To see the sea.

We’ve been planning a drive out to the coast for a few months now but with one thing and another we didn’t quite seem to make it. Yesterday evening all plans converged on making the trip out early today so up at stupid o’clock this morning with flasks of hot stuff, sausage buttie’s, winter wear and boots….huskies, rope, icepick etc etc

It’s about a two hour drive and at this time of morning we had pretty much the roads to ourselves. When the sun did wake, darkened skies turned to cool blues with hardly a cloud in the sky…absolutely perfect.

Well, that was until a few miles out from the coast when we noticed that many of the roof tops, gardens and parked cars were covered with a heavy dusting of snow. When we arrived the blue skies were gone, the icy wind blowing off the sea had intensified and the sleet and snow began.

We sat and waited…

It got worse…

We sat and waited…

It got worse…

We sat and, as if a switch had been flicked, we were back to blue skies, sunshine and the snow clouds heading away and further inland.

Cool shapes on the sand left after the tide.

Making the most of it in the event that the snow decided to do a u-turn, we our took our stroll along the beach…and after a while, time to win a bet I had with a couple of my friends at work.

I win Rob, boy was it nippy!

 

Back on dry land, with warm soup and sandwichs we headed into town to see if anything was open. Pretty much everywhere was shut up for the winter months but we did spot a couple of the larger amusement arcades that were open for business. Remembering our visit from last year, I wondered if the Mirage Arcade still had….?

 

Woot woot, yay it does – time for a spot of retro gaming.

I’ve blogged about this multi-cade before so feel free to click on the link below for more details – If you ever spot one out in the wild, you’ve got to check them out.

http://stiggyblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/retro-arcade-hunt-result/

I tried out the trackball on the cabinet again on games like Liberator, Golden Tee and Missile Command and it works really well although I found it to be a little too sensitive for spinner games like Arkanoid and Breakout.

I also had a blast on Robotron and actually lasted into a few more waves this time around – maybe all that research is paying off! I finished off with a game I’ve been playing a lot of this past week on the 2600 – Gravitar. I must get this booted on MAME at some point over the weekend , such a great game.

Our fun and games over and we headed back home…..although fun and games was about to begin again! Five miles out from the coast, clunk, bang, growwwwwl, instantly my little Peugeot was transformed into something that sounded like a hot-rod Hemi Cuda. You see, my exhaust pipe had fallen off :-O

We called our breakdown cover and (thankfully) didn’t have a long wait until emergency repairs were completed and we was on our merry way again. All crappy boy racer cars on the road just couldn’t compete : -) Hear me Roar!

Micro Arcade gaming – Arcadie Arcade

Well, it’s been a few weeks now since receiving the awesome(ness) custom port of Mame for my Arcadie-Arcade and have been thorougly enjoying testing it out with the creme of all those arcade classics. The Arcadie-Arcade is miniature arcade cabinet designed to be used with a iPhone or iPod Touch. Its uses pressure sensors on the bottom half of the screen for the joystick and two mini arcade buttons leaving the top half of screen to display the game. Fun times indeed, especially as I’ve been lucky enough to beta test this yet to be released Mame port.

So far so its been all good and all of the rom images I’ve tested so far work just as well as if using iMame or Mame4All using Set 37b7. O.k with only two buttons, you might be a little restricted when playing certain games like button-fest Street Fighter II (although it’s suprising how far you can get with just one kick and one punch button) but pretty much all of the old school classics that appeal to me are those that only require one or two buttons. Having anymore buttons on the Arcadie would be a disaster!
Once you have the app installed and a collection of zipped rom images transferred the Rom Folder on your iPhone (I did this via sideloading with the iExplorer desktop client), you launch Mame, scanthe rom folder and with any luck, you should have a nice games list.

You can scroll through games list one by one by moving the joystick up or down or alternatively via left and right to jump through the list more quickly. Pressing button ‘B’ on the Arcadie launches the game and the fun begins.

Along the bottom of the screen of four useful touchscreen buttons which remain on screen during the game. They are – Exit (to main menu), Options, Coin and Start. The options button brings up a full screen menu and so it’s probably best not to access this whilst your iPhone is in the Arcadie case because you won’t be able to see the rest of the screen. To be honest, once you’ve configured the emulator options to how you like them, I doubt you’d need to go into this menu again.

That’s about all there is to it really and even if you’re not familiar with Mame, I don’t think that navigating around and running a game is going to cause you too much difficulty. Oh and btw, bothHorizontal and Vertical games are supported…and if you’re thinking that vertical games won’t be playable of such a tiny portion of the screen..believe me they play just fine.

At the moment they’re no release information for this port particular of Mame. Will it pass Apple stringent views on emulation or will it be a Cydia store app only? Who knows but in the meantime, if you happen to have an iPhone or iPod (3rd Gen), do yourself a favour and treat yourself to an Arcadie Arcade machine whilst they’re available. Even if you can’t play Mame on it yet, the free arcade inspired games on the app store will bring a little bit of classic gaming to your desktop….as well as nods of approval from fellow classic gamers

I brought mine from Firebox and I’m seriously thinking about getting another one so I can have a go at some creating some custom replacement artwork for the side panels.

Here’s a few pictures of mine running a few games – thanks to the Arcade Flyer website for the backdrops!

Even the almighty Starwars (which is almost unplayable without analogue controls) gives you goosebumps when see it playing on a tiny arcade

I can't have a gaming session without including my all time favourite - Phoenix
 Another classic shooter - Scramble.  Even with the tiny digital controls, it's surprising how well it drives that famous red motor. I struggle with the moves but it is possible to pull of the odd Hurricane kick and Shoryuken uppercut. 
 Back to the classics one last time. 

C64 SID tunes on a VIC-20

Here’s a rather interesting project I was reading about on the Denial Vic-20 forums. It’s a Commodore 64 SID convertor written for the VIC-20 which uses Aleksi Eeben’s SID emulator. It’s still a WIP, but the author, Kananga, has release a selection of converted C64 SID files for playback on a VIC-20!

You can run them under emulator with VICE64 but I was keen to run them on an actual VIC so I copied the files to my SD2IEC and let my VIC/VC-20 sing just like it’s big brother c64.

You can read all about it download the sample files here – http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bulletin/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5586

…and here’s a quick video of me messing around with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dMM4MqGuqU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Can’t wait for the finished thing, would be great to get Crazy Comets playing on a VIC.

iOS retro gaming: iMame

Now here’s something special for the holiday season that us iOS retro gamers have been waiting for. iMame the port of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) has bizarrely appeared on the Apple App store as a free download! You can even side load your own classic game roms without having to jailbreak your iOS device! Arcade-Tastic!

Obviously with something like this, It’s not going to be on the app store for long so i’d download it now whilst you can.

As well as the game roms, (which I’m sure you know where to get them), you will need a copy of iExplorer installed on your PC to transfer the files to the iMame/documents folder on your iOS device. I’ve posted about this great little program a few posts ago regarding transferring ZX Spectrum games to the ios Spectrum emulator so you might want to check that out.

Here’s the iMame front end including the few legal roms bundled with the app and a few that I’ve added myself for testing

On my iPad2 the emulation is spot on and so far have been playing full screen/full speed arcade classics like Double Dragon, Galaga and Gorf.

There’s a huge amount of configurable options for both landscape and portrait mode as well as a host of control options including setting 2,4 or 8 way analogue/digital sticks and from one to six fire buttons.

Everyone’s favourite side scrolling brawler Final Fight played in portrait half size mode.

Double Dragon in fullscreen landscape mode.

Pressing the start and coin button simultaneously within a game brings up the familiar Mame console menu giving you even greater options for the emulator and rom.

…and the best bit that just blow my retro gaming socks off – iMame has support for the iCade arcade cabinet…

….which so happens to be on sale at our local PC World store at the moment.

So…where do you think I went before heading off to work this morning?

As an extra bonus, the store assistant offered me the iCade at the web exclusive price too so I saved myself £30.

I’m actually going to resist the urge to setup the iCade straight away and instead wait Christmas day….hopefully

Don’t forget, download iMame for your ipad or iphone ASAP, it won’t be up for long!

Videogames Hardware Handbook Vol.2

The second volume of Retro Gamer Magazine’s Video games Hardware Handbook seems to have slipped into the stores without too much notice for some reason. If it wasn’t for a forum post link I might have missed it

The hardware handbook is a collection of articles previously printed in the  monthly Retro Gamer magazine’s  ‘hardware inspection’ covering classic computers, consoles and handhelds from 1977 – 2001. Sure, they’re reprints but it’s nice to have all of the hardware features together in one compendium especially as  V0l 1. was utterly superb.

Systems covered in Vol.2 are as follows -

Consoles -

Sega Megadrive
Sony Playstation
Colecovision
Atari 5200
Commodore CD32
Neo Geo AES
Amstrad GX4000
Famicon Disk System
Atari 7800
Sega 32x

Computers -

Amstrad PCW
Amiga 500
Oric – 1
Spectrum 128
Apple II
Amstrad CPC 6128
Atari 800 XL
Sinclair QL
Sam Coupe
Acorn Archimedes
Sinclair ZX80
Acorn Electron

Handhelds -

Pokemon mini
PC Engine GT
Tiger Game.com
Sega Nomad
MB Simon
Gamate

I’ve got a few jobs to do outside first and as the tempreture is dropping it’ll be nice to get back inside with a big mug of coffee and 260 pages of goodies.

I picked up my copy up at our local WHSmiths, however, you can order a copy via the publishers website -  https://www.imagineshop.co.uk/bookazines/videogames-hardware-handbook-vol-2.html

Retro Gaming – Defence Force – Oric -1/Atmos

I came across Defence Force at the Eurocon classic gaming event in September where RCM had both a Oric -1 and a Oric Atmos on display. It’s such an addictive game and I haven’t been able to put it down since.  During the course of that weekend, I managed to post a winning score of 305,000 however, since then I’ve managed to rack this up to 650,000…can you beat it?

Sunday morning coffee and practice run at Eurocon.

Released in 1983 by Tansoft, Defence Force is highly regarded as one of the top ten games for the Oric and after you’ve played it for a short time, you’ll get to understand why. Based on the classic Defender format, aliens have decided to invade your planet and first on their agenda is to abduct all of the kind folk that live there. Thankfully, said planet has it’s own ‘Defence Force’ and you, being one of the pilots, has the task of kicking them back to wherever they hail from.

One of the key differences between Defence Force and Defender is that you don’t control your ships laser, they auto fire in long bursts with about a second between each volley. At first, it’s a little of putting but when you get used to it, it’s actually quite a novel approach. On later levels when the number of enemy ships increases dramatically, it’s certainly save you wearing out the fire button!

Things start off slowly, but get very frantic around level 40.

The Defender style ‘smart bomb’ has been replaced by a force shield which lasts for a few seconds to get you out of any tight spots -although in later levels, the amount of time the shield is active is reduced.

There are the many types of aliens, each have their own unique fire & movement characteristics. Some are easily despatched but other require a little bit of thought as well as some nifty flying (or sheer luck) to shoot down.

Graphically, Defence Force is top notch stuff, with a colorful gamemap and extremely smooth animation considering the limited hardware resource of the Oric. Unfortunately sound is awful and with no volume control on the Oric internal speaker, the FX can quickly become very annoying. Thankfully, the programmer has included a silent game mode which can be activated by pressing ‘s’ at the beginning of a game.

It’s been a while since I’ve played a game and become hooked immediately, it’s so playable as you try to best your score over and over again. At Eurocon, I posted the winning score of 305,000 however, back home I’ve  managed to double this to 650,000…can you beat it?

Here’s a few tips that might help you along the way.

a) Don’t travel too fast, you’ll only collide with an aliens/alien bullets.

b) Keep and eye on the map on the top right of the screen. This will give you early warning of incoming ships approaching at speed.

c) Try to take out the winged aliens that swoop down to abduct your people. If the aliens take them all you will be warped to a level that will be swamped with kamikaze aliens that will hone in on your ship. If this happens, activate your shield and ram them all.

Warp level…shield up…quickly!

d) Try to stock pile your shields in the event of the above.

e) I find, taking out the slower moving ships gives you more maneuvering room to take out the faster ships.

f) On later levels, use you map at the top right of the screen to ‘see’ invisible aliens.

g) On levels with Cybotroids, it’s best to activate shields and ram them as they’re very difficult to shoot, especially with a screen full of other aliens/bullets.

h) This is probably just my preference, but the rubber keys on the Oric -1 have less travel therefore seem a little more responsive that the Oric Atmos.

The other day, I found a great Oric emulator for my Nintendo DS. Portable Defence Force, how the hell am I going to get any work done now!

DS_oric – Oric Atom mode.

DS_oric – Oric -1 mode, with Defence Force loaded.

Both Oric -1 & Oric Atom will be available to play at the Retro Computer Museums gaming event at the end of Oct where I’m attempting to beat my high score.

Commodore C64 ITX PC – Part VII ‘Finished’

Today I finally finished my C64 PC project.

Following on from yesterday, the first job on the list was to create the internal header cable to connect to Keyrah interface board to the motherboard.

Using a USB header cable from my spares, I cut away the USB socket and recrimped the four cables using crimps I picked up from Maplins.

Next, I fitted the pins to a floppy disk IDC following the color coding on the Keyrah schematics sheet. Here’s both ends, original and new.

….fitting to the Keyrah board and  hoping I’ve got the wires the right way around!

With that done, time to start cutting into the rear of the C64 case to allow for the motherboard I/O sockets to poke through.

Ideally I need to cut in the area I’ve marked in red  following the path of the blue line.

The cutting tool took some getting used to but after a short time I started to get the hang of it and was able to cut, grind and sand my way through the case. The tea towel was to stop plastic shavings from going everywhere….it didn’t work!

Just a little more sanding and I think we’re done.

Next, I tested fitted the PC components to checked the motherboard ports were accessible through the slots I’d just cut. It’s here that I decided not to use the motherboard I/O back plate as this would mean more cutting into the case and I preferred the thin slot that I’d created instead.

At first, the C64 case lid wouldn’t shut correctly as the C64 keyboard wiring loom was getting in the way. After a few well placed tie-wraps I had it tucked away but still the case lid wouldn’t shut completely. It’s then when I noticed that the SATA/ATX molex plugs were getting in the way. For the SATA cable, I simply  moved it to the other SATA port on the motherboard but for the ATX plug had nowhere to go.

I found that it was catching on the C64 keyboard mount so it was out with the cutting tool again to shave off a centimeter or two.

In the end, I had to make multiple cuts, refit and cut again but after a while I’d managed to get it just right. The only other adjustment I had to make was to cut a few  millimeters of each motherboard mounts.

As well as tie-wraping the cables out of the way, I affixed adhesive velco pads to each corner of harddrive. These worked out really well and do a good job of holding the drive in place. They also increase the drive slightly to help increase airflow.

The only things left was to plug in the monitor, power etc, hit the on button and pray!

WOOHOO! It’s alive

After a victory dance around the garden, the first thing to do was to check to make sure the C64 keyboard worked. With Notepad open they all checked out fine.

Next, I launched a program called ‘Core Temp’. This would give me a desktop widget showing current CPU temperature and also based on what I preconfigured would auto shut down the PC if it reached a high tempreture. On first boot the temp was at 43c and after about 3 hours the temp had raised to 51c. Not too bad but I think I’d feel alot better with a small internal fan fitted.

After setting up the USB wireless dongle I copied over the Gamebase64 files from my main PC and setup the frontend and Vice64.

…..and my first game? Chuckie Egg of course!

Commodore XP.

…and the finishing touch