Tag - review

Amiga CD32 Vertical Display Stand Review

25th September 2019

I was browsing around AmiBay one day when I stumbled across a guy selling stands/brackets that you can use to display Commodore equipment with. His stand for the CD32 caught my eye and was pretty cheap (€12.50) so I thought it was well worth a punt. The stands are made in Italy and delivery to the UK took less than a week.

The stand itself is 3D printed and is finished to a very hight standard. It’s also incredibly strong unlike many 3D printed objects thanks to some sort of exotic ‘ngen’ plastic used in its construction. The end result is a very attractive and sturdy stand that is available in three different colours. Champagne Gold, Clear Grey and my choice, Light Grey.

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How it fits the CD32

The stand features four prongs along the bottom that hook into the slots under the front lip of the CD32. A gently sloped back means your CD32 is held at an angle ensuring it won’t tip forward. There stand also incorporates a couple of holes so it can be mounted on a vertical surface.

Here are the slots that the prongs of the stand fit into.

Here you can see the prongs securely located into the slots.

Use as a Display Stand

The design of the stand allows it to be used in two different ways. The most straightforward is as a simple shelf stand to display your console on, as you can see in the photos below. This works really well and if you have the space is a great way to show off your kit.

CD32 ‘Display’ Stand – seen from behind.

CD32 ‘Display’ Stand – seen from the front. Hard to tell from the photo but it’s leaning back so there’s no danger of it falling over.

Use as Wall Bracket

The other way of using it, and the reason I bought it in the first place, is as a wall bracket. Used this way you can actually gain a little bit of extra space in your man cave. This is because when affixed to a wall or other vertical surface your CD32 no longer needs shelf or cupboard space. As an added bonus it looks awesome whilst stored this way too!

Here you can see the stand/bracket securely attached to the side of my computer desk. The curved screw slot allows easy alignment/levelling.

There are two screw holes used to mount the stand/bracket vertically. You put the first screw in the top hole as normal. The next screw goes through the curved slot below which allows the bracket to pivot left and right so you can align it. Get the bracket level and then tighten both screws and bob’s your uncle!

CD32 ‘bracket’ simultaneously displaying and storing my CD32.

I’ve actually owned this product for several months before getting around to producing this post. Consequently I’ve had plenty of time to test it out. I’m happy to report that it works brilliantly. I feel confident that my CD32 is held securely thanks to both the way the prongs lock into the slots and the angle it is held at. I have mine attached to the side of my desk and I walk past it several times a day. It’s never been knocked off, even when I’ve accidentally bumped into it. It has rocked forward a couple of times but the prongs prevent it from ever tipping over.

CD32 ‘bracket’ simultaneously displaying and storing my CD32.

Lifting the console off the bracket does take a little getting used to. You need to angle it just right and then pull it out and up at the same time for it to break free of the prongs. I didn’t find it a big issue though and I’d rather it was held securely than risk it falling off the bracket because it was too loose! Once you’ve done it a few times you develop a knack for it. I’ve also had it on and off the bracket dozens of times now and it is showing no signs of wear.

Verdict

Whether you want to store your own CD32 vertically or put it on display I’d happily recommend this product. It’s well made, priced fairly and does exactly what it sets out to do. The guy has a website where you can order them from here: ComputerGrafica3D. He also sells brackets for the breadbin cased Commodore 64 or VIC20 computers which I will be reviewing soon.

Trilogic 64 Doctor Diagnostic Cartridge Review

10th June 2019

Steven

Commodore 64

11 Comments

I picked ‘Trilogic 64 Doctor’ up a little while ago as I thought it might come in handy one day. As it had been sat around on a shelf for some time I decided it was time to have a play around with it. You would be forgiven for thinking that this was new old stock given that Trilogic (as we know it) ceased to be a long time ago*. However this is actually a factory fresh product, made under licence by the prolific Tim Harris of SharewarePlus.

Here’s the contents of the box. From left to right. User port dongle, test cartridge and serial port dongle.

Inside the box you get an instruction booklet, some flyers for other Trilogic products, the Trilogic 64 Doctor diagnostic cart itself, a user port dongle and also a serial port dongle.

Here’s the instruction booklet along with some very retro looking flyers for other Trilogic stuff.

What does it do?

So what does the Trilogic 64 Doctor actually do? Well there is a little clue in the ‘doctor’ part of the name itself. Basically you plug it in and it will then perform a barrage of tests on your Commodore 64, from RAM chips to joystick ports.

Here’s a list of the tests it can perform:

Keyboard
Serial Port
Cartridge Port
Kernal ROM
Video Chip & Video Banks
NVI & IRQ Interrupts
Cassette Data
Joystick Port
User Port
BASIC ROM
CIA Chips
Sound Chip
Cassette Key Press
Joystick(s)

Rear of the Commodore 64 with cartridge and both dongles inserted.

Keyboard Test

When you first turn your C64 on with the cartridge inserted you are presented with an on-screen keyboard. This is the keyboard test and allows you to quickly determine whether any of your keys are misbehaving. As you press each key in turn, their on-screen counterparts light up in yellow. If any don’t light up then you know there’s a problem. The restore key isn’t included in the test per se, but given it is needed to progress to the next test it will be obvious if it’s faulty!

The Keyboard test screen

Successfully passing the keyboard test

Joystick and Joystick Port Test

The next test is for the two joystick ports and of course whatever joystick you happen to have plugged in. Simply press up, down, left, right and fire with a joystick attached (in turn) to both ports. Like with the keyboard test, an on-screen visualisation of the presses should appear if all is working correctly.

The joystick test screen

Successfully passing the joystick test

Chip and Ports test

The final and probably most important test is that of the various chips and ports of the Commodore 64. This test includes both the User Port and Serial port so long as you have plugged in the supplied dongles. Video, SID, Kernel, CIA and several other chips are also tested too. If you need to test the cassette port then you must connect a datasette to it, after making sure you unplug the serial port dongle first.

Successful chip tests

Successful cassette deck/port test. Notice how the serial port lists a fault – this is because the serial port dongle has to be unplugged for this part of the test.

After the tests…

Once the tests have completed you will either be presented with a clean bill of health or a fault to fix. The included manual provides a wealth of useful information not just about faults but also how to fix them. It goes into great detail about common reasons for each fault, how to troubleshoot them and ultimately what you can do to fix them. It even goes as far as recommending other useful tools that you may need to diagnose faults or perform repairs.

Conclusion

With the inclusion of the two dongles this offers a very comprehensive phalanx of tests for your Commodore 64. Combined with the informative manual, whether you need to troubleshoot a faulty C64 or just want to have it ‘in reserve’ in your retro toolkit this is a recommended purchase.

If you fancy getting hold of one yourself, head on over to SharewarePlus – it’s £25 at the time of writing.

*Curiosity got the better of me so I did some googling. Although Trilogic Computers does still exist, it is now a PC repair business. It’s still in Bradford only located at a different address. A look through the records at Companies House indicate that they changed from their old address to their current one back in 1997. Maybe one day when I’m in the area I’ll pop in with my old Expert cart and ask them to fix it!

Three Classic VIC20 Games Remembered

16th April 2019

Steven

VIC 20

4 Comments

Picked up a few nice games off eBay recently for my VIC20. Although I’ve had all of them in past, this is the first time I’ve actually owned the retail releases for each game. The copies of Blitz and Race I had as a child were part of a compilation tape I got with my VIC20. I only ever had a pirated copy of Skramble so now at long last I have the original game in my collection.

Although the cassette tapes and ‘J’ card inlays were in terrific shape, the boxes on all three were extremely tatty and well worn. The very first thing I did was replace them with new ones and as you can see the games all look as good as new now.

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Like many people I got my copy of ‘Blitz’ and ‘Race’ on a compilation tape that came with my VIC20 computer. I still have this tape (pictured below) of course but thought it would be cool to own the original, stand alone copies of the games too. It’s holding up pretty well considering it’s now 37 years old!

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A brief look at each game

As I’ve done on previous occasions, I’ve taken some screenshots of each game and written little mini reviews of each. Part of the fun of getting hold of these old games is to relive the whole experience of loading them and seeing if I even remember what they used to look like correctly after all this time.

Race

Despite some horrendous squeaking noises this loaded after a few tries. It’s a pretty spartan game with a brief text introduction and then on to the game. Despite the name and screenshot on the front of the cassette case this is not a racing game. No, this is a dodging game. Move your bike left and right to avoid the other bikes scrolling up the screen. The are four difficultly levels and it gets faster as you progress until you either reach the end or crash. Needless to say it’s not a very entertaining game, and probably never really was. The whole thing is very rudimentary, but then again it looks like it was written in BASIC so you can’t expect too much. Still, it’s a nice little bit of VIC20 history.

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Blitz

This is also a 3.5K game written in BASIC for an expanded VIC20. However this one manages to have a lot of charm and character and is quite fun to play.

The idea is simple, fly your little bi-plane across a randomly generated city as you bomb it into oblivion so you can land. Every time you reach the edge of the screen your plane drops down a row, getting ever closer to the skyscrapers below. You can only drop a single bomb at a time so there is an element of strategy (and luck) to it if you want to succeed. If you time it well you can often drop two or more bombs in one pass which is crucial to clearing the city. Fail to bomb even the smallest bit of rubble away and you’ll crash into it and it’s game over.

I played this quite a lot as a child, the graphics are really pretty good for what it is and the sound effects work really well too. It’s still actually fun now and a worthy addition to my collection.

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Skramble

I thought this tape was faulty at first as every time I tried to load it I was getting an ‘out of memory’ error. After a spot of RTFM I tried just typing ‘LOAD’ instead of the customary ‘SHIFT & RUN/STOP’ as it suggested. Hey presto – it worked! The screen turned white and the text red and several minutes later the game greeted me with a very colourful title screen.

I have to say this is by far the best game of the bunch, the extra 16K of RAM really allows the VIC20 to show what it is capable of. Fantastic, colourful graphics, slick side scrolling and punchy sound effects made this one of the best Skramble clones you could play at the time and it still looks great even now. It’s definitely the best version of Skramble you could play on the VIC. Just a shame so few games actually took advantage of the 16K RAM expansion back in the day as the VIC20 was capable of running some great games if given the chance.

It’s was very difficult trying to play this whilst reaching for the phone camera, games back then didn’t have a ‘pause’ feature! I’m looking forward to playing this a lot more now and reaching the end. If my memory is correct there were 6 levels in all with the final one being pretty torturous. I completed it many times over as a child and won’t rest until I do the same now as an older and wiser, albeit probably slower adult!

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VIC20 Penultimate+ Cartridge

15th March 2019

Steven

VIC 20

11 Comments

Thought I’d share a little review of a new gizmo I picked up for my VIC20 recently. It’s called the ‘Penultimate+’ cartridge and it’s sold by The Future Was 8-bit.

It aims to be the only cartridge you will ever need to put in your VIC20’s expansion slot. It combines a RAM pack, various expansion carts, reset button, system diagnostics and over 70 game ROM’s into a single cartridge and all accessible through a simple and intuitive menu system.

What you get

The artwork on the packaging is fantastic, riffing off the original cartridge boxes to produce a product dripping with nostalgia. It’s a slip-case rather than a box though which disappointed me a little bit. Although I realise my cartridge is likely going to stay plugged in most of its life, it would have been great to have a proper box to store it in for those times when it’s not. Even if I never unplug the cartridge again, as a collector I would have appreciated a proper box to display on my shelf. With no cartridge inside the slip-case is very flimsy and could be easily squashed flat.

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The cartridge itself is sturdily built from brown plastic to a very high standard. It fits snugly into the VIC20’s expansion port without any issues at all. Most of Commodore’s original expansion carts were produced in a similar colour so again this is a nice nostalgic nod to the past.

On the top are two buttons. The first button on the left is an illuminated ‘menu’ button that launches the Penultimate+ Cartridge’s menu screen. The second ‘reset’ button on the right resets your VIC20 vastly reducing the need to power cycle your machine.

Given that much of the time this cart is going to be used for playing games, having joystick navigation through menus is a godsend. Simply move up and down with the stick and press fire to select a menu item or launch a game. Some frequently used options also have handy keyboard shortcuts too.

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The RAM Pack Function

The RAM pack behaves in much the same way as other switchable RAM packs like the Vixen one I already have. The one big difference with this one is that you can change the amount of RAM available using the on-screen menu instead of messing with DIP switches. You are able to chose from Unexpanded (no extra RAM), 3K, 8K, 24K, 32K and 35K. Strangely there’s no option to select 16K but playing 16K games with the 24K option seems to work just fine.

There’s a couple of ways to access the extra RAM depending on what you need it for:

Select one of the ‘Set RAM…’ options from the menu to have that amount of RAM allocated whilst remaining in the menu system so you can load a game ROM.
Press one of the function key shortcuts at the bottom of the screen to reset your VIC20 and drop you at the BASIC screen with the extra memory allocated. This is the option you would choose if you wanted to write a program or load one off a cassette tape and needed the extra RAM to do so.

Main menu with RAM options.

The Games

The games are neatly arranged into 4 categories:

The Future Was 8-Bit Titles (exclusive new games released by TFW8b)
Games (this is where the vast majority of the game ROMs can be found)
Adventure Games (all the Scott Adams cartridge adventure games)
Paddle Games (all the paddle compatible games)

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Penultimate+ Included Games List

Adventureland Adventure	Mission Impossible Adventure
AE	Mosquito Infestation
Aggressor	Motocross Racer
Alien Blitz	Ms. Pac-Man
Alien Sidestep	Omega Race
Amok	Pac-Man
Attack of the Mutant Camels	Pentagorat
Avenger	Pharaoh's Curse
Basic-v4	Pirate's Cove Adventure
Battlezone	Pole Position
Bertie the Ball	Princess and Frog
Black Hole	Q-Bert
BolderDan	Radar Rat Race
Buck Rogers	Raid on Fort Knox
Centipede	River Rescue
Cheese and Onion	Road Race
Choplifter	Robotron
Cloudburst	RodMan
Clowns	Satellite Patrol
Cosmic Jailbreak	Serpentine
Crater Raider	Shamus
Creepy Corridors	Skibbereen
Cyclon	Spaceship-1
Deadly Skies	Squishem
Defender	Star Battle
Demon Attack	Sub Chase
Dig Dug	Super Expander
Donkey Kong	Super Slot
Dragonfire	Super Starship Space Attack
Fast Boy	Terraguard
Frogger	Tetris
Future Fighter	The Count Adventure
Galaxian	The Sky is Falling
Gold Fever	Threshold
Gorf	Topper
Gridrunner	Tornado
Jelly Monsters	Tutankham
Jungle Hunt	Typo
KeyQuest	ViccyBird
K-Razy Antiks	VICKIT4&5
Lazerzone	Victerm 40
Lode Runner	Voodoo Castle Adventure
Mine Madness

SD2IEC Functionality

Unlike, for example, the 1541 Ultimate cartridge that you can get for the Commodore 64, the Penultimate+ Cartridge does not allow you to add any content of your own. You are stuck with the cartridges and game ROM’s that it ships with.

SD2IEC Device

Thankfully however, it does provide a quick way to access any content you may have via an SD2IEC device. Selecting this option from the menu will allow you to easily browse through the content of an SD card using a joystick. For games that won’t run on an unexpanded VIC20 you can allocate the correct amount of additional RAM needed before launching a game. I found this to work really well but I do need to spend a little time organising my game collection by how much RAM each needs.

Navigating the SD2IEC menus

Utilities

Under this section you will find a bunch of utilities that may be of interest to the more dedicated user.

Utilities

Vic Term

This is a terminal program but as I don’t have a suitable modem for my VIC20 I’ve been unable to try this.

Vickit

This is a high speed cassette loading system. If you load this up and re-save a program to cassette it will load back in a fraction of the time.

BASIC4

This adds a number of sorely lacking disk handling commands to the VIC20’s BASIC arsenal such as ‘DIRECTORY’ and ‘DLOAD’.

Super Expander

This is probably the most useful of the bunch and greatly increases the BASIC commands available for writing programs. It provides dedicated graphics and sound commands along with some extra RAM to create them. It also provides commands that enable you to easily read paddle and joystick inputs. If you were thinking of writing a VIC20 game then this would be a great cart to load up. The only downside to this is however is that anyone else that wanted to run your program would also need the Super Expander for it to work!

VIC20 Dead Test+

This could prove to be another really useful feature to have on board. When you load this up it will test various aspects of your VIC20’s RAM and ROM in an endless cycle. If your VIC20 ever starts behaving strangely then this would be a great tool to load up to get an idea what’s going wrong.

If your VIC20 won’t even boot up then you can hold down the reset button for 10 seconds after switching it on to go straight to the dead test function. This is where ‘Dead Test’ cart actually earns its name.

I would have liked an option to buy dongles to plug into the various ports enabling a more comprehensive test but it’s still a great tool to have at your disposal. Maybe a future version will offer this feature.

‘Dead Test’

Verdict

If you have a VIC20 then you should seriously consider getting one of these cartridges. It successfully combines a huge number of cartridges, games and functions into a single plug and play cartridge driven by a simple and intuitive menu system.

Even if you’re like me and have an extensive collection of cartridges already I would still recommend getting this. Not only is it hugely convenient to have an entire library of titles and functions always at the ready but it saves the wear and tear of both your VIC20’s cartridge port and the individual edge connectors of your cartridges. If you add an SD2IEC reader then you can literally have everything a few stick waggles and a button press away.

Does it fulfil it’s mission to be the one and only cartridge you need? Almost, but I still have an Adman speech synthesiser cartridge that I enjoy messing about with from time to time. Maybe a future ‘Ultimate’ version will incorporate this too and then it really can remain plugged in forever!

Mono Review

20th February 2019

Steven

Commodore 64, Reviews

15 Comments

Mono is a brand new PAL game for the Commodore 64 created by a couple of guys in Switzerland, Clay Spoerri and Raphael Graf. It’s only available in cartridge format and costs €35 plus postage from their website. I bought this pretty much blind a few months ago as there was little information about it online. Sadly my first copy was faulty so had to be replaced (thanks Raphael) but the new one works perfectly so I thought I’d write a little review in case anyone else is interested in the game.

For your money you get a nicely designed plastic case with a cool manga inspired front cover featuring the pilot of your ship with some game screenshots and ship artwork on the back.

Mono Back Cover

Inside the case you will find a sleek black cartridge with the title of the game etched onto it. The cartridge fits into the C64’s expansion port easily, unlike some other recent cartridges that required shoehorning in! You also get an instruction sheet, mono pin badge, a sticker, postcard and a beer mat/coaster. It should be noted that the latter three items all relate to other games, only the pin badge relates to mono. It’s only a minor complaint but I would have loved to see a sticker in the box of the girl or your ship instead. Also the cartridge is loose inside the case – a foam insert would have stopped it sliding around inside.

Mono Game Contents

Gameplay

Mono is a vertically scrolling shoot ’em up that features a couple of fairly unique and pretty important gameplay elements that set it apart from similar games. Firstly your ship wraps around the edges of the screen. Move off the left side of the screen and you’ll reappear over on the right. Move off the top or bottom of the screen and you’ll reappear at the opposite end. Once you get used to this it’s actually a great gameplay enhancement and one that becomes essential with some of the bosses you’ll encounter later in the game. However it does take a few minutes to get used to and led to me dying on my first play-though. I kept accidentally moving off the bottom of the screen straight into the aliens spawning at the top!

The second unique feature is that your score and your ships life are one and the same. As you play you’ll notice a series of positive and negative numbers scrolling down the side of the screen. Kill an alien and a positive number will appear. Take a hit and a negative will appear instead. So long as you do more killing than getting hit you’ll be fine. However take too many hits and your score dwindles to zero leading to a ‘game over’.

Like many shoot ’em ups there are weapon power-ups to be had, but again these are linked to your score. Score well and power-ups will appear on screen for you to collect. However take some hits and you will lose your last power-up until you are back down to your standard issue guns. As soon as you start building that score back up the power-ups will start flowing again.

Title Screen

Level Design

There are six levels in the game, each one themed differently with it’s own colour scheme, music, background, enemies and boss. The backdrops scroll down the screen smoothly but are pretty simply affairs, based around various shapes or patterns – bubbles, lines, pyramids, blocks and even a circuit board (populated by 6510 chips!).

The alien designs are also pretty simple but they’re nice and clear and each feature unique move and firing patterns. Some of the bullets fired home in on your position too which makes for some tricky situations if you don’t take the enemies out quickly enough. There is some overlap of enemy use from one level to the next but the game adds new enemies to each new level to mix things up.

Every level culminates in a boss fight where a group of bullet sponge enemies appear for you to take down before you can progress onto the next level. I found it was during these segments of the game that the screen wrapping feature came into its own, allowing you to stay literally one step ahead of the enemy, out of their line of fire, whilst chipping away at their health.

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Game Length and Difficulty

You can play Mono using either the keyboard or a standard joystick which is the option I chose to go with. My thumb also appreciated the fact that your ship auto-fires. No need get cramp stabbing away at that fire button like a madman!

One thing that I have to mention here relates to the game difficulty and length. Those 6 levels are quite short, taking maybe 2-3 minutes to complete each. They’re also pretty easy to get through too as the score-life mechanic is very forgiving. To put this into perspective I was able to beat the game on my second play-though in around 15 minutes and that includes brief interludes where I was taking photos for this review!

I’m guessing that is a feature rather than an issue though. For me it seems the game is built around replaying it and trying to improve on that high score as you learn the move sets of the enemies and best ways to take them out without getting hit.

Sound

Mono has some great music playing throughout the game and it changes slightly for each new level. There are no sound effects at all in the game because all the SID’s voices are being utilised to produce the soundtrack. However this is no bad thing, at least to my ears as I really enjoyed the music.

My High Score: 181

Verdict

I realise that for some, €35 for a game that can be bested in 15 minutes may not be perceived as value for money. If so you’ll need to way up the pros and cons I’ve mentioned already in order to decide if this game is for you. Sadly there is no digital purchase available so it’s the Cartridge version or nothing I’m afraid.

Speaking for myself I’ve really enjoyed my time playing Mono, although the graphics are a little simplistic the gameplay is tight and rewarding and the music is terrific. The physical packaging is fantastic and looks great on my shelf. I’ll definitely be replaying it often to improve my score and it’s the perfect game to play if you’re limited on time… you know from the outset that a game will never last more than 15 minutes!

I think the price is quite fair too and on a par with the majority of other cartridge releases so all things considered it gets a recommended from me. 🙂

Myst 25th Anniversary Collection Review

30th January 2019

Steven

Gaming, Reviews

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It’s finally here, about 8 months after backing this on Kickstarter – the awesome Myst 25th Anniversary Collection animated linking book! I received the digital GOG versions of the remastered games quite some time ago and the physical DVD’s just a few weeks ago. However the linking book is what I’ve really been waiting for and it finally arrived in the post today!

Contents

It’s turned out to be a lovely collectors item, just liked I’d hoped for. It really does look like a well worn antique book with the way they’ve finished it with faux cracks and worn out fabric and gilding. The linking part is something that only a video can do justice to though so here it is!

When you open it you get a fantastic fly-past of the game world along with the theme music. The image is crisp, sharp and vivid and the screen beautifully hidden behind the page. This video plays automatically so presumably there is a hidden magnetic switch somewhere that is triggered when you lift the cover.

Along the bottom and side there are magnetic flaps that open up to reveal three hidden drawers. There’s a long shallow draw that runs the full length of the spine which I assume could be used to store the pen if you purchased it (I didn’t). There are also two big drawers which open out on the right. The upper one houses the seven game DVD’s and the other is empty on mine but would probably have stored the inkwell had I been able to afford to add that to my pledge.

Linking Book Hidden Drawers

Cleverly hidden away from plain sight under the little ‘stains’ and ‘marks’ on the linking screen page are a number of control buttons. These let you control the volume and allow you to switch to another video from a different game should you wish to. There’s also a button that will pause playback.

Spot the buttons!

A tiny micro USB port hidden under the large flap can be used to charge up the battery for the LCD screen that’s hidden inside. Plug it into a PC and you’ll discover that the book actually has around 500MB of storage on board, most of which is used. There’s 4 folders on the device. One is used to store the actual video that plays when you open the book. The second is full of videos from the various games for you to swap in and out of the ‘play’ folder. A third folder contains a number of game screenshots and box art while the fourth is basically empty besides a readme that suggests you can store your own files in it. There’s also a handy link to re-download the video files should you ever need to.

: Linking Book Hidden Micro USB Port

: Book Memory

: Game Video Files

Anyway I’m delighted with the finished product and will proudly display this on my gaming shelves for years to come. I am a little disappointed that I couldn’t get the inkwell but it was around £80 extra and I had to draw a line somewhere!

Here’s a selection of photos from various angles showing the book and screen in more detail.

: Front Cover

: Spine Close-Up

: Linking Book

: Linking Book

: Linking Book

: Close-up of the linking screen

Shadow Switcher Review

20th January 2019

Steven

Commodore 64, Reviews

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This little game arrived a few days ago in the post all the way from Germany. It’s a new indie game for the C64 called Shadow Switcher from a company called Dr. Wuro Industries. Rather than simply taking a few photos and saying what’s in the package like I usually do I thought I’d try something a little different this time. So here’s a little review of the game in case anyone else is interested in it.

The packaging is quite basic, but well presented and produced. There’s an attractive double-sided printed A5 instruction card which also serves as the front cover. The game comes on a 5.25″ floppy disk along with a postcard, some stickers and a nice little coaster/beer mat featuring the game artwork. It’s all housed in a transparent plastic wallet with a resealable flap.

Shadow Switcher Contents

Gameplay

The idea of the game is simple – collect all the rings on each level to open an exit that will lead to the next level. However things are never quite that simple. In Shadow Switcher there are zombie robots homing in on your position all the time so you can’t afford to stay in any one place for long. If a robot manages to touch you then it’s instant death and you lose one of your three lives. There are also hazards and obstacles within the design of the levels themselves. For example, some rings are behind iron gates which require you to find a key elsewhere on the level to unlock them. Pulsating electric force fields will kill you if you don’t time your passage through them correctly. There are also crumbling platform segments and rings that at first glance might appear inaccessible. You character cannot jump but he doesn’t take fall damage and has some limited momentum that can allow you to reach inaccessible lower platforms if you run off the end of a higher one.

Shadow Switcher Title Screen

The thing that really makes this game though, and where it gets the ‘Shadow Switcher’ name from, is your shadow and the ‘switching’ mechanic. When you begin a level your shadow is fixed to your starting position. During play, imminent death can be avoided by a quick press of the fire button which will send you straight back to your shadows original position. The robots are always homing in on your current location so most of the time your shadow’s position should be relatively safe. However after switching, your shadow will move to where you were when you pressed fire. It will keep moving like this every time you use the switch mechanic. It’s a great idea and really makes for some absorbing gameplay as you can use it not only to escape danger but to lure the zombie robots away from an area you need to reach.

Shadow Switcher Level

Additional Features

There are 40 varied levels to switch your way through and if you manage to complete all of those there is also a level editor to create your own! Another feature I really appreciated is the persistent high score table. Once you obtain a score high enough to get on the ‘Hall of Fame’ you are prompted to save it to disk. Sadly you cannot save your level progression so you have to start from level one on each play through. I would have liked an option to start from the highest level I’d reached (starting with a zero score of course) so I have a fighting chance of seeing all 40 levels.

Shadow Switcher High Score Save Screen

Graphics & Sound

The graphics are quite simple but they suit the game perfectly and have a charm of their own. Everything is clear and well defined. Colours are well chosen creating vibrant looking levels without any ‘fuzzy’ looking areas which can be a problem with some colour combinations on the C64. There’s no sound effects at all but there is some quite catchy music that plays throughout and it suits the game well. It certainly never annoyed me and it actually stuck in my head long after I’d finished playing.

Shadow Switcher Level

Verdict

I have to say after spending some time playing Shadow Switcher I’m quite smitten with it and would highly recommend it to anyone that enjoys action/puzzle platform games. The difficulty seems to be pitched just right too and I never felt frustrated or cheated whilst playing. If you fancy giving it a go you don’t even need to purchase the physical game either, there’s a free download of it here.

Fire Breath, Little Knight Arthur & Valkyrie Trilogy – Mini Reviews

29th December 2018

Steven

Commodore 64, Reviews

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This is a quick look at Fire Breath, Little Knight Arthur & Valkyrie Trilogy published by K&A+ Magazine for the Commodore 64. These are basically volumes #2 and #3 of a series. Volume #1 was ‘Single Button Games‘. All the games feature attractive loading screens and great music to entertain you whilst they (turbo)load.

Fire Breath

This is a charming little flip-screen platforming game where you control a fire breathing slug, making your way out of an underground warren of tunnels. You must avoid contact with any of the critters you meet along the way, preferably roasting them with your fiery breath and collecting points for doing so. There are power-ups to collect and rooms full of bonus items to discover. Kill all of the critters in each location to move onto the next. I found this to be a very relaxing and enjoyable little game.

Fire Breath

Update: Since writing this I discovered the author’s website, ctrl-alt.dev.nl which provides a good history of how Fire Breath came into existence. Well worth a read.

Little Knight Arthur

Little Knight Arthur appears to be a Monty Mole / Jet Set Willy style of platform game where you avoid monsters on your way to the exit. I say “appears” because I haven’t managed to get beyond the first screen yet. Either I really suck at this game or it is just brutally difficult. Or maybe both? Your character is quite a chunky little guy and there is virtually no room for error when trying to get past the monsters on the screen – their movement patterns seem to be random too so it’s really difficult to pick the correct moment to jump. The art style is great, very reminiscent of similar games from the period and the music playing throughout is pleasant enough but I just found the game frustratingly hard and gave up after a dozen or so attempts. When I’m feeling like a challenge I will definitely go back to this and try to reach the second screen!!!

Little Knight Arthur

Valkyrie Trilogy

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There are 3 games included here. Side A contains ‘Night of the Valkyrie’ and ‘Valkyrie 3 – The Night Witch’. Night of the Valkyrie is a vertically scrolling WWII game where your Valkyrie character has to kill waves of Nazis as you progress up each level before facing off against a boss at the end. Your character can move and shoot in all directions and thus play feels very similar to Commando – definitely a compliment!

Valkyrie 3 is again a vertically scrolling shooter but this time instead of playing the Valkyrie character on foot you are in a WWII biplane flying over the landscape similar to 1942. This was a refreshing change after the other two games following a similar style and I really enjoyed playing it.

Side B contains ‘Valkyrie 2 – The Templar’. I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that this game actually features an intro sequence that loads as a separate entity before the main game. It features music, some really great character graphics and explains the plot of the game. Once this is over the main game loads. I liked the fact that this game offered me the choice to play with either music, sound FX or silence on the title screen. This is another vertically scrolling ‘kill all Nazi’s’ affair where you play the Valkyrie character on foot. This time however, you start out unarmed and must quickly find a weapon in order to progress.

Password Protected End Sequence

When you complete each section of the trilogy you get a password and then an ending sequence will load off the tape. I have to confess this confused me initially as I was expecting the next program on side A to be Valkyrie 3. When the password prompt appeared I just assumed the game itself was password protected. So, if you want to skip ahead to Valkyrie 3 you will need to load the end sequence for Night of the Valkyrie and then reset your C64 and continue the loading process. Thanks to Lukasz for clearing that bit of confusion up for me!

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Inside the inlay cover there is space provided for you to note tape counter numbers down for each game. This is actually pretty essential for this title. Here are the counter numbers I recorded on my system. Not sure if they’ll be the same for you (I use a Binatone Data Recorder).

Side A
Night of the Valkyrie
Game: 000
End: 055

Valkyrie 3: The Night Witch
Game: 097
End: 143

Side B
Valkyrie 2: The Templar
Intro: 000
Game: 049
End: 097

Worth a buy?

I’d definitely recommend Valkyrie Trilogy if you’re a fan of vertical shooters such as Commando – I’ve certainly had a lot of fun with it. Likewise Fire Breath was also very enjoyable but Little Knight Arthur just frustrated me due to it’s high difficulty. (I should point out that I’m not very patient these days!). Had these two not been bundled together I would recommend avoiding the latter but the inclusion of Fire Breath makes it a worthy purchase.

If you would like to find out more or get your own copies of the games then head on over to the K&A+ website. At the time of writing they don’t seem to be advertising them but I’m sure they’ll be added to the website soon enough.

Single Button Games for C64 – Mini Reviews

29th July 2018

Steven

Commodore 64, Gaming, Reviews

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Here’s a quick look at the new C64 ‘Single Button Games’ collection from K&A Plus including screenshots of each of the 5 games on the cassette.

I always enjoy getting packages in the post from foreign countries, seeing the strange looking stamps on them and of course trying to remember exactly what I’ve ordered from where to guess what may be inside! You know how it is with a lot of retro stuff – often it can be weeks or even months after you place an order before it arrives.

Anyway, this time it was ‘Single Button Games’ from K&A Plus Magazine in Poland. As the name suggests this is a collection of games that you can play by only using your joystick fire button.

The Cassette Case

The Complete Package – includes some cool little stickers!

Amazingly there are 5 little games packed onto this cassette; 2 on side A and 3 more on side B. All of them utilise a turbo loader so you won’t have to wait too long for them to load. Even so, they all feature loading music and loading screens to entertain you whilst you wait for the games to load – just like being back in the 80’s!.

The Inlay Card

Taking a Look at the Single Button Games

As mentioned already there are five games included – let’s insert the tape and take a brief look at them all, in the order in which they appear on the cassette.

Binatone Data Recorder with the Single Button Game Collection Inserted – Ready to Play!

SIDE A

Captain Cloudberry (Tape Counter – 000)

You control a small Bi-Plane and have to destroy weather balloons found around the screen whilst avoiding hitting the frozen clouds. The fact you can only use a single button press to control the plane ensures that this is nowhere near as easy at it sounds! Clicking the fire button causes the planes direction of flight to rotate 45′. Each subsequent press rotates it another 45′ until you have come full circle. Just imagine trying to play ‘Snake’ with just a single button to rotate the snakes head and you’ll get the idea.

Captain Cloudberry Loading Screen

Captain Cloudberry Title Screen

Captain Cloudberry Game Screen

Pixel City Skater (Tape Counter – 057)

This is a screen flipping ‘endless runner’ where you have to perform skateboard jumps over various obstacles to progress as far as you can before you inevitably collide with something and fall off.

Pixel City Skater – Loading Screen

Pixel City Skater – Game Screen

Side B

Fire To Jump (Tape Counter – 000)

This is very similar to the previous Pixel City Skater game but features very minimalist graphics with the same principal of jumping over objects in a screen flipping ‘runner’ style game.

Fire to Jump – Loading Screen

Fire to Jump – Game Screen

Flappy Bird (Tape Counter – 059)

This game surely needs no introduction? It’s a faithful reproduction of the frustratingly addictive game that took the mobile world by storm a few years ago. This version is a perfect recreation of the game right down to the same maddeningly difficult gameplay!

Flappy Bird – Loading Screen

Flappy Bird – Game Over Screen – Expect to see this within seconds of loading the game!

Flapper (Tape Counter – 102)

The final game in the collection should really be called ‘Chopper’ as it sees you trying to control a small helicopter. You have to navigate it through a side scrolling landscape very reminiscent of the old ‘Scramble’ arcade game. The faster you press the button the faster the rotor blades spin and the more lift you get. It plays a little bit like Flappy Bird but is easier to control.

Flapper – Game Screen

And that’s it – a really great little collection of games that I’m very happy to add to my C64 collection. I enjoyed all 5 games but if I had to pick a favourite it would be Captain Cloudberry which has that ‘just one more go’ quality in spades. It’s presentation is top notch too and it has a delightfully quirky little rendition of ‘Lady Madonna’ as its’ theme music which I can’t get out of my head!

If you would like to get hold of your own copy then you should head right on over to the K&A Plus website here. They also produce a terrific magazine that covers both the C64 and Amiga computers which is well worth taking a look at whilst you are there.

A Closer look at the Cassette

Just to finish I thought I’d show a few close-ups of the cover and the cassette itself which has been really well produced.

C64 Single Button Games Cassette Case

Side ‘A’

Side ‘B’

Sennheiser RS130 Wireless Headphones Review

19th November 2006

Steven

Gadgets, Reviews

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Received a pair of these bad boys yesterday so thought I’d share my findings for the benefit of anyone else that might be interested.

Sennheiser RS130’s

Included in the box with your headphones is the transmitter/charger base, two AAA rechargeable batteries, a 1/8”->1/4” stereo jack adaptor, small power brick (similar size to a mobile phone charger) and a small multi-lingual manual.

Setup was a breeze, just power up the transmitter/charging station and hook up to your audio source. It will automatically turn itself on when it detects an incoming audio signal and off shortly after it ceases. Then you just need to open up one side of the headphones and slot in the two AAA’s. You switch the headphones on using a small on/off switch on the rear of one of the ear cups. They automatically tune themselves into the FM signal from the base, although you can also select 3 different “channels” on the base and initiate an auto-tune from a small button on the ‘phones themselves if you need to. It recommends you charge the batteries for 16 hours before first use – you do this simply by hanging the ‘phones on the charging stand. There are two metal strips in the headband that pickup the charging current from the metal stand… when it detects that the battery is charged it automatically switches to trickle-charging so no need to worry about over-charging. Being impatient I threw in a couple of Duracell’s so I could play with them right away…

The headphones themselves are well designed and constructed, lightweight for their size and extremely comfortable. The headband is well padded and has the usual vertical adjustment, the ear cups also pivot horizontally as well as vertically so you are assured of a snug fit. They are also well padded and have been covered in a suede type of material rather than vinyl which makes them very soft and comfortable and also less likely to make you sweat whilst wearing them for long periods. I was able to walk around the entire ground floor of our house without any loss of signal so you shouldn’t have a problem whilst sat on the sofa in front of your TV.

Sound quality wise I couldn’t fault them – the volume is controlled by a small thumb-wheel on the right ear cup and goes up far enough for you to be deafened by explosions in COD3 if you really want! There is plenty of bass on offer and I experienced no distortion in the sound and all dialogue and effects were crystal clear. There is a slight hiss when the volume is cranked up high during periods of silence but this is never noticeable otherwise. A welcome addition is a surround sound option you can enable – just don’t expect 5.1 effects from it… it basically seems to widen the field of sound so that you feel like the sound is coming from all around rather than just from your left and right. They do leak a bit of sound so no good for watching movies in bed, but for playing games late at night in your living room they are perfect.

I would definitely recommend these Sennheiser RS130 Wireless Headphones for those of you who are annoying your partner/parents/neighbours/pets with noisy late-night gaming sessions!