Retro gaming week #9

With all the shenanigans of converting the Jamma arcade machine to a Mame cab just lately, coin-op games have been the staple of this week retro gaming and two classic shooters i’ve re-re-revisiting time and again are in –

Phoenix – Centuri (1980)

Pure nostalgia this one – When I think back to early arcade gaming the first game that springs to mind is Phoenix. Back in the day, it was pretty common to see an upright or cocktail cab in the corners of cafes, student clubs and chip shops. The one I remember the most was in a greasy spoon cafe not too far away from the school yard. It was an upright Centuri cab complete with that terrible faux wood paneling, but despite is looking awful, was incredibly popular during lunch (and unofficial) break.

Being the only game in the cafe, the unspoken rule was one credit if there was a queue behind you and owner of the cafe would jot down the scores and would offer free lunch to the highest monthly score.

I’ve only got to hear ‘Romance de Amor’ and I can picture the starfield scrolling down ready for the first wave of attacking birds and then onto the button bashing finale as you punch a hole through the orange defence shield of momma bird – surely a good test of a new arcade build. I play Pheonix and I’m transported back to that cafe on a Friday lunchtime happy in knowledge that the weekend was just around the corner. Bacon sandwich anyone?

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Here’s the second classic shooter i’ve been playing a lot of this week, and another that I used to drop so many pocket money coins into.

Moon Cresta – Nitchibutsu (1980)

As with Phoenix, the aim is to blast away at everything whilst trying not to get hit yourself. There’s no boss stage with Moon Cresta but after clearing a few stages, you get the chance to upgrade your ships single laser gun by docking with another craft. Sadly the trade off is that your ship is now much bigger therefore so watch that incoming fire!

I may have lost ship one, but two and three docked together makes for one mighty ship.

Moon Cresta is also one handful of games that I could recognise straight away by just one sound effect, the laser fire FX is so memorable!

Incidentally, if you fancy looking at some of home computer conversions, the ZX Spectrum version is almost arcade perfect in gameplay. Sadly the sound effects are a bit feeble.

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Setting up my emulation PC for the Mame cabinet meant transferring a hefty amount of data from my NAS and so to pass the time, I’d got my Commodore Plus/4 setup on the geek desk for a spot of gaming whist I waited. Here’s two games I keep returning too, the first being a conversion of a classic coin-op

Moon Buggy – Anirog (1985)

Moon Buggy was ported to many systems including countless clones and I’ve probably played more versions of this game than I can remember – Some are great and many are really poor. The Plus/4 – Commodore 16 version by Anirog is extremely playable though and a faithful conversion of the arcade classic. The difficulty curve, I think, is just right, starting off nice n easy and then gently increasing and rewards those who dare jump early or late.

The aim off the game is to patrol the the surface of the moon and destroy all invaders you encounter. You moon buggy is equipped with forward facing and surface to air guns as well as jump jets to propel yourself over the many craters and rocks you’ll encounter along the way.

Timing your shots, speed and jump jets is critical to completing a stage as well as keeping an eye on the ground and in the air….yep, lots to do!

Graphically it looks rather nice too with just a hint of parallax scrolling on the background and although your buggy is a simply drawn, this version does have the signature wheel explosions if you happen to fall foul of any lunar obstacles.

I think the only critisim i have is the high pitched sound FX of the enemy can sometimes become tiresome but apart from that, top notch 1/6th gravity fun.

Anirog have produced some great game covers, Moon Buggy is certainly one of them.

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Another Plus/4 game I’ve been playing is one that was only released a few years ago..you’ve gotta love the retro gaming community!

Adventures in time – Psytronic (2010)

It’s one of those games that you’re either going to love or loath due to its necessity on the pixel perfect jump…or leap into the unknown.

Give it time though and once you start to learn the layout of a few screens and the enemy patterns Adventures in Time certainly starts to grow on you and for a Plus/4 game, it looks incredible good too and has some of the best music i’ve heard coming from the TED.

I was first introduced to this last year at a Retro Event in Derby by Chris http://www.commodore16.com/ Snowdon (here’s hoping there’s going to be another one) and have been meaning to sit down with this again whenever I had the Plus/4 setup again.

A great game which all C16/plus4 owners should try.

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On to another game that’s starting to grow on me despite a fustrating start.

Gem Chaser – ZX Spectrum (2013)

There’s been a raft of new games released over at World of Spectrum and this one from a few weeks ago. It’s a remake of an indie Xbox game and all you have to do is run/jump your block around the level collecting the coloured blocks before the timer runs out. Sounds easy right?

Well, you can only collect a coloured block that matches your own colour. Failure to do so will result in a time penalty and as time is very short, you don’t want to be doing that very often.

To change your blocks colour, you need to pass through one of portals dotted around the screen. The trick to completing the level is to figure out the least timing consuming route and not to spend too much time running around haphazard.

Try not to destroy your vintage ZX Spectrum after the frustration this game will bring

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I was reading a review of a this particular game in this months edition of Retro Gamingtimes Monthly and thought i’d revisit on a the system I’d first played it on.

Pooyan – Konami (1982)

Pooyan is one of those games that i’ve heard about for many years but have not actually played it. Last year I was at one of the the Retro Computer Museum events and sat down to a system likewise that really didn’t know too much about either. Said system was the Sord M5 and it so happened to have a Pooyan cartridge loaded.

Suffice to say, I really enjoyed it and have since sourced a copy for my NES…..no chance of owning a Sord M5 myself though as they appear to be quite the collectable and demand a hefty price.

Momma Bear in basket, fires arrows at balloonist wolves……huh?

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….,and finally, after the sad announcement and closure of Lucasarts annouced a few weeks ago, I’ve been looking back at some of their classic adventures on PC and Amiga. This week it’s the four disk Amiga version of ‘Threepwood’s island of Monkey secrets’….or something to that effect

Happy gaming….Yarg!

Summer sunshine with Outrun

More heavy snow showers here at the moment and it’s certainly not looking very spring like out there. A quick dash out to refill the bird tables is about as much time I want to be out there this morning. It’ll be much better to stay indoors with mug O coffee and my C64 whilst I await another heating engineer.

Time for something a bit summery I think and a game which just radiates heat.

Outrun is summer, whenever I play on Mame and I think back to summer holidays spent along the coastline and the many arcades halls we used to hang around in over there . The smell of sea air mixed with fried fish, chips, hot donuts and ice creams, deep blue skies and hot bright sunshine glinting of mirror and bezel glass. Neon, chrome, the noise of a hundred arcade cabinets, the flashing lights, the awful carpets (is this the same in arcade halls around the world?), that familiar red car and the sweet sound of Magical Shower drifting over the din. The snow is melting already!

When the home conversions started to appear in 1987 I eagerly brought a copy for my C64. It wasn’t exactly arcade perfect of course but it was a damn fine conversion that was complete with two (of the original three) signature tunes playing out beautifully via C64 ‘s SID chip. Alternative, an audio tape edition of the original arcade music was also included for playback on your Walkman.

The only problem I had with the C64 version is that I didn’t have a disk drive at the time and therefore had to rely on the very slow loading tape edition. Because of this, track routes A thru to E had to be loaded as individual games. So for example, if you wanted to drive route C, you had to fast forward the tape to a certain position and load from there – none of that fancy picking of route as you drive along.

These days I’ll load the floppy edition from my SD2iEC but until recently I had no idea that there was actually two version of the same game released for the C64. One was released in the US and the other over here and the rest of Europe I guess? I happened across it whilst browsing around on CSDB and found a collection of arcade releases by Nostalgia that had been grouped together into EasyFlash cartridge images.

Compilation #3

Each title contains a number of cheats/modifications, allows high score saving to the cartridge and well as backup to disk image. Of course, having the games run from cartridge also cuts the loading time to practically seconds…perfect for Outrun.

Being in .crt format you can play these releases using a C64 emulator such as Vice, but if you want to play them on a real C64, you’ll need to get yourself an EasyFlash Cartridge.

I picked mine up from eBay a few years ago <see previous blog post <http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/commodore-64-easyflash-cartridge-and-jiffydos-rom/>and you can still find them pretty easily on there either assembled or, if you fancy a spot of fun, in kit form.

 

Immediately, you can see that the Ferrari and background is slightly difference between the US and European versions.

European version.

A nicely drawn rendition of the Ferrari although not much use of colour on the driver and girlfriend . Loving those cotton wool clouds just like the in the arcade though.

 

USA version.

A new car and some rougher looking clouds.

Other than that, there’s little to tell the difference between the two – The track palette have been swapped around a little and i find that the US version is slightly easier to complete (or that the stages are shorter?)…all i know is that I’m completing the US version more times that the EU version.

Brunette (EU)….

 

….or Blonde (US)?

And as far as I can tell, the SID tunes are the same as well although I’d probably need to run these through SIDplay to be 100% sure.

Either way, Outrun on C64 Cartridge is a bags of run especially with ultra fast loading time. There’s also a a track selection screen too.

Brr, it still looks cold out there, but in here its summer again….although the illusion helps when you’ve got a toastie warm C64 power supply next to you!

 

 

 

My Gaming Week #7

I’m having an impromptu afternoon off working this afternoon – yesterday, our central heating boiler decided not to central heat anymore and wasn’t expecting a to be able to find an available heating engineer  so soon considering last weekends rapid drop in  temperatures and the huge dumping of snow we’ve had these past few days. Any-ho, he’s on his way so whilst I wait for him I  thought I’d catch up with my blog posts as free time has been a bit elusive these past few weeks.

Here’s a selection of games that’s been keeping me entertained this week (and the last week too as I didn’t get chance to post then either).

It’s no secret, I do love a good dose of Pinball, be it on a real table or in digital format and there are many digital tables out there which, unbound from any restrictions of a physical table often contain many weird and wonderful designs and features.

One such digital pinball game, really takes this to the max.

Devil Crash (Devil Crush) Sega Megadrive (1990).

Devils crash expands the pinball experience by presenting the main game table in multiple parts. The initial table is split into three sections, each with their own set of goals, bonuses and objectives to shoot for and expands on these by adding even more sub tables, again with there own set of goals. I haven’t managed to visit them all yet, but at the last count, playing Devils Crash is like playing on a pinball table which spans over eight tables.

I’ve only ever seen the PC Engine version running but never played it myself so was hoping that the Megadrive port going to be as good.

Visual, it certainly looks fantastic and although I’m not a horror fan, am loving the Gothic/Splatterhouse/Doom-esq/Gieger/Demonic <insert red stuff> look to the entire table. The sound effects perfectly match the table too with plenty of cliché ghoulish laughing, screams and howls – The background music I find, can be a bit repetitive so i’d decided that anything by Metallica was perfectly suited.

Here’s the bottom of the table, lose the ball here and it’s game over my friend.  Aim for the centre castle to help you seal up the gap between your flippers and/or plant the ball into ‘boney’ mouth on the right.

One of the amazing looking sub-tables.

Am also loving the centre section, which kinda reminds me of Bride of Pinbot where the ladies face changes after hitting certain targets. This time around though, instead of robot to girl, we get girl to vamp to aged vamp and on to demonic snake thing….eek!… I’m sure she’s a lovely person though..just misunderstood

But all that goodness would be wasted if the ball physics and framerate turned out to be a bit iffy and thankfully, Devils Crash on the Megadrive doesn’t suffer with any of this. A great pinball game well worth checking out you ever get the chance.

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Buggy Boy – Commodore 64 (1987)

The first time I played Buggy Boy in the arcades was at Smiths arcade on the East coast. They had the huge  triple screen monster of a cabinet version (although not the largest according to KLOV) and I remember  it had red rope netting added to the rear window and sides to enhance that offroad buggy experience.  I’m not sure if this was added by the arcade operator themselves as I can’t find any reference to it being on as standard but it’s something that has always stuck in my mind. Funny how all the little obscure little details often do.

The port to the C64 by Elite surely ranks up as one of the best arcade racing games on Commie and a sure inclusion to pretty much everyones top lists of C64 games?  Like most, I’ve played this over and over again, but it wasn’t until I  was reminded of the fact that I’ve not actually loaded this in ages after seeing it included in NikNice’s ipad C64 games collection (see previous post - http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/niknices-collection-of-c64-games-for-ipad-and-iphone/

You all know the game so I won’t go into it, but if like myself and its been a while, I hope these will also serve as a reminder to do so again soon.

It might not have the large vehicle graphics of the arcade original but of all the home ports, surely the C64 conversion has got to be one of the best Buggy Boy experiences – especially the speed when comparing it to other home ports.

I’ve always like the look of the the ZX spectrum version too, especially the visuals which despite the lack of colour are pretty darn close to the arcade original. However, it runs incredibly slow and the camera angle is way to low, your Buggy blocks you view. It’s a shame as this could really have been something special. I occasionally play the Amiga version and a friend of mine recommended the Atari ST version so that’s added to the play list for another day.

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I had no idea this game existed until receiving a response  Youtube video featuring an  arcade gaming convention  From the 3 or 4 seconds of game footage  I  thought, woo that looks cool, in a  sorta Salamander-organic way. Little did I know that it was  actual a sequel.

Salamander 2 – Arcade/Mame (1992)

I’ve not really got far into the game yet but so far am looking the levels and bosses.  Sure, apart from a huge graphical update there’s that much extra going on here but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, just more of that Salamander/Gradius goodness.

One ugly mother.

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I’ve also been playing a handful of classic vector based arcade games using an emulator that’s designed to accurately reproduce a little bit better than say with MAME. Games like Asteroids, Rip off, Tempest, Gravitar and Lunar Lander.

The emulator is called Another Arcade Emulator (AAE)  - http://www.zophar.net/marcade/aae.html

Play Asteroids in Mame and then on AAE and you’ll instantly notice the difference.

You need a fairly beefy PC to run some of the games though and some seem to run better than others despite having less objects on screen. Initially I tried tried to run Omega Race on my Netbook and it just groaned and stuttered at 1 – 2 fps but on my main desktop things ran much better and am now toying with the idea of adding this emulator to my own arcade/Mame cabinet (yes I will finish it one day!).

AAE adds lots of new graphics options to closely present what the original arcade machines/monitors produced so for example, you can set screen burn, vector  phosphor glow levels, motion blur and light trail length as well as all manner of tweakable controls to suit your preferences.

Arcade  bezel and overlay art is supported in AAE too and worth tracking down to complete the illusion. You’ll also need to hunt down the rom images as these are not included in the download.

A note on Rom files  -
Out of the box I couldn’t get AAE to work correctly with my Mame set and on closer  inspection of the error/log file that’s produced after running a game, it appears that my roms are named incorrectly – or that they are correct but the AAE uses a different naming convention?

- for example, AAE might call for a rom image called 30210.01 but my image was called 30210-01.fr. Concidering that each game might contain a collection of anything between 6 – 40 rom images, that’s alot of file renaming you might need to do – not including the additional game revisions and prototypes.  It’s a bit of a chore but , the emulator is so good I think the reward is so worth the input.

AAE was last updated in 2008 with little advancements  after that, but there still appears to be a thriving forum community that should be able to answer any questions you might have.

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Lunch time web/flash gaming has mainly collection classics like Frogger and Space Invaders and one i’ve been playing quite a bit of is yet again, another Depth Charge port.

Depth Charge: First Attack - http://potentialtargetproductions.com/flash.html

The same classic mechanics of the arcade original are here – bomb the subs within a set time and avoid the torpedoes. However, this flash version differs somewhat by adding the ability to set the depth of you charge. So not only have you got to get the timing right, you also need to figure out the correct depth too…and don’t think those sub driver will stay at the same depth too…the dirty little rotters!

This version has upgrades too allowing you to outfit your warship with faster engines, increased reloading times and armour plating.

Able Seaman Stiggy at your service Cappy…..is it lunchtime yet?

My top tip, try to upgrade your ships speed first as without that you won’t be able to react quick enough to sink the subs or avoid incoming fire.

Happy gaming

StiGGy

Start of a great weekend?

Hopefully, this is the start of a great four day weekend – Just got back from am early morning coffee run and spotted these two out in the wild.

It’s been ages since there’s been an Amiga feature in Retro Gamer magazine so hopefully some good reading whilst I wait for my stuff to transfer from my old iPhone to my shiny new model 5.

There’s still lots to do out in the garden this weekend but with the sun shining and spring in the air, its time to step away from the keyboard for a bit and get prepping for this years spring and summer crops.

And whilst the weather stays good we’re hoping to get some walking time in this weekend either monday or tuesday too so we’ll be pouring over the OS maps later and see what we can see.

Whatever you’re up to, have a good one.

Congrats to Mordi again.

Congrats to Mordi for winning c64 remixer of the year for the forth time now.

http://www.remix64.com/roty.html

Check out all of his tunes at – http://mordi.ziphoid.com/ – especially ‘Ocean Loader no.2′ which still gives me goosebumps when I play it and (hoping he doesn’t mind) used it as background music a few years ago in my ‘bung a PC inside a dead Commodore 64′ YouTube vid.

Congrats again Mordi and keep up the good work.

My gaming Week #5

Another retro gaming week flies by. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

Gyruss – Atari 2600 (1980)

Usually, my go to system for a spot of Gyruss (other than the original/Mame version) is the conversion written for the Commodore C64, but this week, thanks to a bundle of eBay VCS carts (The Harmony cartridge is great, but I do love my retro box art!) , I’ve be enjoying the simple delights of the Parker Brothers Atari 2600 release. Basic it might look, but for a 2600 game it’s surprisingly nippy and has one of the best musical scores I’ve ever heard on the VCS.

In Gryuss, you move your ship through 360 degrees around the perimeter of the screen and blast away at the enemy ships fanning out from either the centre of the screen or from the left or right – Think Galaxians wrapped around a tube.

I think that grey blob is me…honestly it looks better when it’s in motion

Intense tube blasting calls for an intense soundtrack and compared to other conversions, Parker Brother have cranked up the tempo on the 2600 with Bach’s signature tune.

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I’ve also been checking out the Gyruss on another system too and it’s a version I’ve not actually played until this week.

Gryuss – Nintendo NES (1988)

Compared to the Atari 2600 this one certainly looks a stunner with its colourful and chunky Konami threads. The NES version also adds a few new elements not found in the arcade original including boss attack rounds, a new super weapon and a remix of the original soundtrack. It’s a cracking version of Gryuss all right, even if somewhat on the easy side. However, I’ve only scratched the first few planets so lets see if it has the same lasting appeal of the original.

 

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Another early game from Jeff Minters and one you’d usually see playing on my Vic-20 or C64 but this time around, I found the crisp visuals on the ZX Spectrum version simply too good to miss.

Voidrunner – ZX Spectrum (1987)

I found this version of Voidrunner purely by accident really as I was messing around with iXpectrum, the ZX Spectrum emulator on my iPad and needing an example game to play around. Because I’d been dipping in and out of Jeff Minters Llamasoft website recently (I’m keeping an eye out for more news on the soon to be released follow up to Goat Up) I found myself at the software library area where Jeff has many of his early games available as free downloads.

 

Voidrunner is a arcade shooter that shares similarities with Gridrunner and Matrix (which itself take influence from the the arcade game Centipede). The game contains a centipede like trail that makes its way down from the top of the screen towards you at the bottom. As you fire on it, the centipede breaksinto smaller pieces which travel in different direction making the whole task of destroying it ever more difficult. To make life even more difficult, there’s a horizontal laser beam that cuts down from the top of the screen to destroys you if your ship happens to cross it’s path.

It’s been fun to play on my iPad but I’ll be digging out one of my Speccys soon as this one deserves a proper joystick.

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Lunch break gaming this week has been so absorbing at times with this next game that I’ve actually forgot to stop and eat my lunch.

Zombotron – PC/web

http://armorgames.com/play/12000/zombotron

Guns, Zombies, Robots, ragdoll physics and unscripted moments of sheer awesomeness, you can’t help but have fun with this one.

‘Welcome to the planet «Zombotron», inhabited by human-mutants or just stupid zombies. Nobody knows where they come from and what they eat. But we know one thing – they are ready to destroy everything that moves.’

You control our hero via W,A,S,D with mouse for aim and mouse button for shooting, plus the E key for inventory. I’m still a Q,A,O,P type of chap but as I play more and more of these web games I’m getting kinda used to them bit by bit…I just wished more web games would have redefinable keys!

 

The aim of the game is simple to survive the ten levels and get from the start to the finish. Along the way you’ll need to solve a handful of puzzles as well as take out a fair share of squishy zombies and not so squishy robotic defense systems. Kills and opening treasure chests will reward with gold coins which can be used to purchase weapons, ammo, medkits and armour.

You start off with a puny pistol, but it’s not long before your packing shotgun, assault rifle, grenade launcher and rail gun. Ammo might seem a bit stingy at first but once you reach some of the later levels ammo conservation doesn’t become such a problem. Besides, although it’s fun to simply blast everything in sight, each level is littered with items that you can use (or not) as make shift weapon or trap. For example, push a crate from above on to the heads of an unsuspecting zombie, roll an explosive filled barrel down a slope mowing everything down in its path or shoot it in mid path at the right moment to cause maximum, and gory, damage. Alternatively sit back and watch zombie vs robot duke it leaving you to pick off any survivors.

There are also bonus missions to complete too – although not necessary to complete a level, including collecting certain things or doing certain actions. For example complete a level using minimal gun ammo.

I’ve had (and still am) having so much fun with Zombotron and now that i’ve completed it i’m hungry for more….woo, sequels!

Here’s the trailer.

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I round this week up with a pocket collection of classic Atari arcade games that have been given a new paint job.

Atari Classic Collection – Nintendo DS

This DS cart comprises of some pretty accurate arcade ports -

Centipede

Lunar Lander

Gravitar

Pong

Breakout

Missile Command

Warlords

Asteroids

Dragster

Tempest

Each game has also been made to take advantage of the DS touchscreen and stylus control which apart from Missile Command/Breakout pretty much sucks – Tempest with a stylus is just plain awful! However, you an still use the D-Pad and physical buttons which work perfectly (apart from Missile Command) and having a pocket version of Gravitar, Lunar Lander and Asteroids is why I brought the cart and much better than say Mame on my iPhone.

But thats not all. The thing I like most about this collection compared to other Atari compilations is the remixed graphic mode for each game.

Asteroids

Gravitar

Breakout…oh wait, that looks the same.

Happy gaming!

Brutal Sports Football – Commodore Amiga

The second game we used to play on those New Years day gaming sessions was Brutal Sports Football, a game which, to be quite honest, isn’t actually very good. However, when you’re looking for a a2-up sports game and fancy something a little bit different from Sensible Soccer, we thought we have a go on  this particular game that I’d brought up with me, after all it had been sitting on my game shelve untouched for a few months.

 

It’s a side scrolling football game of sorts where the object like most footy games is to score goals to win. Brutal Sports Football differs somewhat to most football games as the players based on fictional characters from fantasy realms including barbarians,  lizardmen and other such creatures…but mostly human…who all seem to have white hair?. The ref appears to be a some sort of Minotaur and not to be argued with and there’s  also a number of weapons laying about the pitch which can be used for defensive or offence use..of just plain fun.

We were hoping for some sort computerised version of Blood Bowl i.e the fantasy board game from Games Workshop that was popular in the late 80′s…wonder if you can still get it ? but was sadly disappointed when we first played it.

 

Shame really as graphically it looks pretty o.k although played on my mates Amiga A600 it all seemed a bit too much green and grey drab. Looking back at it again this afternoon on the A1200 with the colourful AGA chipset it looks much better.

 

Then we discovered the weapons…..then we discovered what we could do with the the weapon…and you can gain points too

Off with his head!

 

Well, that was much better and the next hour or so we forgot about the ball and concentrated on hacking each other to bits until heads were rolling all over the place. Highest fatalities wins

This was so much fun and we all found it absolutely hilarious that Brutal Sports Football returned to the playlist for many years afterwards and was always loaded on New Years day. I don’t see my old friend too often these days but we  keep in touch and each New Years day, we still swap Brutal Sports Football screenshots (with Photoshoppped goodies) via phone  message.

It’s funny how even a crap games can be fun given the right circumstances….except Double Dragon the on the C64….don’t get me started on that one again

 

The Lost Vikings – Commodore Amiga

Out of nostalgia at this particular time of year, I lean towards firing up two particular Amiga games that both myself and mate used to play around New Years day(s) all those years ago. His parents would host these huge New Years Eve parties and I would visit and stop over for the evening as the fun usually didn’t finish until the early hours of the next day. To help chase away the hangovers, New Years day was all about chillin, eating party food and of copious amount of gaming on my mates Commodore Amiga.

Of the many games we used to play, Lost Vikings (and a another that’ll post about next) were two games we loaded each year and have become almost there own New Years day tradition.

The Lost Vikings is standard platform/action type game for which there are many on the Amiga. However, this particular games has a novel twist – rather than having just one main character to control, you control three Vikings (one at a time) who each possessing a unique skill set. By combining these skill sets you need to overcome puzzles, deadly traps and defeat a variety of nasties and finally reach the exit. It’s slower pace it most welcome post party session!

The story goes that three Viking have been abducted by  something probably evil who plans to place them and other specimens into some sort of intergalactic zoo. You manage to escape and must find your way home through teamwork……or be lost forever..ever..ever.

Introducing our heroes -

Eric The Swift

He can run like the wind and is able to leap over great pixel distances. He can also use his thick head to smash through walls or enemies….lots of fun!

Baleog the Fierce

A mighty warrior and one heckava chin. Left alone he’ll  spend all day flexi his muscles but once on the move he can slice and dice with his sword or shoot enemy or faraway objects with his bow and arrows.

Olaf the Stout

You can tell that he likes his pork pies. He might be a bit on the slow side but that heavy shield he carries around can block all manner of incoming fire and shield anyone behind him.  He can also  carry it aloft to provide an extra  step up for Eric or  used as a glider to gently float down to platforms below. How…i have know idea…must be a magical shield..Wooooo!

 

The Lost Vikings is such a great fun game to play, looks fantastic and has some really nice comedic moments that’ll have you laughing at some of the on screen dialogue.  Things start off very easy at first allowing you to get used to each Viking and there respective skills  and then you’ll gradually learn to combine them to solve puzzle by puzzle.  Later on, these levels are brilliantly put together and have you head scratching on more that one occasion.

Complete each level and you’ll receive a handy password code allowing you to restart from that level again  rather than having to start from the very beginning again.

You’ll also note that each viking has an inventory space to store various items such as food and keys. You can also swap items around between each viking to help out in certain situations or to provide a spot of lunch and a jolly nice energy boost.

Vikings vs Egyptians.

 

vs. robots

 

I’m yet to finish this game, but as  my Amiga 1200 is out at the moment, you never know, 20 years later, I might just get around to doing it this year! I also read with interest that Lost Vikings was ported to the Nintendo GBA – Lost Vikings on the go, am liking the sound of that!

 

 

 

 

 

Commodore Free #65

Commodore Free, the free Commodore enthusiast magazine, has always been a damn fine read, but Nigel and co. really have made #65 one of the best to date. Big thanks guys!

Check out some of the Commodore goodness via the C64 diskmag menu.

Not only all of that lot  but the contents of this months (digital) cover tape features a rather cracking game of Tetris, two Schmups (loving ReTron at the moment), a 2-up classic memory game and finally, Tape Master Pro for making your own loader screens with your own  image, music and  text.  The StiGGyBloG tape loader will be born soon

Head on over to Commodore Free and download a copy of this month issue served up in all manner of digital print formats from simple .txt to PDF or .epub and .mobi for your tablet readers if you prefer. Of course, there’s always the .d64 version for playback on a real C64 (or emulated).

http://www.commodorefree.com/index.html

After a hectic day at work and the last of our Christmas shopping trips done, it’s  nice to be out of the cold, put ones feet up and delve into a slice of Commodore bliss.

 

 

Amiga Format magazine – PDF scans.

I’m in Amiga heaven at the moment as Commodore is Awesome are hosting PDF scans of practically every issue of Amiga Format magazine. I was an avid reader of the mag during the 90′s and tried not to miss a single issue (most of them are still with me today). Sure, Amiga Power was the mag for gamers, especially with those cover mounted floppy disks, but Amiga Format was certainly the bigger brother of all Amiga mags, containing an unusual large amount of pages for a computer magazine at the time and covering all aspects of Amiga use, both personal and professional.

It’s this particular magazine that really sparked my interest in personal computing and the Amiga as a device to for so many uses beside gaming. I guess as a result, influencing my choosen career path in I.T. to this day – damn you Amiga Format

Thanks to Commodore is Awesome I can now carry around these great tablets of Amiga goodness on a more modern tablet.

Commodore SD2IEC Cassette Tape Case

I’ve still not got round to building a proper case for my SD2IEC <;see previous blog post http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/sd2iec-new-toy-for-my-commodore-64/ >; and rather than have it sit in an antistatic bag I thought I’d make a get a quick an easy case for it that was a little more robust and at least keep the dust of it whilst it’s in use.

My SD2iEC board is slightly bigger than a standard credit card and thus fits inside a tape cassette case quite nicely. Plus, by definition the device almost replaces cassette tapes/floppy disks for my 8-Bit Commodores so i thought using an old school tape case would be kinda cool.

First thing i need to do was get the Dremel out the two plastic lugs on the inside of the case that used to hold a cassette in place. These would simply be getting in the way so after a quick chop and a little light sanding with one of the Dremel attachments, it’s all nice and smooth inside.

Next I need to cut away a section in one corner of the case to allow for the serial cable and then i cut away a small slot in the front side of the case to allow access to the SD card slot.

Still plenty of room in there but i’ll add a few adhesive foam pads for protection and stop the board from moving around.

I found a template for to print your own cassette insert on the internet which was already scaled to fit perfectly and added a retro cassette image and a few other bits using Photoshop.

I’m pretty happy with the results so far. I just need to make a few holes in the top so I can access the reset and disk change buttons as well as letting the LED lights to shine through.

I’ve amended the cover slightly by adding a ‘Commodore SD2IEC’ in the best matching Commodore font I could find (EuroStile Extended) as well as some simple ‘Load’ instructions similar to those on old Commodore game tapes – amended to load the sd2iec File Browser utility.

I’m also toying with the idea of creating two other alternative inserts. One would be a mock beige Commodore 1541 floppy drive complete with Commodore logo and colour ribbon (except it would read Commodore SD2IEC instead of 1541) and the other would be based on the grey Commodore 1531 Floppy drive. What do you think?

;

Digital retro magazine galore

Phew, a busy week here hence the lack of posts and it looks like the guys over at ‘Commodore is Awesome’ have been busy too with the release of some cracking digital scans of old retro gaming magazines just lately.

First we have the entire collection of Zzap64 magazine. Back in the day, the best Commodore C64 magazine in the UK and still a brilliant read today.

The scans appear to be the same as those on the zzap64 website and on the collection DVD that you can purchase Zzap shop

I brought the DVD a few years ago and have most of them sitting on my NAS server ready to pipe to my iPad via iBooks or Kindle app. The scans are ok and are perfectly readable but some of the early issues are scanned from original magazines that where in a poor state. Mind you, who has early issues of Zzap64 that aren’t creased and ripped these days (if you do, fancy scanning them?)

Certain issues stand out really well in my clouded memory. For example, I remember reading this issue 22 years ago, it was one incredibly hot Sunday afternoon and the Wimbledon men’s final was being played out….funny how I can remember that from all those years ago, but for the life of me can’t remember where I’ve just placed my car keys

Next up is the complete collection of ‘Zero’ magazine. This was a multi format magazine that was in circulation during the exciting time of the emerging 16-bit era of computers and consoles. It also includes PC’s as gaming machines too which up until then just couldn’t compete with the multi talented powerhouse Atari ST’s and Amiga.

I must admit, I never brought Zero. I can remember seeing the odd issue on the newsstand but as a one system owner (or two) back in the day, I dismissed multiformat magazines and favoured dedicated mags to read about the software and hardware for the equipment that i owned.

Of course, nowadays and with my retro collection including more machines than back then, these multiformat magazines are a great resource for discovering things that may have been missed first time around.

A great article from issue #1 about the upcoming Konix multisystem. Sadly is wasn’t to be, but it still remains as one coolest ideas for a console and at least someone (aka Mr Minter himself) got the chance to sample a prototype.

Finally we have the CU Amiga magazine collection. Originally starting out as Commodore User magazine and catering for C64 owners CU and Zzap64 were the magazines I religiously brought and read. As the popularity of the Amiga grew during the twilight years of the c64, Commodore User magazine was changed to CU Amiga and this is we’re this particular collection begins.

Its such a great magazine and early editions are chock full of all those, now classic, Amiga games just waiting to be rediscovered again. I did a art essay at college based on an article in the PD section of CU magazine.. It would be great to search through the archive and find the correct issue again.

Reminiscing with old Cinemaware magazine advert in CU Amiga. I played all four of these extensively on my A500 after pimping it with the required 512mb upgrade.

All of the scans are in PDF format and so can be read via a variety of suitable readers on PC etc. For me, this is one of my favorite bits about have owning a tablet/iPad as it makes re-reading these classic magazines a real joy.

All magazines, including many more collections can be found here -

http://awesome.commodore.me/magazine

Time to put ones feet up!

Happy reading

Digital retro magazine galore

Phew, a busy week here hence the lack of posts and it looks like the guys over at ‘Commodore is Awesome’ have been busy too with the release of some cracking digital scans of old retro gaming magazines just lately.

First we have the entire collection of Zzap64 magazine. Back in the day, the best Commodore C64 magazine in the UK and still a brilliant read today.

The scans appear to be the same as those on the zzap64 website and on the collection DVD that you can purchase Zzap shop

I brought the DVD a few years ago and have most of them sitting on my NAS server ready to pipe to my iPad via iBooks or Kindle app. The scans are ok and are perfectly readable but some of the early issues are scanned from original magazines that where in a poor state. Mind you, who has early issues of Zzap64 that aren’t creased and ripped these days (if you do, fancy scanning them?)

Certain issues stand out really well in my clouded memory. For example, I remember reading this issue 22 years ago, it was one incredibly hot Sunday afternoon and the Wimbledon men’s final was being played out….funny how I can remember that from all those years ago, but for the life of me can’t remember where I’ve just placed my car keys

Next up is the complete collection of ‘Zero’ magazine. This was a multi format magazine that was in circulation during the exciting time of the emerging 16-bit era of computers and consoles. It also includes PC’s as gaming machines too which up until then just couldn’t compete with the multi talented powerhouse Atari ST’s and Amiga.

I must admit, I never brought Zero. I can remember seeing the odd issue on the newsstand but as a one system owner (or two) back in the day, I dismissed multiformat magazines and favoured dedicated mags to read about the software and hardware for the equipment that i owned.

Of course, nowadays and with my retro collection including more machines than back then, these multiformat magazines are a great resource for discovering things that may have been missed first time around.

A great article from issue #1 about the upcoming Konix multisystem. Sadly is wasn’t to be, but it still remains as one coolest ideas for a console and at least someone (aka Mr Minter himself) got the chance to sample a prototype.

Finally we have the CU Amiga magazine collection. Originally starting out as Commodore User magazine and catering for C64 owners CU and Zzap64 were the magazines I religiously brought and read. As the popularity of the Amiga grew during the twilight years of the c64, Commodore User magazine was changed to CU Amiga and this is we’re this particular collection begins.

Its such a great magazine and early editions are chock full of all those, now classic, Amiga games just waiting to be rediscovered again. I did a art essay at college based on an article in the PD section of CU magazine.. It would be great to search through the archive and find the correct issue again.

Reminiscing with old Cinemaware magazine advert in CU Amiga. I played all four of these extensively on my A500 after pimping it with the required 512mb upgrade.

All of the scans are in PDF format and so can be read via a variety of suitable readers on PC etc. For me, this is one of my favorite bits about have owning a tablet/iPad as it makes re-reading these classic magazines a real joy.

All magazines, including many more collections can be found here -

http://awesome.commodore.me/magazine

How am I going to get all this work done now

Happy reading

Commodore Flickr gallery – II Roberto.

Take a look at the II Roberto’s Flickr gallery contains some great images of Commodore machines inside and out as well as many other older games consoles.

Am loving the C64 Silver Sticker set (one day, you shall be mine!)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31083566@N04/

RIP Jack Tramiel

Just catching up on the sad news that yesterday saw the passing of Commodore International founder Jack Tramiel. God speed.