Tag - review

MEGA65, Reviews

Showdown, by Badger Punch Games, takes the award for being the very first boxed retail game that I’ve picked up for my MEGA65 from PolyPlay. Hopefully as the MEGA65 userbase continues to grow more games like this will emerge as has happened with the ZX Spectrum Next scene. I actually bought this way back in November 2023 but as I never had a machine to play it on it’s been sat sealed on a shelf – until now!

Back of the box

The box itself is beautifully produced with a picture of your typical spaghetti western gunslingers on the front and some screenshots of the game along with a description of the gameplay on the back.

All of the goodies you get inside the box

So what comes in the box?

Removing the shrink-wrap seal on the collectors edition box reveals a plethora of goodies inside, including;

3.5″ floppy disk with professionally printed game label.
Leather Showdown keyring
MicroSD card including D81 disk images and other digital files
Fold-out manual
Thick postcard with mock bullet hole (whole thing is made to look like its a plank of wood)
Stickers
A3 Showdown poster
Registration card

3.5″ Floppy and MicroSD card. Both containing the game

The game is included on both a standard DS/DD 3.5″ Floppy Disk and also digitally on a small 256MB MicroSD card. The card also stores a copy of the manual in PDF format, the box artwork, postcard, poster and also the soundtrack music in mp3 format. It’s essential that releases like this have a digital option, either included on a card like this, or as a download, because magnetic media is notoriously unreliable now. Floppy disks haven’t been manufactured for about 15 years or more so even if you find some ‘new old stock’ they have still been in storage for at least that long!

MicroSD Card

I’m really glad I had the digital D81 version of the game too because when I popped in the floppy disk I couldn’t get the game to load. On closer inspection there appeared to be nothing on it which was disappointing.

Popping the game into the MEGA65’s floppy drive

Thankfully the D81 image loaded fine so there was an easy fix. Leaving the floppy disk in the internal drive I mounted the D81 disk image as drive 9 and then used the MEGA65 command ‘BACKUP U9 to U8’ to copy the contents of the disk image to the real floppy disk. It was quite a slow process but at the end I had a fully populated physical floppy disk. I ran a quick ‘DIR’ to make sure all the files were present before attempting to load up the game once more – which they were.

Contents of the freshly copied Showdown floppy disk

I’ve no idea why my disk appeared blank – it’s the first MEGA65 game I’ve bought from poly.play. Maybe it’s supposed to be blank and you have to copy the game onto it yourself? Maybe somebody just forgot to put them on my disk? Who knows.

I did a bit of googling before posting this and it turns out this was an oversight by the team as they didn’t have access to an actual MEGA65 machine to test the disks on which is fair enough. Presumably any copy of the game bought since won’t have this issue.

Anyway this time I was able to boot up the game successfully from the floppy and was greeted with a nice Badger Punch Games splash screen.

Badger Punch splash screen

Shortly after that the game finished loading and I reached the title screen with the option to pick either a 1 or 2 player game. Sadly I have no retro gaming friends so it was ‘1 Player Game’ or nothing for me.

Gameplay is very straightforward and everything takes place on a single screen. You, the red guy, are on one side of a dirt road and the enemy, the blue guy, is on the other side. You can run around the confines of your side of the screen but you cannot cross the road. You need to shoot the other guy before he shoots you and the first gunslinger to rack up 5 kills wins.

MEGA65 Showdown title screen

Screens are are peppered with cacti and sometimes a few buildings which you can use as cover. These don’t last forever as bullet hits chip away at them, space invader base style. Occasionally a covered wagon will make its way up the screen making for some mobile cover whilst you duke it out.

If you stand still whilst firing then your bullets shoot straight across the screen. However if you fire from the hip whilst moving then your bullets follow a diagonal trajectory in the direction you were heading. Skilful exploitation of this mechanic can help take out the enemy from behind cover.

Don’t play whilst trying to take photo’s…

Explosive crates appear from time to time and these are great for catching the enemy unawares as they have quite a wide blast radius if you shoot one. Just be careful he doesn’t do the same to you, or worse still, you accidentally shoot one next to you and take yourself out!

Your gun can only hold 5 bullets but thankfully ammunition is plentiful and you only need to walk over one of the blue bullet icons that randomly appear to replenish your supply. The first player to rack up 5 kills is the winner and that’s about it really as the game ends and you are whisked back to the title screen.

Hiding behind cover

There’s some decent music playing throughout the game but no gunfire sound effects which is a shame. Showdown is certainly fun for a while but it lacks the mechanics that would keep me coming back for more. There’s no scoring and thus no high score to try and beat and no new levels to try and unlock. It’s clearly been designed as a 2 player game and I’m sure it would be infinitely more fun running around trying to kill your mate sat next to you and rubbing their nose in your victory than the rather more hollow satisfaction of besting an AI bad guy.

MEGA65 Dust Cover

3rd July 2024

MEGA65

Picked up a new accessory for my MEGA65 today, granted not a particularly exciting one in the grand scheme of things, but useful nevertheless. It’s a MEGA65 Dust Cover in case you missed the post title – an essential retro accessory to keep not just dust at bay but UV rays too!

Back in the 80’s I always had covers on my Commodore computers and peripherals including my C64, VIC20, 1531 Datasette and even my dot-matrix printer. It just seemed the logical thing to do as I wanted to keep them all in tip-top condition. Now whether that was a commonplace thing or not I don’t know but it’s something I have always done.

Forty year old dust covers!

You can see a couple of the original cases I had on my childhood VIC20 above when I unearthed it a few years ago in the attic. Of course having survived for forty years they had long since passed their best but they fulfilled their mission and kept my stuff safe all that time.

MEGA65 Dust Cover

I purchased this cover off eBay from a seller I have used before called Sew Ready. The woman who runs it makes all manner of covers for retro machines, including floppy drives, datasettes, monitors and even Spectrum Nexts!

Side view

It’s a nice snug fit all around and features contrasting red piping along all the edges and a cut-away section at the back so you can leave all your cables and carts plugged in.

Handy cut-away section at the rear

Embroidered onto the front is the MEGA65 logo featuring the correct blue, green, yellow and red coloured stripes off the badge.

MEGA65 Embroidered Logo

If I could change one thing it would be to add a cut-away section on the left hand side to allow controllers (or in my case a wireless controller dongle) to be left plugged in. However that’s a minor flaw in an otherwise terrific product.

WiC64 Review

14th March 2024

4 Comments

The WiC64 might possibly be one of the most interesting devices for the Commodore 64 I’ve seen in years. It’s not just the hardware (which is great) as there have been a few Wi-Fi interfaces released already for the C64 over the years, but more how the software that’s been created for it leverages the new hardware to achieve something truly special. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this could be the future for modern day 64 enthusiasts – I’ll explain why during the rest of this post.

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This glorious gizmo was sent to me by Tim Harris over at Shareware Plus. Inside the rather unassuming box there’s the main host board, an ESP32 module, a teeny tiny OLED display and a card with a link to a website to go to for more info.

Contents of the WiC64 package.

So, what is it and what does it do?

Basically the WiC64 is a plug-in Wi-FI accessory that connects to the user-port of the Commodore 64 providing internet access. (It also works with the SX64, C128 and VIC20 computers though I’ve not tested it with these). However unlike existing Wi-Fi adapters that utilise serial mode data transfers and are thus restricted to stuff like accessing BBS due to their slow communication speeds, this bad boy operates in parallel mode, utilising 8 data lines, 2 handshake lines and one control line. This is all handled by the ESP32 module.

Basically it’s super fast and capable of loading a typical C64 program in the blink of an eye across the Internet. Yep you read that right, with this device you will be able to download (and upload) programs and files directly over the Internet on your C64!

Putting it together

No manual is provided but then again it is 2024 so having online documentation is to be expected. Following the link on the product card takes you to the WiC64.net website where you can download assembly instructions, a launcher program in PRG format and some STL’s to print a nice case for it.

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Assembly was an absolute doddle and just requires you to fit the ESP32 module and screen to the host board. They both simply push into the sockets provided – all you need to be careful with is the orientation of the ESP32 module but there’s photos in the PDF manual showing which way around it needs to go.

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After putting the WiC64 together I decided to 3D print the case for it so loaded the STL’s into my slicer software to prepare them for printing. The model has been well designed so no support material is needed when you place each part flat on its largest side.

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Just over an hour later (I have a Bambu Labs P1S printer so it’s fast) the print was complete and looked fantastic.

Freshly printed case halves

The two buttons on the host board pop through matching holes on the side of the case whilst there are a couple of little push buttons incorporated into the top of the case so you can still depress the ones on the EPS32 module.

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Oops

Unfortunately I ran into my first problem here when I tried to plug the newly encased WiC64 into the user port of my C64C – it simply wouldn’t fit! This was through no fault in the design of the board or even the case but just bad luck on my part because of where I had chosen to locate the switches for my SIDFX install.

Houston, we have a problem!

The case was clearly never going to fit so I had to abandon that idea and go naked. Even without the case it was an incredibly close fit with just a couple of millimetres clearance between the board and the switches. To be honest though, apart from the obvious lack of protection, I think I prefer it without the case as it does look incredibly cool with all the LED’s glowing and the little OLED screen displaying messages and such. I’ll just need to be careful to never drop a paperclip down the back of my C64!

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Teething Problems

With the WiC64 now plugged in it was time to test it out! I downloaded the Launcher from the WiC64.net site (currently at version 2.5) and copied it over to my 1541 Ultimate II+ cart (via ethernet) so that I could run it.

Ground control to Major Tom…

It popped up a message saying it was searching for Wi-Fi and a few of the lights started to flicker on the board…

Lights are on but nobody’s home…

However it never got any further than this. After about a minute of trying the launcher would simply crash leaving me with a blank screen.

This doesn’t look good!

Needless to say I tried this a few times but got the same result each time. I even tried activating the hotspot on my iPhone (with maximised compatibility) in case it didn’t like my Wi-Fi 6 router but it still failed.

Updating the Firmware

With nothing seeming to work I decided to have a go at updating the firmware as I remember seeing this mentioned on the card. The whole process is web based and conducted within the browser itself. I had to unplug the WiC64 board from my C64 and then hook it up to my Windows 11 PC using a MicroUSB cable.

WiC64 ready to be flashed

Needless to say I had to install a driver for it first as the UART device was showing as unrecognised in Device Manager…

How it appears in device manager

There’s step by step instructions on the ‘Online Flasher’ page and it directs you to a Silicon Labs website to download the drivers. I have Windows 11 so chose the CP210x Universal Windows Driver which worked out well. Installing the driver was just a matter of right-clicking the device and selecting ‘update driver’ and then pointing it to the folder where I’d extracted the driver previously.

Driver successfully installed

Flashing the device is actually done within the browser but it must be Chrome, Edge or Opera. I use Brave but thought I’d still be OK because it’s Chromium based but the Connect button never appeared for me until I changed over to Edge. Then I was able to select ‘CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller (COM7)’ as the serial port to begin the process. Sadly within a few seconds of starting the update it failed with an error. Although I never did find out what caused the error the solution was to hold down the ‘BOOT’ button on the ESP32 module whilst performing the update and it then worked without a hitch.

With the firmware now updated it was time to put it back in my C64 and see if I could get it to connect to my Wi-Fi.

I hooked it back up to my user-port, turned on my 64 and loaded up version 2.5 of the launcher once more.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Much to my delight this time around it displayed (just) my 2.4Ghz SSID (I have a Tri-band router) and I was able to enter the password to connect to it just like you would expect to do with any modern day device.

BOOM! We’re in business!

After a few moments it connected and my C64’s IP address was displayed on the OLED screen, along with the SSID, signal strength and current firmware version.

WiC64 Welcome Screen

The launcher menu screen also loaded up with new options to Login and Register. I didn’t have an account so I selected Register to create one which only took a few moments and then I was finally into the system proper.

WiC64 Menu Screen

Let the Games Begin!

There’s a lot of sub menus and interesting things tucked away into the WiC64 Launcher menus but I’m just going to pick out some of the things I found interesting – in no particular order!

Offline Games List

I’ll start with the games as there’s quite a lot of them. They’re split between Offline games (found in the File Area>Games section) Online games and online multiplayer games. The mind blowing thing about these games is that they load onto your C64 over the internet, but not only that they load in just a matter of seconds. I decided to give Shadow Switcher a quick blast as it’s a game I know and love. I selected it from the menu and BAM, a second later it had loaded and I was able to play it. Absolutely incredible.

Shadow Switcher

The Online and Multiplayer games have their own section which splits off into another 4 sections containing approximately 20 games. The ‘Online’ games are existing games that have been modified to incorporate persistent High Score tables where you can compete for bragging rights against other WiC64 players. There’s a global ‘all time greatest’ score table and also a ‘Todays Greatest’ which is a cool feature that gives everyone a shot at fame no matter their skill level as it gets wiped every 24 hours.

All-Time Greatest and Todays Greatest High Scores

I decided to have a blast at Great Giana Sisters next, which being a bigger game, took a bit longer to load, coming in at a whisker over 20 seconds. Still mightily impressive and if you don’t own or have a copy of the game to hand the sheer convenience of this system is game-changing. Imagine having an entire catalogue of hundreds of games and being able to tap into them whenever you want and play them on your real C64 with persistent high scores stored in the cloud adding a new competitive edge to the gameplay.

Great Giana Sisters – WiC64 High Score Edition

There’s currently only 2 multiplayer games; Artillery Duel Deluxe and Multorio. Multorio appears to require the username of the person you want to play against upfront before it will do anything so as I don’t know anyone else using it I’ve not been able to try this.

Artillery Duel Deluxe

However Artillery Duel Deluxe is a lot more user friendly and will let you play against random people online, play local multiplayer or even just play solo. It even has a spectator mode called ‘Onlooker mode’ where you can watch other players duke it out! I’m not sure if this is live or more of a replay of past battles but it’s still entertaining!

Artillery Duel Deluxe

Obviously this isn’t Steam or Xbox Live so finding other users online can be tricky which is why the solo mode is much appreciated. I assume this is probably why the developers seem to be focusing on asynchronous gameplay, affording everyone the opportunity to compete against others, any time they want.

Internet Radio

WiC64 Radio is another program I found myself coming back to time and time again. It’s tucked away in the ‘Apps’ section of the ‘File Area’. Personally I would have thought the Internet section was more appropriate but it didn’t take long for me to remember where it was located.

WiC64 Radio

I absolutely adore SID chip music and this program supplies a never-ending stream of it over the internet directly into your SID chip. The program will just keep playing an endless stream of fantastic SID tracks until you close it. If you come across one you’re not so keen on you can just tap space to skip it and move onto another,

WiC64 Radio

Not only that but you can create a custom playlist of your favourite tracks too. The screen displays lots of info about the track currently playing including the author, title, it’s release date and run time. I tend to load this up and just leave it running in the background – you can’t beat some classic SID tunes being played through real hardware.

Demo’s

One of the things I used to love doing in my youth was watching and listening to scene demos on both my C64 and later on my Amiga. Well the WiC64 has got me covered here too with a nifty Demo section containing 8 demo’s filled with pulsating graphics and sound for that shot of nostalgic dopamine.

“Quadrants” Demo

Most of these demo’s loaded pretty much instantaneously for instant retro gratification. The Elite Code Mechanics demo soon proved to be a particular favourite due to the amazing music which I could (and did) happily listen to for hours.

Elite Code Mechanics Demo

The still pictures obviously don’t do the demos justice but I just couldn’t get my iPhone to capture video off my 1084 monitor without it turning into a horrid flickering mess.

Crystal Gazer Demo

Ideally I’d like to see many, many more demos appear here so hopefully the developers add to this section over time, after all, most of them are probably in the public domain (unlike the games) so there shouldn’t be too many obstacles to making it happen?

Chat/Messaging

WiC64 seems to be a predominantly German project right now so the Chat and Message board areas are dominated by German users which is a shame but I’m sure in time as more of us come on board this will change

Sadly most, if not all, the messages seem to be in German

However I was intrigued by the ChatGPT option at the bottom of the menu. Surely this couldn’t be THE ChatGPT that is all the rage right now?

Surely not, ChatGPT on the C64?

Chat GPT

Well yes, actually it is. Incredibly the AI revolution has made it to our trusty C64’s in 2024. You can ask it any question and get a near instant reply. It works just like it does on a modern computer, simply ask it a question and it will respond with an answer almost immediately.

ChatGPT in action on the C64

Obviously unlike, for example, Copilot in Windows 11, it is unable to create images but I wouldn’t really have expected that anyway. It also does seem to lack the continuity you get when interacting with ChatGPT on modern systems. For example if you try to tell it a Knock Knock joke it will respond with ‘who’s there’ but then thinks your answer is a new question. Likewise you can start a game of hangman but your guesses don’t seem to be recognised. It’s probably churlish of me to nit pick things like this when the fact it works at all is an astonishing achievement, but it would be the icing on the cake if they could fix this. However ask it any other straight question and you will get just as comprehensive a response as you would on a new computer which is just incredible.

Google Maps!

Yes you read that heading right, WiC64 also gives you a portal to Google Maps on your C64 and what’s more its actually useable too! This is arguably even more impressive than ChatGPT given the graphical overhead involved in drawing them.

Google Maps

You can search for a place or post code from the menu screen or just dive straight in. It seems to have a rough idea where you are already, presumably based on your external IP address, unless it was just pure coincidence that it started me off in Merseyside! Once the map is visible on the screen you are able to zoom in and out using the function keys and pan around using WASD. There’s a choice of satellite view or road map view. Each page refresh takes about 5 seconds or thereabouts to display – eminently useable and I was able to find and navigate around places I know very easily.

Google Streetview!

But there’s more! Pressing ‘V’ toggles Street View so you can look around in glorious 8-bit 3D at your street and even find your house, all on your Commodore 64. I would not have believed this possible if I’d not experienced it myself. It’s an absolutely astonishing accomplishment.

Clocks

There’s plenty more programs and features to be discovered that I haven’t mentioned yet too. For instance there’s an entire sub-menu devoted to a collection of Real Time Clocks (synced to the Internet of course), ranging from a simple digital clock to some downright convoluted affairs that require some serious thought to decipher!

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C/Place Pixel Project

There’s also something called “C/Place Pixel Project” which is an interesting little concept. It’s basically a community art project – you take it in turns with other users to place a single pixel on a 40×50 screen in order to ‘paint’ a picture. If nobody else is around you can make a picture on your own instead! It also has an option to let you watch a timelapse of pictures being created which can be quite mesmerising to watch and a really neat extra feature.

c/place Pixel Project

WiC64 Media Center

This is yet another really cool feature that lets you upload your physical disks into the cloud, either for public use or your own private use.

Uploading one of my disks to the WMC

You simply pop a disk in your drive, enter a few details to help catalogue it so you and/or others can find it in future and then hit upload. Naturally you can also download the disks too.

Downloading a disk from the WMC.

In just a couple of minutes I was able to download a game from the WMC cloud onto a floppy disk with just a few keypresses and then load it up and play it.

Playing the game I’d just downloaded.

There’s a whole repository of disks already waiting to be accessed in the cloud too. This is the sort of thing I could only dream about back when I was a teenager but it’s now a reality thanks to the WiC64.

Honourable Mentions

There’s even more stuff to play around with that I’ve not covered yet including:

MOSCloud Compiler (a facility to upload your BASIC programs and have them compiled in the cloud).
Remote Image Viewer (enter an image URL and it will render it on your C64). I didn’t have much success with this as most online images have horrendously long and complex URL’s and it’s very easy to make a mistake entering them without the option of copy’n’paste. However even when I was absolutely sure I had the URL correct I’d get a ‘failed to process image’ error. Hopefully it’s just a glitch and will be ironed out in due course.
CSDB Browser to keep up to date with the latest C64 releases
RSS Feed viewers for Forum64 and Tagesschau – sadly both in German only.
Telnet program – with a few provided servers to try (similar sort of experience to BBS’s) or you can try entering your own.
A DiskMags section – I found the intro screens and accompanying chip music a lot more entertaining than reading some of them but as always with these things YMMV.

Excess RapidNews DiskMag

Conclusion

I did have a few crashes and lock-ups but nothing major and considering what it’s trying (and succeeding) to do I can totally forgive a little instability. Besides, on the odd occasions it happened I just reloaded the launcher via my 1541 Ultimate-II+ cart and was immediately returned to the exact same position in the menu that I’d launched the program from. It was a minor inconvenience at most. There were also few little issues I had during setup but nothing major and they were all easily solved by a spot of RTFM. There were a couple of sections that seemed to be dominated by German speaking users but hopefully that will change as the device becomes more popular, but even if it doesn’t it only affects a tiny fraction of what’s on offer anyway.

Without a doubt this is an absolutely incredible hardware and software package that really brings the venerable C64 into the 21st Century. It offers so many new ways of accomplishing things, new ideas to try out not to mention the potential new features it may bring in the future. This is one of those devices that every C64 user owes it to themselves to get hold of. Whether you are a gamer or a tinkerer there’s something to interest everyone here and at just £35 it’s a bit of a no-brainer too. SharewarePlus has them in stock now so what are you waiting for? Go get one!

Andy’s Utility Cart Review

8th November 2023

In this post I’ll be taking a look at ‘Andy’s Utility Cart’, a collection of 12 utilities (and one music demo) from SharewarePlus, all combined onto a single C64 cartridge..

The Cartridge and Instruction Manual

The cartridge comes packaged in an attractive cardboard box along with an ‘instruction’ booklet. However this is just a small folded sheet containing a list of what programs are on the cart. No instructions for any of the included programs are actually provided.

Inside the Cartridge

Removing the solitary Philips screw and opening the cartridge shell reveals a smart looking white circuit board hosting a 1Mb Atmel AT27C010-70PU EPROM along with a couple of ancillary chips. The Atmel chip is a ‘one time programmable’ affair that contains all the C64 programs.

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What’s on the Cartridge?

So now that we’ve seen the hardware inside the shell it’s time to see what programs are on it. See below for a full list of what’s included.

64 DOCTOR
64 TESTER
FAST LOADER
TURBO NIB COPY
DISK TOOL b.S
CASS.AZIMUTH
HEAD ALIGN
1541 ALIGNMENT
15 SEC FORMAT
THRUST CONCERT
1541 ALPS CHECK
TURBO 250 [Bonus Program]
DIAGNOSTIC [Bonus Program]

All of the utilities on the cart are selectable from a handy menu screen as can be seen in the photo below. There’s no way to exit most of the programs or get back to this menu screen so you will need to power cycle your C64 to achieve this.

Andy’s Utility Cart Menu Screen

Strangely for a compilation that is described as ‘twelve utilities for the Commodore 64’ there’s actually 13 in total. Not sure why there’s a discrepancy. Maybe they considered 13 to be unlucky? Perhaps it’s because one of the programs, Thrust Concert, isn’t actually a utility at all but more of a scene demo? Alternatively it’s conceivable that they felt some of the programs were a bit samey? Who knows… but I’m certainly not going to complain about having an extra program included!

Back of the box (and a list of what’s on the cart)

Here’s quick look at each of the 12 13 Utilities

64 DOCTOR (Diagnostic sequence by Computer Software Associates)

This is a comprehensive diagnostic program that can help with troubleshooting issues with your C64. It can test the keyboard, video, audio, joysticks, disk drive, datasette, RAM and even an attached printer. You are able to launch a complete systematic scan or you can select a specific test and just run that.

Menu Screen for 64 Doctor

In the photo below I ran the keyboard test which marks each character on the screen as you press the corresponding physical key on the keyboard. Great for seeing at a glance which keys might be faulty on an old keyboard.

Running through the keyboard test

64 TESTER (Comprehensive screen, keyboard & joystick port tester by Tim Cannell)

This is another diagnostic program that focuses on testing the screen, keyboard and joystick ports. The tests are displayed on-screen immediately on launch and includes character maps, colour palette (including overscan borders), along with sprites, and the current status of both joystick port axes.

C64 Tester Screen

Additionally a counter ticks upwards at the bottom, presumably so you know the program is still running/not crashed and a rather annoying ‘Close Encounters’ style 5 note beep jingle is stuck on repeat too which had me reaching for the volume knob after about 30 seconds!

FAST LOADER (Commodore 64 fast disk loader with shortcuts by MR. BYTE)

This one is a floppy disk fast loader utility, presumably similar to Epyx Fastload and the like. Unfortunately in my testing I didn’t have much luck with it and nothing would load with it enabled. At first I had both my 1541 drives on and I was getting an error in German saying ‘Bitte nur floppy anschalten’ which translated to ‘floppy only please’. Not very helpful but I took it to mean ‘one floppy drive only’. Thinking it didn’t like having both drives on I turned one off and tried again. This time I didn’t get that error but instead the screen would just go blank when attempting to load stuff, unsuccessfully. I tried a variety of disks and programs but nothing made any difference. Some instructions for this one might have been helpful – maybe I was missing a vital step. I also made sure my JiffyDOS ROM was disabled, but that too made no difference. Maybe it just doesn’t like my C64? The brief description did mention ‘with shortcuts’ but I have no idea what they are and whether they were optional or a necessity to get it working. In the end I had to throw in the towel and admit defeat with this one.

I may never know how speedy Mr Bytes fastloader is…

TURBO NIB COPY – (Copy Q turbo nibbler disk copier with error scanner by Cracker & CSS)

This is a very handy and easy to use ‘nibbler’ disk copy utility that can copy the contents of one disk to another using either one or two 1541 drives.

Turbo NIB Copy Initial Screen

An option screen allows you to select drive unit numbers for both the source and destination drives letting you configure disk to disk copies if you have more than one drive.

Options Menu

Obviously copying disks is quicker and more convenient using two 1541 drives but it’s still perfectly possible if you only have a single drive at your disposal.

Reading phase

In the case of single drive copying, disks are copied in sections with you swapping the source and destination disks in and out of the drive. It takes four passes (8 disk insertions in total) to completely copy a single disk although the fourth and final pass is much faster than the previous three.

Writing phase

A visual representation of the tracks and sectors being copied is displayed on screen in real-time providing reassurance that progress is being made.

DISK TOOL b.S (Disk Tool V6.5 with comprehensive floppy & disk monitors by Klaus Raczel)

This program includes a whole raft of disk related tools ranging from the mundane like formatting and verifying to advanced sector editing.

Disk Tool Title Screen

Unfortunately the menu’s are all in German which I cannot understand (it’s been nearly 40 years since I studied it at school and I was never particularly good at it anyway). Some of the German words were close enough to their English counterparts that I could understand them, but others, not so much.

Some of the German is easy to understand… some is not

Basically I struggled to use this utility. I did try the translation feature of my iPhone which did a pretty good job of translating the photos I took of the menus to be fair but it made using what is already quite a complex program a chore. One rainy day maybe I’ll go through all the menus and translate them into English…

CASS.AZIMUTH (Cassette Azimuth for aligning & adjusting your datasette by H Diebek)

This is a really useful tool when you are having issues loading software off tapes from your datasette unit. Apart from having a dirty read/write head, azimuth (head alignment) is probably the main reason for having games and programs fail to load. On Commodore’s datasette units you can adjust azimuth using a small Philips screwdriver but you need real-time feedback to let you know whether your are making things better or worse. This program provides that feedback.

Menu/Instruction Screen

I do already have software to do this that I purchased back in the 80’s from Interceptor Micro’s. It came with a little Philips screwdriver and a pointer to attach to it so you could see how much you had rotated it. However it’s one glaring flaw was that the software came on cassette. Not ideal if your read/write head is totally out of whack!

Alignment screen – clearly my drive needs some adjustment…

The program displays the data being read off a C64 tape in real time as little black dots falling down the screen. This allows you to fine-tune the azimuth on the fly by adjusting the screw until the dots appear as orderly and distinct thin vertical lines (rather than be splattered across the screen). In the photo above there is certainly room for improvement on my deck.

However it’s important to remember that azimuth can vary on a tape by tape basis as much depends on the azimuth of the machine that recorded the program onto the tape in the first place!

HEAD ALIGN (Minimal head alignment v1.1 for your datasette by Enthusi)

This is basically another Datasette azimuth alignment program only this time a more streamlined, bare bones version that doesn’t require you to press any keys to start the process. It also didn’t like having my JiffyDOS ROM enabled and refused to supply power to my cassette port until I disabled it. Not a big deal, just something to be aware of.

Head alignment screen

1541 ALIGNMENT (Commodore 1541 disk drive track & sector alignment by Antiram)

This is a comprehensive track/sector alignment tool for tuning 1541 drives. Happily my drives are in perfect shape so I didn’t mess around with this program at all but it’s a very useful tool to have in ones toolbox for when the need arises for sure!

1541 Alignment Menu Screen

15 SEC FORMAT (Fast 15 second formatter by Mike J. Henry & Alf Maier)

This literally does what it says on the tin – load it and it prompts you for a disk name and ID number. Enter these and press RETURN and away it goes!

The name’s Bond…

In fact calling it ’15 Sec Format’ actually does it an injustice as I found it was consistently formatting disks in 12 seconds. Using JiffyDOS made no difference to the speed in this case. The program ends once the format is complete but you can simply RUN it again to format another. If you have a whole bunch of disks to format then this would be a great solution.

THRUST CONCERT (Music concert featuring Rob Hubbard & Jeremy Smith by Stoat & Tim)

This isn’t a utility but still a welcome addition to the cart. I suppose it could be considered a ‘sound test’ but that’s a bit of a stretch.

Stoat and Tim Present…

This is basically a music demo and I do actually remember listening to this quite a lot back in the day. The demo features the music Rob Hubbard created for the budget Firebird game callerd ‘Thrust’ and is ‘played’ by a band of animated computer characters.

Rob Hubbard on keyboard (bottom right)

If, like me, you love Rob Hubbard’s music then this demo is an essential listen.

1541 ALPS CHECK (Alps 1541 drive alignment with LED & stepper motor tests by Commodore)

This is another terrific 1541 diagnosing program that allows you to test/adjust everything including the LED’s, head alignment, stepper motor speed and even the write protect tab. A very useful program to have, especially on cartridge in case your drive is in no state to load up your utility floppy.

1541 ALPS Check Menu

Bonus Programs

F1. TURBO 250 (Turbo cassette load & save by Mr Z)

This is a pretty simple but effective program that allows you to save (and then subsequently load) programs onto cassette tape in turbo format. It cannot load non-turbo programs from cassette at faster speeds as the speed itself isn’t altered. What this program actually does is increase the density of data saved onto a tape. With more tightly packed data, any given length of tape will contain a larger section of the saved program and thus when read at the same speed, loads more of that program into your C64’s RAM. Ultimately the result is that the program loads in a fraction of the time.

Turbo 250 Menu Screen

Of course densely packed data is more susceptible to read errors but with this cart you have the tools required to sort that problem out too!

F3. DIAGNOSTICS (Diagnostic Program 324528, by Commodore)

This is another C64 diagnostic program that tests things like RAM, Timers, Memory and Colour output.

Diagnostics Test

It runs all the tests automatically on launch and loops through them continually. A counter is updated at the end of each test cycle allowing you to keep track of how many times it has run, useful for bench testing a machine after a repair for example.

Colour Test

Final Thoughts

Andy’s Utility Cart is a really useful collection of utilities to have in your arsenal. Sure, there are a few duplicated programs but this allows you to pick the one that suits your needs best.

It’s a shame I couldn’t get the Fast Loader to work and that the Disk Tool utility is presented in German but there are loads of other programs available so it’s far from a dealbreaker. There are no instructions provided (nor links to online documentation) so you either need to know what you are doing or be prepared to do a bit of research and hunt around online for information in order to get the most out of some of the packages.

Priced at just £18 it’s easy to forgive these minor shortcomings anyway. I certainly had a lot of fun playing around with all the programs on the cart and have no doubt I will be using several of the utilities to maintain my disk drives and datasette.

The cart is available from Tim Harris over at Shareware Plus priced at £18 at time of posting.

The C64 Collectors Guide to Mastertronic Kickstarter Bundle

21st November 2022

22 Comments

This is a compilation of mini reviews of stuff I got with ‘The Commodore 64 Collectors Guide to Mastertronic’ on Kickstarter a couple of months ago. It includes the book itself, ‘Hammer Down’ C64 game, ‘Classic C64 Soundtracks’ Tape/CD and a 25th Anniversary remaster of the first edition of Commodore Zone magazine.

What I received in my bundle.

As you can see in the photo above I received quite a few items in the bundle. The book, a reproduction Commodore Zone magazine, Classic C64 Soundtrack CD and Cassette tape and a C64 game on cassette; Hammer Down. ‘Didn’t he do well!’ as Brucie used to say.

The Commodore 64 Collectors Guide to Mastertronic.

The hardback book itself is a weighty tome, coming in at over 500 pages complete with glossy protective jacket. The cover takes its styling cues from the Mastertronic £1.99 range of its subject matter and is visually very appealing.

The back cover.

Inside the Collectors Guide to Mastertronic Book

Inside there is coverage of every Mastertronic game ever released for the Commodore 64 alongside screenshots, game descriptions and mini reviews. It’s basically an encyclopaedia of everything Mastertronic for the C64. The presentation of the book is lovely with full colour box art and screenshots on glossy paper with a real premium feel to everything. The original Zzap! 64 scores for the games are also included where they exist (they may be present for every game but I certainly haven’t read every page in the book to check).

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I’ve had a lot of fun just randomly browsing through the book, stopping when a particular game catches my eye. I was quite shocked to discover that one of my favourite Mastertronic titles scored a measly 37% in Zzap! 64. I’d have given it at least double that score as it entertained me for many a rainy Sunday afternoon as a kid until I finally completed it.

Shockingly low score for The Last V8!

Although I got the Collectors Guide to Mastertronic book as part of a Kickstarter campaign, it is available to be purchased separately from the Fusion Retro Books website. If you want to pick yourself up a copy don’t forget to use my code ‘LYONSDENBLOG’ to get yourself a whopping 15% off the price.

Collectors Guide to Mastertronic – C64 Soundtracks

Also included in the bundle was a collection of excellent C64 SID soundtracks on both CD and Cassette. Each contains exactly the same tracks but I wanted both just so I could play them on both my Hi-Fi and Walkman. There are 13 tracks in total and most are native SID tracks but there are also a couple of orchestral versions at the end taken from the 8-bit Symphony album.

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Just like the book, the design of the albums is based on typical Mastertronic releases from the past. This is especially true for the cassette version which would look right at home amongst my collection of classic games.

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The cassette features full colour labels and a J-card complete with track listings. The recording, whilst on a standard ferric cassette, sounded terrific and has been completed to a high standard.

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The CD is a thing of beauty too. The music has been recorded onto one of those vinyl record style black CD’s which makes it look like a diminutive 7″ single. It features an expanded version of the cassette artwork on the front and needless to say it also sounds fantastic.

Sadly I don’t think the soundtracks are available to buy anywhere now as they were limited edition runs.

Hammer Down Game

Also included in my Collectors Guide to Mastertronic bundle was a new original game for the C64 called ‘Hammer Down’. The game comes on cassette with a suitably Mastertronic style cover. Look carefully though and you will see that it’s actually made by Psytronik, the prolific modern day C64 game publisher.

Hammer Down cassette case.

The yellow cassette is very eye-catching and has colour artwork screen-printed directly onto it and looks fantastic.

Hammer Down tape and cassette case.

Likewise the yellow case and full colour J card complete with screenshots looks equally great.

Binatone Data Recorder – Loading…

The game takes a few minutes to load but during that time you are entertained by a very catchy SID tune and some great game artwork.

Press Play on Tape.

Hammer Down Loading Screen.

The game itself is like a cross between ‘The Last V8’ and ‘Action Biker’ which is no bad thing. The gameplay side of things comes from ‘Action Biker’ whilst the top-down view (rather than isometric) comes from ‘The Last V8’.

Hammer Down Title Screen.

Once the gamer finishes loading you are greeted with a neat ‘chequered flag’ title screen along with another great piece of SID music. This screen also displays your high score and the games credits. A really nice touch here is that the MPH and RPM dials become VU meters with needles that bounce away in sync to the music.

Never forget where the petrol station is!

You play as a motorcycle courier who must ride around and collect all the packages dotted around a small town. Of course it’s never quite that simple so in time honoured tradition you have 3 lives and will lose one if you hit an object or run out of fuel. Your fuel level drops at quite an alarming rate so you need to keep a close eye on it. Thankfully a warning will sound when the level gets critically low. Fill-ups are free so it really pays to keep your tank topped up.

GAME OVER – Expect to be seeing this screen a lot!

Like the games upon which it is based, controlling the bike in Hammer Down is quite tricky and takes some getting used to and navigating the scenery can be tough. The main problem is discerning what elements of the environment are fatal if touched and those you can get away with. For example there are thick black areas around walls and buildings which I thought would kill me. After a few minutes I realised they were shadows and I could safely drive through them. Conversely sometimes elements I thought were road markings turned out not to be resulting in a life lost. Basically a lot of trial and error is required but that’s all part of the fun.

Another skill that needs to be mastered is the U-turn! Your bike has no reverse so if you head down a dead end (which you must do to collect many of the packages) a U-turn is your only option! The bike has a pretty small turning circle but it can still be extremely tricky to turn around without hitting something!

There’s limited sound effects in the game, being mainly limited to explosions, a low-fuel warning/refuelling ‘glug’ and a parcel pickup chime. However the SID music that plays during the game more than makes up for this. It’s a terrific rendition of ‘The Return of the Los Palmas 7’ by Madness. They were one of my favourite bands back in the 80’s so this added greatly to my enjoyment of the game. Obviously your mileage may vary here!

All in all this is a terrific little game and I’m really glad I chose to add it to my Kickstarter bundle. I highly recommend it, especially if you are a fan of either ‘The Last V8’ or ‘Action Biker’. It definitely has that ‘one more go’ appeal as you strive to collect a few extra parcels on your next round and beat your high score.

If you would like to get yourself a copy Psytronik will be selling it on their website soon.

Commodore Zone 25th Anniversary Edition

Last but by no means least I picked up a ‘remastered’ 25th Anniversary Edition of the first issue of Commodore Zone magazine. For those unfamiliar with Commodore Zone it was a fan made A5 magazine produced in the UK in the mid 1990’s and ran for 16 issues.

Commodore Zone Remastered edition.

The original magazine was completely black and white, even down to the cover. Access to a colour printer was a luxury most of us couldn’t afford back then! The photo below shows the original magazine from September 1995 on the left for a direct comparison.

Original and remastered edition side-by-side.

Clearly a lot of work has gone into this as you can see from the comparison photos below. It’s not just the addition of colour but also many of the pages have been completely redesigned to incorporate a more modern look and feel. The guys that did this have done a tremendous job and I really hope that they give the same treatment to the rest of the back-catalogue in the near future.

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The only thing missing is the coverdisk but as I have all the original discs already that’s no great loss. Here’s a photo of the (double-sided) disk I received with issue one 27 years ago!

The original coverdisk from issue 1.

Sadly printed versions of Commodore Zone aren’t available to purchase anywhere today (unless you get lucky on eBay). However you can buy a CD containing scanned copies of all 16 magazines along with .d64 versions of all the coverdisks here.

Rogue64 Review

6th February 2022

Commodore 64, Gaming, Reviews

It’s been a good while since I reviewed a game but after recently picking up Rogue64, a new game that has just launched for the Commodore 64, I suddenly felt the urge to write one.

The game, created by Badgerpunch Games (credits in the image below), is available both physically (from Bitmap Soft) and digitally from Itch.io. priced at £35 and £4.60 respectively. I picked up my copy of the game digitally.

Rogue64 Credits

The download included a CRT cartridge image along with a very attractive PDF instruction booklet. An Easyflash cartridge version is also available to download. At the time of writing the game is only available in cartridge form (whether that be physically or digitally).

Rogue64 Instructions

I ran the game via my 1541 Ultimate II+ cart (and via emulation) and it worked without a hitch.

Story

The story, according to the games Itch.io page, goes like this: “You are Zendar the explorer, looking for treasure and fame in the dungeons of Mordecoom! Rumour has it that there is a magic item at the bottom of the dungeon, and you want it! The only problem is that there are evil cave dwellers lurking in the dark, waiting to attack as you travel deeper and deeper into this cube-like tentacle terror maze. The dungeons of Mordecoom are waiting!”

First Impressions

On first running the game there’s a ‘Bitmap Soft Presents’ screen complete with digitised speech before reaching the main title screen. From here you can choose to see the game credits, some instructions or begin your descent into the dungeons of Mordecoom…

Rogue64 game screen

The game screen is attractively presented, which considering this is all you will ever see, is just as well. The game utilises the C64’s hi-res graphics mode to achieve a detailed and crisp display. A good use of colour ensures that the screen is still attractive to the eye and everything is presented clearly.

In time honoured tradition your score and high score are displayed across the top of the screen along with the name of the game.

Gameplay window showing current room

The main screen is split into 3 main sections. On the left is the information panel where you can see your health, strength, inventory and status effects. The central window is where we can find our hero and where all the action takes place. The right hand side displays a map of the current dungeon and is updated automatically as you explore. Each dungeon level has a name which is displayed across the bottom of the screen.

Gameplay

The aim of the game is to battle your way through multiple dungeon levels and ultimately face off against the final boss. Levels get progressively more difficult as you journey deeper down and new monsters are introduced. Thankfully our hero gets stronger too thanks to magical gems that can be found as you explore. These can grant him extra strength or increase his health bar.

Grabbing gold bars adds a nice chunk of points to your score whilst various potions scattered around each level can help or hinder your progress. Green potions always recover health but the red and blue ones could do anything at all. This is because their contents are randomised at the beginning of each game to add a bit of variety to each play through. Some of their effects include freezing time for a number of moves, killing all monsters in a room, making you drunk so you move erratically and so on. This definitely adds an interesting element to the game as you drink one for the first time to discover what it does!

Hearts can also be found on each level and will recover our hero’s health on contact. However unlike the green potions they cannot be carried so you have to decide on the most opportune moment to use them.

Character stats and inventory

Each dungeon is split up into several small rooms and each of these is displayed in full within the central window. There’s no scrolling – your character stays within the confines of that window – it flips as you move from one room to another. Rooms tend to be a little maze-like in appearance and will incorporate one or more exits that allow you to move around the level.

Speaking of movement, our hero is controlled with a joystick in port 2. You simply push in the direction you want him to go. Objects can be picked up by simply walking over them and go straight into your inventory. I think the clever ‘use item’ system is worthy of a mention too. To select a potion within your inventory you hold down the fire button and move the stick left and right until it is highlighted and then simply release the fire button to use it. Very simple and slick, much like the rest of the game.

Combat

Enemies can be attacked by standing next to them and pushing our hero in their direction. Combat is automatic and uses RNG along with your strength, active potions and health to determine the outcome. As RNG is employed both your attacks and those of the monsters can and will miss their target occasionally so it pays to be careful. If a fight looks like it’s going the wrong way, running away is a viable option. You can come back to finish them off after you’ve healed up. It’s important to note that the game is turn based so enemies only react or move when you do which which makes it quite a relaxing experience overall.

Occasionally monsters can inflict a status effect on you that will last for a number of turns. I managed to get poisoned by a snake and kept taking damage after every move. If I hadn’t had a healing potion on me I would have been dead for sure. Likewise some of the potions you take have status affects such as making you stronger or intoxicated for a few turns and so on. This adds a certain level of unpredictability to the game and keeps you on your toes.

To progress onto the next dungeon you must find the exit to the current one (a yellow door) and also the key required to open it. Both of these are randomly somewhere with each level. You could choose to rush to the exit in each dungeon as it is quite possible to avoid contact with a lot of the monsters. However you’ll miss many vital upgrades doing this and end up being ill-prepared for the final boss fight. Far better to take your time and explore each room fully, defeating every monster along the way. Besides, this is what I’d call a ‘high score chaser’ game and the only way to get a decent score is to kill and collect everything in sight!

Design

I really appreciate the way the game screen has been designed – it’s very aesthetically pleasing and everything you need is always visible. No need to toggle map screens or inventories – it’s all there, all the time. The game employs an auto-map feature which is pretty neat. When you enter a room it is added to the map straight away and all available exits indicated too. This makes it easy to see at a glance if there are any rooms you haven’t discovered yet. Occasionally you can pick up a potion that will highlight all the rooms in a level immediately but I didn’t find these terribly useful.

It’s all thoughtfully laid out, intuitive and everything fits in the space allotted for it. Each room fits within the confines of the central window and each dungeon map fits within the map window. Inventory space is very limited so it pays to use the stuff you find rather than try to hoard it for later.

Rogue64 Auto-Map

Sooner or later you will meet a grisly death and be greeted with the Game Over screen. This gives you a handy summary of your progress including level reached, score attained and what monster offed you. I should point out that there’s no option to save your progress with this being a ‘roguelike’ game so bear that in mind before you start your dungeon crawl. None of your progress or hero upgrades carry over to your next play through – you are back to square one every time.

Rogue64 Game Over screen

Music and Sound

Playing throughout is a terrific SID tune that really suits the game and certainly never gets tiring. Sound effects are minimal but are there when required. Battling, picking up items, exiting a room and so on all have their own little effects that add to the immersion of the game. There’s also a screen shake effect that occurs when you take a hit in battle which is a really nice touch.

Nit-picking

There are a few little things I wish had been incorporated into the game. For example, as great as the automap system is – it would be even better if it was able indicate the exit (after you have discovered it of course) to make it easier to find once you’ve located the key. Likewise if it could identify rooms with discovered but uncollected items I’d find that a real boon too.

Another feature I would love to see is an option to save your game, although I can understand why it’s not there. If you are 10-15 minutes into a game and something comes up it would be nice to have an option to save your progress. Whilst I don’t mind leaving my PC on for extended periods of time, leaving my 40 year old C64 on with a game paused is a definite no-no for me. Finally the big draw of replaying the game is to beat your high score – it would be awesome if the game actually saved this for posterity too.

Mobile Gaming

I’m not a massive mobile gamer but occasionally I’ll stumble across a game that I like to while away my lunch hour playing. This is one of those games. The turn based combat, addictive gameplay and simple control system make this a perfect game to play on a C64 emulator on my phone. There are quite a few C64 emulators out there for Android users; I use C64.emu and this game runs absolutely flawlessly on it. An added benefit of playing on my phone is that I can just flip it shut and the game is paused indefinitely until I come back to it. Nice! If smartphones had existed in the 80’s I would have failed all my ‘O’ Levels for sure…

Rogue64 running on my phone via the C64.emu emulator

Verdict

Normally roguelike games infuriate me. I hate losing my progress and having to slog through a game just to get back to the where I was up to. That’s definitely not the case with Rogue64 though. Through a combination of slick game design, simplified controls, easy to master turn based combat not to mention a great SID tune and a fair but addictive gameplay loop, Rogue64 keeps me going back for ‘one more go’. Sure I could kick myself when I die stupidly after failing to reach the next dungeon, but there there’s also a real sense of satisfaction when I finally do and beat my high score in the process. I’ve not yet reached the last level of the dungeon or seen the boss monster but I’m determined to keep trying until I do!

iNNEXT USB Game Controller Review

30th January 2021

Commodore 64, VIC 20

51 Comments

Just picked up an iNNEXT USB Game Controller off Amazon to use with my TheC64 Mini and Maxi consoles. Why? Well unfortunately after almost 40 years of faithful service my C64C has started to act up. It’s been crashing and freezing whilst playing games that have always run flawlessly before. I’ve ran my diagnostic cart on it and everything passed so I’m hoping it’s just the electrolytic capacitors. My C64C has never been recapped before so it’s been packaged up carefully and sent away to an expert to get them all replaced. I decided not to attempt it myself as I don’t want to risk causing further damage with my dodgy soldering skills! I’ll know the outcome of this in a couple of weeks when I get it back.

Anyway, in the mean time I still want to be able to play my C64 games without having to resort to the Zip stick wannabe’s that the Mini/Maxi consoles come with. Even though the stick that came with the Maxi is much improved I just prefer a gamepad controller these days.

iNNEXT USB Game Controller Packaging

I’m sure there are other controllers out there that will work but I chose these for a number of reasons. The most important one being that in addition to the D-pad they have 8 buttons, matching the number of buttons on TheC64 joystick. They also looked great and came in a pack of 2 for a reasonable price. I was a little apprehensive when purchasing as I wasn’t sure if all the buttons would actually be recognised by the console. This is why I thought I’d share my experience in case anyone else is looking for a similar gamepad for their TheC64’s.

Back of the box.

I was fully expecting a nondescript plain box as is often the case with cheap Chinese goods. However the gamepads came supplied in a surprisingly attractive box featuring product shots of the controllers on the front. The reverse side lists all the gamepad features in multiple languages.

The two controllers unboxed.

A Closer Look

The iNNEXT USB Game controllers themselves are styled like the old SNES gamepads. In addition to the D-Pad they have ‘Select’, ‘Start’, ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘X’, ‘Y’ and two shoulder buttons. Altogether this makes 8 buttons plus the direction controls which matches the configuration of the TheC64 joysticks exactly.

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Taking a Peek Inside

The build quality of the pads is really good and although they’re pretty lightweight, they feel solid and well constructed. They certainly didn’t creak or flex in my hands, even when I deliberately tried to bend them. The D-Pads worked well and the buttons have a decent tactile feel to them when pressed. They didn’t feel spongey or rubbery so I was never in any doubt as to whether I had pressed one or not. One little feature I appreciated was the contrasting convex and concave buttons for the XY and AB buttons which made it easier to know what I was pressing in low light.

iNNEXT USB Game Controller Internals.

The cable is approximately 5 foot long (1.5m) which I found was more than long enough for my needs. The gamepad shell itself is held together with 5 small philips screws. Naturally my curiosity got the better of me and I took it apart to see what was inside.

The iNNEXT USB Game Controller PCB.

As I should have expected from a modern piece of electronics, there wasn’t really much to see. Still, at least my curiosity was sated!

iNNEXT USB Game Controller with TheC64 Maxi*.

*Just in case anyone wants to know where I got the Commodore 64 badge from – check out my post here.

Testing

The controller just worked out of the box with the games I tried on TheC64 Maxi carousel. By default both shoulder buttons are configured as ‘Fire’ buttons which I found worked pretty well. The Start button brings up the ‘save state’ menu whilst X and Y operate the two triangular buttons. The first three round buttons on the base of the Joystick are replicated by the A, B and Select buttons. So that was every one of the joystick buttons replicated successfully.

iNNEXT USB Game Controller being used to bring up the Save State menu during a game of Soul Force.

I tried a number of non carousel games off a USB flash drive too like Galencia and Soul Force. Happily I experienced no issues at all with these either. Of course if there had been problems there’s always the option of creating custom .CJM files to change the button configuration for specific games if needs be too.

Perhaps you’d like the left shoulder button to operate the spacebar in Ghostbusters for example? No problem, simply add that to a Ghostbusters.CJM file and you can get your C64 shouting ‘Ghostbusters’ without reaching for the keyboard. This is an even more useful feature when dealing with the keyboard-less TheC64 Mini..

iNNEXT USB Game Controller – Verdict

All in all I think these are terrific gamepads and fulfil their retro gaming duties admirably. They’re very reasonably priced, well built, comfortable to hold and work exactly as I’d hoped. I’ll be keeping the 2nd pad as a spare but there’s no reason why you couldn’t plug them both in and enjoy some 2-player games like Pit Stop II or Spy vs Spy. Oh and they work perfectly on PC as well, whether for native PC gaming or some retro emulator action. Definitely recommended.

The Valley – C64 Cartridge Review

1st April 2020

6 Comments

Recently Tim Harris was kind enough to lend me a new cartridge based game called ‘The Valley’ for the Commodore 64 to try out. The cartridge arrived housed inside a sleek oversized cassette case complete with a very attractive inlay card.

The Valley Game Case.

The rear inlay depicts the April 1982 cover of the British ‘Computing Today’ magazine (costing just 70p!) which is where ‘The Valley’ game actually originates from.

Back of case.

Upon opening the case it becomes immediately apparent that these are no ordinary cartridges. They are little electronic works of art.

Cartridge Design 1

Cartridge Design 2

As you can see from the above two photos there are actually two completely different cartridges. However the difference is purely cosmetic as they both run the same game.

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Rather than have a traditional plastic case these cartridges have been constructed in such a way that lets your see their inner workings. One consists of a PCB sandwiched between two purple perspex layers whilst the other is a triple decker PCB stack.

A Closer Look at the Two Cartridges

The black one… this is constructed from 3 PCB’s bolted together and is my personal favourite.

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The purple one… this is made from a single PCB sandwiched between two sections of purple perspex.

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Plugging the Carts In

Here’s what they look like plugged in…

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So why exactly have the cartridges been created like this? Well part of the reason for this strange construction becomes obvious when you first plug the cartridges in and switch on the power. They light up like Christmas trees, the reason for which I will reveal shortly.

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The Game

This game actually has quite some history to it and it all relates to that Computing Today magazine featured on the inlay card.

Back in the early 1980’s the magazine published The Valley in the form of a listing for the 32K Commodore PET. The listing was hundreds of lines long so it was broken down into more manageable chunks for budding adventurers to type in (and then spend hours on end bug checking).

Title Screen.

This also made it relatively straightforward to convert the game to run on other machines as each chunk of code was accompanied by comprehensive documentation that described exactly how everything worked. A nice bonus of typing in games like this was having the option of tweaking the game to your liking. Nasty Troll kicking your arse? Just nerf it’s physical damage stats in the code!

The games backstory.

The object of the game is to find the Amulet of Alarian from one of the temples and also locate the 6 gem stones that slot into it. You must also reach the rank of ‘Demon Killer’ so that you can find the Helm of Evanna and return it to the castle. Only by doing this will you save The Valley from the darkness that has engulfed it. To achieve all this, you, the hero, must travel across the valley battling many monsters and raiding temples to find treasures and stones for the amulet.

In this original form the game lacked a proper ending and ‘suffered from very poor gameplay’ according to Dungeon Dwellers Inc (DDI), the makers of this new incarnation of ‘The Valley’. DDI have taken the original game and enhanced it to make it more fun to play. The enhancements don’t just concern the coding of the game either… but link directly into the design of the cartridges.

A thing of beauty!

The cartridges feature graphics for both the Helm of Evanna and the Amulet of Alarian etched onto the PCB. The really cool thing though is that within the graphics are a series of LED’s which depict the presence of each item within your actual in-game inventory.

There are 8 LED’s to represent the helm, amulet and each of the 6 mystic stones. When you find one of these items in the game the corresponding LED will light up! If you are lucky enough to find all the items there are LED’s on the back of the cart that will start to pulse signifying that you a nearing the games end.

A handy little extra feature is the addition of a reset button at the back of the cartridge which is itself illuminated by a red LED.

The Game

DDI have added a very atmospheric title screen complete with music to the start of the game that really sets the mood. However this is the only sound that you will hear from the game (unless you manage to beat it) as the game is played in complete silence. There is supposed to be an animated ending complete with sound but I’ve not come anywhere close to seeing that yet.

You control the game using the numeric keys. Very strange layout at first but you get do get used to it. Shame there appears to be no joystick support though…

You begin the game by naming your character and choosing your class. The 5 options available are; Wizard, Ranger, Barbarian, Warrior and Cleric. The choice you make affects the in-game stats of your character, namely your Combat Strength, PSI (magic) Power and Stamina. If you ignore the choices on offer and select a different number then you are randomly assigned a class from one of 7 alternatives including: Villager, Thief, Bandit, Archer, Druid, Knight and Warlock.

The main game screen.

The main game screen then appears and the map of the kingdom is drawn up. The map and everything within it is generated randomly each time you start the game so no two play-throughs will ever be the same.

You will start in south west corner of the map on the safe path. So long as you stay on this path you will never be attacked. However once you stray off it it’s game on. Away from the safety of the path you can be attacked even if you are standing still so don’t wander off for a cuppa or you will likely find your hero dead when you return!

Combat

The Valley is a proper old school RPG that requires a healthy dose of imagination to be properly enjoyed. Other than the visual representation of where you are (Valley, Forest, Swamp, Tower etc.) there are no graphics to depict enemies or battles. All encounters are text based and the battles performed by rolls of the dice. When you encounter a foe you will be informed of their presence via text and a (semi) turn-based battle will commence. Whatever moves they make and the damage they do will be displayed on screen.

I previously described the combat as ‘semi turn-based’ and that’s because it uses a mixture of turn-based moves and real-time inputs from you during battles. When it is your turn to move a ‘Strike Quickly’ message will flash up on the screen and you literally have about half a second to press a key and select your attack. If you are too slow you miss your chance to retaliate and the monster gets another swipe at you. This is especially frustrating when you have to cast spells as you have to press ‘S’ to signify that you want to cast a spell and then press ‘1’, ‘2’ or ‘3’ to select which one. All of these key presses are subject to the same strict time restraints which can lead to frustration when you get flummoxed mid-battle.

Exploring a forest in The Valley.

As I said combat is all a roll of the dice so both you and the enemy can and will miss and attacks will do a random amount of damage, sometimes none at all. Consequently you need to be prepared for anything. Occasionally you will surprise an enemy and get a chance at striking first or evading them – but only if you spot the opening message and press the correct key in time to take advantage of the situation.

I must admit I would have preferred a true turn based approach where you can take time to select your move and play at a relaxed pace. However this does make battles more tense, albeit at the expense of risking cramp in your hands from hovering over the keyboard like a praying mantis all the time!

Speaking of moves you have 6 at your disposal, 3 physical attacks and 3 magic. Physical attacks consist of Head, Body or Leg strikes with head strikes being less likely to succeed but rewarding success with more damage, whilst leg strikes are most likely to hit home but do the least amount of damage. The magic spells you can cast are Sleep, PSI Lance and Lightning however the latter two can only be cast once you reach level 8 and 16 respectively.

Damage reduces your stamina and combat strength and if either of these falls to zero your hero dies. To recover from damage you just need to move around. After every turn your stats slowly increase so it pays to keep moving although you can’t move far before you encounter another enemy to fight.

Inside a lair… each of those asterisks could potentially, if you are really lucky, be the amulet…

Occasionally you will encounter some treasure or a ‘place of ancient power’ rather than enemies with the latter granting welcome stat bonuses to aid you in your adventure.

When you venture into a swamp, forest or the Tower the upper half of the screen changes to show the map for that area. Forests have temples to explore whilst the swamps have lairs, each comprising of a single floor. The Tower is split into many floors and is the only place you are able to find the 6 stones, but only once you have located the Amulet of Alarian. If you try to enter the tower before you have located this your entry will be barred.

Exploring a swamp in The Valley

Progress can be saved by making your way to one of the two castles that are found at either end of the road – assuming you manage to get there in one piece! Additionally if you manage to place all six gem stones in the amulet it will grant you the power of resurrection… but only once. If you are slain and resurrected the stones disappear and you will need to find another set in the tower again!

Verdict

The Valley is a pretty unforgiving and difficult game I have to admit and I’m not very good at it. I was constantly either too slow pressing the keys or pressing the wrong ones in the heat of battle. Consequently I wasn’t able to get very far during the time I had the game for. However the allure of lighting up those LED’s on the cartridge was very strong indeed and it definitely had that ‘one more go’ quality about it. It’s not cheap but it’s definitely something I’d consider to be a collectors item and something I would treasure for years to come.

At the time of writing The Valley cartridges are only available from DDI. You can find their website here: sys64738. I believe the game will cost $80 plus postage to your location.

If you would like to try the game first to see if you like it before parting with a not insignificant amount of money it is also available to download from CSDB.

Vegetables Deluxe Review

28th January 2020

Amiga, Commodore 64, Reviews

15 Comments

Vegetables Deluxe is a sequel of sorts to the Vegetables game that was released on itch.io early last year by Mike Richmond. It’s a ‘match 3’ type of game similar to Bejewelled or Candy Crush, a genre I don’t think even existed back in the 80’s. Thanks to this game that’s no longer the case and you can now enjoy this genre on both a C64 and Amiga (see end of post).

Physical Presentation

The game is presented in a vibrantly coloured glossy green box with some great artwork on the front. The back of the box includes some nice clear screenshots of the game in action along with a description of what it’s all about.

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Opening up the box reveals an instruction manual and the game on a 5.25″ floppy disk with a snazzy matching label.

Vegetables Deluxe manual and Game on a 5,25″ disk

The instruction manual is nicely illustrated and in full colour throughout. It clearly explains how to play the game and describes the four different game modes on offer.

Vegetables Deluxe manual

Loading up the Game

Upon loading the game you are presented with a lovely title screen complete with music. Pressing the fire button on your joystick starts a game straight away. I did find this a little odd as you’d normally expect to choose the game mode first.

Vegetables Deluxe title screen

To actually get to the menu screen you need to pause the game by pressing ‘P’ on the keyboard and then press ‘Q’.

Vegetables Deluxe menu screen

From the menu screen you can choose whether to have music or just sound effects whilst playing. You can also select from one of four different gameplay modes (more about these later).

The Game

I’m sure most people are aware of what a ‘match 3’ game is but just in case… Basically you have a grid full of randomly coloured objects, or in this case vegetables. You must match 3 or more of the same coloured vegetables either vertically or horizontally to remove them from the screen and earn points. You do this by moving the little selection box around with a joystick, holding the fire button and then moving the stick in a direction. When a group of vegetables disappear, the ones above fall down and new ones randomly appear from the top to take their place. If you run out of matches the game will use one of your available ‘shuffles’ to randomly rearrange the vegetables on the screen so you can carry on. However, if you no longer have any shuffles remaining then the game will end.

Vegetables Deluxe ‘Classic’ mode

To mix things up occasionally an immovable block will appear that impedes your progress. You can also match more than three vegetables for extra bonuses. Matching 4 in a row will cause an entire row to be removed and this is a great way to clear those immovable blocks. Matching 5 in a row will cause every matching vegetable on the screen to removed and will earn you an extra shuffle.

Watch out for the grey immovable blocks, let too many accumulate and you’ll run out of moves!

The screen is broken up into 3 main sections. On the left there is a kind of shopping list which either tells you how many of each vegetable you need to collect, or how many you have collected so far. (More on this later). The centre of the screen is where all the action takes place whilst on the right is where the timer, score and number of shuffles are located.

Game Over! (This was my ‘shopping’ High Score)

Game Modes

There are 4 different modes, each catering towards a different play style.

Casual is for those that want a relaxing experience that keeps the ‘unmovable blocks’ to a minimum. The instructions reckon it’s still possible to reach a game over state in this mode. However during my time playing the game I found this to be more like an endless mode as I kept racking up extra shuffles.

Classic is the default play mode and has you battling to reach a high score whilst dealing with plenty of immovable blocks.

Shopping has you collecting the vegetables shown on the shopping list. If you manage to collect them all then you complete that level and move onto the next with a bigger shopping list.

Shopping mode has you collecting items off the list on the left

Countdown is the hardest mode and has a sliding countdown timer (the coloured bar on the right). This gives you just a few seconds to make a match or you lose a shuffle.

During play if you are struggling to find a match the game will briefly highlight a potential (though not necessarily the best) move you can make. This is a great feature and is one commonly found on modern variants of the game. It’s no use in Countdown mode though, for that you really need to be on the ball!

When you are not playing in shopping mode, the list on the left works the other way round. It actually keeps a tally of what you’ve collected, up to a point anyway. You see the counters only go up to 99 and then reset back to 0. It’s not a big deal and in Casual mode where you could potentially be collecting a mountain of vegetables, entirely understandable.

My thoughts on the game

I tried all the game modes but found the ‘shopping’ mode the most fun. It gives you something extra to work on besides just matching vegetables. I didn’t really enjoy ‘countdown’ mode as the timer destroyed the relaxation side of things. Games started in casual mode simply lasted too long. Without a save option I was never able to actually finish one. I guess people playing it on an emulator or C64 Mini would have the option of using save states but that doesn’t fly on the real thing. Leaving my ageing C64 on until I can come back to finish a game certainly isn’t an option either!

For a game that is all about reaching and beating a high score I was disappointed that there was no way to save a high score to disk. Many C64 games offer this facility now and it’s a shame that Vegetables Deluxe hasn’t followed suit. Of course it’s not the end of the world by any means. You can write your score down (proper old-school style) or snap a pic of the screen with a smartphone. Hopefully one day this feature might be included in an updated version of the game.

The game looks terrific though and all the better for utilising high resolution mode. The vegetables are clearly defined and very colourful and the overall aesthetic is very pleasing to the eye. If you choose to play with sound effects then you won’t hear much at all, just the odd ‘plink’ when you make a match. The music however is brilliant and if you enjoy SID tunes then this is definitely the way to play. I’ve played this game for hours and never tired of listening to the soundtrack so top marks for that.

This is a terrific little puzzle game for the Commodore 64. It looks great, sounds fantastic and is a lot of fun to play. I have no reservations at all in recommending it to anyone looking for a casual gaming experience. It’s published by Double-Sided Games in Canada on cartridge, floppy disk or digital download. There is now also a cassette tape version available from Psytronik in the UK.

Standard vs Deluxe Comparison

I mentioned at the start that this is an updated version of the game. Below you can see a few comparison pics between this and the earlier version. There’s a number of marked improvements over the original game. These include the addition of in-game music and three extra gameplay modes. The Deluxe version also takes advantage of the Commodore 64’s high-res capability to deliver much crisper graphics than you get with the chunkier colour mode used in the original. It actually reminds me a little of a Spectrum game in terms of presentation, especially the font used.

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Amiga Version

Included as a bonus at no extra charge is a complete Amiga port of the game as well! This takes the form of a digital ADF disk image that you can either use in an emulator or on a real Amiga via a GOTEK drive. (I think this bonus is exclusive to the Double-Sided Games release).

Amiga Title Screen

It’s the exact same game with the same choice of game modes, optional music and so on. The music is terrific but I personally prefer the C64 tune. The title screen is also infinitely better on the C64 version with the Amiga’s being text only.

Amiga Vegetables Deluxe game screen

A big benefit of the Amiga version is mouse support which feels like the natural way to play a game like this. It also benefits from the higher resolution and larger colour palette to create a more striking display. Both games are brilliant but I think the C64 version is better in the music department whilst the mouse support gives the Amiga version the edge in gameplay. If the C64 version supported the NEOS or 1351 mouse then that would make it a clear winner for me!

Even though the Amiga version is classed as a bonus addition to the C64 game I would still recommend this to Amiga only gamers as it’s a great game on either system.

JollyDisk – a Merry 8-Bit Christmas

31st December 2019

Commodore 64

1 Comment

I spotted this little festive treat quite by chance just a few days before Christmas. It’s called ‘JollyDisk’ and is basically a series of animated Christmas cards along with some nice SID based Christmas carols. There’s also an animated Yule Log ‘Jukebox’ thrown in for good measure too.

From time of ordering to delivery from the USA to the UK took ten days. Given the time of year I thought this was pretty good. What wasn’t so good was the £13.11 customs charges I got stung for. Only £5.11 of that total was actually import duties, the other £8 was tacked on by Royal Mail for ‘handling fees’. Anyhoo… them’s the breaks as they say so I won’t hold that against it. As for the Royal Mail… you robbers…

JollyDisk Contents

Anyway my JollyDisk came neatly packaged inside a ZipLock bag with a colourful card inlay showing what it’s all about. There was also a nice ‘Stirring Dragon Games’ sticker, a keyboard overlay (remember those?) and of course the actual 5.25″ JollyDisk itself!

The JollyDisk is actually double sided. The first side is devoted to the multimedia Christmas cards whilst the flip side hosts the Yule Log Jukebox.

Christmas Cards

JollyDisk Title Screen

After a few moments you are greeted with a nice title screen before moving on to the Christmas cards. The cards are beautifully presented in full multi-colour graphics featuring a number of animations that help bring the scene to life.

Pay attention to this one to spot a special appearance…

In one scene for example, Santa’s sleigh streaks across a moonlit sky (closely following by E.T. if you pay attention!). Others feature animated animals, snow falling, twinkling lights and much more. It’s clear that a lot of love went into creating each scene.

A fox gazes into a moonlit sky…

Accompanying each screen is a Christmas carol performed gracefully by the C64’s SID chip. There’s a different carol for each screen ranging from Silent Night to Deck the Halls and of course Jingle Bells is in there somewhere too!

Winter scene featuring a deer taking a drink

Once each music track has finished the next scene is automatically loaded off the floppy disk.

Traditional Christmas scene

Once the final Christmas Card has been displayed it loops right back to the start. This means you can leave it on for as long as you like and have it constantly cycling through different scenes and carols.

A kid playing on a C64 in their bedroom at Christmas – something most of us can probably relate to!

It’s the sort of thing a computer shop in the 80’s might have left on display during the festive season.

The last scene before looping back to the beginning

Yule Log

The second side of the JollyDisk features a fully animated Yule Log created entirely from PETSCII graphics. This ‘Jukebox’ is where that keyboard overlay comes in handy.

The keyboard Overlay in use

The keyboard overlay sits over the function keys and reminds you which keys do what.

F1 turns the sound off.
F3 changes the fireplace design (there are 2 to choose from).
F5 selects a crackling fire sound.
F7 skips to the next song.

The songs that play are the same Christmas carols that featured on side one. However there do seem to be a few more on offer here. I think there’s ten in total. In addition to moving sequentially through them with F7 you can also directly access each one using the number keys. Playing the songs like this causes them to play on a loop, particularly handy if you have a favourite.

JollyDisk Yule Log menu screen

The crackling fire sound enabled by pressing F5 is quite effective. I assume it’s been created using various snippets of white noise but it’s pretty effective and definitely relaxing. In fact I’ve actually got it running in the background whilst I type this article!

A static photo wouldn’t have done the Yule Log justice so here’s an animated GIF…

Here’s an animated GIF I created of the crackling fire. You’ll just have to imagine the Christmas carols playing or the sounds of the log crackling – either that or buy a copy for yourself 🙂

All in all this is a delightful little product. It’s definitely something I will look forward to digging out every year to experience some 8-bit Christmas cheer.

As I write this it’s still available physically for $24.99 or $14.99 digitally from Stirring Dragon Games if you are interested in getting hold of a copy yourself.

CDTV Disc Reference Guide Book Review

25th October 2019