoft: Robin To The Rescue/Monkey Magic. It has those two (in)famous games on it... Very cool stuff, thanks to Plus4Vampyre once again! |
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| | Read about 4ever03...in English! | | Posted by Luca on 2004-01-17 |
 Read the party emotions from the organizers directly! Thanks to Lavina's translation, Ninja/GS released the english translated version of Lunacy 9! You can't miss it, otherwise...get outta here! |
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| | 2 Very Rare Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-15 |
 Sidius is on a roll! The second pack from him this week may be small, but they are interesting nevertheless. We have the German language Kingsoft release of Tom Thumb! The game is labelled simply Tom, and as the cover sticker states, this release had the C16, C64 and VIC-20 games on it! We're very happy to finally see this cover in the collection. The second scan is for Monkey Magic. We have already discussed the fact that some Solar Software releases (maybe all?) have alternative covers, and this is such a cover too. What makes it interesting, is the label: Micro Design. The style, layout and even the company address confirms that this is infact Solar Software. Perhaps it was their re-release label? Hard to tell from just one cover. The more we dig the more we find... Thanks to Sidius for these! |
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| | 8 New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-13 |
Sidius surprised us with 8 more very cool and sought after covers. Well, that's definitely a pleasant surprise :-) First we have two Tynesoft covers: Battle Star and Music Synthesiser. (Note that on the latter cover they have three different variations on the name of this program... Which we are missing, by the way.) Jetbrix was the final missing piece from the Gremlin Graphics cover collection, and we now have it! The Anirog cover collection is also complete, with the addition of the last two covers: Las Vegas and Minipedes! Nice going, but we have more. Two Kingsoft compilation releases were also added: Plus-Paket II and Kingsoft Sport Show. And finally we have the cover scan for World Cup Carnival. It's big and beautiful, chock-full of official football logos and emblems: the whole cover screams: buy me. Which was of course necessary, because as we know, behind all the fancy stuff it's just the same old World Cup. Many thanks to Sidius for these scans!
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| | RAP4 is Here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-12 |
| This will blow your mind... Ulysses777 found an old commercial software from 1988 called RAP4 - The Remote Audio Processor. It's a full blown sampler, sample editor, sequencer and music synth. The interface is point-and-click, complete with pull down menus and dialog boxes. We also have the 70-odd page manual fully scanned available here. RAP4 can grab samples from the datasette or an interface referred to as 'TTL4 Interface'. Ulysses777 has kindly created a schematic drawing of this as well. The software even has a basic extension, so that you can use your samples or tunes created with the editor in basic. We'd like to strees that this is an extremely rare find. All we can say is: Wow!... Definitely check it out, there's a lot to play around with here. |
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| | YAPE 0.54 is Here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-09 |
Gaia has released a new version of his Commodore Plus/4 Emulator, YAPE. This release brings some very important additions to the emulation:
- true disk rotation emulation
- full write support in CPU level 1541 and 1551 drive emulation
- TED and SID sound now selectable at the same time
This means that disk-based games that save information (like Bard's Tale III) now really do work, not just run. What are you waiting for? Go download it now!
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| | C16 Showcase Booklet Scanned | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-07 |
| Gaia scanned the instructions booklet that came with The Commodore 16 Showcase. All 8 pages can be viewed in our Publications Section here. The links between hardware bundles and software are now completely in place, so the above mentioned tape (or games like Exorcist) will have a link to the hardware bundles in which they appeared. Thanks to Gaia for the scan! |
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| | Ultimate ROM Map Updated! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-05 |
 SVS of Fire released version 1.1 of his Ultimate Rom Map. About 40 new addresses were added, most importantly addresses related to the 1551, cartridge, and I/O. The new ZIP file is 72.7 Kb. As usual, if you have any comments or ideas, email the author. Go download this great tool right now! |
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| | 8 New Adventure TAP files! | | Posted by Csabo on 2004-01-04 |
We are happy to announce that the new year starts with a very nice surprise: 8 TAP files from various adventures (finally) made their way to us. The bombshell: Voodoo Castle and Buckaroo Banzai actually do exists and were commercially published on our little platform! These two are part of the Scott Adams Adventures, and came on the Scott Adams Scoops compilation. The other two games on the tape are Pirate Adventure C16 and Strange Odyssey C16. We had to open separate records for these, since they are a different implementation as their cartridge counterparts. (The easiest way to tell them apart is the black vs. white screen background color.)
Mosh has also sent us the 4 more TAP files from the Mysterious Adventures series. These are the original, C16 text only versions. Escape From Pulsar 7 and The Time Machine are available as TAP or PRG for the first time anywhere! The other two TAPs are forWaxworks and Feasibility Experiment. Many thanks to Mosh for these! |
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