This week… an already funded project, but we liked so much that it deserves to be known. Commodore 64 book.
Tag Archives: Old Computers
KickStarter Project of the Week (KPW)
The next project is quite technical, but as a maker, many times I have faced the problem of dealing with aged or damaged screws. Knife Edge is a modification of Phillips screwdriver that is specifically made to deal with that situation.
R-Kaid-R
Love Hultén (Facebook, Youtube, Personal Webpage) is a designer which passion for retro-style electronics drives his creativity. At the moment he is working building retro-style gameboxes (which by the way, can be bought through his webpage). Everything is limited edition!
Also, If you like R-Kaid-R, look at this Lego-Style computers.
Lego Matrix display.
Usually Mondays are for Lego models, but this one is so great that it deserves its own day.
This is how the pixels work.
It is not a playable version… but it shows the potential.
It would be great implementing it with the Lego Turing Machine.
Embed MS-DOS games.
We have mention many times the Internet Archive, and how it keeps a database of movies, music, games… specially, MS-DOS games. Well, now it seems it is possible to embed the MS-DOS games into tweets, and yes, into webpages too. So, I use this opportunity to put in one place some of the MS-DOS games I love.
Like Prince of Persia?
I was very bad with the Prince of Persia and never managed to finish it. But I was quite good with the Great Escape, and manage to escape several times (at that point I didn’t knew English at all).
I have to admit that I never played this game to the end until a couple of weeks ago. Gateway is not only a game, but the first novel of the Heechee saga (which I love), written by Frederik Pohl. The game is nice, but quite linear, and at some points it is easy to understand what to do, but in other parts there is no other way around, you need to check a walkthrough.
This one has survived the years and nowadays is still playable in most smartphones…. although, with different names. Enjoy Bust-A-move.
Obviously, any list can’t be complete without Pac-Man.
There are more games, but it will be too much for a single post, so I will finish this small list with a classic. SimCity.
Tetris Printer
Everybody who played Tetris has been annoyed by the blocks left behind when trying to win. Here it is how to use them for drawing (obviously an algorithm, not a real person).
If you want to know how it was done, here is the Tetris Printer Algorithm.
Videogames history
Thanks to the INDIEACHIEVEMENT™
we can enjoy this videos of how some games have evolve over the years.
Hope you enjoy it!
Super Mario Bros.
Chiptunes
This is a short exploration into chiptunes.
Let’s start with this, you will enjoy it. Portal 2 ending theme covered with 8 bit music.
Yes, that’s it, this post is about 8-bit music. Becuase I found a great editor, it’s called Farmitracker.
And what does this program? FamiTracker is a free Windows tracker for producing music for the NES/Famicom-systems. And the most interesting part is it’s NSF-file exporting. That allows music created in this tracker to be played on the real hardware, or even for for use in your own NES-applications. O_O Nice nice!!
To get this program, just go to the downloads webpage and get the source of the latest version. Unzip and install.
And since I’m terrible with music, here you have some tutorials. Enjoy them!
There is a nasty noise during all the video (crappy PC mirophone).
This guy know what he is doing.
The funny thing is that this sounds better than many actual games!!
And the last video.
And now, I gave you a short list of 8-bit composers to inspire yourselves.
Nullsleep. Electronic musician whit many actuations over the world. Not only dedicated to 8-bit covers for games, but have some songs.
RushJet1 His pictures says everything. Has many covers and you can download them in it’s webpage.
Tsu Ryu. Descibed as Electronic/Chiptune musician and cartoonist. doesn’t have music on his webpage, but have a very active youtube channel with nice music, like this.
Jake Kaufman. This is a big man in this busines. He has his own Wikipedia page. His webpage is a very interesting blog with many entries. Take one minute or two to check it out.
C-jeff. It’s not the kind of music you will find in games, but it’s nice. he is also one of the founders of
And I’m not sure about what it is, but have things as cool as this two (listen to the tracks).
And this one:
And this one is part of a project called Noise Channel, a radio channel to explore chiptune music.
And that’s all for today. Want more? Here is more!!
How to Emulate Comodore 64 and PLAY Apollo 18 by ACCOLADE.
Hi everyone. I’m back today with a new emulation tutorial and also a game review.
Commodore 64.
The emulator for this console is called : CCS64
And can be found in this webpage: http://www.ccs64.com/
Commodore 64 is the predecesor of the Commodore Amiga (which we already make a review). As interesting features, it implemented an spceial key that in combination with others allows new commands (like Microsoft or Apple did in the future). And one of the coolest sound systems of all times. Even now, there is lots of people programming things for it, and specially, making music inspirated in that.
First see the original:
And now listen to Tim Follin compositions (he’s the GREATEST):
Cool… And that’s the reason why now Nintendo is including a C64 and classic games into his Virtual Console for wii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Console). So, if you don’t want to play it in the computer and have a wii, now you can try it there.
But here we don’t have wii, so here is the tutorial for Windows.
Step 1. Get the emulator from the webpage. (Scroll down). We are going to install CCS64 Version 3.
Step 2. Unzip and execute steup.exe. The installation is easy, just Next>Next>Next.
Step 3. The installation will create a shortcut in the front panel to CCS64 V3.9. Click on it. The Emulator is now running.
Step 4. Time to get our ROM.
The game we are going to test is a real masterpiece buried in the past. Is called Apollo 18 and was made by Accolade.
Apollo 18 was one of the canceled missions to the moon, and is one of the min topics of moon conspirators theories. Also, there is a new movie (not bad, a blockbuster),( don’t read more, SPOILER) proposing that the mission really happened but the crew never came back again because there are rock-insects in the moon.
This is a complete longplay. Enjoy it because it’s like nothing else. I wonder why there is no more games like this.
You can get the ROM in this link. Just download it and unzip.
Step 5. Get bat to the emulator and File>Load and Run… And look for the files you have downloaded. The one we need now is AP18-1.D64
And… Voilá
Note. For the keys and documentation:
http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64.html
And… finally…. If you don’t want emulator at all, here you can download an exe file.
the Brick In the Sky 