It all started in the summer of 1964, as the website states, in a new game which sees students from Liverpool going on holiday alone for the first time. Merlin's World is a new game from a Dutch MSX enthusiast known as Webmouse, which takes you on a binary adventure through the ages to meet the mythological being.

The game will work on all MSX-2 machines or better, and is due for release at the end of this year. It's a puzzle-adventure featuring three hapless souls that must be guided through the ever-warped world that confronts them. To follow the games' development, head over to merlinsworld.webmouse.nl, or follow announcements through the www.msx.org portal.

Yet another puzzler is on its way for the Amstrad CPC. French programmer 'Demoniak' is currently developing a Rubik's Cube simulator for the famed 8-bit, but in 2D if that makes sense. The idea, for those of you who don't know, is to sort 81 individual squares by colour to build up nine 3 x 3 blocks in total in accordance with the guide at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.

This new game is called Cubulus, and will work on any, good emulator. A demo can be downloaded from ldeplanque.free.fr/Divers/Cubulus.dsk.

Demoniak's website is entirely written in French as you would expect, however (for those who don't speak French) keep an eye on the forums over at www.cpczone.net, in the 'Programming on the CPC' sub-forum, and more news can be found there too.

It hasn't been overlooked here that it's summertime. The recent heat wave and two major sporting events have provided a distraction enough for there to be little news in the retro scene this week, which you might have noticed. It feels like the time when a national newspaper magically found TV funnyman Richard Wilson in the stars; with enough creativity, one could join up the stars to resemble pretty much anything, but you'll be happy to know that I haven't played dot-to-dot to reveal a picture of Simon Brew's face yet. It nearly came to that though. Yikes.

Anyway, back to what I was going to say. I recently received an e-mail regarding emulation. As someone who has tried as far as possible to use real aged technology (and had some fun doing so, such as trying to fix the ZX81 keyboard membrane again), I've never really paid much attention to what's happening with the emulation scene. But it's the case that emulating a machine is much more convenient than having half a dozen machines set up with peripherals, VDUs and software strewn about the place. One laptop or PC saves space for sure. But it's because I like using the technology that I find most emulators quite easy to use. With the exception of MAME, that is - this particular package always confounds me.

So, it's time to branch out a bit and offer some advice methinks. If you're struggling to emulate a particular computer or console, or would like recommendations on which package to use, or where to get legal wares to play, e-mail me at shaunf@micromart.co.uk - unless it's about MAME...!