|  Angyalbőrben - Happy New Year! | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-12-31 |
At the moment of this writing, the European folks are already in 2014, while some of us here in North America are still stuck in the Old Year.
Anyway, a quick last minute gift for you all: C16/Plus4 in the Media. I found an old clip from a Hungarian TV show, called Angyalbőrben (literally meaning "In Angel Skin", refers to being in military uniform). One episode features a Commodore 16, and even a Hungarian C16 game! Check it out and enjoy - and be sure the read the transcript (complete with translation!) to get a clue as to what's going on.
Hopefully this section will expand more in the future. Happy New Year to all! |
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| | RPG Time! | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-12-24 |
 Kichy Maestro has already rocked the news this year, but he's back once again with an encore!
Dunzhin is a 2D Rogue-like role-playing game. Enter the dangerous dungeons to fight hordes of enemies and leveling up. The hero's main goal is the recovery of a treasure hidden on the deepest level. The levels are always randomly generated, which will ensure a fresh experience each time you choose to descend. The game accepts even complex commands, so be sure to read the documentation included on our page.
This little gem is placed under your virtual Plus/4 Christmas Tree, enjoy! |
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| | C+4Hires V2 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-12-18 |
 carrion released a new picture show today: C+4Hires V2. It's the sequel to C+4Hires from June of this year, this time with 7 pictures instead of 15. The pictures are recolored versions, the originals are from Deev, Frost, Leon, Electric, Mermaid and Veto. Visit carrion's blog for more details. Check it out and enjoy! |
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| | MCG's Treasure | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-12-18 |
 Recently registered but long-time Plus/4 enthusiast MCG sent us some programs that were missing from the database. Please allow me to editorialize a bit:
One in particular, A Sötét Jövő, is especially a happy find for me. There's a few reasons: the author is from my hometown (Eger). I like adventure games (and judging from recent forum threads, I'm not the old one!). But mostly, because this game was "lost" for so long.
We all had different childhoods, but most of us are here on this site because of nostalgia. For many of us Hungarian folks, CoV (Commodore World) was an important part of our lives. I religiously bought every issue, and I remember that many of us lamented the eventual end of the Plus/4 section in the magazine. In issue 24 of the magazine, the solution to this adventure was listed. I didn't have the game myself, but I didn't have that many "contacts" back in the day. (Remember, this is pre-internet times, so all scene software was spreading via snail-mail.) I figured I'd eventually get it.
Fast-forward to the era of Plus/4 World: it seems that we've looked though everyone's disk archives, and this game is just gone... Along with quite a few others. I personally thought that it's lost forever, since the author himself (Jakec) confirmed that the didn't have it.
That's where our friend MCG comes in :-) He just simply had the game! Rediscovering something like that, 22 years after it's release, is great in my opinion.
Besides that one game, he sent me a nice big batch of files, including this own program archive listing. This was at the end of October, and with "lightning" speed, the programs are already up. Well, a few things slowed me down. First, I created a page specifically for checking collection listings. It's not very fancy (quite the opposite), but it can be found here. The idea is simple, copy/paste a list of PRG files, and the page will tell you which ones we have and which ones we don't. Matching programs by filenames requires the database to be 100% up-to-date and correct, but that's probably impossible. Nevertheless, if someone wishes to use it, it's there, you can contact me for more details and/or feature requests.
The other thing where I bogged myself down was that his programs included 10 versions of Formula 1 Simulator, (1-10). After long-time gentle nagging from Gaia, I picked up Visual C# and the first small program I wrote in it was a utility that can draw the scenery and display the track from the game. (You can read more on that in this forum thread.) Armed with this utility, I was able to sort all of them; it turned out that only one was completely new, the others were variations of the existing programs.
Finally let me mention two more programs: Microdemo II was also a long-lost demo from CSM. Farm Song 4 requires viewer discretion, and I'll reserve judgement, but this was mentioned on the forum 7 years ago, and well, now we have it.
Big thanks to MCG for these! More will likely be forthcoming, so be sure to keep an eye on the New Stuff section. |
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| | There Is No 16K Only Support | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-12-15 |
 A little gift from Germany! Inspired by our famous forum thread, angelsoft did some programming and sent us 3 new versions of his games. Each new one runs just fine on stock C16 machines. Diabolo is the first one, it replaces the old Plus/4 only executable. For Pilot X, there's a new loading screen and the game autostarts (it has to be loaded with ,8,1). Last but certainly not least The Frog, which made the news recently (and was rated nicely) is now also available for Commodore 16 gamers! The new version sports a nice loading screen and has also one change in the gameplay: the levels will now progressively get harder.
Check it out and enjoy! Big thanks to Jens for these, and remember, there is no 16 only support ;-) (Or is there?) |
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| | Club Info 132 Released! | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-12-12 |
 The last 2013 issue of the German disk-mag Club Info, number 132 has arrived. Erich/Ultd packed the two sides full: side A has German language articles. Among these is a very detailed review and description of Championship Wrestling, the continued docs for Scapeghost, a users guide to SVS-Calc 2.0. Side B offers recent and new games. Check them out! Big respects to Erich! |
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| | Better Colors In "Town" | | Posted by Luca on 2013-11-30 |
![Ghost Town [PAL/NTSC]](/dl/screenshots/g/ghost_town_pal_ntsc.gif "Ghost Town [PAL/NTSC]") ![Ghost Town [PAL/NTSC]](/dl/screenshots/g/ghost_town_pal_ntsc_title.gif "Ghost Town [PAL/NTSC]") Yes you're right, it's a C16 classic. And again: yes we understand it should be considered perfect as it has ever been. But everything can be improved, you know...
Kichy of Assassins crew just liked this Kingsoft's famous arcade/adventure game, but he dislikes how some assigned colours have been set along the screens. Hence, it's a change for a rerelease, with better colours and, why not, PAL/NTSC compatibility as addon!
Et voilà, release achieved! Ghost Town [PAL/NTSC]. Download it and enjoy the old classic in a brand new guise in palette! |
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| | NST's Monitor Extension | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-11-26 |
 BSZ/NST (the guru behind NST's Audio Extension - AKA the SIDCard - that has been making news for the past few years) has just made the latest version of NST's Monitor Extension public. In a nutshell, it's a utility designed to go into an EPROM, and it replaces the built in TEDMON. Even a quick glance into the documentation will show you that it's what the TEDMON should have been. The description and documentation is available in both Hungarian and English, so head on over to the homepage to read more and for the download. |
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| | Game Of A Xlife-time | | Posted by Luca on 2013-11-17 |
 In view of a forthcoming version 2 of it, we've decided to hold the announcement about this program, which have just been commented in a known thread in the forum. And now, V2 of Xlife has come!
Xlife is by far the best implementation of the Game of life on every 8bit machine. Based on the experience achieved with the previous Life V1.01, Vladimir "Litwr" Lidovski has coded one that there's no other like it. It offers an impressive list of features, considering so many variables in order to satisfy even the most demanding user.
The basic rules of the game can be modified completely. You can set your initial pattern in a comfortable way, let it evolve (even with a 'blind' faster mode), stop it, change it on fly, reprise it, do it step by step. There's a random pattern option with adjustable ratio. The pseudocolor mode is a real joy for the eyes, and perfectly highlights the population's behaviour. A zoom option allows to spy even the minimal cells'communities locally evolving.
Patterns can be loaded and saved in any moment, even merging'em with the population currently on screen. Aside of the available source codes, from the official XLife 8bit version page you can download a gigantic pack of 2396 preset patterns, which should really satisfy any presumable need.
The V2 improves the first version, and adds a fully explicative instructions file, and a SEQ files reader in order to immediately check any single record.
Try the Xlife experience right now! |
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| | They Perfectly "Fit" In The Scene | | Posted by Luca on 2013-11-14 |
  Referring to the über-big C64 scene, if 2012 has been the year of hires graphics, we can easily say that 2013 will be remembered as the year the PETSCII style is reborn into a new life of its own. After some weak signs about PETSCII art, In the end of the year the Plain PETSCII Graphics Competition consecrates this graphic format with a huge number of users taking part of the compo.
Aside of this trend, several powerful PETSCII editors has popped out, but no offence for anyone if we dare to recommend PETSCII as the best of the bunch, thanks to its coder Marq.
Even parties, hot on the heels of that compo, have set competition PETSCII-based, just like Zoo 2013, where the same Marq has literally ruled the scene, placing here and there graphic and demo entries all based on PETSCII.
But PETSCII is a common language for 8bit Commodore machines. And Fit, the ancient group founded by Marq, is known for the heterogeneous choice of different machines involved. Easy to realize, then: let's port the C64 PETSCII demos to Plus/4!
First comes Beisikki Demo, code by Marq and music by Yzi, a little gem written in BASIC, and the porting on Plus/4 of a compo winner in BASIC demos. Pretty nice!
But then the big gem comes! Straight from its first place at the demo competition, The First Ball is the best advert for the fresh new PETSCII animation feature just included into PETSCII! Code by Marq, additional code and the stunning graphics by Dr. TerrorZ, and a perfectly fitting SID tune composed by Yzi.
Marq opted for the SIDcard usage, in order to leave unchanged the cool tune, and that's why there are two files in the spreaded D64: in order to be compatible even with the much obscure SIDcards, you can choose between SID music at $FD40 or $FE80.
Hence, welcome Fit, we all wish to see more and more productions from you, hoping for a dedicated Plus/4 release, in the next future. |
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| | "Memento" Test Your Memory With Style | | Posted by Luca on 2013-11-12 |
 Time passes for all of us, are you getting older and older, uh? ;) Are you worried for your synapses sparkling any day lesser than yesterday? No-oh-oo! You don't have to worry for that, because your old buddy, the Plus/4, comes to you in order to train your memory with a classic match-the-couples game!
Of course, it's November 2013, and nowadays the best scene's dudes know how to push a real classic like that to the apex of cuteness! It's Memento, a memory game just born under the Assassins label!
Whom we're talking about? Oh well, here comes a great comeback in the scene: the most appreciated Skoro, author of famous demos and games in the past and stronghold of the real oldschool way of coding! The awesome visuals are all from the well known Kichy, ubiquitous in these times (and of course the audience has reasons to be happy of that!). Listen to the sweet TED original tune, you should recognize him because at this point you should have heard his music in several other productions...yes he's Csabo of LOD, gotcha!
The quality is very high, the game is nicely entertaining and you have 20 levels of increasing difficulty and different graphics to play with. Sometimes, there's no need of revolutionary ideas to release a highly enjoyable game.
Memento homo, quia Plussier es et in Plussierem reverteris! :D |
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| | Angelsoft Games | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-11-09 |
 Plus/4 World has been here for a long time (and hopefully will continue to exist for a long time as well). We consider ourselves to be the center of everything Plus/4 and C16 related. Though occasionally we miss some stuff... www.angel-soft.de is one such case. Jens Engel AKA angelsoft is the author of such classic games as Diabolo and Pilot X. He recently contacted us (after some encouragement from Rüdiger), and our database is now four games richer!
First up is Coltfire. The story behind this one was that he was contacted by Kingsoft in the '80s to write a western game, but it was never released. Last year he released the C64 version and now the C16 version is out as well. Kristall-Labyrinth is a BASIC game, in which (true to its name) you collect crystals in a labyrinth. Finally there's a very professional Frogger clone called The Frog, which includes a level editor and it's accompanied by a C16 version of the game as well (The Frog (Basic)). The recommended emulator for all of these is Minus4.
So check those games out... Like them? Not so much? Be sure to give your feedback on the forums! |
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| | Plus Graph 2.0: New Life For A Golden Oldest | | Posted by Luca on 2013-11-05 |
  Everything can be improved, and time does not count! This time, SVS/FIRE will use his own words to present here his new effort!
"When the Plus/4 was launched in the '80s, it was intended to be a business machine. The original plan was to sell the machine with programs built into its internal ROM, ready to use. The user could choose which embedded program to have. They were ready but the fact is that just a month before the launch date, Commodore decided to include only a single ROM program, the same for everyone. David W. Johnson - a developer at Tri Micro - gathered 4 applications and built the so called 3+1 (a Word Processor, a Spreadsheet, a Database and Graphics). In order to fit all of the programs into 32K, and to integrate between them, he had to reduce their code by cutting some features. The most penalised was the Graphics program, reduced to a single command which generated a text histogram (GR).
Years later, some of these ghost programs were discovered by Plus/4 users, for example Plus/Extra – the original Word Processor – with the original features. This year (2013), Gary "gc841" Cooper found a copy of Plus Graph, the graphic program excluded from 3+1. When it was available here I confess to having felt the original feeling of the Plus/4's golden era.
Would the fate of our machine have been any different if they had been released? What features should there be in a 2.0 version of these programs? Well, Plus Graph 2.0 is my answer: by modifying and improving the original Plus Graph code from Tri Micro".
Briefly, SVS/FIRE has improved and fixed Plus Graph releasing Plus Graph 2.0 and that's quite a great release, try it! |
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| | "Sgt. Helmet Zero" Hits On Plus/4! | | Posted by Luca on 2013-10-26 |
 Yes, after three years they did it again!
Exactly three years ago, we've learned how a 48K long game can be squeezed in less than 16K with no loss overall, either in graphics'n'sound or in terms of gameplay. Its name was Uwol, and the guys behind that conversion did a really great job. Could they do better than that?
Eheh they could indeed, we say, while watching the stunning results of their effort!
The man that moved the strings of graphics and code is Kichy/ASN again, the artist behind the fabuolus TED original soundtrack is Csabo/LOD again, and once again the original ZX Spectrum game is another success coming from those cool guys under the well-known name The Mojon Twins! And this time there's no 16K memory limit to stay in, so why don't put down an enhanced version of the original one, with better multicolor graphics instead of spectrumesque hires stuff? So they thought, so they did! Now we have a fantastic enhanced version of Sgt. Helmet Zero running on Plus/4, with additional joystick support and several adjustments and addons here and there.
Sgt. Helmet Zero is a fast jump'n'shoot action game along 4 levels, in which you have to set free the girls which have been taken hostage by evil forces. Free all of them and you'll be allowed to exit and go to the next level. Enemies and turrets shoot at you with no mercy while jumping around avoiding bullets and deep pits, so you have to show to be the tough dude you look to really be.
Less words, more jumps, even more bullets: it's time to play Sgt. Helmet Zero! |
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| | New Programs Added | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-10-22 |
Hungarian Plus/4 fan Gabucino (who happens to be second cousin of TGMS!) sent us a little care package that includes a few lost programs. Here's the list of new things added:
He also found a light pen of unknown origins, complete with some programs. Since we don't know the official name (or indeed if it IS an official release), this has been added with the generic name Fényceruza (Lightpen). Check it out and big thanks for these! |
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| | PETSCII Power | | Posted by Luca on 2013-10-13 |
 The 31 October 2013 is the deadline for a pretty nice graphics compo previously launched at CSDb: the Plain PETSCII Graphics Competition consecrates the art of PETSCII drawing in its plain shape, color matrix and screen once background and border have been set, no special effects, no fireworks, no borders opening, just PETSCII. Right now, several fantastic works have just been inlcuded in the competition, which appears to be quite a harsh battle.
Big competitions need better berforming weapons to fight with, you know. That's the reason why Markku Reunanen (aka Marq/DKD) has developed PETSCII, a powerful crossplatform graphic tool with tons of innovative features, including smart PETSCII mirroring and rotating, copy/paste, straight conversion, multiple exporting options and so on. It works under Windows, Mac or Linux.
Ok, quite nice. But where's the intopic part? Well, just from today, PETSCII started to support Plus/4 format too, besides PET, C64 and VIC20! And further improvements are on the way!
Don't miss the experience to try this cool one, let's PETSCIIing right now!
Update! After few hours, the author added a fantastic C64 -> Plus/4 feature! |
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| | Endings Triplets 31-37 | | Posted by Luca on 2013-10-05 |
 Here comes another bunch of game endings!
Old and new games, brief congrats and extensive finals, they all gather here!. Plus, a famous final hidden since dozens years because of a buggy converting. Yeah buddies, right, that Barbarian game!
Another seven-triplets release. Come to see the endings of: Ghost Town, Decstone, Toyballs, Logical Ball, Treasure Island, Into The Eagle's Nest, Nibbly 92, Mentsd Meg Az Életed, Blue Thunder, Space Warrior, Krakout, Leonardo, Captain Fizz, Üveggolyó, Rug Rider, Scumm, Trans Logic 2, The Power (Onefiler), Barbarian 3, Barbarian The Ultimate Warrior, Barbarian.
We still have dozens of this stuff for you, and new endings are added day by day. Don't miss the signal when the Endings will call! |
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| | Ultimate Battle For Italian Stuff Has Started | | Posted by Luca on 2013-09-25 |
   We officially started to afford a big challenge: we'll cover all the Italian newsstands'compilations, both serial and single releases!
It looks like being a very difficult mission, because the longlasting story about the Italian lack of a copyright extension to the software creations during a big slice of the 80's had set free unscrupolous publishers in releasing pirate compilations with (sometimes very badly) hacked commercial games, even under several fake labels per same game, in newsstands and shops. They were used to steal each other's hacks, or to re-release unchanged copied games with no camouflage, and no right of course!
But even this doesn't scare us! Empty slots have just been prepared in order to sort all the available .PRG and .TAP files at the moment and in the future: see, e.g., the series Byte Games and Go Games, we'll put there complete and single tapes and programs, as well as covers and booklets. In the next days, other longlasting series like Computer Set and C16/MSX shall be started too.
   Waiting for the big ones, here come some minor newsstands'series.
Super Commodore 16 and Super Commodore 16 Plus/4 VIC20 are two Jackson and J.Soft releases consisting in multisystems'tapes bundled with magazines, full of utilities and games (mostly come straight from foreign magazines and books, converted and/or translated in Italian). We're lacking most of those mags, but we'll hope to find all of them one day; meanwhile, tapes covers and single programs are all in. Now we are quite sure that Jackson released these programs as first, then several newsstands'compilations did steal some of these in order to re-release'em.
Another notable series is Commodore Club, published by Systems. They'd started aiming for Commodore machines, and n the end of 1985 it became "Software Club" due to the inclusion of ZX Spectrum and MSX programs. Now, Commodore Club #6, Commodore Club #7, Software Club #09 and Software Club #12 boast complete coverage.
 Here's a series of hacked games which has give us several headaches. Linguaggio Macchina 16/20 had been the C16/VIC20 newsstands'series which moved Edizioni Foglia from selling single hacked games into the shops under the labels Cassetta Games/Go-Go Games to the multiple games distribution under proper label, and can be considered the prototype of what the famous and longlasting C16/MSX would have been next, after the publisher name's change in GEIE. They seemed they don't had a release date, hence we used to tag all of those releases with the initial letters of the included games. A recent finding of one of their booklet's cover has suggested that the date should be printed on the booklet and not on the cassettes and cassette's covers. While waiting for further investigation, we recovered one and dumped two of them, with all the games.
Computer Games E Utilities by Ed. Softwell Milano. And yes, the tapes under this series really contain what they declare to contain: computer games and utilities! We have very few hints about these releases, the cassette we got (Computer Games E Utilities N.5) as for the one we recovered (Computer Games E Utilities N.9) contain both hacked stuff and original utilities, all disrespectfully signed "Max & Alb". Hope to find more of these in the near future.
Last but not least, for something completely different. Introduzione Al Basic Parte 1, official Commodore Italiana SpA. release of An Introduction To Basic Part 1, fully covered with tapes and box covers.
Also, don't miss all the daily new stuff continuously entered by the whole community. There are several publications and covers for so many entries around: Vorks, Future Knight, Multipede, Rambo, C&A Games 07, the Argentinian Commodore 16 press like Drean Commodore and several other books... Oh too many stuff, you'd better stay around and be alert ;) |
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| | A Byte's Life | | Posted by Luca on 2013-09-17 |
 Puffers? Gliders? Guns? What they're really talked about? Of course, those are some patterns which can occur, unexpectedly or not, while playing a session of the ultimate concept of math beauty ever: the Conway's Game Of Life!
In order to have a test run on the "C64 Studio" IDE, Marek "Mkarcz" Karcz, has just finished to code his own version of 'game of life' on Commodore 64, in less than 4Kb, read anything about his work in the dedicated blog page here. It's a pretty neat implementation, with fullscreen display and I/O feature to store the most notable sequences.
"Let the C16 have it too!", that's what Luca/FIRE said! And that's the reason why now you can enjoy it on C16 too, with its set of archived patterns.
Enjoy the beautiness of life, death and what lies inbetween. On C16! |
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| | Two Tech Demos | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-09-05 |
 Litwr released two tech demos that push the limits of the Commodore Plus/4 (and put emulators to the test). The first one is 231c, it shows 231 distinct colors. There are limitations though (so you can't just use all the "additional" colors with the normal ones, at least not on the same horizontal lines). The second, 40x36c extends the upper/lower border as much as possible.
Both demos only work on PAL systems. Check 'em out and discuss it on the forum! |
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| | World's First Useful Trainer For Rockstar Manager | | Posted by Luca on 2013-09-04 |
 No words needed, just try googling out with keywords like 'rockstar' 'ate' 'hamster' 'cheat' 'walkthrough' 'solution'. See how many results? And how many people did try in the past to see the ending of this cornerstone of British humor's recreational piece of art?
Although the game plays like a sarcastic joke around the music biz in the '80ies, it represent the proverbial hard nut to crack, and nobody (I repeat: n-o-b-o-d-y) had never seen what happens to Clive and his boss Cecil Pitt when they eventually get the desired platinum disc! Some trainers of the original C64 version exist, but the single help of unlimited money does not assure that you'll finish the game, resulting basically useless...
..until now! Luca of FIRE crew takes to you the world's first trainer which enables you to reach the ending of Rockstar Manager!
Rockstar Manager +2! forces your musical releases to hold the first place in both the billboards, you will have no contestants! You'll aim straight to conquer the 4 gold discs by recording your album and releasing it, no more actions have to be required for! Beat it like only a Wacky Jacko can do it! To complete the package, introductions pictures from both C64 and ZX Spectrum versions have been included as bonuses.
What shall we do? Well...eat dirt Clive! |
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| | Club Info 131 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-09-02 |
 September is here, and it is my pleasure to announce the new issue of Club Info, Issue 131 is here. Erich/Unlimited packed two sides of a disk full of stuff for your Commodore-related pleasure. Side A contains the German-language articles. Side B has some new stuff that might be of interest: Full Moon (a newly converted PETSCII movie demo), Kamel Adventure (a strategy game with selectable answers), Micro6 (a previously missing utility by Ceekay) plus a whole lot more. Download it and dig in! |
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| | Knights & Demons | | Posted by Luca on 2013-08-23 |
 What were we thinking? We at Plus/4 World's HQ are seriously getting old, if a brand new game for Commodore 16 has popped out from a Spanish nowhere and we didn't hear a word about it! It's a real scandal, and now it's time to grasp at straws, and fix this outrageous event.
Kabuto Factory is a brand new - yet little but quite active - reality into the 8bit game developing. They cover the classic Spanish retroscene, and this means they mostly create stuff for ZX Spectrum, MSX and Amstrad CPC. Their passion for the old home computer times is so genuine to drive'em in the trade of their best games on cassette, for a paltry cost. But, as we cited before, they're quite active, and that's the reason why they stray into other platforms'developing too!
And guess what? In July 2013, they converted Knights & Demons to various systems, including the C16!
The game's mechanics are based on those EORoid games, a beloved branch of the logical type. It has been converted by Baron Ashler aka Manuel Gómez Alcaide, with additional code and support by marcos64, which was formerly a friend of Plus/4 World representing our link with the Spanish side of C16.
A commercial release for the Commodore 16 version of Knights & Demons is on the way, as announced straight from Kabuto Factory, and you can see a preview of the package you'll get.
Meanwhile, we hope that the guys at Kabuto Factory would delight us with further C16/Plus4 software in a near future. |
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| | 11 Very Rare Italian Tapes | | Posted by Luca on 2013-08-19 |
 Another must-have bunch of Italian tapes have been intercepted on eBay, and this time we really had to win the bid at (almost) any cost, because the cassettes auctioned were very rare ones. All aspects were covered: TAP files, covers, leaflets and cassette photos.
Let's start considering some most wanted hacks re-released by Playvision: Dots Eater, Bomber (Playvision) and Bolt Knight. Playvision used to have the same released games as Visiogame, even in the product code sequence but we don't know if both labels (which can be considered as twin ones at this point) had released'em in parallel matching till the very last one, and nowadays all these tapes are very rare.
Another most wanted one: Impariamo A Conoscere Le Ossa / Calcolo Dell'Ora Nel Mondo is another two programs compilation by Mantra Software. Mantra (as usual) released original software instead of hacked games, and this is a quite interesting scientific compilation of human physiology and weather science.
Back to hacked games again, with Wacky Painter (Golden Software) and Tennis (Soft). And an ultimate hint that links the fate of these two software labels: the Soft re-release of Tennis has the Golden Software label printed on the cassette!
   And now for the bigger gems: hard to find utility programs labelled C.S.P. Microgame and Data Comp (the latter is another satellite label of Visiogame).
Magic Brush and Pixin are two never seen before graphics utilities both coded by Paolo Aimetti, arguably the same tools he used in order to create games like Small Jones. Now we know that Conto Corrente has been originally released under the Data Comp release, then re-released by Soft in Data Manager compilation together with other hacked programs. Supertoto (C.S.P.) (utility about football bets) and Labirinth (3D maze game implementation) has finally come to almost complete the rare softography under this label.
We really hope that we'll be able to snatch more lucky loots to win like this one. Meanwhile, enjoy this one! |
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| | Amiga Music Box 1 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-08-11 |
 If you like Amiga tunes and Plus/4 demos, then you're in luck: today marks the release of Amiga Music Box 1. In contains two tunes, converted from Amiga by Spektro. I (Csabo) helped out a little by wrapping them up in a little music box. There's not much else to add, give it a listen and enjoy! |
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| | A Few Hungarian Tapes | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-08-05 |
 We're happy to report that a couple of new cover scans have been added to the database: Bear(tm) sent us the cover for Breki (an old Hungarian game for two players), and an alternative scan for Turbo 16. The artwork isn't earth shattering on either, but our inner completionist is smiling nevertheless. In addition, first time contributor Gabucino sent us the files from Octasoft's Assembler, which includes the previously missing 64K version of the program.
Thanks for these guys! Remember to keep an eye out for more missing cover scans and programs! |
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| | More News From Newsstands | | Posted by Luca on 2013-07-31 |
 How many the hell they were? They show up anywhere, especially on eBay, where we consume our best money to achieve the completeness of our archive!
Yes, it's time again for some Italian newsstand's compilations, this time even more rare, and this represents a further approach to the forthcoming challenge against the really long-standing series of compilations with hacked and re-hacked games with chronological crosslinks between them. This update looks forward to find a path of managing those tough nuts, starting to store, where possible, both PRGs and TAPs of any single entry spending time in order to cut the original TAP into the right slices. Congruence of an archive consumes time, aware of this? ;)
First of all, we discovered that Special VIC20 C16 hadn't been the one and only ride of Pubblirome in the field of C16 games'hacking and rereleasing. There's Super VIC20-C16 too, and the two compilations have in common some of the games. We've also borrowed Input VIC20-C16, a smaller Pubblirome compilation of hacked games, again with several crosslinked titles, but saved with a different loader based on Turbo Tape.
Newsstands' power again, with two issues of "Software Club" recovered: Software Club #09 and Software Club #12, containing themself-hacked games like Invaders (Systems) (!) and weird utilities like Chef. And let's go on with C16 Best, complete with its dedicated instructions paper, learn how to C16 with Commodore 16 Per Te, take advantage of many utilities with Essenziali E Routine and Programmi Per C16.
 Also added, several tapes of hacked games, especially from Visiogame, even like two missing ones we're in search for: Triple Decker 4, and that Maze Builder tape spreaded in Educational Line N1, which turned out to be an editor for Small Jones game released in bundle with it!
Last but not least, two quick addons in the publications field: Commodore 16 Guida All'Utente as the user manual sold in Italy with the C16, and a big 57Mb PDF of Super Commodore Commodore 16 2.
A list of the addons follows: C16 Best (+paper), Essenziali E Routine, Commodore 16 Per Te, Jet Mission, Karate Master, Maze Builder, Programmi Per C16, Software Club #09, Software Club #12, Chef, Char Editor (Systems), Graphics (Systems), Soldiers, Space Fortress (tape), Star Wars (Visiogame), Triple Decker 4, Zodiac (crack), Super VIC20-C16, Anatomia, Astronavi Aliene, Breakout, Cruise, Il Genio, Invaders (Systems), L'Esorcista, Vecchio West, Super Commodore Commodore 16 2 (magazine), Agente Segreto (tape), Astronave Talpa (tape), Corsa Sul Fiume (tape), Il Ladro (tape), Il Legionario (tape), La Morte Nera (tape), La Spia (tape), Le Chiavi (tape), Lupo Di Mare (tape), Missione Su Marte, Commodore 16 Guida All'Utente (manual), Biss (tape), Guerra Totale (tape), Il Pizzaiolo (tape), Invasione 2000 (tape), Scacchi (tape), Tennis (Pubblirome) (tape), Velocipede (tape), Autostrada (tape), Meteorite (Pubblirome) (tape), Tennis (Pubblirome) (tape), Il Pittore (tape), World Games 2, Off-shore, Soccer, Pool, Flushing Meadows.
Oh, and new tapes have been bought, so they are coming too, war is not over yet! |
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| | PETSCII Game Tree Some Converted | | Posted by Luca on 2013-07-15 |
 In a past far far away, all of us had a run animating weird figures by assembling those PETSCII bits of graphics. Someone improved that particular skill and coded games based on that. On C64, The Skull has been well known just because of his funny PETSCII based BASIC games.
Luca/FIRE celebrates the strange brilliance of PETSCII gaming, converting to Plus/4 Tree Some, the most original one in The Skull ludography! The Nature has to defend by itself against all humans: they're simply men whereas you're a huge tree, so kick'em hard on their heads. Which side will prevail today? |
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| | Árok Party 2013 Releases! | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-07-06 |
 The wait for those of us who could not attend is over: Chronos/ACW supplied us with the freshest warez on the scene. We're talking about the releases from Arok 2013 (AKA. Arok 15), the 8-bit retro-computer party that was held in Ajkarendek, Hungary over the weekend. Head on over to the New Stuff section now!
Unfortunately there was no demo this year, but plenty of nice pictures and a much-awaited preview of Adventures In Time 2 was released. Congrats and thanks to all the guys who produced stuff for this party. It must have been a blast, we're anxiously awaiting party reports, so stay tuned.
Update: Partial results (and correct release names) are out, check the compos page.
Update #2: Photos/video of the event, courtesy of Chronos.
Update #3: More photos of the event, courtesy of Rambo.
Carrion has won both the gfx compos at Árok and Silesia parties, respectively with a Plus/4 picture and a C64 picture. After very few days, he tested how the latter would look as a Plus/4 MFLI, and the result is S7! Grass also has done the opposite, converting GCV to C64 NUFLI format for fun.
Update #4: Umpfh, it looks like the Berlin wall in-between formats and machines has been shot down, so who's still missing in the row? Ah yes, EleonORA C16, a conversion for any 264 machine of the wonderful HiRes picture that Leon sent in the mixed gfx compo, quickly put up by Luca/FIRE. |
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| | SD-Snatcher Preview Released | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-07-04 |
 George released his first demo today: SD-Snatcher Preview is here! It's a picture show with 5 converted images. Check it out, discuss it on the forum and enjoy! |
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| | Botticelli Bilderdisk 38 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-07-03 |
 Erich/Ultd released this year's installation of his Botticelli Bilderdisk series. It's a two-sided picture show using the Magica driver. You will find 32 public domain multicolor pictures (check Side B for the info file). Check it out and cheers to Erich for his continued work! (Note: If you have any Plus/4 related news or new releases, and you'd like to see it appear here instead of the forum, be sure to email Luca or Csabo.) |
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| | Lunar Rescue Released | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-06-10 |
 A new classic coin-op game conversion called Lunar Rescue has been released. The game was written in BASIC and runs smoothly on an unexpanded C16. It was made by the same author as the recently released Galaxy Wars game. A lot more info (in Spanish) can be found on this forum. Check it out! |
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| | Club Info 130 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-06-08 |
 Erich/Ultd released the new issue of Club Info. You can find many articles on Side A (in German), while Side B has some new and recently released stuff. Among these are: "Physik Programm" (edutainment in German), "Gener.F-Copy 8.1" a new multi-platform copy program by DataLand, "Poker/C" and "The Living Dead" - both converted by Erich.
There's also an extra 3rd disk included this time. It has some "missing" programs on it, like Save Our Turtles. Check it out! |
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| | New Picture Show By Carrion | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-06-02 |
 Carrion released a new picture show today, called C+4Hires. It contains 15 hi-res pictures converted from C64. For more information, head on to the forum! |
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| Two Three Most Wanted And More | | Posted by Luca on 2013-05-20 |
 Our persisting fight against the "Missing software" tagging has won against other celebrated hidden software we were looking for.
Rising out of nowhere, in the very end here comes Wonder 6, a most wanted demo released by The Vulture under the Men Of Science label, which we just had as broken program from several collections. Finally, now we can put that as working into the whole ser...oh wait! What's that one? Wonder 3? Yes, it's Wonder 3 from the same coder, a missing one we've absolutely never seen before! And all this means one thing only: the Wonder series is now complete! Great achievement!
 Recoveries are not over yet, another one out of the missing software's list: it's Sound Box VII by LTA, a music box we've searched for, since someone noticed a hack of the main picture in another demo. Too early to put up a series, having three chapters overall of that, but it looks like taking shape, and this is certainly a notable step to have'em all one day.
And we wish a similar destiny will come for Picture Show 6 by Gang Soft. Previously, we've found a unique specimen of their releases, i.e. the 7th chapter. A single one means nothing, two in a row begin to turn into a new series to search for...
 Additional stuff follows. First of all, some SD2IEC utilities we've missed before, like CBM FileBrowser 16 V1.5 and Dracopy 1.0d Plus4. Follows, a couple of very ancient Kruk's demos: Greased Lightning (Kruss) and Horror Demo; a very early picture by Crash at the time he was known as "Monster Graphics: Mach Mit; a German educational program about a Russian space program called Projekt Phobos. In the end, some minor stuff which has to be included in the archive (in some cases, though their controversial content): Tomorrow, Alpensound, Dream-woman, La Marseillaise, Move Your Feet, Plus4-power Demo, Porno (HR), Porno Show II, Sex Cartoons I, Strip 16, Strip And Slide, Swedish Girl, Work Hard.
Last little gem: Tynesoft C16 Plus4 Catalogue III, the third promotional booklet released by Tynesoft, in PDF format. |
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| | Spanish Rockets Against Aliens! | | Posted by Luca on 2013-05-18 |
 Unexpected game's releases are the sceners best friends!
We wanna thank marcos64 for the advice, we would never be aware of this juicy conversion in BASIC of a classic Taito coinop's milestone. Actually, Galaxy Wars is a conversion of this arcade machine developed by Universal Co. Ltd. and distributed by the Japanese publisher in the year 1979.
Daniel Crespo Andrés (aka dancresp), a Spanish ZX Spectrum coder (which doesn't hide his interest for other machines too!), has decided to try out the capabilities of the BASIC V3.5, as he found it much more comfortable than the most famous V2.0, and the result is this sweet'n'neat conversion which also seems to be quite enjoyable to play with!
We hope that dancresp would have a long experiencing on the C16, and right now we're looking forward for further software from him! |
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| | Incoming TAPs And Other Previosly Missing Ones | | Posted by Luca on 2013-05-07 |
   Contributors FTW!! This community simply shine, when we call and you promptly react!
You all know we tagged all the know-but-missing stuff with the "WANTED" word in the notes, in order to have an easy searching for anyone that can help us in feeding our/your prefer archive. Well, our little advice in the forum has been enough for MIK to push him in a loooong session of tapes dumping and covers scanning. And this is the fantastic result he got!
Finally, we've got tapes of: Chopper War, Corman, Fire Ant (no fastload), Heebie Jeebies, Invaders (no fastload), Jet Set Willy II, Ping Pong, Pizza Pete, Raider, Skelby, Slippery Sid, Space Sweep (no fastload), Sqij, The Mirror, The Wizard And The Princess, Williamsburg (Adventure 3) and the famous broken version of Xargon's Revenge re-released on Omnibus II compilation!
And we've got several covers too, some fresh new, some replacements as better ones: Bridgehead, Saboteur!, The Mirror, Mercenary - Escape From Targ (disk version's back cover), Cassette Database. To these ones from MIK, we've added a rare view of the Learner Pack Software box.
 Surprises are not over! gc841, alias Gary Cooper (his Sabre Wulf conversion has just been reviewed, see the forum!) did a great work to spread worldwide a rare gem: Plus Graph by David W. Johnson, released in Christmas 1984 both as a standalone utility and as an integration to the Plus/4 3-Plus-1 software!
Thanks to Gary, now we have the disk, the additional material and the whole manual for it!
Let's complete this big giveaway with these two further publications. It's C16 Chris's turn to contribute, with new covers and the whole manual for Company Pac 123 as PDF. And last, courtesy of DLH's Commodore Archive, here comes the extra paper from "Your Commodore" issue 50 entirely dedicated to the C16/Plus4, as PDF again: C16 And Plus/4 Essential Guide.
Hey, absolutely don't believe all this boon would quench our thirst! We're still waiting for your own contribute! Search the WANTED tag, then scan dump copy and finally send to us! ;) |
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| | HVTC Update May 2013 | | Posted by Luca on 2013-05-05 |
Further updates of the High Voltage TED Collection, aka HVTC, have been procrastinated several times, just because the near future of the whole project is closely related to the development of .C8M as the proper format for TED tunes. Why releasing new files with custom code for multiple tunes, if all this effort will be trashed out once .C8M will be here on this earth?
Well, an answer exists, and it sounds like topsy-turvy: a conversion to .C8M has to be done anyway, meanwhile let's make the collection grow. And that's why a new version of HVTC is out today!
We've reached the notable number of 330 single files overall, as usual both "pure as they are" and straight runnable to play, plus some fixes here and there (i.e.: added the missing jingle in Harvey Headbanger's file).
Csabo offered all his files in both formats, completing his own folder, Braintron's folder is now completed too, and several new authors have been added, with some very hard hacks succesfully included (Oszkár A Lovag, Oblido...). Metamerism's tune is still missing, but Degauss has promised to release a standalone prg for it quite soon, and that'll become the first file to store for the next update ;)
Don't forget to completely delete the whole previous collection (that's the way to do at any new update!), then download/unzip the new one!
UPDATE: sorry for the mistake, the right link to the ZIP file is on now! |
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| | A Relaxing Shields'Harvest | | Posted by Luca on 2013-04-27 |
 Ok, maybe here in the Plus/4 scene, we're not exactly used to release one production a week, have to admit... But what we do for sure is listen people and quickly match their needings.
In this forum's thread, Yerzmyey/H-PRG has complained about the high grade of difficulty of certain classic games, which nonetheless he would play further to see what lies more into it, and he cited Robo Knight with that intent. And, yes, Robo Knight is a classic game for real, a C16 milestone in the commercial games, with its wide map, competent usage of software sprite's techique, a gameplay extremely polished and calibrated properly. The only pity is that it's a unique opera of its coder!
May your superheroes stay blind and deaf to the neat request of a trainer? Here comes Luca of the FIRE crew, to save the day and your nerves too, releasing Robo Knight +4M, a trainer with four features you can activate and deactivate while the game is running, pickin'up shields here and there has never been that easy! As for previous trainers, the whole stuff is absolutely C16 compliant, perfectly running in any 264 series machine, and it runs again the cracktro with music by Csabo/LOD.
And so, Yerzmyey, what do you say about? Does it is a much more easier shields'harvest or not? ;) |
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| | Endings Triplets 24-30 | | Posted by Luca on 2013-04-20 |
And after some weeks of silence, here we are, ready to start again our ride into the games'endings we've never seen in past years. Yes, in the usual mix of C16 classics, converted games and original ones.
Another seven-triplets release. Come to see the endings of: Tonido, Nuclear Ball, Lloyd Game, The Hell, The Hell 2, The Hell 3, Molecule Man, Extasy, Legionnaire, Kaputörő, Slipper 2, Trans Logic, Escape, Trap, Ponk, Puzzlenoid, Triple Change, Landscape Maze, Very Shit Game, Very Shit Game 2, Dixi A Megmentő.
We still have dozens of this stuff for you, and new endings are added day by day. Don't miss the signal when the Endings will call! |
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| | Exomizer 2.0.7 Loves C16 | | Posted by Luca on 2013-04-15 |
Exomizer, the widely used packing tool which crunches your 8bit files starting from your own PC, improves again!
This brand new version (2.0.7) includes fixes and new features exclusively dedicated to 264 machines'users, and it's a straight consequence of a feedback to the author Magnus Lind from Luca of the FIRE crew, after his recent dealing with stuff that have to work on C16 too.
Here follow the changes'list since the previous version:
- bugfixed commodore sfx targets to automatically disable irq when decrunching over system areas. This was reported for the plus4 target by Luca/FIRE. This fix together with moving the decrunch table to zero-page, -Di_table_addr=0x2, allows decrunching $0200- without corruption for all commodore targets except for the vic20-configs that have a memory hole at $0400-$1000;
- bugfixed z80 decrunchers from Metalbrain;
- bugfixed sfx c16/plus4 target where the default decrunch effect could corrupt memory while decrunching data that covers $0be7, reported by Luca/FIRE;
- added feature to sfx-mode that complains if the data it too big to fit in the available memory of the selected target, suggested by Luca/FIRE;
- added c16 target, -t 16, like -t4 but with smaller memory, suggested by Luca/FIRE;
- bug fixed in the z80 decruncher.
See how much new matter for us? Hence, you have no excuses and must update your Exomizer right today!
We respect Magnus Lind once again, thank you bud for keeping this essential tool clean and running! |
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| | Liberator +5MD: A Crack For Any 264 Machine | | Posted by Luca on 2013-04-11 |
 "Let's resume the tradition of cracks and trainers on Plus/4 too!" we said just a couple of weeks ago, and you all know that the scene doesn't like vapourware. So, let's go back in time, to fully exploit the games we'd loved so much, which sometimes we'd desired to win by breaking the toy to see how it's made inside.
First in row to fall is Liberator, the widely appreciated horizontal shoot'em up with softsprites, smooth scrolling great sfx; somewhat prejudiced due to various flaws and unrewarded no ending, its strong points are the Uridium-esque graphics and the great fun playing against the mothership's generator.
It's now time for revenge: Luca/FIRE takes to you Liberator +5MD, a jewel version implementing ingame modifications, and a useful autofire feature in order to blow up generators easy way! As any respectable crack deserves, a classy intro with game's docs precedes the game itself: all coded by the cracker himself, and supplied with a sweety tune composed ad hoc by Csabo/LOD.
Ok for the cutey tune, but Csabo did more than you can see on the surface, occupying $1ED (493) bytes only for that tune! Why this effort? Well, simple: what has been thought to run on C16, must continue to run on C16! Yes, this cracked game lies into the C16 memory limitation, and can be run on any machine in the 264 series!
Time to scatter some generator's debris in the deep space, we shall meet again in other forthcoming cracks. |
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| | Four Missing And Rare Tapes Are In! | | Posted by Luca on 2013-04-06 |
 When the community asks, the community promptly answers loud and clear!
We asked for some missing tapes since months, moreover the famous case about the two different versions of Xargon Wars raised up again. This has moved MIK to save the day, under the motto:"It's saturday, let's dump some damn tapes!". Once copied as TAP images, the whole pack of four was ready to be spreaded, and that's how we've got the TAP files for Joey, the very rare Room Ten, Xargon Wars first version without turbo loader, and...ohoooo Aliens as one of the super rare tapes around!
Big bash MIK, we thank you so much! And we hope that many other buddies shall move their 1531 cables to join in and enrich the TAP archive, 'coz many many other missing files await to be crossed out from the list. |
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| | Happy 39th Birthday TCFS! Wah-tchaaaa! | | Posted by Luca on 2013-03-28 |
 It's the day! Today is the 28th of March, hence all together in one voice we say: happy birthday TCFS, you're 39 now!
Does exist a better way to celebrate one of the most notable personalities ever in the Plus/4 scene, than release a celebration trainer of Exploding Fist +4 as one of his most loved converted games? Download Exploding Fist +5MD!, and enjoy cheating against your opponent, reaching the ranking of Master in a snap of fingers! That's the surprise present that Luca and all the FIRE crew wanna give to TCFS and to all the Plus/4 aficionados all over the world! Wah-tchaaaa! |
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| | Plus/4 Asteroids Emulator | | Posted by Luca on 2013-03-16 |
 Don't believe in lazy saturdays so close to a new spring time, when anybody thinks nothing notable can really happen! That's the right time to expect the unexpected to happens!
Norbert Kehrer is not a n00b into the emulation field, it's not for a coincidence his own site is named Norbert's Emulators. He thought that the Atari coinop game classic Asteroids that hit in the arcades in 1979, all in all, is based on a 6502 CPU, a proper video generator for vectors and some circuitry for the audio output. In the very end, machines like C64 and Plus/4 work with a similar heart, so why don't emulate that old fashioned vector game in all its charming elegance?
Asteroids is the pretty cool result Norbert has achieved: a very playable version of the Atari's ancient gem, even at higher levels, when the vector objects on screen are so many to move. The Plus/4 version runs faster than the C64 one, due to the advantage of the automatic doubleclocking that occurs when the Plus/4 raster draws on the borders.
Polished, playable, unforeseen. The only thing we can ask is: more of those surprises. Thanks Norbert!
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| | Darker Side Of The Dark Side | | Posted by Luca on 2013-03-15 |
 How many times we've checked and checked and checked again the disk collections? Well, we've made it for years, and at this point nothing can be actually discovered on those disks...
Wrong, absolutely wrong: sometimes the best fishes pass through the net of our sieves for years!
And this is the perfect case to describe what we're talking above: we found Dark Side (Csory), a version of the famous Freescape game Dark Side, which has been previously converted by Tarzan, ported to Plus/4 by Csory. This latter version features way better keyboard interfacing, a better conversion in single particulars like the jetpack window on the panel, and addons like the intro picture. This is a version that worths to be played till the end!
Some other precious stones lie around the big diamond hidden for so many years. The claimed 1551 version of Techno Trance fixed by Chicken has finally raised up from somewhere, some forgotten demos by Unlimited have been added too (especially Unlimited Membership (Older) which has been easily confused with the latter released Unlimited Membership), also added the 1551 version of Bard's Tale III released by Ceekay and the Manowar rerelease of Supremacy.
A complete list follows: 38 Sec. Format, Disk To Tape Transfer, Copy 224, Copy 226, Disk Turbo, Elan0, Fast-validate, Stellar 7 (alt), Dload V3.23 (versions), JCL Assembler (version), Charset Inverter V1.0, Dark Side (Csory), Eliza Packed , Unlimited Demo, Unlimited Membership (Older), Bard's Tale III (1551), Comic, Die Insel Der 1000 Gefahren, Purple Turtles (crack), Supremacy (version), Techno Trance (1551). |
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| | Club Info 129 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-03-13 |
 Erich/Ultd is here with the first Club Info of the year. (For those two don't know: it's a German-language disk mag, published every 3 months.) Side B doesn't have many new programs as it's mostly dedicated to SVS-Calc 2.0. There's a ton of articles on Side A, though: reviews of new programs, tips & tricks, documentation for Scapeghost and Games Creator and more. Check it out! |
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| | Preys Of A Hunting Weekend | | Posted by Luca on 2013-03-10 |
 It has been a relaxing weekend of flu and bustling about the D64s in one of the older collections we have, just to pull out some missing old game cracks, just in order to persevere in our new viewpoint about cracks.
And yes, we've collected some new cracks and trainers we're proud to have in the database. But, as usual statistics teach to all of us, sometimes you also catch something you've missed before. The big fish today is Renaissance C16, the conversion of a famous version of the Othello game. We all know that Renaissance has been converted from C64 under the FYC label. Not the same with this C16 one, which seems to be much like a commercial release.
Other notable new programs: another Pigmy's tool we didn't included before called Digi Drums II, an ancient tape-to-disk copier as Kofa-kopi, another tape-to disk program including Nova Turbo hacking called Tape Copy, and a German Game Basic by Telesoft.
We've also changed the files for Danger-Willi and Helix with some complete ones.
Here is the complete addons list: Alien Invasion (crack), Blaze (crack), Digi Drums II, Digital Ball, Jetbrix (crack), Joe Blade 2 (crack), Karting Grand Prix (crack), Kofa-kopi, Krackout (crack), Laza! (crack), Magician's Curse (crack), Mario Brothers (crack), Megazone (crack), Mesél Az Erdő (crack), Molecule Man (trainer), Mychess 2.0 (crack), Netrun 2000 (crack), Pharaoh's Tomb (crack), Popeye (crack), Pottit (crack), Raider (crack), Renaissance C16, Superman (crack), Thrust (trainer), Timeslip (trainer), Helix (file), Tape Copy, TV Bongo, Tycoon Tex (crack), Ürkaland (crack), Xargon's Revenge (crack), Xcellor8 (crack), Zeppelin (crack), Danger-Willi (file), Démonok Birodalma (crack), Game Basic, Pagemaker (crack), Summer Events (crack), Way Of The Exploding Fist (crack). |
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| | Pirate Adventure Manual | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-03-07 |
 Spektro sent us a scanned version of the Pirate Adventure Manual. This 12-page booklet came with Scott Adams' Pirate Adventure. It has tips on playing adventures in general, getting around and mapping. Check it out! Big thanks to Spektro for his contribution to the archive, and remember to send in any new/missing Commodore 16/Plus4 material you might have. |
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| | A Never Used Loading Screen Rises | | Posted by Luca on 2013-03-05 |
 And now for something completely different. And weird. Why wasting time to draw the graphics for a loading screen, and in the end do not use it?
After some chatting with Andrew Morris, author of several graphics for various Mr. Chip Software classic hits, he recovered some diskettes containing sparse bits and workstages of graphics, mostly done for famous C64 games. In most of the D64s, there's a Graphics Master copy, clear signal that Andrew used the C16 charset editor made by Michelangelo Pignani as main graphic tool in order to edit characters.
In the very last one of the whole pack, apart of another copy of the formerly cited editor, and the original charset done for Xadium logo and letters, there is a graphics set which can be displayed by loading and running two separate custom viewers written in BASIC. It's a DizasterBlaster logo, plus the Americana label, one viewer is for C64, the other for C16. It should have been used as loading screen for a cassette loader.
Andrew Morris himself declared he doesn't remember why that screen hadn't been added to the final release, though ready to go. What we can see is the declared release date: year 1986, one year before the official release year. Viewer+graphics can be downloaded from here. |
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| | Rare Newsstand Compilation Found | | Posted by Luca on 2013-02-23 |
 This one is a very particular tape collection of pirated C16 games, because it's the one and only known newsstand collection released by Pubblirome with C16 games, in the time when Pubblirome was one of the most active C64 oriented publishers of newsstand cassettes.  Moreover, it's a LONG tape, with 20 hacked games per side (side A has Vic20 games recorded on), and in general the longer the tape is, the rarest is the chance to find it working. |
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| | Rare Maniax Tape Found | | Posted by Luca on 2013-02-15 |
 It's a Maniax, Maniax on the tape! And it's playing like it's never played as cracked!
We've finally found an original tape for Maniax, the colorful Qix clone released by our beloved Kingsoft in 1988! We've bought for less than a dozen Euros, and promptly dumped into .TAP format. It comes in its original tape suit as you can see in the cassette's picture, but in a deck with copied cover and inlay instructions, just like it should have been a sort of closure offer stuff.
The purchase of this original version has allowed us to understand few data about Maniax:
- some graphic tiles used as bonuses are originally broken in the tape version, this means it wasn't due to a bad cracking consequence;
- even in the original tape the infamous bug which randomly occurs after the 2nd level does happen, consisting both in a non moving main foe and preventing the background graphics to appear when an area is closed;
- the same bug does not generally happen in Maniax (MOS), hence might it the latter be a crack from the disk copy, maybe different from the tape one?
We're still hunting for the disk version of Maniax, even spotted around but at high prices. Who wanna join into the big hunting challenge? |
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| | Hires Color 7 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-02-12 |
 Erich/Ultd is here with the 2nd release this year, the 7th part of his Hires Color series. Hires Color 7 contains 32 images and utilises the Magica driver. With several Duce and Veto (C64 graphicians) pictures included, it's a good selection. Thanks to Erich for this release, enjoy! |
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| | New Scans | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-02-10 |
Several new scans have been added to the Plus/4 World collection today:
* First, we have the German version of Targ Survival Kit, called Targ-Überlebenspackung. This was bundled with the German Mercenary Compendium Edition. Thanks to Rüdiger and C16 Chris for these! (Watch out for the ultra-hq versions, they are huge.)
* Hans got his hands on the manual for Page Setter V2.0, this has been added in PDF format (see: Page-Setter 2.0). He's been in contact with the program's author, so other info might be forthcoming.
* First time contributor Björn saw that we needed the cover for the Tynesoft game Munch It, so he scanned it and sent it in. This has been now added, and in very high quality too!
Thank to all who sent in this stuff, check it out and enjoy! |
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| | Retro Hardware Project: 1541 II/1551 | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-01-16 |
 Our unstoppable and extremely talented hardware guru BSZ did it again! As his latest project, he converted a standard Commodore 1541-II drive into a super dual drive, which also functions as a 1551 on the touch of a button. The hardware two drives have internally similar hardware, but there are plenty of differences, including clock speed, etc. He designed and added a new board into the remaining free space of the 1541 II, and - after a lot of grief and effort - it works! You can find the entire story with a lot of pictures on his project page (unfortunately on in Hungarian):
http://hup.hu/node/120659
Save me, Google Translate, you're my only hope!
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| | Cirno | | Posted by Csabo on 2013-01-02 |
 Let's start the new year off with a picture Luca spotted: Cirno was drawn by Exin. It was entered into the Oldskool Graphics compo on the Ultimate Meeting, which was held at the end of last year. I personally think it's a solid piece of work. Love it? Hate it? Indifferent? Discuss on the forums! |
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