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As regular readers of this page will know, some things have happened over the past decade, on old 8-bit hardware, that would've looked seriously impossible during the heyday of the 1980s. Thrust on the Atari 2600, GameX: The Games Exchange for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Virus for the Sinclair ZX81 and the recently released Commodore VIC-20 game The Keep are just four great examples of how understanding the hardware that you're programming can reap many rewards, especially when trying to apply techniques used on more recent hardware.

Just imagine applying a fast 3D engine, for example, to something primitive like a ZX81. Well, Bob Smith looks set to establish a seemingly impossible high standard on the old membranous, quirky black box, with the public showing of his 3D engine. This, after developing the already mentioned Virus, and then creating Boulder Logic for the old monochrome ZX, both sublime pieces of work. His (as yet) untitled production has to be seen to be believed, and even then former 8-bit developer John Pickford, currently of Zee-3 Digital Publishing, was sceptical, implying that the emulator had somehow been sped up to show the binary world at a more playable speed. Actually, it had been slowed down so that the NTSC Timex machines and the PAL ZX81s had parity in that department.

To keep up to date with developments from Bob, you may do so by following his social network page at www.facebook.com/bobs.stuff, where you're able to leave comments and ask questions. Someone's already asked to see the source code, which will be interesting for anyone interested in advanced Z80 machine code.

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The popular independent gaming website www.rgcd.co.uk has announced a whole host of new releases for the Commodore 64, but rather than emulated disk or tape images for each, these new wares will be on cartridge to plug into the back of your real machine. I'm assuming that all of these will not require keyboard interaction, and will therefore work with the C64GS too.

The first release (now available) is the sideways-scrolling 2D blast-fest Edge Grinder, created by Jason 'TMR' Kelk of Cosine Systems (www.cosine.org.uk), which is simply about blowing stuff up. That stuff being the hordes of alien foes coming your way, which thankfully organise themselves in attack waves that can be learned as you progress. Of course, the better your destructive tendencies, the more points you'll score.

Edge Grinder's available now, costing £19 including postage and packing. Click on the Shop tab of the RDCD link mentioned above.

Also from Cosine Systems, and also on cartridge, is a port of Jason's Commodore PET game Blok Copy, in which you must rearrange a seven by five matrix back to its correct order, after the computer's messed everything up. It's a solid puzzle game that, quite frankly, I'm not very good at.

Point your web browser at the aforementioned link for more details about this, and other on-going projects.

If you'd like to contact me, you may do so by sending your retro-related questions, stories, memories or news using the power of email to Shaun@micromart.co.uk, or use the Micro Mart forums, which you can access through the Micro Mart website at www.micromart.co.uk.

I'm now off to explore Bob’s amazing 3D world on my old ZX81, See you next week!