Happy 30th birthday, Commodore 64!

This month is the 30th anniversary of the Commodore 64 – which was unveiled at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in the January of that year.  Approximately 17-20 million machines sold in its commercial life time which was between 1982 and 1994, and was a remarkable amount for the budget 8-bit machine.

Although the Vic 20 was my first personal brush with the Commodore range, it was the C64 which inspired me the most.  With its characteristic features such as the SID chip, the machine holds many fond memories for me – of which I continue to relive today via retro gaming (and following those who continue to develop for the machine today).

Saving up pocket money for the likes of Zzap 64 and Commodore Format magazines, awaiting the likes of the new Dizzy games and Codemaster releases back in the early 90′s was a big highlight.  I was lucky enough to just about catch the machine before it commercially declined to a point of a comic strip-like magazine and no games to review – being able to visit the likes of John Menzies, Boots and various second hand shops to purchase my games.

It was a sad day when it’s last commercial presence (in the form of Commodore Format magazine) disappeared from shelves at the end of 1995 – but the machine continues to live on today with a healthy amount of game and demo releases each year – an example of which can be found here: http://www.rgcd.co.uk/2011/05/c64-16kb-cartridge-game-development.html

Here is to another 30 years – and hoping that the hardware continues to survive

 

 

Hidden secrets in games

Update: 29th December 2012 – See foot of page for addition from Vinny Mainolfi.

I’ve always had a bizarre interest in the things we were never meant to see – I don’t know why, it’s something i’ve had ever since the day I discovered a cheat which allowed me to be immune to fire/water in Fantasy World Dizzy and helped me to discover odd looking screens which were not part of the game.  The desire for discovering unseen materials is why I run a preservation project for games that never saw the light of day.  Getting hold of and sharing something that we waited months for back in the day when magazines showed promising previews of a particular game, and which eventually never showed.

However, it’s not just unreleased/lost games which interest me, but its the little details within the games that DID make it.  Most of you are probably well aware of the term “Easter egg” in the computing world, being a small piece of code which is buried away and unlocked in a particular way (Via a code or a key combination).   With C64 games, there are loads of easter eggs buried away in the shape of mini-games,  demo’s and messages from the developers – unlocked via a combination of key strokes or accessing a strange part of a game.

Finding an easter egg is pretty neat, but there is much more awaiting discovery that we may not be aware of – things classified as easter eggs maybe, but not intentional ones…

No, i’m talking about bits of unseen ‘assets’ within games …  unused sprites, music, background graphics and even levels!  There is a lot of this kind of thing tucked away in the games we all love and know very well, but unless you’re actively digging around – you most likely will never get to see these things.  You may not for instance get to see the cheeky message hidden away in Army Moves Part 2 (See below) unless you were hunting around in the code with a Machine Code monitor.

After starting a thread recently on Lemon64 forum, it seems others out there are interested in this kind of thing – and its got me hungry for starting up a new segment/category on the up and coming new GTW portal site (Which btw will be here soon!).  Very quick fire pages/entries for particular titles with hidden bits and pieces, showing you the assets or even how to get access to them.  It’s a slight expansion from just covering unreleased/lost games, but I think it will be an interesting one.  Let’s see how it goes….

As a taster, below are some samples of hidden bits and pieces discovered in a few C64 titles (Thanks to those over at Lemon64 for discovering them)…

GTW64 and C64.com update

Over the past few months, GTW64 has been working with C64.com to preserve a series of games after working on the disk collection of Darren Melbourne. 25 or so disks were painstakingly preserved by C64.com, and GTW64 trawled through these and found many a lost game. We present a good selection of these, but more will follow in the future with more disks being examined and preserved by both of us.

The collaborated update includes:

• Nuker preview found and released
• Runestone preview found and released
• Duel full game found and released
• Unnamed CRL game preview found and released
• Leopard Lord full game found

Then part of GTW64′s usual update includes:

• Necronom graphical assets found
• Shao Lin’s Road V1 assets found
• Enduro Racer V1/V2 preview found
• Early version of Microprose Soccer released
• More details on Razzmatazz added
• 42 other new entries added
• 17 existing entries updated

Enjoy, and hope you all have a good holidays and a happy new year! We’ll be back in 2012 with more joint findings

http://www.gtw64.co.uk and http://www.c64.com

Salvaging a sun stained C64…

I found a pretty yellowed C64C in a box which is a symptom common with the C64C due to some cases using a particular type of plastic which yellowed very easily over the years.  This one was pretty extreme, even the insides were in a state with rusted sheilding for the motherboard and plenty of dirt and dust.  I had pretty much picked this one up a few years back second hand, packed it away for spares and forgot about it until having a sort out.

Before the work

Inspired by Jason (Kenz) Mackenzie’s Speccadore 64, I decided to spray the thing black to create a very quick modded C64C.   Firstly I stripped out the board, cleaned it throughly with cotton buds and alcohol on the board.  Then I masked the C64′s machine logo and LED with masking tape to mask those areas and preserve them for once the job was complete.

The missus very kindly picked up a can of Plasti Kote from Wilkinson, which although didn’t seem a lot – did the trick of covering the machine.  After about a day’s work, leaving the case periodically for 3 hours to dry on each side, and for touch ups … this was the result…

The completed piece

I had tried to use a C16 keyboard inside (which has grey coloured keys, which fitted the black case better), but found that the mapping is different, and the keys didn’t work – but the C64C keyboard still looked fine anyway in a very contrasting sort of way

Only thing overall was that I rushed things a bit and ended up getting drips and imperfections around the case – but I was pleased enough with the results, and have learnt for next time when I do another case I have that is all messed up (next with a blue shade ).  If you try and do anything similar, make sure you apply thin coats first and apply in stages – not try to do it all at once!

RGCD 16kb cart compo closed

Just a quick post to say that 11 new C64 titles have been released as a result of the RGCD 16kb Cartridge Competition.

Some incredible titles such as C64anabalt (Official conversion of Canabalt for the C64), Fairy Well and many others can be found and played. One game requires a set of paddles, so you may have to play in WinVICE or similar if you don’t have a set.

Check everything out here:

http://www.rgcd.co.uk/