It's time for new games again, you'll be glad to hear. Commodore 16 enthusiast Chris Snowden is currently working on a graphical text adventure called Dark Manor. At the moment, the descriptions for each location in this binary world are there, though the art work needs to be finished and added to the code, and therefore it is most likely that the game will require a full 64k of RAM. A 16k version isn't ruled out, though if this does appear it will definitely have to be text only due to the obvious restrictions of working in such a small amount of space. More details will no doubt be mentioned over at www.commodore16.com. If you're on MySpace, check out Chris's page at www.myspace.com/commodore16 too.

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Moving onto the Dragon 32, and the Pac-Man clone currently under development by Colin Gall (called Wobman, probably for legal reasons) is back on track as he has been mulling over the code. Although things are reported to be in an advanced stage, there is still a problem with flickering sprites. Colin has said that he is trying another double-buffering technique to calm things down a little, but all being well, and time permitting, this should be the second homebrew release for the Dragon this year. Who would have thought it? Meanwhile, for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, the mind of Jonathan Cauldwell has been working overtime, with him talking about a green-fingered Humanoid Pig (Earwig Addlethorpe, who starred in the game Higgledy Piggledy) being pestered by Bumble Bees and giant Borlotti beans which chase him around his garden. Jonathan mentioned something about a giant die that has the power to change the weather, and obviously no garden would be complete without jet-propelled toilets, would it?

Planning is in the very early stages, but more news will follow shortly, along with a screenshot or two. Both of these latter games should be available from Cronosoft, so for more information, keep an eye on www.cronosoft.co.uk.

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News has reached me that Alten8's first Commodore 64 games collection is currently in the works. The aptly titled C64 All-Stars Volume One will feature no less than 54 games old and new, and will be available primarily for PC users who want a bit of nostalgia to lighten up their day. For the first round, the likes of Adventureland, Aftermath, Dogfight 2187, Everyone's A Wally, International Cricket, Red Led, Sceptre Of Baghdad, Soccer Boss and Splat! are included. And for those of us in the know, it should be possible to extract the emulator images from the CD and write them to a C64-compatible floppy disk of some sort to play on a real machine.

Or, if you're audacious enough, write them to an MMC card for use on the MMC64 device, for instance. More details about this collection should be available by the time you're reading this, so head over to www.alten8.com/files/details.php?id=98 to find out what's happening.

Protovision has also announced that the latest version of the world's first C64 game that can be played via the Internet is now available. Artillery Duel v0.005 has improved graphics and other small improvements and bug fixes. This production requires a RR-Net adapter or something similar on your C64, as well as an Internet connection. For more, head over to home.ica.net/~leifb/commodore/duel, if you want to upgrade your C64 to play it, try www.protovision-online.de and check out the latest catalogue.

Finally, issue six of the electro-fanzine Commodore Free is available in both PDF format and plain text. This issue contains a tribute to famed C64 musician Richard Joseph who sadly passed away in March. Richard was responsible for the tunes on games such as Defender Of The Crown, Antirad and Barbarian I and II, as well as some recent scene demos. One of his final interviews is in this issue as a tribute to his work. Download it now from www.commodorefree.com.