Micro Mart


PC To Spec

 
Published in Micro Mart #939

Shaun is back with more retro news for you to mull over...

Retro Mart: PC To Spec

Sinclair ZX Spectrum users who have a DivIDE interface will be pleased to note that there is now an easier way to file share between their mighty 8-bit and a humble PC. According to the newswire over at raww.org, MDOS3 users can save important data to a CF card or hard drive and easily transfer it to a non-Linux running PC. There's an MDOS3 tool which creates virtual .D80 images from your Windows GUI.

The first title mentioned, Battle Throne, is a one-on-one hack-'n-slash-'em-up in a similar vein to Barbarian I, but with less blood and gore. The backdrops are beautifully drawn, with some excellent music to accompany the proceedings. One or two people can compete, or a single player can take on the best of the medieval binary foe within the game.

Apparently, it's as easy as adding your favourite TAP files into a D80 image, saving this to a CF card and then inserting this card into your DivIDE interface which is connected to your Speccy. An English manual is included, though the site is Czechoslovakian. Head over to c15.speccy.cz/mdos3 to get hold of this handy tool.

LCD Screen

Commodore Plus/4 (and C16) enthusiast Mike Dailly has yet again been hard at work, but this time on developing hardware for the platform. While his eagerly awaited blasterama Xeo3 (or XenonTriOxide) is currently on hold, Mike has soldered together an LCD screen that can be connected to the machine's expansion port and is also contemplating a 256KB memory upgrade, which will be a Plug and Play device (unlike other such upgrades], ideal as an end-user product. He is also considering an MMC reader, which is an excellent idea as this would make a reliable replacement to the ageing 5.25" floppy disk, or indeed your entire collection of disks.

To find out more about Mike's dabbling into electronics, head over to www.xeo3.org and click on 'Dailly's Techblog'. You won't be disappointed if you do.

Another Entry!

The number of entries to the Game Overview Freestyle Jam (a competition set up to encourage people to develop Commodore é4 software) has shot up to six as Christopher Jam recently released Teradyne Warrior to the competition. While not the strongest of entries, Christopher admitted that. his game, a horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up, only took him three weeks to complete, and that this was his first attempt at coding something of this nature.

He's also going to continue developing the concept further, so consider this a work in progress that will be something bigger and better at some point in the future - at least it's something to look forward to, and the backdrop for the game looks really good as well. To find out more, head over to freestylejam.artificial-stupidity.net.

While on the subject of C64 games, Protovision will soon be releasing The Adventures Of Jim Slim In Dragonland, which will be presented in a big box format for all of you collectors out there. The group's website can be found over at www.protovision-online.de.

Blinky's Back

Many of you who grew up with an 8-bit computer might remember a budget game from Zeppelin Software called Blinky's Scary School. This game was released on the C64, Speccy and the Atari 8-bit back in the day, but there was never a version for the often forgotten MSX. That is until now, as lcon Games is working on a faithful remake of it for the once Microsoft-affiliated platform.

Rumours suggest that this will be available very shortly, but if you want a visual taster, head over to www.icongames.com.br/msxfiles/blinky/indexe.htm where you'll find a small video preview and some screen shots. There is no ordering information yet, which suggests that the game will be available to download and play on your favourite emulator.

Shaun Bebbington