|  2005 - The Year In Review | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-12-31 |
3... 2... 1... And that was 2005, previously known as the future. The occasion of another whole year passing is significant enough for us to pause a little, and think about what kind of year it has been.
Emulation is a very important aspect of the current Plus/4 life. On Windows platform, YAPE is the de-facto standard. Cheers to Gaia for his continued work on this free emulator, which is now up to version 0.64. Minus4j and Forever Plus/4 Emulator also got updated. VICE is still being worked on, but there's very little Plus/4 specific improvements.
There were no significant changes in terms of websites, the current "players" are still there and continue to evolve. (Although some were forced to changed address.) On our end we've officially opened the Plus/4 Encyclopedia, an effort to gather all Plus/4 specific knowledge to a free, open and accessible place. It's difficult to rate it either as a success or a failure, let's just say it's still there and has potential to become something great.
Our collection is still growing, we've passed 5250 pieces of software. We're thankful for everyone who sends us covers and TAP images, but C16 Chris deserves a special thanks. He basically flooded us with so much content, that processing and uploading everything will take well into the new year.
There's still new software being released. Chaos was this year's Questionmark (down to the fact that they both have ambiguous names), a breakthrough trackmo taking the top spot on the Top List. There's one effect in particular that's worth mentioning, a long-time dream of coders everywhere: displaying graphic on (or "removing") the side border. The scene also produced Crackers Demo 4, the participation and the quality are something to be proud of. Cheers to Luca for his great effort to bring CD4 together. Skoro deserves special kudos for being one of the most prolific coders this year. Lone News and Club Info were the two diskmags still being produced. Finally the recent release of Storm +4 V1.1 marks the only significant game release this year, and the return of Kichy. Last minute update: T.M.R has just released two new games! Check out Lunar Blitz and Reaxion!
We wish everyone a happy, successful, productive new year! Keep the Plus/4 alive! |
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| | Storm +4! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-12-25 |
 Open up one more box this morning. We have an unexpected but most welcome gift from Kichy/Asn: a brand new game release called Storm +4. Yes, it's the Storm game, but it uses all capabilities of the Plussy. Kichy writes: "[...] Around '90 I used to love playing this game on the C64. However, I only had money to purchase a +4, so I bought one, and I couldn't even get the C16 version. So at the beginning of this December I thought we really should have a full value game with large map and nicer colors. [...]" What an excellent though! What's even better is that he made his thought a reality, and the end result is a downloadable game for you. Respects to Kichy! |
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| | New Domain for the C16 German Homepage! | | Posted by MIK on 2005-12-22 |
As you can guess from the above news header the Domain of Germany's C16 Homepage has now been updated just in time for xmas! The name of this great site is still named C16.de and will continue to go by this name for the foreseeable future, its just an address change.
The new address is now http://c16.c64games.de. The webmaster Thorsten said "unfortuneatly the C16 Domain was closed by the DENIC because my internet-provider made a very big mistake so I can not get the c16.de domain back. I have configured a subdomain on my c64games site.....".
Anyways, its great to see you guys back in business and many thanks for the news Thorsten.
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| | Zortek and the Microchips | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-12-20 |
 More than a year after adding this title to the database, we're finally getting our hand on it. Thanks to Chris from www.commodore16.com, we have the D64 image and the cover scans for Zortek and the Microchips. There's also a photo of the badge that came with this educational/game package. Check it out and enjoy! |
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| | Starburst! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-12-10 |
 Thanks to C16 Chris, we have full cover scans for Tony Takoushi game Starburst. No stars bursting, just some ball bouncing here. Well, we're talking 1986 after all. This game definitely ranks high on the weird-o-meter. However, with the help of the full instructions, those who wish to complete the game are now better armed. Whether it's actually possible to complete the game (or it just loops) still remains to be seen. Thanks to C16 Chris once again, enjoy! |
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| | More Classic Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-12-10 |
  C16 Chris sent us full-size cover scans for a few more games. Tutti Frutti and Storm are both classic releases from Mastertronic for the Commodore 16. The quality and playability of these games is quite good, and now we have the cover art to match it. We also have one more small addition: an alternative back cover for Street Olympics. This one has the instructions written on it in 4 more languages. Thanks for these! |
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| | More Firebird International Instructions! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-12-04 |
  C16 Chris sent us two more sets of cover scans. Shark Attack (or just Shark) and the wonderful Thrust are both Firebird releases. We now have the full size cover scans for both (for Shark it's actually an alternative one), plus the 4 sided international instructions (covering 6 languages) as well. Enjoy! |
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| | Club Info 90 is here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-12-03 |
 The German disk-mag Club-Info continues with issue 90. As usual, the two sides are filled with articles (in german), some recently released demos, and a few new Unlimited releases. Check it out if you're interested. Respects to Erich for keeping it going! |
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| | MicroCompiler converted to English | | Posted by SVS on 2005-12-01 |
 SVS promptly converted this piece of software to English. You can download it from the cbm264 site (kindly hosted by JamesC).
By the way a brief (but clear) manual was created, from a collaboration between SVS and C16 Chris, it is available here.
Everyone should try out the Micro-Basic-Compiler, it seems to be a great SW for our machine. Its ability to generate pure M.L. code is a feature that's better than the good AustroSpeed (which produces executable P-code programs). Its commands may seem too few, but really they should not be considered commands, but rather macros of a clever assembler. |
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| | Book Covers and an Invitation | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-27 |
Ron van Schaik was kind enough to send us a nice set of book covers that we were missing from our site. Among others, we now have The Commodore C16/Plus4 Companion, The Commodore Plus 4 Book, Het grote floppy-boek, Werken met de Commodore Disk Drive and Commodore C16 Book 1: Starting Basic. Visit our Publications section: it's the most comprehensive one on the internet for C16 & Plus/4 related books and magazines. We've also made some navigational improvements, e.g. books that were translated to other languages will now have a link to the translations (example: the The Commodore 16 Games Book now links to its Italian counterpart.) This section (as the rest of the site) also still needs volunteer work, so if you want to help out, here's your chance. Got more books, magazines, or cover scans for existing listing? Send them in!
Ron would also like to invite ANY commodore user to their Commodore Show on December 17th. He said there are already 3 C16/Plus4 owners that will be attending. If you can, then come, you are officially invited! Click the link below and scroll down for English.
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| | Two Video Cover Replacements | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-26 |
  From the never ending C16 Chris collection we've uploaded two more cover scans. They are classic Mastertronic Commodore 16 games: Video Meanies and Video Poker. Enjoy! |
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| | Mike Dailly Launches New Version of Minus4j! | | Posted by MIK on 2005-11-23 |
Minus4j (1.3) is out! Minus4j (1.3) is out! Should I say that again? Yes, it's true and it's only just gone live now for your downloading pleasure!
MikeD says there's a readme explaining the new parameters etc. for this new version, so I won't go into detail with those for now, but thought I'd share a quick snip of what Mike had to say,
"I got fed up of seeing Minus4j pages where the FPS was way too high, even when using a sleep of 30! So I've changed it so that it's now tied to a frame rate, which means things run at the right speed. I've also added a scaling screen, so you can double or treble (if you like) the screen area on your web pages (720x480 is *2) which makes things easier to see."
Remember folks before you go rushing off this is a web browser based Java Plus4 emulator, but saying that it's free for all and if you fancy having a play or creating your own archive of C16/Plus4 wonders for anyone to enjoy while on the web then Minus4J is a great tool indeed!
Cheers Mike and best wishes buddy!
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| | German Basic-Compiler | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-21 |
  C16 Chris sent us a complete package for C16/C116/Plus4 Micro-Basic-Compiler. We have a D64 image, full size disk cover scans and a 16 page user's guide for it (in German). This utility is for programmers, check it out if that kind of thing tickles your fancy. Thanks to C16 Chris for this! |
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| | New Software, Cover Scans and an Ad | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-19 |
  Check out the new stuff send in by Ulysses777! Company Pac 123 is a complete business accounting system. Does that sound funny? It probably wasn't in 1984. Nevertheless it's part of the collection now, complete with cover scans and a disk image. Next we have Micro Base from Kingsoft/Anco, it's yet another database system. Finally we have a cool advertisement for the Commodore Plus/4. "...And all of that is yours for just £299.99!" Well, we do know that the Plus/4 IS worth it, but the ad is a must see :-) Excellent stuff, big thanks to Ulysses777 once again! Enjoy! |
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| | Exomizer 2.0 Beta 3 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-14 |
Magnus Lind, the author of the best cross-platform cruncher Exomizer has sent us word that there's a new public beta released. The last stable version was 1.x series, and this is a big step up from that. Selected items from the new features list:
- Totally rewitten handling of the sfx decruncher.
- Several different decrunch effects.
- Complete user control over memory and irq config.
- Can start basic programs properly with built in trampoline by using the command 'sfx basic'
- The decruncher code is assembled on the fly for maximum flexibility by an embedded assembler.
- Will adapt the decruncher to include only features used by the compressed stream to keep the size down.
- Can generate relocated sfx targets without basic line.
- Has a literal sequence escape mechanism that detects and handles sequences of uncrunchable data properly.
Those of you who actually get the above list a correct to go "impressive" (hint: most of this translates into even better compression than before). It is a crime to compress anything on a Plus/4 but this. Grab the beta now and use it! The author welcomes any feedback. Enjoy!
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| | New Cover! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-14 |
 Just one... But it's rare, and as unbelievable as it sounds it's new. Looks like Sidius found a copy of Super Gran The Adventure... Will there be a program file coming soon? We'll see. Thanks Sidius! |
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| | New version of MNIB available | | Posted by Gaia on 2005-11-08 |
Peter Rittwage has taken over development of the excellent MNIB tool (originally from Markus Brenner) with which one can dump and archive original copy protected disks with a parallelized Commodore 1541 drive. The new release is able to copy virtually any protected disk. So fire up your parallel 1541 everyone and begin dumping those Kingsoft disks :-)
Link: MNIB Development at the C64 Preservation Project page |
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| | Tynesoft C16 Plus/4 Club! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-05 |
 C16 Chris sent us a new publication: Tynesoft C16 Plus4 Club! This booklet didn't fit into any of the 4 existing publication categories, so it is now the first one in a new category: Promotional Materials. Looking through the 18 pages is fun, it's nice to see our collection... But wait a minute! What's that on Page 12? Super Gran The Adventure? That's right folks. Well, this missing (and therefore most wanted) piece of software is also mentioned on the back cover of Super Gran. Maybe no-one ever bought a copy? Anyway, thanks to C16 Chris for this. Enjoy! |
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| | Ultimate Plus4 Map V1.3! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-11-03 |
 Plus/4 utility guru SVS is proud to announce the release of the Ultimate Plus4 Map V1.3. The most notable new feature is "RAM Map", which has valuable information consolidated from many resources, including the official Plus/4 Programmers Guide. There's also lots of new documentation about the I/O and banking, plus tons of other minor improvements. This handy XLS file (which is now also available as HTML) is a must have for anyone who is still hacking the C16 or Plus/4. Download it now! Cheers to SVS for maintaining this! |
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| | Invasion of the Hungarian Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-10-30 |
        
We are proud to announce that we've added no less than 28 scans for 17 Hungarian releases. A nice fellow by the name of Bear(TM) (but not the Plus/4 scener Bear) sent us the first four: Almatúra (Apple Tour), Forth+, Kőműves Kelemen (Kelemen the Bricklayer) and an alternative scan for Légicsata (Air Battle). The rest are from Crown: Bölcsek Köve (Stone of Sages), Flipper, Godzilla, Kincsvadász (Treasure Hunter), Perspektíva (Perspective), Sielő (Skier), Turbo 16, Ürpók (Space spider). Plus there are 5 more from Crown, each one of these also has an original TAP file: Amőba (Amoeba), Észvesztő Utvesztő (Mindboggling Maze), Európa (Europe), Rázós út (Shaky Road). And last but not least Elvarázsolt Kastély (Enchanted Castle), which is a nice - if not hard to learn - platformer. If you've never played this one, don't let the weird language scare you away, you don't need it to run and jump, grab flashing objects and avoid anything that moves in this old-school game. Big thanks for the guys for this stuff!
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| | Retro Gamer Returns! | | Posted by Ulysses777 on 2005-10-28 |
Today it has been announced that Retro Gamer, which closed down a month ago, has been purchased by newcomer Imagine Publishing from the administrators of the defunct Live Publishing. The magazine is to have a completely new design, and will have a new editorial team, made up from former GamesTM and Zzap64/Crash staff members, but will still receive contributions from the former RG freelancers.
Retro Gamer will again be a monthly publication, and the issue numbering will continue from where the old RG left off, starting at issue 19. The first issue is due to be released on December 8th!
Links:
Sale announcement on the Live Publishing site
Imagine Publishing
Imagine Publishing press release |
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| | More Cover Scans | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-10-23 |
  C16 Chris sent in these: full size scan for Mr. Puniverse, full size scan for POD (Proof of Destruction). These are of course classic C16 Mastertronic games. As a new feature for the site, when you click on Mr. Puniverse (or any other game for that matter), now you can see a list of derived software (if there are any). Mr. Puniverse was popular among level editors, so there's quite a few. Also 4 pages of international instructions for the Firebird game Runner. Thanks for these! |
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| | A New Compilation And A Manual | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-10-20 |
 More cool stuff from C16 Chris, this time a rare Italian compilation called Computer Games E Utilities N.9. It contains some original games and utilities, these have also been added to the database with downloads. We now also have the German language manual for Tynesoft's Music Synthesiser. Enjoy! |
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| | More Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-10-18 |
  C16 Chris sent us these: Maniax tape cover and instructions. This is actually a very nicely written game (like some of the other Jörg Dierks games), check it out if you don't know it, plus make sure to vote. We also uploaded the Karate King disk cover, front and back. Stay tuned for more! |
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| | Some new covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-10-17 |
 The massive amount of covers from C16 Chris are slowly making their way to the site. Today we've added a full size replacement cover for Mastertronic's Kane. The only other new set today is for Into The Deep, another Firebird release that now has the 4 page instructions from the international release. Enjoy, there will be more to come. |
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| | Club Info 89! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-10-15 |
 Erich/Unlimited released Club Info 89. It's the usual two sided German diskmag. Check out side B for a few new releases, such as the ASCII-movie/demo Godzilla Demo. Thanks to Luca for supplying this! |
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| | New Demo Release! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-10-12 |
 Skoro of Assassins just released Graphics Show. This two part demo features some nice converted pictures (22 small ones in the second part) and SID-only music. The intro graphics was converted by Kichy. The demo marks the 26th release this year, 6th for the author. This should be enough to feed the hunger of the demo-starved masses... Check it out and don't forget to vote! Thanks to TLC for supplying us this hot piece of warez. |
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| | 3 New Covers And 2 TAP images! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-28 |
   Isn't that the same title as yesterday? Be that as it may, once again we have two covers + TAP images from Crown: Berks (Go-Go Games) is from Go-Go Games and Caves of Mars is from Visiogame. They are Italian releases - obviously modified from the originals, but interesting pieces to have in our collection. One cover from C16 Chris: Formula 1 Simulator now has a full size scan for the C=16 labelled cover as well. Enjoy! |
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| | 3 New Covers And 2 TAP Images! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-27 |
   Here comes some new stuff from Crown: two Visiogame releases. This company appears to be yet another Italian one who released hacked games. Aeroblitz and Axxon are actually Italian versions of Blitz 16 and Raider. They have cool covers nevertheless... Both are complete with TAP images. We've also managed to squeeze in one more C16 Chris cover into today's update: Fingers Malone now has a full size scan. Enjoy! |
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| | 2 Mastertronic Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-26 |
  The daily updates continue with just 2 covers for today. C16 Chris sent in a ton of full size replacements, these are from that list. Big Mac is done, and even has an alternative back cover, plus we have Finders Keepers. Enjoy, there's more to come! |
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| | 3 New Kingsoft Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-25 |
   Sidius sent us covers for three Kingsoft releases, 10 scans in total. Micro Text and Micro Text 2.0 now have all their covers, and they are HUGE! All we need now are the actual program files. We also have the Turbo Tape cover scan. This happens to be yet another unimaginatively named program, so there's some confusion around multiple programs with the same name. Sidius also sent us the original German TAP images for Mercenary - Flucht Aus Targ and Mercenary - Die Zweite Stadt. Cool stuff, enjoy! |
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| | 4 Rare Ones! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-24 |
 We have 4 more rare coverscans from Plus4Vampyre. First up is an odd one: a white cover version of Baby Berks. It appears to have handwritten text on it, but looks like a legitimate release nevertheless. Next up we have a beautiful scan for Fantastic Four, the German language version. We even received the G64 image for this game, but unfortunately it does not load with YAPE or VICE. Next we have the second compilation release from OziSoft: Petals of Doom Galaxions. Finally another very nice one: Wu Lung disk cover (6 scans!). This bi-lingual cover has English and German instructions for this very nicely done and somewhat underappreciated game from CSJ. Big thanks for these, enjoy! |
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| | 5 New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-23 |
  We're pleased to bring you some new cover scans! Yesterday we've added Adress C16, we now have the cover scan for it, courtesy of Plus4Vampyre. He has also sent us a much-looked-after Audiogenic release of 3D Glooper. Next up are the C16 Chris scans: Bandits at Zero (full size scan), Flight Path 737 (an alternative cover) and finally Star Commander. This last one is the third and (for now) final release from Tequila Sunrise, hailing from Belgium. It's nice to know how widespread the C16/Plus4 was! Thanks guys for these! |
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| | New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-21 |
    More covers from C16 Chris: an alternative cover for Gremlins, an Italian re-release cover for Steve Davis Snooker. Byte Games 6 has also been added, hopefully we will get more info on this later. Last but not least we have I Giochi Di Societa, an Editoriale Video (and somewhat shady) release from Italy. It's a game compilation with quite a few originals (check the New Stuff page to see these games) and even a hacked chess (Scacchi). Check it out and enjoy! |
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| | New Stuff! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-19 |
 Let's get this week started with some new stuff. To be a bit more descriptive, we've added 3 new cover scans from C16 Chris: ACE +4 Disk Cover, Galaxy (A Kingsoft release cover with different labels), and an alternative scan for Canoe Slalom. We also have some new TAP images from Rüdiger: Savage Island Part 2, the C=16 text only version (finally!). This is the only playable one, as the Plus/4 version is not only badly converted as the first part of the game, but also completely bugged. Finally we have the 4 TAP files for Commodore's Typing Professor. Cool stuff, check it out! Thanks guys! |
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| | 11 New Covers! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-16 |
    From the (seemingly never-ending) C16 Chris collection... We've added 11 new cover scans covering 4 games. Las Vegas now has the large box cover scan. Manic Miner received a lot of stuff: full size original, an alternative cover (with different C16 label), a Jackson release and German instructions. We also have Petch released by Tequila Sunrise and finally a nice Italian re-release cover from Soft for Rig Attack. Thanks to C16 Chris once again. Enjoy! |
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| | New Cover Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-15 |
 C16 Chris sent in a newly found old-release: Syndrome Compilation from Jaysoft. The tape contains three basic games: Syndrome (Game), Tank Block and Blast It. (Not to be confused with the Syndrome megademo.) The cover touts "smooth action with colorful graphics" - well, we've heard that one before... Take a look and judge it for yourself. We've probably seen worse. Nevertheless it's a cool addition to our ever growing collection. Enjoy! |
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| | Pigmy Releases Digi Mixing Player! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-13 |
| Pigmy (re)released Digi Mixing Player. It's that mysterious one that was discussed here on our forum. This player mixes three channels of digital samples realtime. The playback is at 13,800 Khz (which is very fast!), using the traditional 13 value digi table (that's about 3.5 bits). Even though there's no interface, we have instructions on what files to load to actually hear something. Also note that as of this time, DMP does not yet work in YAPE, but it does in VICE. Cheers to Pigmy for making this public! |
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| | More New Stuff! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-11 |
 We're closing this week with yet another update. Rüdiger's datasette must be smoking, because he sent us a boatload of TAP files. Here we go: Battle Star (original TAP image with a very cool loading screen), Blaze, Way of the Exploding Fist (the Melbourne House release), Gremlins, Leapin Louie (the original, not te novaload version), Operation Hawaii, The Chip Factory. Finally there's something new, yes, once again, we bring you a piece of software that you haven't seen before. It's Tynesoft's Music Synthesiser. We've had the cover with the cute kids, but now we have the software as well. At a first glance it looks like a very impressive tracker, with ADSR, glissandro, vibrato, tremolo controls and more. (All we need now are some decent instructions.) It's definitely worth a look, check it out. Plus we just couldn't resist to add one more cover from C16 Chris, it's for Deutscher Zeichensatz (Plus/4), a utility from Kingsoft. Since it's a commercial release, it brings the total covers to 571, we're at 75%. Thanks guys! |
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| | New Cover Scans from A-Z! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-10 |
  More covers from C16 Chris. We have a better coverscan for Surround Balance Tricky Dices, which we have renamed from Data Media Collection 2 to be more consistent with the UserSoft releases. V is for Vox, which now has an alternative tape cover, W is for Winter Events, we have a new disk cover with a special sticker (announcing what awards Udo won). Z is for Zap-em, we have a new Italian re-release cover. The last one is a new release. Okay, old release, never before seen at least. 2005 September, and we're still finding these? It comes on Andromeda Meteo 16, a two-program compilation from Mantra. The cover scan for this release actually comes from Crown. Both guys sent it in, but his was better quality. He is also the kind soul who created the original TAP file for these two. Andromedia is a gross hack of Stellar Wars, but Meteo 16 is new, apparently some kind of meteorological software (in Italian). What do you mean this is not news? You read it on the forum days ago? Eh, just go and download it. Thanks guys! |
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| | New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-08 |
   From the C16 Chris collection, we have 5 covers for 3 games today. Bongo now has a disk cover (the 4th one for this somewhat underrated but nevertheless brilliant game). Death Race 16 now has an alternative cover, this one has a Commodore 16 (only) label. Finally we have an Italian re-release Blame, which is really Blaze, the old shooter originally from Romik Software. Enjoy! |
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| | New Cover Scans! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-03 |
   Today is the first installment of the many, many covers sent in by C16 Chris. 8 coverscans have been added, covering three games: 3D Time Trek (a release by Tequila Sunrise software), plus two alternative covers for Apollo Mission and the classic Patrick Strassen game Autobahn. Check them out! Thanks to C16 Chris for these, stay tuned for more to come. |
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| | Expectation 2 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-09-02 |
 We have a new demo for the Plus/4! Skoro of Assassins has just released the follow-up to 2003's Expectation. Two years after the 16K demo comes the new installment: Expectation 2. This release is the 25th this year. Nice visuals are waiting for you, the music unfortunately is SID only. Cheers to Skoro for keeping it going. Download it now! |
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| | Emulator Updates! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-08-26 |
Gaia released YAPE 0.63! This release brings you some things that are simply amazing: Commodore V364 emulation (yes, it speaks!), read only support for D81 files, and a lot more cool things. Go to YAPE Homepage to read the rest and grab the download.
Litwr has also released a new version of his emulator. Forever Plus/4 Emulator is now up to version 1.31. Go to Litwr's Plus/4 Downloads to grab the new version. Cheers to the emulator developers! |
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| | New Release! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-08-24 |
| We have some news from The Big Corporation, better known as TBC. When was their last release? 1993? That's been 12 years, hasn't it? That's why it's even more of a good news that Siz has just released an updated version of Zak Wizzard (version 2.1)! This version now works on 1551 drives as well. It's a well made piece of software with built in help and many feature. Check it out for some Zak Listenning fun! |
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| | New Covers and TAPs! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-08-20 |
   Ulysses777 brings you this week's fine additions, and they are rare ones indeed. First up we have Cuthbert in the Cooler, the weakest in the Cuthbert series perhaps. The cover will tell you the 'story', so the game might make a bit more sense. Or not. Neverthe less it's cool to have the cover! Next up we have Kaktus, an Audiogenic release. The third one is another sought-after cover: Sir Knight, from Tynesoft. In fact, this was the last missing Tynesoft cover, their release are now complete. To celebrate the addition of the cover, we've made some cheats for this game. Was there anyone who even got past the first screen? Well, maybe, but with lots of practice, and I'd bet money that no-one ever completed the 14(!) screens. Cool cover though. Finally we have World Series Baseball, this time with the Plus/4 version's cover. And oh yeah, for all four games we also have the original TAP images as well! Very nice stuff, enjoy. |
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| | Crackers Demo 4 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-08-10 |
 The definitive release of 2005, Crackers Demo 4 has just been released! The demo was first released on the Arok7 party, this is the final version. Parts were contributed by many sceners. Go download it now! |
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| | Arok7 Photos from ATI | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-08-07 |
| We have received the first pictures from the Arok7 party courtesy of Ati. Click here to view them. Also Click here to view bubis's photos on his blog. We have the first demo released from the party: We are the cure. This demo is also a part of the co-operation demo, but was entered at the party as an individual entry. |
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| | ...and do not forget | | Posted by Luca on 2005-08-02 |
| the return of the great Jim Hehl in the forum :) |
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| | In the community | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-08-01 |
| Here are some bits of news about our scene members. The +4 King is back! Check out his new recently added photo, featuring his amazing car (F.A.B.1) in the background. Also say hello to Plasma, who just stumbled upon our site recently. Welcome back guys! We send cheers to Csio, who is getting married this month. Check his pictures section for a photo of his new family. Congratulations to him! Last but not least we now also have a piccy of Chris, the commodore16.com webmaster. This brings the total number of pictures in the Faces of the Scene gallery to 96. |
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| | New Emulator Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-07-24 |
| no$c64 is here! Hmm, that sound like C64 stuff, so why would we be interested? Well, the author, Matrin Korth has actually added C16/Plus4 emulation into it as well. The name might also imply that the emu does not handle strings. This is not the case, it refers to no (real-world) dollars, as in free (which is nothing new to our community, as we've always been lucky enough to have our share of freeware emus). Quickstart guide for the impatient: download the Windows version and run the EXE. Press F11, select Plus/4 in the CBM Version, click OK, then press F9. Voila, the ever so familiar screen is up and running. While the emulation is not too accurate just yet, the emu itself seems to have huge amounts of debugging functions. It also appears to be closed source, but the authors site has lots of valueable docs on it. We'll be very interested in seeing how far this new project will go. |
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| | Mr. Chip and The Mad | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-07-24 |
| Umm... What does Mr. Chip and The Mad have in common? Not much, they just got new stuff added in the same news item. Right. Now that we've cleared that one up, we're proud to present three original Tape Images of these games: Formula 1 Simulator, Olympic Skier, and Pacmania. We've had TAPs of these before, but the new ones courtesy of Rüdiger have the original loading screens (and no turbo). Now onto the second half: did you ever wonder what the author of such brilliant games as Digital Ball or The Invincible looked like? Rachy took some photos at fYaNICA #12 (it's an Amiga party apparently), and snapped a shot of The Mad himself. Cool stuff, enjoy! |
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| | Big Update! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-07-04 |
 Who's ready for a big update? (cue crickets chirping) Anywho, we've got some very nice new stuff for you. Rüdiger finally got around to create some TAP files. We've had the covers for these release for a long time, now we can all see what the actual programs are. 4 new CSJ releases have been added: Datei C16, Text C16, Utility C16 and Vokabel C16. (All german language C16 programs.) Ulysses777 also prepared some downloadables. We have the Bombjack II TAP image. Next up is one of the Mysterious Adventures: Perseus and Andromeda, full size cover scan and TAP image. Finally a most interesting release: Snooker & Pool from Gremlin Graphics. I can hear you all jumping up and shouting: "What? Haven't played that one! Did the year 2005 really bring us a new previously unseen sports simulation?" Well, don't get too excited. If you take a look, no doubt you'll find an uncanny resemblance to another snooker package (cough Classic Snooker cough). Well, that's it this time. Thanks guys for the new stuff, enjoy! |
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| | Club Info 87 is here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-06-05 |
 Like clockwork, Erich/Unlimited released the fresh issue of Club Info: Club Info 87 is here. Two disk sides of Plus/4 goodness await all those who speak German (well, to be absolutely correct it's also waiting for those of us who don't). There's a new converted PETSCII movie demo on it as well called Visitors 3. Respects to Luca for supplying this. Enjoy! |
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| | More Flowers Have Arrived! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-05-30 |
 Ati is celebrating the one year and one month anniversary of the release of Flowers with... Flowers 2! Will this be a yearly tradition? Only time will tell, but we sure wouldn't mind. This brand new demo features more original DFLI images for your viewing pleasure. There's a nice soundtrack from SLD as well. Download it now! Respects to Gentlemen Software for this fresh release. |
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| | New Covers and Tape Images | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-05-28 |
| What do you mean the site is dead? You're reading this, aren't you? Now that we've cleared that up, let's see what the good folks have sent in to our ever-growing archive. Ulysses777 gave us issues 3,4,5 and 6 of C16 Plus4 Computing, complete with cover scans and tape images. These four new tape based magazines each each contain about 8-9 games, so download 'em and have fun. He also scanned a full size version of Ghosts 'N Goblins, the original Elite release. Next up we have three T64 images submitted by Ein Plus4 User. He gave us both sides of Basic-Kurs, and something else, which most of us have probably not yet seen: the german version of Mercenary: Mercenary - Flucht aus targ. This meant that we broken the original one record into two, since the german version is obviously a separate release. Not only the text has been translated, but also the keyboard controls. We're not sure about the cover scans at this point, with the Compendium Edition all the covers for this game are a bit jumbled up. Thanks guys for this excellent stuff, enjoy! |
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| | New Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-04-29 |
  Six new cover scans have been added to our collection today. Rüdiger sent us 4 German releases from Quellesoft, these are German packed Tynesoft games. They are Abschiessen (Shoot it), Aufwärts zur Rettung (Climb it), Pillenschlucken (Munch it) and Sprungbereit (Hoppit). Crown also sent us some new stuff: Speed King and Tube Runner now have high-quality full size scans. Thanks guys! |
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| | Commodore Plus/4 Demo Collection DVD | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-04-26 |
 Exciting news! Lacoste/WLS sent us word that the very first Commodore Plus/4 DVD Compilation is ready! This DVD contains over two hours of some of the best Plus/4 demos. There's also a slideshow showcasing the works of the graphic artists of the Plus/4 scene. A must have for every Plus/4 fan. The price is only 5 euros + S&H. To view the details and send an order, click here! |
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| | YAPE 0.62 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-04-21 |
The latest YAPE has arrived! On a related note, happy belated birthday to Plus/4 World (3 years old!) and Gaia. There are lots of new exciting features added this time, a very cool one is the ability to record videos (AVIs) and sound straight from YAPE. Also, the fantastic sideborder removal effect in Chaos is now emulated. For those who can afford it, and think it's worth it, there's now a donate button on the download page. I did - for the years I've used this emulator it was a very cool and useful tool, it's sure worth a couple of bucks. Cheers to Gaia for our scene's pride and joy!
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| | New Magazines! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-04-18 |
 Just who is the best coder on Plus/4? I know that's the first and foremost question on everyone's mind. Well, now you can find out, just read the latest release of Lone News: 17. This issue (which is also the first one being NTSC compatible) is also packed with interviews and other stuff, and features a more readable font by popular request. Disagree with the chart results? Well, maybe next time you'll fill out a votesheet on time! Club Info 86 is also out, like clockwork, still only in German though. Finally we're glad to announce that X-Bázis has been found (by non other than the original author). Thanks for the cool stuff guys! |
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| | BalSys updated (release 2.1) | | Posted by SVS on 2005-04-15 |
 It's time of a new release of Bal-Sys from SVS. Even if the release is only 2.1 against previous 2.0 there are many improvements and new features. Go to here to download your copy!
Contents of the download:
- D64 image with complete BalSys
- Lot of ready-to-use and sample BAL programs
- Complete manual in word-format (with special sections both for newbie and expert users)
- Self-displaying info files in Future-writer-2 format
- New icons
- ... and much, much more!
By SVS of [FIRE] italian crew. |
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| | LoneNews Editor Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-04-13 |
 Our most-enthusiastic hardcode scener, Luca/FIRE has surprised us with a new release: LoneNews Editor is here. This nicely done utility let's you... well, as the name suggests edit LoneNews, or any other text. Features built in help, SID or TED music, but it's also worth pointing out that this program is NTSC compatible!
We'd like to use this opportunity to urge everyone to send in their votesheets! Come on, it only takes a few minutes. Even if you're not a "scener", you must have some favourites... The more votes, the better. Keep in mind that even partial votesheets are accepted and appreciated. The newest issue of the mag is apparently 90% ready, all it's waiting for is your votes. Don't delay, contribute to the scene and Keep the Plus/4 Alive! |
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| | New Demo Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-04-12 |
 Following Killer Demo and 20 Years +4, Skoro&Kichy released Killer 2! Check out this new demo featuring SID only music and a few cool effects. Guaranteed to give you that good old-school demoscene feel for 10 minutes! Cheers to the guys for still producing new stuff. And it does not stop here: we also have Skoro's Music Box 3+ which fixes some bugs in the original, and a few long-lost (well, not exactly lost) Hungarian adventures added today. Among them is X-Bázis+, a modified version of the original release (which is still 'lost'). Remember to send in any missing stuff you find on your old disks and tapes. |
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| | Photos of online users | | Posted by SVS on 2005-04-07 |
Csabo has added to the forum page the option to see the online users as their photos, instead of their nicknames. This brillant feature allows you to instantly understand if one of your friends is (or has been) on line, without to read the name-lists.
Try this, simply by setting your page as follows:
- Aspect
- Options
- Checkbox on "Show visitors photos (if available)"
all is done! :)
By this occasion all the users that have |
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| | New Scans Uploaded | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-04-06 |
  After a long pause we're here to bring you some cool new scans. Sidius has sent in full size cover scans of Manic Death Chase, Monty on the Run and the somewhat underrated platformer Robo Knight. We also have some magazine covers: Rüdiger scanned two more 64er covers, 64er Sonderheft 3 and 64er Sonderheft 8 feature the C16 and the Plus/4 in their full glory. Check them out! Thanks guys for the submissions. |
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| | 4 New Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-03-21 |
  Sidius scanned a few more covers for us in their full-size glory. The replacements are: Apollo Mission, Berks 3, Booty and Guzzler. Check out the fine artwork for these old classic Commodore 16 games. Thanks to Sidius for the submission. |
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| | New YAPE Release! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-03-10 |
After a five month pause, the latest version of YAPE was released today! As usual, it's a worthwhile download, bringing you more accurate emulation and more options. Most notable is the addition of a drive-related hack: pressing CTRL+ALT+X in YAPE activates a workaround that will let you load any demo that uses Coby Loader 8.0. With this, even more demos are now working on this most amazing emulator. Another big improvement: the sideborder removal in the new Chaos trackmo actually works! Cheers to Gaia! Rush to download your copy:
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| | MConv v1.6 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-03-08 |
| TLC brings you a new version of his freq converter: MConv v1.6 is here. This is quite simply the best freq converter for the Plus/4 in existence. It's small, fast, accurate and pretty advanced. (For those who don't know: a freq converter is a piece of code that converts SID musics so that they play on the TED - on they fly.) Recently there was some talk on the Hungarian forums regarding converters and TED vs SID in demos. Well, this is definitely a valid choice for anyone still writing demos. Read the documentation and download it now! Respects to TLC for releasing this. |
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| | New Demo Release! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-03-06 |
 It's a well-known fact that prolific Plus/4 coder Skoro has an "all-work, no-bs" attitude, and here comes once again to prove that with a new demo release. 20 Years +4 has arrived from Assassins, featuring graphics from Kichy. This is the second demo (following +4 Forever/TLT) that celebrates the 20th birthday of our beloved machine. In style and execution it can be compared to Genetic Faulty, and this one-file(!) piece of code also pushes the limits of what you can do in only 64K. There are at least 13 different effects to watch with many variations (depending on how you look at it, you can count it even more). But it's not about sheer numbers, it's a quality, well executed production, and there's no mistaking the fact that this is polished work. Download and enjoy it. Big respects to Skoro and Kichy! |
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| | New Covers | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-03-01 |
  Check out these new full-size cover scans: Skyhawk from Crown. This cover was also sent in by Sidius, who scanned Kung-Fu Kid. A new original TAP file has also been added: this time it's for Project Nova. Thanks guys! |
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| | It's Chaos Over Here! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-02-28 |
 Drop everything and download Chaos! No, not Chaos the old game... The demo! No, not Chaos the old demo from Kruss... The new Chaos trackmo from Absence+Wilds! I'd rather not give away the surprises in this demo, but it has a few official firsts. This production has been in the works for 10 years. The quality though is very, very high, this is the kind of stuff that should be flooding the Plus/4 demoscene. Ah, just stop reading and go download. |
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| | AustroSpeed translated to English | | Posted by SVS on 2005-02-27 |
 A second release in a few days by SVS for you. The great program AustroSpeed is now in English, and with some colors too! Download it from cbm264 site (D64 image). The internal menus have been rewritten to better explain the hilevel capabilities of AustroSpeed compiler. |
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| | BalSys 2.0a manual released | | Posted by SVS on 2005-02-25 |
| The manual for BalSys 2.0a by SVS is ready to be downloaded from cbm264 site (now 5.7 Mb unzipped). It has been totally rewritten and language-corrected. Enjoy the numerous tables, schemes and examples! It includes chapters for both newbies and expert users. |
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| | Two New Scans | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-02-24 |
| Two new scans were added to the database: The Wizard of Akyrz full-size scan from Crown. We are still looking for the TAP image for this old Commodore 16 adventure game. Rüdiger scanned the cover of 64er Sonderheft 14. Check them out. There's more to stuff come (slowly), so keep the faith and stay tuned. |
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| | Some News | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-02-18 |
| Litwr, a true Plus/4 enthusiast wrote an interesting and important article about the C16/Plus4 Character Generator and Unicode. Download it here in PDF format (109 KB). Read it! For feedback, get in touch with the author or discuss on our forums. In other news Kichy, one of the few active scene members remaining, sent us a picture to the Faces of the Scene gallery. He is once again a member of ASN, and there's rumors of a demo made by Skoro with Kichy's graphics, for the 20th birthday of the Plus/4. We're hoping to see it soon. Alos there's a new cover scan uploaded for One Man and His Droid, courtesy of Crown. |
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| | New DFLI intro from Cosine | | Posted by Gaia on 2005-02-01 |
| Somewhat unexpectedly, the originally C64-er, now 8-bit multiplatform British demogroup Cosine has released a marvelous new intro, called Radiant. This release is marking the debut of the refurbished Cosine headquarters. You may remember, Cosine's equally excellent quality Ikaruga demo has won the 1st prize in the 16kb compo on the 4ever03 party in 2003. To date, Radiant is the first and only demo for the 264 family with hand drawn DFLI mode graphics. Hopefully this cool intro will give some inspiration to the other sceners, as well. Do not hesitate, head on over to the Cosine website to grab your copy now! |
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| | VICE 1.16 is out | | Posted by Gaia on 2005-01-30 |
| VICE, the Versatile Commodore Emulator has received an update today. Among the most notable changes for our platform are the improved TAP support and tape motor emulation. This version is also able to handle real serial devices connected with the cbm4win/cbm4linux drivers. For a more detailed list of changes and the downloads, head on over to the VICE headquarters. |
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| | WANTED: Shaun Southern!! | | Posted by MIK on 2005-01-17 |
Are you Shaun Southern, are you a friend of Shaun, are you from another computer system scene and can help spread the word that Shaun Southern is a wanted man? If so then you might be the person who can help!!
Andrew Fisher a writer for the magazine RETRO GAMER - Retro Game.net is working on an article about Shaun Southern and would love to track him down for a chat so one of our Heroes can be added into the on-going bible of all things computery, our golden years as it were - RETRO GAMER! This may not happen if the Retro Gamer team can't get in contact so please if you can help in any way by letting either Andrew or Shaun know that would be great!
Maybe I should of followed up my leads back in 2000 when I got in contact with Magnetic Fields. The anonymous reply did know Shaun and offered me this image below. I'm kicking my self now because Shaun was most loved by all us C16/Plus4 gamers and you know how much he supported our system...
I can only hope Andrew gets in touch. Cheers!
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| | BalSys Version 2.0 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-01-12 |
 After only few months SVS returns with a major update of the new O.S. for Plus/4. Go to here to download your copy!
For those who are lucky enough to have a broanband connection, there's even a video (Mpg) presenting some features of this improved piece.
Some updated features/news:
- Faster, easier, and nicer :)
- Full support for 1581 drives (subdir management / navigation)
- Best debugging tools
- Icons signalling status'
- New pseudo commands
- Automatic saving routine
- Selfconfigure system (frees the user to configure the system)
- Better and expanded debug tools
- Full control on Labels table
- Autoalign on right address
- Some bugs fixings
- Rewritten manual with clear examples, tables and lists
- ... and many, many others!
By SVS of [FIRE] Italian crew. |
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| | C16.DE shut its doors | | Posted by Gaia on 2005-01-10 |
| It seems that the new year is not starting very well. After being updated less and less frequently, the best German C16/+4 site www.c16.de has been shut down. Although the short message states it being "temporary", who could possibly hope for a happy ending when the site had been sort of having its swan song in 2004 already. If some of our readers happens to have a follow-up, please refer to the forum. |
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| | New TAP files! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-01-04 |
Rüdiger created TAP images of a few multi-loader games. We have World Cup Carnival, with all the fancy stuff in front of the good ol' original. This is actually for two tape sides. We also have the only Epyx release, Championship Wrestling. Once you consider this multi-loader where you have to rewind each time you choose a wrestler, you can appreciate how cool the crack is. Nevertheless, the original tape images found a good home in our archive.
Rüdiger has one more surprise for you all: check out ACE +4, apparently there's a little-known built in cheat in this amazing game. Big thanks to Rüdiger for this cool stuff! |
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| | P4PC FLI Converter by Larry! | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-01-03 |
| Larry/WLS just released his P4PC FLI Converter! Yes, it's the magical tool that created the pictures in the Drea-M-time series. It's a java program, and everything you need is included in the package. (I took the liberty of translating the included documents to English.) Time to start producing some high quality images! Will this give our demoscene that much needed kick? Remember to give credit, where it's due. Big cheers to Larry for this amazing utility! |
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| | Club Info 84 | | Posted by Csabo on 2005-01-01 |
| Let's get the new year started nice and early. We have a leftover release from 2004: it's Club Info 84, the December issue of the German diskmag. Time to get those dictionaries out (or use this one), and start translating. Big thanks to Erich for the mag and to Luca for supplying it. |
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