Amiga Forever DesktopHot on the heels of Amiga Forever Essentials for Android, Cloanto has just released the latest "2013" versions of their popular and easy-to-use Amiga Forever and C64 Forever emulators. This is great news for old and new fans of the greatest Commodore platforms, including all versions of the Amiga series (inclusive of the CDTV and CD32), and most of the 8-bit line, including PET, VIC 20, C-64/128, and C-16/Plus4. Around here, it's among our absolute favorite emulation packages and used as pack-ins with various devices, including the MCC, so you know it has to be great.

The full press release details are below, along with all the links to the various packages available:

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.

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..

This week's episode is a 20-minute retrospective of Project: Firestart, suggested by viewer (and fellow English professor) Chris Oatis. This is a VERY interesting game from a historical perspective, and there's a good case to be made that this is the first-ever "full" survival horror game. There's some contention, of course, since it's not true 3D (it uses a "pseudo-3D" comparable to early Sierra titles). Otherwise, everything that most people associate with the genre is in there, such as logs to flesh out the backstory, limited ammo, cinematic cut scenes, etc. The game is also interesting because it was released exclusively for the Commodore 64/128--in 1989! That decision just didn't make sense, as acknowledged later by the developers themselves. On a positive note, though, it's some REALLY impressive C-64 coding work, since it looks as good if not better than many games for the Genesis or Amiga/ST. You can read more about the game and its impact on the genre here.

Download the video here (only Matt Chat supporters, please).

This mode does exist in this C64 version and also on the Atari 8-bit version of the game!

The C64 port of the game shown here running on a PAL C64G (the German Aldi version with the C128 CPU) playing with two Suzo Arcade Sticks in port 1&2.
I run the program on the 1541UltimateII, the first version is trained and halfway the video I realize that and load up the cartridge version that is unmodified.

Intro soundtrack by Andy C. aka SynthMonkey aka ZombieAndy1979
http://www.youtube.com/user/zombieandy1979

NOTICE:
"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

The nice Arkanoid/Breakout clone on the C64 called Krakout. Great gameplay, great music. Mind you on the C64 and TV screen the gameplay is really fluid my grabby thingie really mocks up the smoothness of it all so it doesn't do it justice completely.

Press Play on Tape playing the Krakout theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F04F4grZ9Mk

Krakout on the Amstrad CPC
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF8vRwjLNGY

Krakout on the Speccy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9AcRbYY6OU

Krakout on the MSX
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rn9f-gzOWp0

Cool music mashup between GODS sountrack (A500) and Krakout (C64)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ricyl9duhx0

Intro soundtrack by Andy C. aka SynthMonkey aka ZombieAndy1979
http://www.youtube.com/user/zombieandy1979

VIDEO RESPONSES:
by HalfBlindGamer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVqCe2xz_DA

by Polaventris
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psl-gRpzwuk

NOTICE:
"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."

Amiga Forever DesktopCloanto has released the latest "R2" enhanced versions of their popular and easy-to-use Amiga Forever and C64 Forever 2012 emulators. This is great news for old and new fans of the greatest Commodore platforms, including all versions of the Amiga series (inclusive of the CDTV and CD32), and most of the 8-bit line, including PET, VIC 20, C-64/128, and C-16/Plus4. Around here, it's among our absolute favorite emulation packages and used as pack-ins with various devices, including the MCC, so you know it has to be great.

The full press release details are below, along with all the links to the various packages available:

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.