This particular issue is rather special for me as it contains a review by Peter Badrick about the RetroDerby GnG event that myself and my colleagues from the Retro Computer Museum attended.
If you missed out this year, event hosts Shaun Bebbington and Mr C16 – Chris Snowden are planning on holding similar events next year and I’m sure they’ll be announced in future issues of Commdore Free. Alternatively, I’ll post here.
A great read this month, and again, tons of new homebrew game info and articles – I particularly enjoyed the feature about tape piracy and its effect (or lack of ).
Outstanding work again CF team and if the jolly fella happens to stick a new shiny tablet device under the tree this year, treat it to a bit of Commodore love this Christmas and check out the tablet friendly epub and mobi (and PDF) editions or Commdore Free.
Hehe, warning! – There’s a picture of yours truly on page 35/36, That RCM Zip Stick joystick, Amiga & Banshee got a bashing that weekend!
Just got back from another damn fine weekend of retro gaming goodness at the Retro Computer Museum.
Despite a nip in the air, +40 classic computers, consoles, one projector and a collection of eager gamers was all that was needed to raise the temps and to get everyone enjoying themselves. There was a couple of new faces this time around which is always nice to see as well as the ‘usual suspects’ for guaranteed laughs and fun.
I’ve not taken a great deal of photos this time around as I was rather enjoying quite a bit of gaming on the Saturday including copious amounts of Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast. Here’s a handful of the quick snaps I made in between bouts.
This weekend was a chance to take a good look at some of RCM’s new toys like this Memotech MTX 512 complete with Rememorizer addon board which provides additional VGA output, SD card storage and 512k of extra RAM. With this much tech, I’m pretty sure our MTX 512 can now recreate our own Kelly LeBrock
The ZXpand on the ZX81 still continues to impress and at one point we had one of the old ’81′s running at 20mhz! The game ‘Mayhem’ still continues to be an event favourite and high score sessions to beat Stu’s 72 points where attempted. I think Soph came closest with 60 odd points.
JT was happy to test fit one of his SwinSID C64 SID chip replacements into one of RCM’s breadbins and take it for a test drive. Big thanks for letting me have one of these puppies myself. It’s currently sat in my C64 next to me playing a bumper crop of High Score Ballads from CSDB . More on the SwinSID later on.
I also managed to pick up another homemade SD2IEC for my Commodores as my own has developed a bit of a fault. Hopefully the chip will be of use to you JT?
Mike brought along his Android based MK808 mini computer which is so small it makes the Raspberry Pi look huge…and to think, something that small can run pretty much all console emulators (even PSX) full screen in hi def! XBMC runs beutifully on it as well as PC games like GTA3. Add to that all those lovely Google apps and for around £45, i’m highly tempted to get one of these myself. I’ll be researching a bit more on the Mk808 these coming days as its a real tinker’ers tech toy!
What was also impressive was Sophie’s new Atari Mega STE. Some of the demo’s running on this boxy monster were veeeery impressive. This was the first time I’ve seen a Mega STE before and despite it looking a bit ugly, was quite an impressive piece of kit it was. Soph was telling me it’s one of those rare items that pop up from time to time and she’d managed to locate this faulty unit on eBay in Germany which was being sold for next to nothing as it was faulty. Having won the item, said fault turned out to be very was minor and is all in working condition again. Top marks Soph!
Sunday was all about relaxed, chillin and having a natter and I spent a while trying out a someones Android tablet – one of those very impressive – now it’s a netbook, now it’s a tablet Asus Transformers thingymebobs. We wanted to see if we could get Mame and other emulators working with my iCade. After detecting via Bluetooth and pairing successfully we tried a few emulators but couldn’t get it to work . Even mame4droid, with native icade support wouldn’t work. In the end, we downloaded a simple joystick app, mapped the controls of the iCade as keyboard inputs and used this configuration to set the control type for each emulator. This time it worked, and really well too. In fact, just as well as on the iPad with no lag or connection issues after that initial hiccup. With Christmas coming, and if you’re an Android owning retro gamer. Maybe think about adding one to your list to Santa?
Messing around with the iCade, messing around with the MSX.
Amongst the games played this weekend, there was a couple that seemed to stand out for me so i’ve added them to my list further exploration.
More digital pinball courtesy of ‘Ruiner’ on the Atari Jag. I’m still tempted to get a Jag now, even if it’s just for this one game.
Moon Cresta on the Dragon 64 (via multicart). Suprisingly a very faithful port of the arcade original…on a Dragon!
Strider II – Sega Master – I’ve not played this one before and was instantly hooked. Will be tracking down my own copy of this fun little run and gun sequel.
Soviet Strike – Playstation. I haven’t really played any of the ‘Strike’ games since Desert Strike on the Sega Megadrive but this 3d-ish incarnation on the Playstation was actually rather fun.
More Soul Caliber but not before resting ones aching wrists. Thanks to Levs for bringing the arcade sticks in, much better than standard controllers. Am now on a mission to find myself one!
Even better connected to the projector and the lights off.
All in all a rather splendid weekend of gaming with friends new and old. That pretty much wraps it up for gaming events this year and it was nice to have the last of 2012 finished off at home at the retro computer museum.
Back in Derbyshire for day two of retro gaming and a more gentle start to the day compared to yesterday. After meeting up with chaps and chatting over a morning coffee, we fired up the machines and awaited our visitors.
During the morning I got to take another look at batch of Atari Jaguar games and one in particular was really fun to play. It was a Pinball game called – Ruiner.
Two tables are on offer which span over two or three screen. This is the first table and is based around 1950 cold war era of nuclear war and Defcon shenanigans. Plenty to shoot for to keep you entertained and some brilliant spot FX. Gameplay is a little slower that most pinball games but somehow this makes it more of fun to aim the ball.
The second table is similar to Dungeons and Dragons and again, rather fun to play. I did, however, prefer the first table and it’s this one that I’d really like to play more of in the future.
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There was also some pretty impressive Commodore hardware on show to and we were treated to a look at the SID chip addon board for the Commodore Plus/4 (have added one of these to my list to Santa!) and literally jaw dropping demonstrations of a Commodore 128D (a very nice machine in itself) which has outfitted with a SuperCPU expansion board.
A stock Commodore 64 runs at about 1 Mhz, so imagine multiplying this by 20 times and you’ve got one powerful machine which is technically faster than the Amiga . That’s what the SuperCPU does and with game like Driller which you probably know runs at about one frame per seconds on a standard c64, now runs just like a modern FPS game at +30 frames per second….fullscreen!
C128 in C64 mode…how much RAM!
In addition, it’s owner, and event co-host Shaun was able to demo some of the software specifically designed to show off the capabilities of a fully pimped C64/C128 including games like awesome-ness that is Metal Dust.
Never thought I see a C64/C128 running a game that looked so impressive, using the full colour pallette with so many objects and scrolling sprites, huge textured rocks, awesome soundtracks and digitised speech all running without flicker or hiccup. Note the FD-2000 Floppy Drive. This was one hellava setup!
I tried to capture Metal Dust on my camera but the monitor sync refresh was producing way too many lines on the recording so here’s a. Youtube video of the game in action.
The SuperCPU is a highly sought after item and can easily fetch up to £2000 so my research leads me to believe. It certainly a piece of Commodore tech that i won’t be owning but rather generously, Shaun has offered to loan his setup for our next RCM event! I can’t wait to take another closer look at it and sample some of the games that have been modified to take advantage of the hardware, such as Stunt Car Racer, Test Drive and Castle Master.
Shaun also demonstrating to Andy, few program tips like this simply three line code on the C64 to produce a very impressive maze display.
I also spent a lot of the BBC Master today, especially some of the arcade ports and was quite amazed at the quality on the ol’ Beeb. Galaxians, Joust and Moon Cresta were particularly fun and on the pin sharp image of the Cub monitor they looked even better.
Also, I’ve never played Thrust on the BBC before and have to say, it’s one of the nicest versions I’ve played to date..even if the controls were a bit odd.
I also spent quite a bit of time on Andy’s Amiga 1200 which has a rather daper 68030 board with 32mb ram, a 4GB CF HDD and plenty WHDLoad funtastic software.
A great afternoon on Sensible Soccer, Chaos Engine, Deluxe Galaga to get the wrists aching and then Pinball Fantasies high score tournament to give them a rest again
Dear Santa, please can I have some Ram for my A1200 please?
We also though it would be run to play on the Nintendo Virtual Boy until our eyes began to bled and them immediately moved on to bright whites on MB Vectrex. I’m glad I wasn’t driving straight until later…the shapes burnt on to my eyeballs were taking time to dissipate
Lots of ‘woo’s ‘ and probably a bit of drooling from Dr Phu and Max in the corner, what’s going on?
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Mmm, Commodore C128D in the nude….purdy!
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Whilst Andy pumped out some classic SID chiptunes on the C64, I had one last go on Turmoil on the Vic-20 before waving the last visitor goodbye and we set about dismantling everything and moving it down to our parked cars. We were a little short on hands compared to Saturday but we still managed to get everything pack up quite quickly and into three cars plus my MPV.
Thanking our hosts Chris & Shaun for a great weekend, we made the journey back to HQ and thanks to entering the ‘shortest route’ on my Satnav, i took the harrowing route through twisty, narrow country roads with not a street light in sight. A fun drive when you’re lugging 20 odd TV’s and crates of retro gear!
After the ‘rally stage’ and back at HQ, we unpacked and got everything set up again ready for some European visitors who were attending the museum the next day.
Wary but content, we said our goodbyes and headed home.
That was one helluva great gaming weekend and one that also raised a nice amount for charity too. Chris is looking to do this again on a six month basis and I for one will be back again.
The retro gaming doesn’t stop there though as we have our own members weekend event coming up in two weeks time and is always a laugh when the admins, volunteers and RCM members get together. Better get my Dreamcast out, I’ve got some practising to do!
Phew, a very looooong day today but one that has seen many, many laughs and a whole bunch of retro gaming goodness with friends old and new.
A cold, dark, wet and very early start for the RCM admins as we needed to meet up at HQ early enough to pack up around 30 computers/consoles, associated games, attachments and monitors, transport them all to the event in Derbyshire and have anything set up before the doors opened at 10am.
We must be getting good at this after all these years as we soon had everything organised, loaded up and ready to roll within record time. Who says bloke’s aren’t organised!….o.k, I got slightly lost on the way to the venue because I’d forgotten the postcode
We were met on arrival by our hosts Chris Snowden & Shaun Bebbington and got stuck into to setting up the three rooms with everyone’s favourite gaming gear.
Yet another TV for the pile Jim.
In this room we had the MB Vectrex, C64, ZX81, Atari 2600, PC Engine, Amiga 1200, Commodore 64GS, Atari 800, Nintendo Gamecube…
…and not forgetting the VIC-20
Into one of the areas linking the next room we had the BBC Master, Nintendo N64 and a Sega Megadrive/Sega CD setup and Karls Everdrive SD cart playing a rather funky looking port of Angry Birds…on a Megadrive!
I didn’t get chance to take a good look at this today but will certainly be giving it a try when I’m back there tomorrow.
The next room housed an Xbox 360, Nintendo Virtual Boy (was being a bit stubborn at the beginning due to a loose mains cable but we managed to get it going in the end), various hand held electronic games, SNES, NES, Sony PSX, Atari Jaguar and Chris’ iCade with Mame and various emus.
Finally, we had one of the smaller rooms housing a Sega Dreamcast, PS2 with twin steering wheel setup (I rather enjoyed a spot of 2-up rally action with Jim this afternoon), Amstrad CPC 664 and a Sega Master System.
There was also, various Commodore C16/Plus 4 hardware set up from Chris humongous collection. All in all i think that there was something here for everyone and so with the doors opened and a few eager retro gamers ready to get going, we had a coffee and got cracking.
As the event was being held on the outskirts of Derby City centre and only a stones throw away from where Core Design had their office, I thought ‘When in Rome’, I’d re-play some of the games they produced including Lara Croft – Tomb Raider, Chuck Rock and the AGA-Tastic Banshee. The latter is a game I didn’t really play a great deal when it first came out but had since rediscovered it a few years again. It’s certainly one of the finest looking Schmups on the Amiga.
A good start to the day
I don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere remotely close to the type of scores that Jackie was racking up on Drop Zone on the Atari. A real pro in action! Note the cartridge in the the C64GS…it’s a port of the classic C16 version of Kickstart.
Max was kind enough to show me his (wip) port of Cosmic Ark to the C64. Damn well addictive, can’t wait to see the finished results.
Well, my score on Mayhem on the ZX81 is improving, but my 51 is no match for Stu’s 65. The challenge has been set for tomorrow
After lunch and getting to know a few other folk that arrived this morning and then the now obligatory Soul Caliber tournament on the Sega Dreamcast. I was also looking at some of the emulators running on the DC, and noted the how well they ran from CD and in particular with VGA box, how crisp they looked. Mental note to investigate further on my own setup.
Checking out some homebrew games for sale. Mmm Commodore games!
Andy sampling a bit of Commodore Plus/4 homebrew gaming with Adventures In Time
Impressive (but unfortunately not complete) this next game plays and looks very similar to Amalyte on the C64 and has an amazing soundtrack thanks to the use of the SID chip addon cart that Chris has for his Plus/4. I forget the name of the game (X3no, Xe3o?) so I’ll take another look tomorrow and capture some footage.
One system that I don’t really play a lot on is the Atari Jaguar. Apart from the odd game of Tempest, I rarely sit down to explore some of it’s other titles and RCM has got quite a few so I thought I’d take a look at some of them this afternoon. I was certainly impressed by Power Drive Rally, Cybermorph and the conversion of Syndicate so that’s another note to take a closer look into the Jag.
That pretty much wraps it up for day one. As always, bags of fun when the RCM chaps get together and nice to meet and chat with a few new people. Bring on day two!
Oh and one last thing..Beam Rider on the ZX81 – That little black box continues to surprise.
At last weekend Play:Expo, I met up with fellow RCM admin and friend Mike who has recently attended Eurocon in Karlsruhe and had picked up a couple of new ZX81 games for the museum. Knowing I was heading down to RCM this weekend, I offered to play postie and take them down with me.
Both game have been released by http://www.revival-studios.com/ who produce new homebrew games and demo for classic computers and consoles.
Mayhem and Down are the second and third releases by Revival Studios for the Sinclair ZX81/Timex TS1000.
Both games are obviously simple being ZX81 games, but are extremely fun to play.
After we’d finished with the Mame cabinet, we tried both games on one of the Zx81′s and had a look at the other, and first release from Revival Studios – Avalanche.
Mayhem, in particular is really a fun game as you dodge the ever expanding flying debris and collect parts for points. I think 32 was the highest score we could get.
The ZXpand comes in handy for this arcade games like this as it provides joystick support.
I also read with interest that there’s a VIC-20 port of Mayhem being released. I’ll definitely get a copy of that if it’s as playable as the ZX81 version. Head on over to the Revival Studios shop for details including options for digital download.
It still amazes me that games are still be produced for vintage systems such as the ZX81, especially when they’re as fun to play as these two.
A busy week at work so I’ve not had chance to post a lot since coming back from Play:Expo but one thing I have been working on is building up a suitable PC for a MAME arcade cabinet at the Retro Computer Museum.
and it’s pretty much ready for installation in to the cab, configure the ipac/controls and give it play test (lots!). I’m heading down to the museum this morning with all the relevant bits so hopefully myself and Jim should have this completed today.
Also, I’ve been given a rather nice HP TFT monitor from my work collegue, which has got a really nice pivoting stand allowing the screen to rotate almost 360 degrees including all the way back so it practically lies flat (great for Visual Pinball). As the Mame cab will feature a vertical mounted monitor, this particular TFT has been a great help this week as I’ve been able to setup and test the MAME frontend in the correct orientation at home. My thanks to Savi for this great monitor!
A quick test at work soon turned into a lunchtime competition
Back home, the PC is built and although is of modest specification (P4 2ghz/1Gb) its more than enough to play all vertical games including newer stuff like Do Don Pachi schmups. I’m using an older version of Mame, one i usually use because its good for compatibility and had speed because its prior to all that 3d accelerated changes.The version I’m using is 0.89
For the MAME frontend, I’m using MALA. I’ve always been a fan of MameWAH which is usually my weapon of choice for a simple menu/snapshot/marque frontend. However, it can be a bit if a pain to setup if you haven’t used it for a while as you forget the config file format. MALA is almost similar but has a nice setup GUI as well as command line and I find that setting up custom graphical layouts and game lists are much easier as MALA is equipped with tools to help with this.
The PC is pretty much done and ready for installation into to the cabinet today. I’ve still got a few duplicate/clone roms to remove from the game list and there’s a few that have either missing snapshots and/or marque pictures but that can be sorted out whilst I’m at the museum. I’m not sure if Jim has used the standard Mame controls for the iPac interface for the joystick/buttons but again, I can always adjust them to suit the frontend when I get there.
One final play test last night.
Right, I better get cracking and load up the car and head down to the museum. I’ll be back with more photos soon.
The closest thing I ever owned to a DeLorean was a old 5th hand silver VW Scirroco. Sadly, it spluttered to a painful death not long after I brought it. Nice car whilst is lasted though.
It’s an interesting computer the Sinclar QL, well interesting to me because it’s an underdog. Commercially a failure and a bitter disappointment to gamers at the time hoping that the word ‘ Quantum’ and uber-fast microdrives would equate to a box of awesome-ness and excel Spectrum entertainment to new heights.
….but, the QL was wasn’t a computer for gaming, it was ‘a’ serious computer’ ‘ to quote a line from the BBC’s Micro Men. Well, we all know what happened to the QL don’t we and it’s a shame really as it’s surely one of the coolest looking Sinclair cases of them all?
I remember the TV advert above which see’s super Sir Clive taking his giant Quantum Leap and also the many articles about the QL in Crash magazine. Being just a wee lad at the time with only a paper round after school to fuel the sugar rush, the QL was waaay out of my league financially and besides, I was still Commodore through and through.
I did, however get my first QL about 4 years ago which was kindly given to me by a now retired IT collegue of mine who had brought it from new back in ’84. It was boxed and had been kept in beautiful condition complete with prestine manuals, software and and various brochures. Certainly one of the nicest looking examples of an old computer I have ever seen.
I gleefully took it and played around with it for a bit but in all honesty it sat in it’s box….unused and unloved again. Shame on you StiGGy! That’s no way for a computer to be kept and so after a quick chat, I decided that it would be better if I donated to the Retro Computer Museum where it could be used again and accessible to all.
Over the years, I’ve kinda grown fond of the QL and although mock it we do at RCM (because it really does make a nice door wedge, hammer and/or cricket bat) it does grows on you bit by bit the more you see it. The hunt for another one was on and so to eBay I went.
Flippin eck! it looks like these are becoming quite the collectable these days judging by my search results. Maybe it’s the underdog/cool factor similar to the Nintendo Virtual Boy, Sega Nomad or even MB Vectrex which has increased the price?
Well, whatdoyouknow…fate I guess but just the other day I got chatting with two colleges at work who both have old and untested QL’s sat in their lofts and said that I could have them….’as you’re into all that old computer junk’ Woot woot!
I took my small LCD TV to work with me so that we could test them and also to let my co-workers check out the new cardboard prototype pinball machine i was putting together’ (see previous blog post – http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/08/26/cardboard-visual-pinball-model/ )
The first QL, given to me by Luke our IT Helpdesk chap, simply refused to display a picture on screen. The power LED was lit but that’s about it. There’s no ‘start-up’ whir from the Microdrive unit and likewise no motor noise when inserting a Micro cassette.
That one requires a little more attention so we placed it to one side and moved onto the other.
The next one is from Ian, one of our software developers and it sprang into life immediately with the familiar red boot screen in glorious shaky RF on my TV (must get/make myself an RGB to Scart cable).
Luke’s QL came with a whole bucket full of Micro cassettes so we set about loading up exciting arcade titles such as…erm…’Abacus’..well, it might be an arcade hit?
Sadly not, but that’s o.k we’ve got plenty of other exciting titles to try such as ‘Gas Bills’, ‘Math’, ‘Addresses’ and ‘Letters’ – Hmm, it appears that the original owner of this particular QL actually was using it for serious things after all :)
Hunting through the many cassettes I finally found one labelled Games Collection and was rather excited to see after a short whirl of the Microdrive the following games menu displayed on screen.
Starting from the top we loaded each in turn. All but one failed after about a minute with ‘load error at line 130′ or ‘line 250′. It did make us smile after waiting a good five minutes only to recieve ‘loading error at line 3′. Only line 3 after five minutes!
The game that did work was called Zfred and appears to be a clone of QBert. The keyboard controls are just terrible and so is the game but heh, I’m happy to see at least something work.
We tried a few more Micro cassettes but again, most failed to load. I suppose after all these years of non use we were lucky to get something to load especially as the Microdrive system wasn’t exactly renown for it’s reliable.
Going back to the games collection cassette, I tried it again and again but each time it failed. However, it seemed to fail at different lines of the game code and so with a determined fierce stare…a bit of swearing, and a ‘gentle’ tap on the QL case we ‘willed’ the cassette to load….and it flippin well did. I don’t think i’ve ever been so excited about a game of Breakout
Let the competition begin. Left/Right cursor to move, CTRL to launch the ball and Up cursor to make your bat move quicker. It’s a flipping hard game too…very hard…in fact, our top score between myself, Neil and Rob was…erm hmm…20 points!
It didn’t matter though, it was working and a fun QL lunchtime was had by all.
So, going forward what next?
Well, the faulty QL actually came with a floppy drive expansion board and if it works then this provides a few more options to play with.
Interestingly, Dr Phu demonstrated how to connect a standard PC floppy drive to work with the QL and read software directly fro 3.5″ 720k disks. It’s an interesting idea and one I’m keen to try if the interface does indeed work. I’ll be take it down to the Retro Computer Museum to further testing.
Here’s RCM’s setup and floppy drive we had during last months gaming event.
Which, as always prompted a bit of a mini competition with some of the other RCM staff members.
Mike showing is keyboard skills with the gawd awful but strangly addictive QL port of Scramble called – Death Strike.
Death Strike is one of a handful of games belonging to a game pack that was released only a few years ago – Don’t you just love the retro gaming scene that keeps the classics computers alive.
Oh and final thing I want to mention about the QL….it doesn’t need RetroBriting!
Here’s a close up of my rather latest BBC Micro model B and as you can see, next to the shiny white of my compressed air cap, it’s rather yellowed with age
I’ve got this latest computer from a car boot sale a few week ago where I spotted it lurking under one of the table amongst boxes of household junk. It looked like it had been stored for a long time in the loft judging by it’s condition and the owner said that it hadn’t been tested for years. For £5 I thought it would be worth the gamble even if it’s just for spare parts.
Back home, swapped the plug and had a quick look inside for obvious damage. Satisfied but still weary, I instinctively flinching when I switched it on and bracied myself for a pop. The pop didn’t come, just the familiar BBC start up beep! What a pleasant surprised to find it working just fine and all of the keys appear to be responsive too.
So after a bit of a soak test I packed it up and placed it in my cupboard until I had some free time to give the case a little attention.
Well, with the weatherman being spot on with his prediction for an uncharacteristic scorcher of a weekend, yesterday I decided to get it out again and treat it to a bucket of RetroBrite…well, a small bowl.
First things first was to give it a nice clean inside and out to remove the worst of the grime. I used Mr Muscle Mildrew remover on the outer case to get rid of the dirt and black scuffs and an air duster, Q-Tips and PCB cleaner inside on the main board inside.
I think this was home to something at sometime – There’s so much crud inside!
You can see in the above picture that the keys are very dirty and have a large build up of grime underneath. It’s a shame the clear plastic trim with the Acorn owl logo is worn. Replacements can usually been found on eBay and various BBC enthusiast websites so I’ll be replacing this as soon as I can.
The keys simply pop off when prised gently allowing you to get to all the gunk underneath. Certainly a lot easy than with Commodores was there’s usually an explosion of springs flying everywhere
With the sun really shining now, time to tackle that gawd awful case.
The stuff I use isn’t actually ‘official’ RetroBrite, but this alternative is easily available off the shelf, cheap and doesn’t require the mixing of nasty chemicals. I guess the results might differ in comparison to the official stuff but I’ve had some great results with this before so am happy to recommend it. Huge thanks to Mike (1200xl) for posting about this stuff on the RCM forums.
I’ve blogged about this alternative before, so if you’re interested, please see my previous posts for more details and pictures -
RetroBrite coated (thanks for picking it up for me hon xxx) and shrink wrapped to stop the solution from drying out too quickly in the sunshine. The BBC’s computer case has a raised texture therefore I put plenty on to ensure a good coverage.
Note – Being Peroxide, it’s best not to get it on your skin, clothes or table cloth so ensure you lay down plenty of newspaper… just like m……oops!
Time to place the case halves out in the sunshine and remembering to turn them around every hour so that the sun shines on each side. I usually leave mine for about 4-5 hours on gas mark 7 You’ll need longer if the sunshine is broken with cloud cover though.
After a while (maybe an hour) you should see the yellowing starting to fade a little bit and the original colour (in this case – beige) starting to return. Once it’s done, remove the shrink wrap and give the case halves a good hosing down and place somewhere to dry out.
All in all I’m quite happy with the results so far. It might need another session at some stage though, especially around the corners but it’s certainly looking much better than before.
Here’s a Photoshop cut n paste of two images I’d taken before and afterwards so you can see the difference.
Trying to play this thing one handed whilst filming the 21″ Vextrex on Saturday proved to be a bit difficult so I managed to catch Richard having a go on his creation on Monday.
As you can see, the sound is pretty much spot on but the graphics need a little more work.
Sadly, later that day it appears that someone may have accidentally inserted a game cartridge whilst the Vectrex was still switched on and subsequently blowing something judging by the burning smell. Let’s hope Richard can discover what the problem is and is able to fix it soon.
Am now back from a second day of retro gaming at RCM’s gaming weekend. Lots of fun indeed and as always, great to catch up with friends and fellow colleagues.
My friend Alex has uploaded some footage from Saturday as he walked around the event rooms so you can get an idea of what goes on. My little iPhone Arcadie makes an appearance towards the end of the vid. Suffice to say, there was a lot of interest with this, especially running Mame, so let’s hope it gets a release soon.
I’ll upload a few photos later on, including some more footage of the monster Vectrex.
Had a fantastic day of retro gaming and catching up with old friends today as well as a sneaky peak at Richards (Dr Phu’s) homemade monster 21″ Vectrex.
There’s still a bit of tweaking to be had to get the graphics to display correctly but so far it’s coming along very nicely. I took my Vectrex multicart along with me so we could see it running side by side with the same gaming running on the original Vectrex. My iPhone pictures didn’t work out so well but I was able to play a reasonable game of 21″ Berzerk.
Richard and his baby.
I’m currently working on a set of reproduction Vectrex overlays (for the regular size Vectrex that is) and had taken my Minestorm overlay with me to work yesterday to take measurements and make comparisons with the ones i’d made via one of our enterprise laser printers. I still had it in my bag with me today so I thought we’d have some fun
Andy at the Retro Computer Museum has posted a list of all the computers and consoles that will be available to play at their gaming event being held over next (bank holiday) weekend at the Snibston Discovery museum – Leicester.
Hope to see some of you there?
‘List of machines for next weekend (subject to change)
– Systems –
Atari 400
Sega Master System
Atari 2600
Commodore Vic20
MB Vectrex
Aari ST
Sinclair ZX81
Atari Jaguar
Acorn Archimedes A3020
CGL/Sord M5
PCEngine
Timex 2048
Sinclair 48K
Sony PS2
Acorn BBC Model B
Nintendo SNES
Commodore 64
Sega Megedrive + MegaCD
Panasonic MSX CF2700
Dragon 64
Amstrad CPC464/664
EG2000 Colour Genie
Apple IIGS
Atari 800XL
Sega Dreamcast
Sincalir Spectrum +3
Nintendo NES
DosBox PC
MGT Sam Coupe
Sony PS1
Acorn Atom
Acorn BBC Master
MAME Cab (Bartop)
Commodore Amiga 1200
Nintendo Gamecube
Texas Instruments TI994a
Sinclair QL
Nintendo 64
Microsoft Xbox
Commodore +4
Tatung Einstein
Commodore Pet 2001
Commodore CD32
Sega Pico
Apple Mac Performa 5200
Commodore SX64
Mattel Intellivision
Amstrad GX4000
Sega Saturn
Enterprise 64
Commodore 64 + Piano Keyboard
– Handhelds –
Astro Wars
Scramble
Munchman
Galaxy Invaders
Caveman
UBoat
Nintendo Gameboy
Sega Genesis Nomad
Sega Game Gear
Atari Lynx
I was hanging around the VIC-20 Denial forums earlier this evening and looking back through their back catalogue of new software releases when I came across this rather intriguing collection of converted Commodore PET games The collection is aptly named Green on Black because of those lovely retro green screen PET graphics.
Now I must admit, I’m not overly familiar with the PET (apart from lugging their heavy asses around at the Retro Computer Museum) and I seem to recall the only game I’ve ever played is a rather good conversion of Space Invaders.
With my VIC-20 temporary packed away (My new C16 is the current occupant of my geek desk) I thought I’d run the disk image under emulation on my netbook, hence the nice crisp screenshots as opposed to the dodgy but authentic ones I’ve been posting of late
I’m using Vice here and have set the VIC RAM to 24k. Most of the games are 16k but there’s the odd one that required a bit more.
Disk loaded and game menu displayed.
Now i’d like to post a little bit about each game here but to be honest, just two of the games have kept me quite entertained this evening and so I’ve not actually had chance to try the others yet!
Lunar Land.
Use the keys 1-9 to adjust the strength of your space craft’s landing jets you attempt a landing on the moon. You start at 52,800 meters and you need to control both the rate of descent whilst keeping an eye on your limited fuel supply. Land to fast or run out of fuel and it’s goodbye space craft, hello new crater. There’s also a stopclock running during gameplay so once you’ve mastered landing you can try again and see if you can beat your time.
It’s wickedly addictive.
erm…..Houston…something broke off.
Next we have Artillery. A simply Tanks/Scorched Earth/Worms type game copied many many times but always a laugh to play with friends. This PET version only has a 2-up mode so you’ll have to play as both sides if playing solo.
You set the gun angle by typing a number between 1-90 and set the amount of gunpower charge by typing a number between 1-6. Finally press the return key to let your projectile rip. If you miss, adjust your gun position/gunpower charge accordingly. Note that wind speed and direction (displayed at the begining of each round) will need to be taken into account whilst aiming and firing.
This weekend i’m once again at the Retro Computer Museum as we host another gaming event for staff and helpers. I can’t remember if we’ve got one of the PET’s out and setup for play but if we have, it’ll be cool to see if i can find any of the original in our library and play them on the real thing.
Another fun filled day working with the chaps at the Retro Computer Museum. Today we were erecting new shelving and moving the software library to their new homes.
I was on Commodore tape, disk and cartridge duty, sorting, stacking and generally reminiscing with the others every-time we came across another classic game.
The boxes kept on a coming as the shelves began to fill three deep.
Zx spectrum tapes.
Always nice to see and photograph some of the Ultimate games together. Most of our collections for other platforms are complete but our BBC micro collection is missing a few.
We’ve also started to add a few items to the new display cabinets.
I just love this, such a daft item for a portable gaming console and always makes me smile.
Ultimate pimped Gameboy
After lunch and a little later into the afternoon we had a chap arrive with a rather large boot full of Atari goodies including a fully boxed Mega ST with external harddrive units. They might need a bit of tweaking but they’ll make a great addition to the museum. I must admit, always being an Amiga user I’m not overly familiar with the Atari 16 bit computers, especially the Mega variants. I only have a lone Atari ST520 myself. Maybe at the beginning of February when we host our members gaming day, I’ll spend a little bit more time getting to know these pro models a bit better.
All work and no fun so we spent the next few hours doing what we love the most – Retro Gaming. I was found lurking on the C64, Tangerine Oric, TI99a and MSX (I have a soft spot for Penguin Adventure) as multiple vs. bouts of Soul Caliber on the Dreamcast.
Jim, after upteen attempts to get it to load, was determined to show us that he Amstrad CPC464 version of Outrun is actually quite good….and it certainly did look promising until it started to move…..at approx one frame per second. Nice try Jim
