It's been a few years since the announcement of the development of Sturmwind: Windstärke 12 by Duranik, and on Wednesday April 24th, 2013 the final game is scheduled to be released. There will be two different SKUs for the game- a limited edition version with plush Kraken boss and upgraded packaging for $129.90[USD] and a regular release jewel case version for a much more reasonable $39.90[USD] with free shipping included.

The deadline for all entries was on March 31st, so I figured I would present a comprehensive list of the entries for the Commodore 64 2013 Double Screen Compo. The theme this year was water in a rather expansive context which could include as they put it "part of a landscape, something surreal, raindrops, animals swimming in a river, arrangements with geometric bodies, a person drinking something, a liquid sculpture, a deep sea motif.".

One caveat: Some images are suggestive and some do contain nudity. It's all in a rather artful representation.. nothing gratuitous- but I figured it was worth pointing out.

To learn more about this contest, you can visit their website here... or just click the images below to view them from this site.

Commodore 64 cracking group Nostalgia has just released Sid Meier's Pirates! for the EasyFlash cartridge.

This release was based off of the v2 PAL original of the game but is both PAL and NTSC compatible. The release includes documentation, a scan of the world map, numerous bugfixes and a stylish cartridge start menu.

It also comes with a save game editor and ten built-in cheats including: Sword-fight Cheat, Sea Battle Cheat, Land Battle Cheat, Crew Always Happy, Health Always Fine, Unlimited Food, City Info Cheat, Enable World Map, Display S&T on World Map, Reveal Maps at Once.

Release Info:
• This version of Sid Meier's Pirates! is based on the v2 pal original.
• It's a 101% version with numerous bugfixes.
• It works on EasyFlash and EasyFlash3 carts.
• It contains a save editor where you can modify your stats and import old fame and saves from both original and nostalgia disk versions.

NOTE: If you cheat or if you use the editor to modify your stats you will not be able to enter the hall of fame. You WILL have to start over with a new game.

Head over to Nostalgia's website to download this release.

I just stumbled upon this fun little flash game from Mark Foster called Bomberjam. The game is a local two player territory annihilation game which draws upon some Bomberman and Qix gameplay mechanics.

Here is a video of the Oldskool Demo Compo released at Revision 2013 held in Saarbrucken, Germany from March 29th to April 1st.

Back in early 1984, when I was first exposed to the Commodore 64, one of the games that I had a chance to play a fair bit of was Blue Max by Synapse Software (SynSoft in the UK). In the game, you take on the role of a hot-shot World War I biplane pilot by the name of Max Chatsworth who is known affectionately to his friends as Blue Max.

The game is essentially a 3/4 perspective vertical shooter similar to Zaxxon in presentation. You have at your disposal a machine gun with unlimited ammo as well as a finite number of bombs which you can use to take out buildings, tanks, bridges, roads and boats. Overall control of the plane is very responsive, although (as with Zaxxon) keeping your altitude straight can be rather tricky. The shadow cast by your plane helps a lot in determining your horizontal location on the level (for bombing purposes) but you need to match your altitude to that of the enemy planes in order to shoot them down. You also need to mind your altitude to do strafing as well as estimate the time for a dropped bomb to reach its target.

After watching one of Marks latest videos, it got me thinking about some of my favorite video gaming memories. We're all getting older- a point driven home every time I notice the yellowing of the boxes on my older games.. and it suddenly dawned on me just how much gaming history I've actually lived through.

So.. anyway. The point is, we all have gaming moments that we hold dear.. Not necessarily because they relate to amazing games... sometimes it's the people, events or times that those memories are attached to..

I admit I've been out of touch on the Commodore scene for a while... basically because my system finally smoked. :( Still, I figured I would throw this link out to interested parties..

Introducing Slixed: An online drawing program which allows you to create Commodore 64-esque pictures with the C64's glorious 16 color palette. You can choose to create a new drawing from scratch, or load an image (in JPEG, GIF or PNG formats) which can then be edited in either hires or multi-color modes. Once you have an image worthy of hanging in the Louvre, you can save it off in PNG format for posterity or for later editing.

The program is currently in alpha, but it's certainly quite usable. One can only imagine what great features may be coming down the pike: Saving and loading in native C64 formats.. editing the various interlaced (high color) formats.. exporting images to assembly includes (for coders).. the skies the limit.

Just one more great cross platform tool to help modern C64 developers create new games, demos and art.

Check it out here.