|  Boring Stuff! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-12-30 |
 Did you think that his little programme from back in October was the only thing gerliczer was planning to haunt you with this year? You were almost right. But unfortunately, your luck has run out. After two days of fretting, swearing and name calling he managed to hunt down and eliminate the pesky bug blocking the release. Please, welcome with the well-deserved tedium his new intro: Boring Stuff. |
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|  | On the heels of the Pets Rescue and Alpharay loader, BSZ brings you all an SD2IEC loader for Lykia! | [ comments ] |
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| | Merry Christmas To You All! | | Posted by 5tarbuck on 2023-12-23 |
| Ho ho ho!!! Have you all been good this year? Then Santa and his hard-working helpers have a little gift for you... |
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| | Encouraged the by the resounding success of the previous loader, BSZ just made an SD2IEC loader for Alpharay! | [ comment ] |
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| | Doomed PETSCII Pacman! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-12-10 |
 Have you ever wondered what would combining Doom and Pac-Man would end up like? Wonder no more, Doomed PETSCII Pacman by Ko-Ko is here to answer that.
Don't expect typical Pac-Man gameplay, almost everything works slightly differently. Eating power pellets can have terrible effects, but they are needed to level up. Eating ghosts is deadly as always. In addition to the conventional Pac-Man enemies (Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde) this game also has Zinky and Drinky!
Enjoy! |
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| | C16+4: Do The Math And Find The Mag | | Posted by Luca on 2023-12-05 |
 We've known about C64Mark through his delicious redux versions of some C16 cult games, and due to his weekly activity as live streamer on his Twitch channel. Probably the audience doesn't know him as a collector of games of the era in their physical copies, and games' magazines in early times.
Exactly as regards this latest passion of him, a few days ago he had the chance to put his hands on a rare series of fanzines, titled as 20 User, where the number 20 is a straight reference to the funny sum of "16+4", does this rings more than one bell into your head?
C64Mark has found and consequently purchased five issues in series from 1 to 5, and of course we don't know if there are further issues of this magazine, which presents itself as "the official magazine of C16 and Plus/4 User's Club". What we do know, however, is that the people behind the product used to sign as Micro Media, and the editorial board was located in the heart of Scotland, in Carluke, a city in the Lanarkshire county.
20 User fanzine is a precious testimony of the era, every issue includes passionate reviews of the games and news about the next releases to be, shining of that teen energy of which somone of us could have some memories about. Do you remember if one of these magazines has ever come into your hands?
[Issue 1] [Issue 2] [Issue 3] [Issue 4] [Issue 5] |
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| | Into The Eagle's Nest Deluxe | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-12-05 |
09 September 1990: Mutschler Péter, better known as Mucsi, has released a Plus/4 porting of the C64's Gauntlet-styled game Into The Eagle's Nest. It was a lovable conversion work, but the game resulted as compromised by some strongly personal choices in the graphics, some notable bugs, plus the bugs naturally present even in the original game. All in all, a brave attempt, reaching a debatable result. It's Csabo/LOD, who embraced the task to integer the old code with new fixes and some new features from scratch, also to enrich the presentation with a cool intro and add so many stuff and fixes, in order to have a real tangible Into The Eagle's Nest Deluxe! Once purged from any kind of bug, and found the right compomises to keep its aspect at best on Plus/4, Into The Eagle's Nest Deluxe is now the best way to play the super classic from Pandora software house.
As the game says: "let's get down to some serious destruction!"
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| | Meet Your Own Ghosts At Blackwood Manor | | Posted by Luca on 2023-12-02 |
 It's Christmas time for Mr. and Mrs. King, and what's better than living that magic time of the year by moving into a remote Scottish manor house, just days before the end of 1986?
The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor is an award-winning interactive horror from Stefan Vogt, the acclaimed author of Hibernated 1 and The Curse of Rabenstein. Take on the role of novelist Thomas King and his wife Cora. Seeking inspiration for his next book, Thomas begins to explore the history of Blackwood Manor, only to uncover a dark secret that dates back centuries to the days of the Great Scottish Witch Hunts. It's a complex interactive fiction piece written in Infocom's advanced Z-machine format XZIP. The game has three different endings, a bad, a neutral and a good ending, depending on the player's choices. It is very likely that the player, on a first playthrough, will not reach the good ending, even though it is possible. Reaching the bad or neutral ending first is part of the experience and helps the player understanding the true intentions of some of the NPCs and the impact of decisions made, so they may be reconsidered. The Ghosts of Blackwood Manor is following the path of some of the most iconic interactive fiction works from the 80s and early 90s, trying to resemble a retro look and feel but it also aims to meet modern era expectations. There are no dead ends and the diffculty level is moderate. Generally it's more about experiencing a story rather than drowning the player in frustration.
Initially released as freeware/NYP under the new label Moonmist Entertainment on a plethora of systems from the '80s, a commercial distribution by poly.play is on the way. We suggest to play it for free, but the author has spent tons of time passion and work on this game, so we think that you should show some appreciation by dropping a very reasonable quid at the official page. |
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| | Traffic Troubles With Yewdow! | | Posted by Luca on 2023-11-23 |
 Inufuto could not act more Japanese than how he's showing to be: the punctuality of his publications is proverbial, and, as the previous year four months circa has passed between his summer game to the after one, this year too he does not deny himself, and just like a Swiss clock he knocks down his fifteenth impact with Yewdow!
Here's the matter: a mate of you drives his car to collect all the flags on the screens, but he doesn't know where to turn the car in order to reach the flags, until you deploy some significative road signs on his track. Unfortunately, an annoying dude hinders your job, and the car itself... Well, you won't like to be hit by a car on the run! The walls could be of some help, but they collapse once hit, just like your chances of victory!
So give it a deep try, and go for discovering the cheapest tracks to solve all the screens! |
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| | Charity Calendar 2024! | | Posted by George on 2023-11-15 |
 Neil from the RMCRetro Channel has chosen George's picture for his Charity Calendar 2024. This is a great honor for the whole Commodore Plus/4 community. The main theme for the calendar is Big-Box games. Please support his charity project for preschool children!
The calendar can be ordered here. The price includes shipping and a signature version can also be ordered. |
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| | A "Dex"citing Map! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-11-03 |
 If you've ever wondered what the map of Dex looks like, you're in luck: I (Csabo) created a map for the game.
There's also a couple of other things that might be interesting for hard-core games. If you want to take a deep dive, read on! |
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| | Cauldron II: The Pumpkin Strikes Back! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-10-31 |
 Happy halloween Plus/4 scene; and what better way to celebrate this spooky holiday than digging up some classic games that fit the theme. How about... Cauldron II? What? It doesn't exist for the Plus/4? Gosh, what a pity. Oh well, everyone go home, nothing to see here.
Wait what?! TCFS actually converted this game to the Plus/4?! That changes everything!
This time the player takes on the role of Bouncey - what a fun name for a pumpkin - who does, in fact, bounce, constantly. Your quest is to guide him through Witch's castle (more than 120 screens!) to enact his revenge. There are six magical items - a Chalice, Axe, Shield, Crown, Scissors, and Book of Spells - scattered throughout, and Bouncey must collect them in order to complete the game. Avoid all the baddies - some of which Bouncey can shoot down, if he collects the "spark". It won't be easy!
Fire up that old iron and load this game immediately! Happy halloween! |
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| | Kitaro's Silk Road! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-10-30 |
 After his last, less than stellar result in converting music to our machines gerliczer still refuses to give up trying. Although his original idea was a bit different, he thought that the new piece he managed to somewhat tame should be put to some use. So, he took his song data and player, duct taped it to the converted album art and now presents it to the community. Please, try enjoying Kitaro's Silk Road in gerliczer's interpretation. |
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| | A large pack of previously missing Hungarian educational programs have been added, complete with cover scans, TAP files and cassette photos. | [ comments ] |
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| | Stinger | | Posted by Luca on 2023-10-10 |
 Question: Is Fabrizio Caruso the Italian Inufuto, or is the latter the Japanese equivalent? We previously mentioned this, but no answer seems to have emerged.
However, what has emerged is Stinger, the new game developed by Fabrizio Caruso. Stinger showcases the incredible capabilities of his Cross-Lib, a universal retro-hardware library that allows for potential game compilation on 200 different retro systems. Currently, 73 of these binaries have already been compiled and made available here. Stinger is an exciting shooter game featuring power-ups, 6 unique levels, 5 different types of enemies, and various items to collect. Let's see how skilled the audience is at achieving high scores! |
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| | Bobby Bearing +7DGMF 101% (NTSC/PAL) | | Posted by Chronos on 2023-09-29 |
 Bobby Bearing is an isometric action-adventure game released by The Edge in 1986 for the Sinclair Spectrum. It was ported to the Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 by Trevor Inns. Originally converted to our little machine by Ceekay and Plasma in just two days in 1990, but it was unplayable due to several critical game breaking bugs. So we (Csabo, Siz, Kichy and Me, Chronos) fixed it and put some extras in it.
Enjoy! |
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| | HVTC Update September 2023 | | Posted by Luca on 2023-09-28 |
It's that time of the year! The High Voltage TED Collection, also known as HVTC, needs a refreshing update, 'coz we've had sooo many new releases, and the modern era of the Plus/4 demoscene is recording a healthy tendency to TEDsound tunes's usage.
Actually, we've more than 90 new entries! After all, keep in mind that the single TED Vibes and TED Vibes 2, massive celebrations of the TEDsound, include a total of 28 brand new tunes. Csabo has decisely begun a fulcrum of reference to have the TED playing at its best into your AAA retrogame, that's the reason why his folder got bigger this time too, reaching the 111 single files. Delest and 5tarbuck are busy guys too, due the fact that their respective groups count on them for the musical score of their productions. But other composers too are getting a habit in TED music, people whose come back after a first approach: h0ffman, Hermit, FADE (now in Exceed!), Chabee... And not to mention one very notable new entry: Jammer, who has shown the power of his own player.
A complete report of what has been added, moved or fixed can be read here in the whatsnew.txt.
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!
This is the straight link to the ZIP file. |
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| | The Empire Strikes Back! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-09-25 |
 Last year, some of you may have seen a C64 Star Wars game by the group Megastyle, which is a remake of an old Atari 2600 game. It's one of those games where the die-hard Plus/4 fan just sighs; "oh well, we don't really have shooters like this, there's just too many sprites".
But one man, he stands tall on a mountain top, wind blowing in his hair, staring off to the sunset, and he says... Well, he says "No. This shall be done". His mind is already hard at work, thinking about how to pull of the impossible, and display software sprites on top of parallax scrolling. And then suddenly he's in front of a computer, and his fingers are typing faster than the eye can see, the heavenly choir reaches its crescendo, and everything turns white... (Sorry about that nerdgasm, where was I?) Oh yeah, that man is TCFS.
If you're up for some Star Wars themed shooting, fire up that old Plus/4 (or an emulator) and watch in amazement as The Empire Strikes Back! |
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| | Lancess Priya: May The Farce Be With You | | Posted by Luca on 2023-09-23 |
 In the year 1983, Atari had the honour to capture the lore of George Lucas' Star Wars into the videogame's world, and what had popped out was a wireframe vectors' dream enclosed within a luxury furniture accompanied by stereo sound. Unfortunately, the 8bit home computers wouldn't boast an equivalent power, and all the conversions had been judged mediocre as higher of those scores.
But now, in a brand new millenium with brand new ideas, Dr. TerrorZ, guru of the PETSCII in any of its uses, takes back the home computers' rights in the 3D description of the game environment: we are 8bit, we better move characters than vectors, so why don't use'em in order to boost a decent starwars-ish simulation game at the desire framerate?
Those are the reasons behind Lancess Priya, a first person fly'n'shoot game which looks far far more than just inspired to the classic coin-op. Planet Eartha is under attack from the evil lord Luken Faija and his fleet of Battlestars. Lancess Priya is the only hope. Proceed through Space Battle, Battlestar Surface, and Battlestar Trench scenes, avoid enemy fire or deflect them by shooting, earn wave bonuses by destroying the required number of targets, such as enemy ships, tower tops and bunkers, destroy the Battlestar you need to hit the reactor core(s) at the end of the trench.
Compared to the C64 original, winner of the WiLD Demo Competition at Vammala Party 2023, this adaptation shows less colors and differs by some graphic elements only, but move frantically fast more than the original. You only have to try it and improve your score. Now go, young hero! And may the Farce be with you! |
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| | Colodrio! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-09-10 |
 Function 2023 also brought a new game: Logiker released his first Plus/4 game called Colodrio.
The name is a portmanteau of "Color" and "Holladrio" (the yodelling sound). Your task is to sort out the colorful tiles by color and brightness. This cute little puzzler offers 3 playing modes (Standard, Expert and Relax), has adjustable music/sfx options and a built-in little introductory story.
Enjoy! |
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| | Function Party 2023 | | Posted by Chronos on 2023-09-10 |
 This year's Function demoscene party took place in Budapest on 8-10 September. According to the organisers, more than 300 people turned up and partied, there was a Viti grill sausage bar and the Pécs sceners were also cooking pizzas. Luckily, a good number of Plus/4 faces also attended the party. In line with recent trends, we had a lot of Plus/4 performances. In the game Colodrio by game developer Logiker, we have to arrange colour blocks according to colour and lightness. It doesn't sound very exciting when you write it down, but if you try it, you won't be disappointed, a very interesting and playable stuff with a nice music by Csabo. And then there is the TED Vibes 2 music box, the work of Murphy/Exceed and Pal / Offence and 15 well known scene musicians. I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that next year will be the 40th anniversary of our little flamingo soaring in the clouds and we'd like everyone alive and kicking to jump into a good trackmo! We've made a nice Middle Aged Flamingo demo for this, and by scanning the qr code at the end of the demo you can get to the dedicated project page on plus4world to find out more. Last but not least, MMS has also come up with a Petscii image called Eye of the... It was a great party, thanks to everyone who attended or contributed with something..
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| | TED Vibes part 2 | | Posted by Murphy on 2023-09-09 |
 The TED Vibes musicdisk got a sequel.
For TED Vibes 2, 15 musicians from 9 countries joined to create music for the TED chip. Some of them are veteran musicians from the SID and AY scene.
The result was an exciting and stylistically very diverse collection of music. The brilliant graphics were created by Pal / Offence, a well-known pixel artist from c64 and Amiga scene. |
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| | Stunt Car Racer! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-08-22 |
 An old 90s rumor is now a reality: you can play Stunt Car Racer on your Commodore Plus/4!
The conversion of this game has been rumored and discussed many times over the years, but it never came to fruition until cobbpg decided to port the game. Since he also created a C64 SuperCPU version, he was already intimately familiar with this game's code, therefore a Plus/4 port seemed obvious - much to our delight :-)
The original game was programmed by Geoff Crammond in 3 years. It's well-reviewed and often called a "classic". If the author's name rings a bell, that's because he's also the programmer of Revs, the simulator that Pigmy converted in 1988.
The Plus/4 version takes advantage of the TED's colors palette. The gameplay however is 100% faithful to the original, so the various hints you can find online for the C64 version apply and can be helpful (e.g. C64 Wiki.) The game features a title picture by Unreal, which is a reimagination of the original using TED colors.
Enjoy! |
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| | Airwolf Enhanced Released! | | Posted by C64Mark on 2023-08-02 |
 New Features:
- 16 new screens - taking the total to 25
- 5 more scientists to rescue (now 8 in total)
- Improved controls
- Improved chars and animation, based on C64 release
- New scoring system
- Respawn death bug removed
- Infinite score bug removed
- Cheat modes built in
- NTSC fixed
- All still crammed into 16K! |
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| | Carrion's 121 colors - new slideshow from Carrion | | Posted by Murphy on 2023-07-16 |
 Censor Design and Exceed released a slideshow at the Árok party 2023 entitled Carrion's 121 Colors. In the slideshow you can see 15 brilliant pictures from the works of the Polish pixel master Carrion. There will be some familiar images, but the selection also includes 3 completely new graphics. By the way, this is the first plus/4 release of the legendary C64 group Censor Design. |
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| | Árok Party the 24th! 14-15.07.2023 | | Posted by Chronos on 2023-07-16 |
 The 24th Árok Party took place in Ajka, where a record number of plus/4 sceners and productions were represented. There were entries in almost every category, at game dev compo Verona presented a very unique, very meta game called Blob Fox, and master TCFS presented his long rumoured genius game Lemmings, rebuilt from scratch. Graphics weren't neglected either, with Chronos riding the summer vibe with Koalafied, while MMS had a 3D "what if" image inspired by C64's Creatures with Imagine Creatures! and Absence's new hero Hevo showed off a totally party-ready Shadow of the Breast, and last but not least Carrion also gave us a childhood cartoon hero fighting AI, Mikrobi, in Mikrobi vs AI. If that wasn't enough for the 264 users who are eager for fresh stuff, we got two demos, one of which is Carrion's 121 Colors, which could be considered as the debut of Censor Design on Plus/4, and the trackmo False Idols, produced by Section 31, which has a lot of little gags and interesting things, but I would highlight the return of Jeva. Last but not least, we also get a Ted track from FADE called Good Ol' Fashioned North Korean Necromancy. A little extra release: instead of a good old fashioned party coding, this year we had party drawing. Lavina’s son drew an MC picture at the party called RPG Maker. It was a great party, we loved every minute of it! Thank you to the organizers and the contestants for all their performances!
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| | Tomato Worm! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-07-04 |
 Brand new from javierglez: Tomato Worm is here! It's an implementation of the puzzle game by the same name, original written by GuerraGames.
Puzzle through 64 levels in this nibbler style game by guiding your ever-growing worm; make sure to eat all the tomatoes before you run out of room to move. Check it out! |
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| | YAPE 1.2.3! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-06-26 |
Gaia is back with another excellent update to YAPE, the popular Plus/4 emulator. The list of changes includes:
- more informative trace window in 32-bit developer build
- improved CPU halt
- improved PAL display phase inversion
- bug in unmapped memory write in 16kB mode
- joystick reset and uninitialized state vector
- more reliable monitor command history and navigation
- various-palette related bugs fixed (in high accuracy mode; digi palette in OpenGL mode etc.)
Download your updated version from the official homepage! |
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| | Play Othello in 1kB! | | Posted by Gaia on 2023-05-25 |
 Perhaps not everyone knows that Reversi and Othello are not quite the same games after all. Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, invented in 1883 and played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. Othello is a variant patented in 1971 with a fixed initial setup of the board. The latter is what most people know under either of these two names. The objective of the game is to have the majority of disks turned to display one's color when the last playable empty square is filled. We have quite a few of these kind of games already in our collection, heck, it even has its own category!
Problem is... most of these implementations are programmed in BASIC (the only known machine code port being Renaissance) and as we all know BASIC is way too slow for any kind of AI. Another problem with them is that you have to type the coordinates of your moves which is rather inconvenient when moving around with the cursor keys could be just as easy to implement. So, if these two things have so far been the only ones hindering you from playing Othello on our platform, then the wait is over! By cleaning up an almost 10-year-old backlog, the 1kB VIC20 version has now finally been converted to the Plussy: Othello 1k. It was an actual entry of the 2002 Minigame compo by one of our casual contributors, Anders Carlsson (check out Beggars Aren't Choosers) where it ranked 23rd. Despite the size (only 1024 bytes!) its strength is rather decent, so it's always a venerable opponent for a quick match. Enjoy! |
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| | Maps for Hungarian Adventures! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-05-06 |
A couple of older Hungarian text adventures have been ported from Commodore Plus/4 to the TVC (which is an old 8-bit computer manufactured in Hungary). Laky has created YouTube videos as well as maps for these, and the maps are now here for all to enjoy.
The maps/games are A Hős Lovag (The Heroic Knight), Hajótörött (Castaway), Madarak Bolygója (Planet of Birds), Szökés A Várból (Escape from the Castle) and Tarzan Adventure.
In case you were to pick up these old adventures, you will now have a handy map as your guide! |
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| | Digits! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-04-18 |
 Step right up folks, there's a new game available for your C16 or Plus/4! Is it an epic space adventure with blasting lasers? Hunting monsters? Racing a fast car?
Nope! It's math. *crickets*
Hey, where did everybody go?
Joking aside, Digits is a rather simple math-based puzzle. It's been popping up in articles recently (Forbes, The Verge). If you don't mind doing some calculations in your head, perhaps give it a try (or play the original online). |
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| | BASIC 10Liners 2023 Results | | Posted by Luca on 2023-04-13 |
 Silently, in the loud cloud of the mega releases for the mega parties, quietly but inexorably, the 9th edition of one of the most loved online compo parties has reached its natural end with the final results of the 2023 edition.
BASIC 10 Liners 2023 has seen once again some very interesting Basic V3.5 works shine in the roster of the participants.
In the PUR-80 category, three friends have crossed swords against their fierce rivals, but most of all this competition has seen the name of a fundamental Plus/4 scene's group raise from the grave! Yes, Synergy is back, thanks to the two entries by Haegar, which got ranked respectively 24th (Mini Tron) and 29th (Soli Pong)! Tron264 by FeCO reached the 35th place, although a Tron-like game offering two game's modes would probably have deserved more than that.
Veteran coder raze carried around the 264 flag, joining the PUR-120 category with Mini Mars Plus, a vector game which refreshes the soul of a Lunar Lander -ish ancestor with a splash of Thrust. 8th place out of 9 for it.
And in the end, here we are in the massive EXTREM-256 category, where FeCO again puts you behind the wheel on the highway, the road is a mess, the horizon gets blue far away, the 17th place is on sight.
Congratulations to all the participants, you honoured the beloved black box. See ya in 2024! |
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| | 9 Hungarian Books Added! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-04-13 |
| Big thanks to Lacus, who scanned 9 Hungarian books for us! |
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| | TED Vibes and Chromatic Distortion | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-04-09 |
 Revision 2023 is still underway, but two great productions have already appeared on our small scene.
First up is TED Vibes: a music box by Murphy/Exceed with wonderful graphics by Poison/Singular. You can hear not less than 13 new TED tunes from 9 composers.
In the 4K intro front, edhellon is back with Chromatic Distortion, a follow-up to last year's Chromatic Admiration. Beautiful visuals plus a new tune by h0ffman.
UPDATE: Chromatic Distortion won the oldskool intro category in the compo. Be sure to check out these new releases! |
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| | Radar Rat Race! | | Posted by Gaia on 2023-04-05 |
 In our "games that could have been but weren't" pseudo-series (yes, think about Squirm 16 and Galaxian Plus4...) we continue to present you classic, old-school games that could have been released on our system, but for some reason they weren't.
Today's release, Radar Rat Race, is - again - a modified clone of an arcade classic released in 1980 by Namco, called Rally-X. It was first developed for the VIC-20 by HAL Laboratories in Japan, but soon enough, Namco's corporate lawyers convinced Commodore that it would not be such a good idea to release any unlicensed arcade games. So Commodore's software engineers went on and transformed the cars into rats, the streets into a maze filled with stationary cats, and renamed the game 'Radar Rat Race'. The game was a launch title for the VIC-20 released as a cartridge and was later also ported to the Commodore 64 in 1982, and now this version has finally been ported to the Commodore 16, too! Game journalists at the time criticized the game's controls and repetitive sound, but called it "quite exciting and amusing to play."
You have to guide your mouse through a giant maze. The "camera" only shows a small part of the maze at any given time. At least three rats pursue the player. The goal is to eat all of the pieces of cheese, shown for the entire maze on a radar screen, without getting caught by a rat or bumping into a stationary cat. By pressing the joystick button, the mouse can disperse a limited amount of magical dust (called "star screen"), which confuses the rats for about five seconds. Once the round is complete, the game starts again, with more rats and faster play. Certain levels are special in that they are faster and have more stationary cats than normal levels ("speed run"). The gameplay is originally accompanied by a rhythmically altered version of a phrase from Three Blind Mice looping in a mere three seconds that gets on the nerves very quickly and was replaced by a complete composition by Maestro Csabo meddling other lesser known titles, but you can always get back to the original tune by pressing 'F3' on the title screen or 'E' during gameplay.
If you're a C16-only freak and the game still seems strikingly familiar to you, that is not a coincidence. We already have Menekülés, a "clone of the clone" with cats chasing your mouse and collecting cheese in a... guess what?... maze!
The game is relatively compact, so we could squeeze in a nice title screen for you, but we leave the details up to your Google skills. |
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| | WE:COME:FROM:PLANET:PETSCII | | Posted by Luca on 2023-04-01 |
 In a world moving toward the AI TextToImage tools, one man still resists, a man dangerously owning an armada of robots which are "...made by a real person to look like they were autogenerated by a computer...". And that man is buzz_clik in person!
PETSCIIBOTS takes the virtual PETSCII art back from the potential virtuality of those PNG image files filled with plenty of PETSCII made little (sometimes bigger!) robots, dropped by buzz_clik 5 years ago, at the time when he ignited his artistic project called "PETSCIIBOTS". So, who said "NFT"? Now those imaginary robots are real solid SEQ files, they're for real, ready to be used. A proper PETSCIIBOTS Player allows to browse both regular BOTS and bigBOTS, the entire organized collection of SEQ files is included into the packet in order to edit your own D64s containing Player + BOTS, and the same whole collection has been spread onto 10 D81 disk images which are very convenient to be used on SD2IEC devices.
Are we now closer to the Pocket ̶M̶o̶n̶s̶t̶e̶r̶s̶ Robots Plus/4 game we all await for? Gotta BOTS'em all! |
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| | Minesweeper Game Detected! | | Posted by Luca on 2023-03-31 |
 There's a new minesweeping galore to challenge in the city, and its name is Detector... MineDetector!
The powerful and long running LUMYDCTT IDE and compiler application created by Charlemagne shows its muscles again with a classic game where to avoid the mines buried in a field. A very laaarge field, this time!
Have some tries, have some more! |
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| | An Enigmatic Map! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-03-23 |
 Enigma, the '85 maze-shooter action game published by CBM now has a map! Ahem. That's it. You can look at it if you like.
Or perhaps, as long as we're talking about Enigma, we can dive deeper into this game. [ Read on ] for more. |
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| | Cracky! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-03-21 |
 Cracky is here! It's a new platformer game with an old-school look-and-feel, written by Japenese developer Inufuto. He writes his games using his own C compiler and assembler, and releases them on a multitude of 8-bit platforms (35+ and counting). Cracky is his 13th release.
Your task is simple: clear each level by collecting all the stars, while avoiding the baddies. The title refers to the floors, some parts crack when you walk over them once, creating holes in the platforms. Since there's no jumping, on most levels you must use this to your advantage to reach otherwise unreachable stars.
Check it out and enjoy! |
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| | Sumplete! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-03-14 |
 A game invented and coded by ChatGPT? It sure says so! We have to jump on this bandwagon quick, we're gonna make millions!...
Or, at the very least, we shall have a small new math-based puzzle game for Commodore Plus/4. Meet Sumplete, a somewhat Sudoku-like puzzle game. Your task is to delete numbers, so that the rows/columns add up to the sums displayed on the right/bottom. It might be a fun distraction for a few rounds. Enjoy! |
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| | Galaxian - The classic arcade game by Atari that could have been but wasn't | | Posted by Gaia on 2023-03-09 |
 Atarisoft was a brand name used by Atari, Inc. in 1983 and 1984 to publish video games for non-Atari home computers and consoles. It used a distinctive colour for each platform. Atarisoft worked solely with contractors and had no developers on its payroll. Although only existed for about two years and stopped operations when Warner sold its consumer division to Jack Tramiel, it had several dozens of popular titles in its catalogue. Unfortunately, going out of business coincided with the launch of the TED series so these Atari ports never made it to our platform.
During the haydays of the Home Computer era, the ports of popular arcade games was a big business, so it was no wonder that Atarisoft also jumped into the bandwagon by publishing Galaxian for the Commodore 64. Galaxian is a classic arcade game released originally in 1979. It was Namco's answer to the immensely popular classic, Space Invaders by Taito, but it could only reach a decent second place in popularity behind that.
Galaxian spawned many ports and conversions, the Commodore 64 version was written by Bill Bogenreif (of Designer Software). Interestingly, his company is still around today but it's no longer publishing video games. The game was originally released as a cartridge.
Although the title screen suggests 1983 as release year, the hidden text around the memory address $9DF0 tells a different story: the game was apparently finished and released in 1984 only, during the final days of Atarisoft. Despite the very capable hardware and some unused code chunks, the Commodore 64 port does not use any HW sprites at all, everything runs in multicolor bitmap mode, which made a plus/4 port quite straightforward. Admittedly, the game is quite rough around the edges, has a meager 6.1 score at Lemon64, but it has some of that genuine old-school touch that newer games don't and some folks do appreciate to this day.
The player assumes control of the Galaxip starfighter to protect Earth from several, increasingly difficult waves of alien ships. Gameplay involves destroying each formation of aliens, who are - as opposed to Space Invaders - are continuously launching descending attacks towards the player's ship in an attempt to smash it.
To remain as authentic as possible, the Plus/4 conversion is released as a cartridge dump as well. Enjoy! |
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| | Hey HVTC, You've Been cRTED! | | Posted by Luca on 2023-03-08 |
 HVTC had seen the light something like a dozen years ago. Although gathering executable .prg files which need a real machine or an external emulator, soon the main target of the project has become clear: have a modern player and a vast, near complete, collection of TEDsound music to be played on any nowadays PC. A proper format would have been needed first, and passionate coders like Gaia (TedPlay) and Siz (SIzPlay) gave their contribute to reach a valid choice which could include all the possible variables and data to convert every given music in a common, generic, dedicated format.
Today we present a new milestone in this long lasting mission, one signed by Hermit, former author of the famous TEDzakker. cRTED is a PC based music player running on both Windows and Linux OSes, playing TEDsound music converted to the brand new .TED format. The latter is actually an enhancement of the .TMF format introduced by Siz with the possibility to have the header/metadata at the end of the file, and this means that the new format can be both recognized by the cRTED player, and run as a normal .PRG file on any real machine or emulator! There's the possibility to use it as a command line with several options to input, but it obviously shines when used thru its GUI, featuring all the useful options which can be requested for this tool: infos display, restart/pause, fast forward, repeat/advance, volume control, switchable channels, fast/slow playlist scrolling all mouse and/or shortcut keys driven. The playlist in .TEL format is basically an editable text which can easily be edited by anybody, and includes both single files and entire folders.
The whole suite comes with the HVTC-ted source files, where the actual HVTC-ted converter can be used to re-create the HVTC collection into the new format, and the HVTC-ted (2023-03-08), currently a good selection from the whole HVTC (soon to be swapped with the complete one!).
This represents the 1.0 version of the cRTED project, which already includes shared and static library forms for a better inclusion in other TED-playback projects, looking forward to be ported to the largely used RockBox like its C64 cousin cRSID which is now the main SID-playback engine in RockBox.
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| | A tape turbo in 2023? Why not, it's the authentic retro feeling! Check out Speedy V3 by mc68k. | [ comments ] |
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| | Elite +4: Circle Closes | | Posted by Luca on 2023-02-28 |
 Habemus "fixum" maximus! Mark Moxon turns back to the coding scene, and improves the flicker free version of the super classic Elite +4 released some months ago by (almost) fixing the planets' flickering too! The cleanest version of the "game of a lifetime" (cit.) is now here.
Elite +4 Flicker free Π (pron.: Elite +4 Flicker free Pi) is the title of this new and apparently ultimate hack of the famous 3D space trading simulation, where, after the first fix regarding the ships, the planets have been (almost) fixed too. Why we say "almost"? Well, in all the versions, including the BBC original where those patches have been based, planets still flicker a bit when partially off-screen. This is because of the way the ball line buffer works: it's a consequence of the way the circles are stored as sequential arcs, forcing the erase/redraw sequence to involve slightly different segments. So this isn't strictly flicker-free, but it's way better than the default. On C64 and Plus/4, this is even more evident due to the slower processor.
This was the best moment to celebrate the genius of Pigmy, the man who converted the game when he was 15, in less than a week, using only a Datassette and the internal ML Monitor of the machine. That's why Luca took his time to give the original intro a cooler aspect. Overall, with a modernized titlescreen and a stable wireframe 3D, *this* is the Elite +4 version worth to be run on your hardware. |
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| | Usagyuuun Kniffel! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-02-26 |
 The newest member of Plus/4 World is Sirhadisen, and our new friend from Germany is here to gift us his first game: Usagyuuun Kniffel! It's a multiplayer Yahtzee game with some elements from the "Quan Inc." franchise (Usagyuuun and friends).
This project was a long time coming. Sirhadisen writes:
I started programming back in 1987, but I was too young to comprehend machine code in the limited time I was allowed to sit in front of a 60Hz screen. In April 2022 my nephew found an old book on machine language for the Plus4 and I decided to make up for what I missed in my childhood using the great resources that can be found on the internet nowadays XD.
The result of that work is now here for all to enjoy. Be sure to check it out! |
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| | Midi Expansion For The Plus/4! | | Posted by sabe on 2023-02-26 |
| Chizman has made a MIDI OUT expansion card based on Arduino Nano. Have a look at the demo on the hardware section here. |
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| | Sir Knight (Loves) C16 | | Posted by Luca on 2023-02-25 |
 Thee needeth not 32kB to saveth thy beloc'd princess!
C64Mark, the main and most important C16/Plus4 streamer known to date, the versatile C64 and C16 game developer with an attitude for the player-torturing games, the naive consumer of exotic flavoured beers, is back for his C16 sophomore production, dedicated to the not-that-famous Tynesoft classic Sir Knight title.
Basically, Sir Knight C16 fixes the debatable usage of the bitmap graphics which forced the noble predecessor to only work with a minimum memory of 32kB. C64Mark's complete rewriting of the game moves the field of action onto a less wasting screen RAM environment and softsprites, to make your C16 the perfect scenario for your own medieval heroic tale of jumping, dodging, running and princesses-saving.
As sometimes happens, less is more: in less memory, here come more levels (30!) with related names, the proper joystick control it deserved, a vanity board to start a challenge against both your and the other players, a real ending and much more! The addition of well greeted music, jingles and sfx is once again a worthy dmx87's affair.
Who is't'll succede to saveth the princess and triumph in the hisc're board? |
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| | TEDzakking Everywhere | | Posted by Luca on 2023-02-22 |
 Perfecting perfection? Yes, Hermit can! You need to compose sophisticated TED music for your forthcoming productions, but you aren't properly at home, so you can't handy have the proper emulator or the real machine, right? Now you can!
Hermit has released TEDzakker 1.2, the third incarnation of the TED music editor which pushed the sound editing capabilities on the TED machines beyond their limits, easily becoming the darling of 8bit music composers and demo makers. And from this 1.2 version, it's going crossplatform! As you can see into our Tools section, there are now two new distributions of TEDzakker 1.2 to be directly used on modern OSes: TEDzakker WIN for all of you Bill's BFFs, and TEDzakker Linux for the Rebel Alliance out there.
From now, you don't have any valid excuse for not experimenting on in your composing skills: use it literally anywhere. |
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| | Lost MX Stuff! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-01-31 |
 Unreal was digging through his old diskettes, and lo and behold, some program worth preserving have turned up! Three new/old releases have been added to our database:
* Lotus is a graphic by Unreal, a recreation of the yellow FerrariEspirit from Lotus Turbo Challenge 2.
* Metapharstic 1997 is yet another version of the trackmo that eventually got released in 2003. It's Beast's last demo, and he intended it to be absolutely top-notch. For demo scene members, it will be very interesting to see "new" parts that didn't make the final cut, and to ponder the long development time and interesting process this production went through.
* Finally Prototype is a game... prototype :-) An unfinished horizontal scrolling shooter, more like a tech-demo, but worth preserving nonetheless. Unreal dug up another unreleased converted intro, and these two linked together are now yours to enjoy! |
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| | Fixed Points Final Release | | Posted by Lavina on 2023-01-17 |
Exceed's flag is flying even higher!  The long awaited final version after the party version has just arrived. Acclaimed Plus/4 coder Murphy released the definitive version of Fixed Points, the latest trackmo to our beloved platform. Expect crispy coding and perfectness, even new content compared to the previous version, so head on to download it and enjoy! |
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| | Wizard Of Wor Classic! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-01-12 |
 TCFS is back with another classic game port: Wizard Of Wor Classic! If that name plus game combination rings a bell, no wonder: he has ported this game before, back in 1990. However, that port is not very faithful to the C=64 original. This one however, is. Great care has been taken to ensure the game looks, plays and sounds just right. The cherry on top is a cool new intro by Murphy and a hand-pixelled title screen from Unreal.
Are you ready for some hectic, two-player, maze-traversing, monster-shooting fun? Then be sure to load it up and submit your high score! |
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| | R.I.P. Skoro! :( | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-01-05 |
We are utterly heartbroken to have to report that Skoro, our friend and prominent Plus/4 coder has passed just a few days ago. Rest In Peace. |
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| | YAPE 1.2.2! | | Posted by Csabo on 2023-01-02 |
Gaia has just updated the popular Plus/4 emulator, YAPE. Here's what's new:
- SID card mouse emulation (in DirectInput mode)
- manufacturer dependent RAM powerup patterns
- copy emulator window to the clipboard as a bitmap
- the 32-bit build has now an opcode track window
- quotation mark printing bug (MPS-803)
- drive VIA emulation accuracy improvements
Download your copy now from the official homepage. |
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| | T-Rex Run! | | Posted by TRP on 2023-01-01 |
 Happy New Year Plus/4 World! After months of silence TRP is here and proud to present 220 Volt Team's 30th anniversary game: T-Rex Run. Big thanks to Csabo for the great music!
In the mid 2010's years an iconic creature was born in Chrome universe and now he moves to the Plus/4 world. Let's run! |
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