Retro Pi gaming

Coding Epiphany have posted a great, easy to read, easy to follow guide for setting up your Raspberry Pi for a spot of old school gaming using the Retro Pie & Arch packages.

Part 1 –

http://www.codingepiphany.com/2013/03/27/raspberry-pi-retro-gaming-mania-part-1-retropieretroarch/

Part 2 covers DOSbox –

http://www.codingepiphany.com/2013/03/30/raspberry-pi-retro-gaming-mania-part-2-dosbox/

I must admit, after the initial flurry of excitement when I received my Pi and experimentation that followed with with Raspbian, RaspBMC and the ‘Atarberry’ 2600 I’ve not actually done much else with it since.

These great guides might just spur me on to take another look sometime soon.

Mini Arcade?

Well I wasn’t expecting to own another arcade machine when I woke up this morning but after practically being snowed in today and a carefree session on eBay – pop, got myself another one!

It was a bit of a bargain really and was quite surprised to win it at a very low price without many bids. It’s a standard Jamma cab rather than a specific game (the board included is some sort of soccer game) and despite everything looking in really good condition, the monitor appears to be faulty. That’s no problem though as I intend to swap it out for something slightly bigger anyway.

Its more than likely that I’ll use this as a basis for a quick Mame conversion especially as i have everything i need in my spares box to complete this straight away. The cabinet has two sticks fitted (wooho – Robotron twin stick funtastic-times ahead) with three buttons per stick. I could drill through for more, the control panel certainly has room for them but I think I’ll keep this as is and mainly use it for playing classic games.

A couple of features that attracted me to the cab in the first place was that the monitor can be easily be rotated, by lifting out the front glass bezel, rotate the screen and pop the glass back. It’s also slightly taller than my other arcade cabinet and a bonus being quite a tall fella.

All I need to do now is arrange to go pick it up…come on snow melt already!

I’ll be back with more and pictures as soon as I’ve got it and will blog about the conversion as I progress.

Out of curiosity, how many cabs do you have to own to count yourself as having your own arcade hall

Fez and Strider

A couple of game related items worth noting if you haven’t already picked up on these.

Firstly, it looks the the utterly brilliant Fez is finally making its way to PC via Steam with the possibility of Linux and Mac, Ouya (have been following this project for some time now) and iOS versions to follow.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1aj74m/i_am_phil_fish_cocreator_of_fez_ask_me_anything/

I played Fez on my mates Xbox360 after watching Indie Game:The Movie - http://buy.indiegamethemovie.com/ to see what  all the fuss was about got instantly  hooked. Not having an 360 myself, I’m really looking forward to PC release on May 1.

Secondly, a rumour maybe, but there’s an interesting story circulating  the interweb regarding the possibility of a new Strider game (XBLA/PC).

Extra, extra, read all about it - http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/19/4122726/strider-game-allegedly-headed-to-xbla-and-pc

 

 

Video Game Years – 1977

Thanks to my mate Alex for the heads up on this one and so I thought I’d pass it along here too – although I’m guessing most of you might already have seen these.

Here’s the first episode of Retroware TV’s show – Video Game Years, which  features classic gaming and pop culture from a certain year. This episode kick things off with 1977 so expect plenty of Star Wars, woodgrained tech, Pong,  classic tv ads,  more woodgrain, Atari VCS,  Channel F and probably even more woodgrain.

It’s fantastic viewing all right and got me laughing out quite a few time. If  you’ve got half an hour spare, check out the Video Game Years – 1977.

Nolan Bushnell ET treasure hunt.

Here’s a great image of the Nolan Bushnell digging for those infamous ET game cartridge c/o http://www.joystiq.com/2013/02/15/wrup-bushnell-digs-for-e-t-cartridges/.

O.k so he’s not actually doing that, but it’s a  fun photo caption  all the same.

Speaking of Atari, look what Mrs StiGGy brought  me back from her shopping expedition.

Retro Gamer Magazine’s – Atari Book – 40th Anniversary Special.

A 40th anniversary Atari special from the makers of Retro Gamer

The Machines
- In-depth features on Atari’s greatest hardware.

The Developers
- Interviews with the people that made the games.

The games
- The top 25 games for the Atari 2600, along with ‘The Making Of’ features for all the classics.

40 Reasons why we love Atari
- We explore why Atari is so fondly remembered.

Also inside…

The Machines
- Atari 2600
- Atari 5200
- Atari 800 XL
- Atari 7800
- Atari ST
- Atari Lynx
- Atari Jaguar

The Developers
- Atari Inc
- Atari Corp
- Nolan Bushnell
- Allan Alcorn
- Howard Scott Warshaw
- Bob Polaro
- David Crane

The Games
- Top 25 Atari 2600 Games
- Pong
- Sprint2
- Asteroids
- Missile Command
- Battlezone
- Tempest
- Pitfall!
- Miner 2049er
- Star Wars
- Dandy
- Crystal Castles
- Paperboy
- Dungeon Master
- Roadblasters
- Chip’s Challenge
- Alien Vs Predator

https://www.imagineshop.co.uk/

My Gaming Week #4

Quick and fun games are the order of this week as the continuation of a rather hefty I.T. project at work has left me with very little downtime again. Thankfully, we can see light at the end of the tunnel (or is that tunnel vision due to lack of sleep?) and I can get stuck into something a little more involving soon as I’ve been promising myself a return to either the land of Midwinter or the seas of Carrier Command.

First up on the list is a some vintage fun and a very early title by Mr ‘Yak’, Jeff Minter.

Centipede – Sinclair ZX81 (1981)

 

Over the past few years, I’ve become quite fond of Uncle Clive’s little black box and it’s game library which still provide snippets of fun despite it’s meager hardware limitations (and even more fun when you throw in a ZXpand unit). Centipede might not look much and missing a few things from the arcade original but that doesn’t stop it from being a damn fun retro game as you aim even higher to best your own and your mates highscore.

OOOOOOOO vs “

Choose from 20 speed settings (20 being the slowest  and 1 being well, quite frankly, insane!) and select 1-5 lives. Personally I’ve been starting on speed 20 with one life and after clearing each stage, the game speed increases.

Make it past Wave 3 and OOOOOOOO starts firing “.” fullstops at you….very unsportsmanlike of him too!

 

Yay, I beat Jeff’s highscore!…oh wait….dammit.

 

**************************

The next two games I’ve been playing an awful lot of this week  are a couple of PD releases on the Commodore Amiga.

First up, we have a remake of one of my favourite arcade games.

Depthcharge – Commodore Amiga (1994)

 

This is a cracking remake of the 1977 game by Gremlin. Apart from the upgraded graphics (in colour too..woooo!), it’s pretty much on par with the original (bottom left).

 

The key difference with the Amiga version is the  overall speed in which the game plays.  Those subs dash around underwater a hefty odd rate of knotts whilst releasing a barrage of mines and torpedoes to the surface. The original arcade game had a much slower pace and required accurately timed release of your depth charges.  I think I still prefer the original, but this Amiga version is still great fun and the lack of timer means you can blast away until you get hit.

 Do you get bonus points for making your own sonar ping SFX’s?

 

Depthcharge can be found on the Assassins PD disk #165 which you can download from Back to the Roots website – http://www.back2roots.org/Get/Assassins%20Disk%20165%2C1/

*************************

Next up is a remake of Thrust

Fleuch (v.2)  - Commodore Amiga (1993)

 

 

I’m loving the chunky retro look to Fleuch and it plays just as well as most other Thrust clones. Key layout is just perfect.

 

Incoming  from those gun turrets can often be accurate and relentless which certainly makes for one exciting gravity game.

Do I sneak down and collect the orb ASAP or take out the gun first? There’s not much room down here to do either! Steady as she goes.

Moving around  in the tunnels can be a bit tricky, and things get even trickier once you’re towing the orb.

Fleuch can also be dowloaded from BTTR via Assasins PD disk #166 - http://www.back2roots.org/Get/Assassins%20Disk%20166%2C1/

*************************************

Lunchtime gaming has quite literally been a blast with this rather cool mouse driven arena shooter -

Death vs. Monstars (Flash/Web).

http://armorgames.com/play/3307/death-vs-monstars

Simple yet fun. Move auto firing Death (you) around the screen and destroy the invading Monstars. Holding down the left mouse button will lock your gun position to so you can strafe the suckers if things get a little hot. Pick up the coins and stars  left behind as you’ll need these later.

Each kill increases a meter at the bottom of the screen. Once full, double click the left button to release a smart bomb. Handy when things get even hotter.

Alternatively, if you’re getting pummelled and find yourself in bullet hell, press and hold the space bar which will activate a Matrix style slow-mo bullet time. Very handy for getting oneself out of a jam and outflanking Neo style.

After killing the required number of Monstars (countdown at the top left), you finally get to spend all that lovely dosh on upgrades.

You’re going to need them!

Aaaaggggghhhhhhh

Happy gaming

 

 

 

 

My iCade Jr.

I received my iCade Jr today and have been having fun messing around with it this evening. You probably know what the iCade Jr is but for those of you who don’t – it’s a device for turning your iPhone/iPod into a desktop arcade machine complete with arcade style joystick and buttons. It’s bigger brother (which I’ll refer to as Snr) is for use with the iPad and it the best iPad addon you could ever wish for…in fact, go buy one now

Now I say they’re designed for Apple iOS devices but iCade supported Android apps are now becoming quite common place and as I’ve had success using a friends Android tablet on my iCade Snr, I would have thought that if it’ll physically fit the iCade Jr it should work just as well.

The Jr is a very similar in design to the larger iCade and it’s nice to see the front buttons in a classic diamond shape as opposed to ION’s other game controller the 8-Bitty.

My side art differs somewhat to that on the box (which sorta resembles iCade Snr). Kinda cool though in it’s black and blue paint job.

What I didn’t expect was to find four more buttons on the rear panel bringing the total number of buttons to eight. The rear buttons are great when holding the iCade in both hands i.e like a handheld console, especially on those games that only need buttons instead of joystick control. This also has the advantage of giving a clear view of the screen. Also, being out of the way, these rear buttons are also useful to remap in Mame as ‘Start’ and ‘Coin’ etc, leaving the four front buttons for your ingame action buttons.

Size wise, the iCade Jr is designed to fit the iPhone 4/iPod but there’s a little bit of room either side if your Android phone is slightly wider or you have a hard case wrapped around your iPhone. I measured the inside width to be 6.5cm.

Still plenty of room even with my iPhone case fitted.

Height wise, it will fit the iPhone 4 with a few mm clearance so if your device is 11.8mm or less it’ll fit and you’ll be able to close the little plastic lid at the top of the iCade. If your phone is taller you’ll have to leave the lid open but that’s no big deal as it won’t affect gameplay. Here’s Mrs StiGGy’s iPhone 5 which is way taller than my iPhone 4 but as you can see, it still fits pretty well.

The iCade Jr is battery operated (no mains jack option like iCade Snr) and uses Bluetooth to connect to your device. Batteries (x2 AA) were included with mine, and they just slot into the compartment underneath the iCade after removing the battery compartment door.

Pairing to your device is a simple process, just hold down the red/white buttons at the front of the unit for a few seconds until the red light just below these is lit. It should now auto pair – no need to to enter a unique button combination like pairing the iCade Snr.

Incidentally, there’s no on/off button as such. If no control is used for a short period, the unit powers off automatically.

There’s also a hole in the bottom of the case that allows you to thread your charging cable and connect it to your phone so that you can recharge and play at the same time. This fits the iPhone charging cable (USB end) although I found it a bit snug and had to give it some welly to get it to fit through the hole.

Oh and another thing, the red joystick ball top unscrews and can be removed leaving behind a four directional thumb pad if you prefer that style of controller instead.

I’ve tried the iCade Jnr with iMame and it worked pretty, although I really did struggled to remap the buttons to use the front four buttons as by default the app uses the rear buttons instead. After much messing around I found that if you go into the Mame control settings (global) and clear whatever button configuration defaults first then it will allow you to remap. If you simply try to change an existing map to something else, it doesn’t work. A bit strange really and i didn’t experience anything like this on the iCade Snr but once you’ve got them set the way you like them, you shouldn’t have to change them again.

iMame – Aspect Ratio enabled hence the small menu.

Great for vertical games….

and horizontal too.

Sadly, something appears to be amiss with iMame as occasionally whenever I’m using the joystick and a button simultaneously, lets say moving and shooting, it doesn’t always shoot. It’s doesn’t do this it all the time but can be pretty annoying with games like R-Type where you really need to be on the stick and button together. At first I thought either I’ve got a faulty unit or a slightly iffy contact but when i tried it with other iCade supported apps, all appears to work perfectly.

Manomio C64 emulator supports the iCade and works really well in both portrait and full screen landscape. No control issues at all.

I’ve also tried Spectaculator (ZX Spectrum emulator) and the Vectrex emulator and all are work perfectly well, the latter being particularly fun. I’ve also tried a few iOS iCade supporting apps such as Velocispider, Atari Greatest Hits, League of Evil and Mos Speed Run without any fault whatsoever.

All in all, I’m damn happy with it. It a shame iMame has a few controller issues but Mame wasn’t the main reason why I brought it (it’s for project I’ve been musing over but more about that later on).

I probably wouldn’t pay the full retail price of $49.99 for thr Jr, but as I got it on sale for a bargain $9.99 it’s flippin ace. I believe Think Geek now have it listed at $24.99 if you want to take one for a spin.

If you’re thinking about getting one and have any questions, feel free to ask away and I’ll answer as best I can.

edit 18/1/13 Found this interesting forum post this morning re Mame and the front buttons mapping/simultaneous control issue and thought I’d add here.

http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?threadid=169393

Diablo – Commodore 16 /Plus 4.

Nope, not a retro 8-bit remake of the popular PC based hack n adventure game – Diablo on the Commodore 16 is some sort of shooter and although basic it is, it’s not actually too bad.

Diablo tape label after messing around creating my own boxes in Photoshop. Need more practise though!

;

Diablo appears to have the livery of an in-house Commodore game. I wonder if this was one of the pack in games for Commodore 16 computers as I don’t recall it being on the Plus/4 pack in roster?

Any-ho, the game title screen sets the story – this is a word for word copy!

‘On a planet deep in the space robots have taken the power and will now start to eliminate the humans. You have to destroy the robots who let the humans free when they are hit. Save the humans before another robot explodes. You die when your base is hit. This mission is not easy. Keep that in mind….’

O…kay, I’m still non the wiser therefore I’ve had to figure it out myself. That yellow thing at the bottom centre of the screen (the thing that looks like a chess piece), that’s you and it’s you’re job to save your base (the thing that looks like a space invader hiding in the bottom right of the screen) from the Robotic hoard that start at the top of the screen and travel left/right and down towards the bottom. I have no idea what the round thing (top left-ish) with the ‘X’ in the centre is but it bounces up and down, left to right and kills you if you touch it. I’m guessing some kind of robotic frisbee, probably evil too

Once you shoot a robot, it will stay still for a few seconds and so, dodging all other things on screen, fly up and over it to collect the rescued human body that was contained within. Leave it alone for more than a few seconds and it’ll explode killing you instantly.

Diablo sort of plays like Centipede and also reminds me of Carnival and Gridrunner and is kinda fun for a while once you get the hang of it especially in later levels when there’s so many robots to shoot and duck around.

It’s not going to be a game that you’ll be playing for very long but certainly fun to check out.

My current high score is 30,080.

;

Best and worst selling Retro gaming consoles.

Aus retro gamer have put together a rather interesting graph that looks at total units sold worldwide on a number of gaming consoles from 1972 – 2002.

I’m not sure where the figures are from but they seem pretty consistent with various other sources.

I knew the NES far outsold the Sega Master System, but I didn’t realise the gap would be so huge.

Look at poor old unloved Commodore CD32

Sony just kicked ass didn’t they!

What no Vectrex? Actually I can’t locate a figure for the total number sold. Anyone help with this?

Panasonic 3DO – 5 million (wiki) If they only had lowered the initial asking price!

Commodore GS – erm, probably not very many and you’ve very lucky if you have one as they’re quite the collectible these days.

Amstrad GX4000 – seven , no not seven million, just seven I’ve got one myself, but less said the better

Cannonball – Enhance Sega Outrun Engine.

It might be cold, grey and damp out there today but inside it warm and full of the joys of summer  with clear blue skies, big fluffly white clouds and three tropical soundtracks. Yup, Outrun is back and and this time, thanks to coder DJYT, a new game engine has been released called ‘Cannonball’. Using the original roms Cannaball has many enhancements and improvements over the original and can also used to run Outrun at a very impressive 60 frames per second

You can pick up the Windows binary files here -

http://www.massdestruction.co.uk/outrun/cannonball-v012-w32.zip

You will also need a copy of the MS Visual C++ Runtime Libraries

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555

and finally a copy of the Outrun Roms (They MUST be revision B).

or alternatively if you wish, you can download the source files and compile your own version of Cannonball via Github -

https://github.com

 

I had issues getting it to run at first but then noticed that Cannonball calls for an Outrun Rom file  called ‘epr-10381a.132′ which is not in the revision B Rom set. Either rename the file to epr-10381b.132 or copy the rom file from Revision A set.

Game Controls are as follow -

• Cursors: Steering
• Z: Accelerate
• X: Brake
• Space: Gear Change
• 5: Insert Coin
• 1: Start
• F1: Pause
• F2: Advance a frame when paused
• F3: Toggle/Freeze timer

 

At first I thought, yeah it looks pretty impressive and smooth at 60 fps but it wasn’t until I switched back to the original 30 fps did I notice that how MUCH of a difference the enhanced version looks. Play, for example the first (left) path  to get to the area with the overhead stone structures…it looks flippin awesome, you won’t go back to Mame again for your Outrun fix

 

Woot woot, party time!

Still shots won’t show how smooth this looks at 60fps but I highly recommend running two version of Cannonball configured at both 30 and 60 fps. Pause both (F1) and run them together.

My desktop –  60fps on the left, 30fps on the right….or it it the other way around

At the moment there’s isn’t a frontend menu system for the game so for example, if you wish to change the graphics properties and other game options you will need to do this by editing the games config file with notepad or similar.

I’ve found that if you select the fullscreen toggle, the audio is effected slightly, therefore I prefer to run Cannonball in Windowed mode but set the scaler mode to either 3 or 4.

 

Here’s what my config looks like – <Widescreen, Windowed, Scale 4, Normal difficulty, Normal traffic, Auto gears.

<?xml version=”1.0″?>

<!–
Video Settings
–>
<video>
<!– FPS
0 = 30 FPS. Optimized Mode (Slow computers)
1 = 30/60 FPS. Original Game Mode. (The original experience)
2 = 60 FPS. Smooth Mode. (Full 60fps)
–>
<fps>2</fps>

<!– Enhanced Widescreen Mode –>
<widescreen>1</widescreen>

<!– Set Screen Mode: 0 is windowed, 1 is full-screen –>
<mode>0</mode>

<!–
Windowed Mode Settings
Scale: Scale or zoom factor for window mode. 1 is original size.
–>
<window>
<scale>4</scale>
</window>

<!–
Fullscreen Mode Settings
Stretch: Set to 1 to stretch the screen and remove borders.
–>
<fullscreen>
<stretch>0</stretch>
</fullscreen>
</video>

<!–
Game Engine Settings
–>

<engine>
<!– Game Time:
0 = Easy (80 seconds)
1 = Normal (75 seconds)
2 = Hard (72 seconds)
3 = Very Hard (70 seconds)
1= Infinite Time
–>
<time>4</time>

<!– Traffic Difficulty:
0 = Easy,
1 = Normal,
2 = Hard,
3 = Very Hard
1 = No Traffic
–>
<traffic>0</traffic>

<!– Advertise Sound In Attract Mode –>
<advertise>1</advertise>

<!– Gears:
0 = Manual (Click to shift, for normal play)
1 = Manual (Hold to shift, for cabinet play)
2 = Automatic
–>
<gear>2</gear>
</engine>

Many thanks to DJYT for the awesome-ness release. For more info, visit the project page -

http://reassembler.blogspot.co.uk/p/cannonball-open-source-outrun-engine.html

I wonder if someone could create a Christmas mod

Oh my G.O.G!

Bargains galore to be had at Good old Games at the moment. Check out some of these gaming bundles on sale! Be quick, this particular sale ends soon….mind you, isn’t everything going to end soon?

Spoilt for choice here but there’s three particular bundles I’ll be going for. No wait, Four…..Wooo, didn’t see that one, better make it five….eek, Curstie’s gonna kill me

Retro Gaming: Flipper Slipper – Colecovision.

I don’t really play that many Colecovision games too often (must change that), apart from being quite partial to a spot of Beamrider, however I’ve been returning to this one particular game quite a lot this week – The rather odd Breakout/Pinball game called Flipper Slipper.

Gameplay is straight forward enough and follows the usual Breakout pattern i.e you control  the bat left and right (actually you get two Flipper Slipper) and bounce the ball off the targets above to score points.

With other Breakout clones, such as like Batty or Arkanoid for example, you get a multitude of pick up modification to help you clear the screen. Well, there’s nothing like that in Flipper Slipper but what you do get is the ability to rotate your bats which helps to increase your aim. Also, as the bats are slightly curved, and with practice, you can effectively double bounce the ball and get it travelling in the right direction for more precise shots…ok, i admit, most are flukes

As you can see from the two yellow blobs either side of the screen and the wavy lines at the bottom, Flipper Slipper has some some of beach theme going on….well yellow blobs must mean sand right? Erm…… I’m sure what that bear and/or dogs head at the top of the screen fits into the beach theme but hitting the blue icons below him a few times seems to rack up the points so I’m guessing that’s good right?

Those ‘things’ at the top left/right of the screen are in effect, blocks similar to Breakout. Clearing them will reward you with points and taking out the last one will spawn a new set for you to clear again. You also get to target fish that are out for a stroll on the sand (yep!) and ninja-less turtles from time to time.

..and what the flippin ‘eck is that floaty thing that drifts  from left to right? In fact, what the hell was the artist on when creating this  screen?…Yep, Flipper Slipper is one weird looking game, but one that is surprisingly very likable after just a few short plays. Who cares what all the crap is on screen, those curved bats certainly make for an interesting game of Breakout.

Edit – aha, I’ve just found a pdf copy of the instruction manual online…makes more sense now

http://www.colecovisionzone.com/photos/game/manual/flipper%20slipper%20manual.pdf

Maldita Castillia

<roar> ‘For God and Castles’ <more roar….and a bit of echo for dramatic effect>.

Yep, that’s what you’ll be saying after completing a level of Maldita Castilla…during gameplay it’ll be something like ‘Dammit’, ‘For flip sake’, ‘Noooo’, ‘Die you mother flappy things’ etc etc

Locomalito is back with yet another retro-tastic freeware game and this time around it’s a arcade platformer which takes inspiration from Ghost n Goblins, Gryzor, Karnov, Castlevania and many more. Suck at Super Ghouls and Ghosts on the SNES? <I do>, play Maldita Castilla instead, its a little more forgiven and bags of fun.

Here’s the trailer -

Like Verminist and Hydorah, the thing that i really like about Locomalitio’s releases are the the little extras that have gone into each production. For example, ingame simulated scan lines, arcade ROM board inspired game startup  and the host of additional media available free for download with each game.

A page from the beautifully produced game manual.

Behold, the carriage of the chosen one.

You can even download and print your own DVD wallet and disc cover.

One of ten posters depicting scenes and end of level bosses. This one, the child of Jabba the Hutt and General Grevious?

Man-up brave Knight,  fore your quest begins – Six levels of 80′s pixel platform fun awaits and demons beckon o’ yonder. Smite away my lord – For God and Castles!

Konix Multisystem emulated

Woo, check out all the excitement at http://www.konixmultisystem.co.uk/ as they have now released an emulator of the famous yet unreleased 80′s console, the Konix Multi System. Best of all, with kind permission from Mr Yak himself, a semi complete version of Attack of the Mutant camels which Jeff developed for the system has been released too! Impressive stuff indeed especially as pretty much all related material about the console is practically non existent.

Looking pretty good there for an 8-bit system. Certainly might have given the Amiga or Atari ST a good fight.

After you’ve had play around with the emulator and some of the tech demos, check out some of the in depth articles on the site too to learn more about the machine that never became.

What is an interesting thought though, is now that the emulator is out there, I wonder if any talented coders begin to develop new games for it and/or could we see Homebrew Konix Systems starting to appear? Anyone got an a spare deck chair

History of Ocean Software Book gets the green light.

Although a little slow to get going, with just 7 days left, the Kickstarter project to produce a biography about Ocean Software has reached its goal. Fanfare!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/47744432/the-history-of-ocean-software-by-retro-fusion

There’s still time to back this great project though including additional  stretch goals to have as many ex Ocean staff attend the Revival Retro event being held in the spring next year (UK).

Until then, am looking forward to hearing all about the development of the new book and counting down until summer 2013 when we can all get out mitts on it. Nice one Chris :-)

Here’s a quick look back at when i managed to locate their old offices during a trip to Manchester.

http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/a-wave-to-ocean-software/

..and finally, a line from a website I read today that made me smile.

‘Back in ’88, everyone had Kylie & Jason but we had US Gold and Ocean’