29th June 2006
Looking for some retro news? Your search is over as it's right here
Retro Mart: Atari Upgrades
Atari Age have reported that a new batch of upgrades have become available for the famed Atari 8-bit home computers. These new peripherals are based on the Multi I/O (MIO) devices that a company called ICD produced some years ago. This board contains a handy hard drive interface, high-speed serial port, parallel printer port and onboard RAM that can be used as either a RAM disks or a printer buffer and it's thanks to AtariAge user Ken Jones who built the upgrades from scratch.
Jones' design has a whopping 1MB of onboard RAM and improved serial and parallel ports that accept standard PC-compatible printer and modem cables. If you'd like to get your hands on one of these prized, and certainly very handy, bits of kit, pre-orders are now being taken through the Atari Age 8-bit forum over at www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showforum=12. There's also to be an option for XE users to use these devices on their machines, so you may pre-order with confidence regardless of the revision of your computer.
Game Overview
The 30th issue of the popular C64 disk-zine Game Over(view) is now available to download. This chronicles all of the important happenings in the C64 scene, including the pending releases of games such as Zoo Mania, Juggler, Bubbles, D-Fuse and more. So, if you want to read the official verdicts on these games, or just have a good laugh and something new to read, go get it from www.dspaudio.com/~jaymz. As a side note, it has emerged that Zoo Mania will be available through Cronosoft some time in the near future, along with many other C64 releases (see next news article).
World Domination
Alongside the already mentioned Zoo Mania, Cronosoft have announced six other new games ready for release. For the C64, there's Treasure Isle (a text adventure), Escape From Arth, Sceptre Of Baghdad and The Castle Of Madness, whilst Speccy owners will be looking forward to Farmer Jack In Harvest Havoc and the dubiously named Metal Miner. If some of these titles sound familiar then that'd be because the C64 releases are effectively re-releases as Treasure Isle, Escape From Arth and Sceptre Of Baghdad were put out just over a decade ago by Jon Wells in an attempt to support the commercially dead C64 under his failed software label Visualize Software. The Castle Of Madness was also made available as a free download and was released earlier this year, but it will see its real media premier thanks to Cronosoft. This release in particular is likely to be a disk-only affair.
For the Speccy, Bob Smith is putting the final touches on Farmer Jack and will then turn his hand to creating a follow-up to the popular puzzler Stranded for the famous Sinclair machine. The working title Stranded II should feature roaming foes, moving platforms and even a level designer thanks to input from members of the Cronosoft online forum. Why not join the debate, join the forum and have your say over at www.cronosoft.co.uk, or just check the new website to get hold of your wares. With their increasing portfolio of good quality games, Cronosoft are fast becoming the premier budget label for all of the popular 8-bit micros. They'd like to branch out however and support machines such as Mattel Aquarius, Texas TI99/4A, Atari XE/XL, Sinclair ZX81 and even the Sord M5, so if you can help with any of these machines e-mail head honcho Simon Ullyatt directly at chaosmongersf@yahoo.com.
