16th April 2009
There's a new way to take your Commodore 4 with you, as Shaun finds out in this week's Retro round-up.
Retro Mart: The New SX-64
It's rather fitting that the Commodore 64, which was turned into the world's first 'portable' colour computer in 1983 with the 64-SX, has now finally become a true laptop thanks to Benjamin J. Heckendorn. Using the famous 8-bit machine (actually, a modified C64c board as these are much more compact), Benjamin started his labour of love some two and a half years ago, restarting the project from scratch several times, before finally coming up with the goods on the 4th of April, some 26 years after the luggable SX first emerged.
This incredible device incorporates a modern SD card reader - in this case a C64DTV revision of the 1541 III (with more information at jderogee.tripod.com/project1541.htm) - and a screen from a Nokia phone to conveniently browse the files on the inserted SD card. There's also a full 15" flat screen. The only real omission seems to be a Lithium-Ion battery, however I'll forgive that as I'm sure a 'portable' solution could be found here if needed, and it's something that Commodore never managed in the first place. To be fair though, battery technology back in the early 80's would have probably been of the dangerous, Lead acid-derived variety, and also added considerable weight to the already heavy SX-64.
To read more on the amazing story of this creation - dubbed the Commodore 64p - head over to benheck.com/04-05-2009/commodore-64-original-hardware-laptop. Who needs a 64-bit laptop when you can have one with 64k? It makes you wonder...!
More Psytronik Games Ahoy!
Continuing the tradition of re-releasing many Thalamus classics for the C64, Psytronik will have Creatures 2: Torture Trouble and Armalyte: Competition Edition ready for May. Creatures 2 will be a disk-only release due to the nightmare multi-load from tape, and sees Clyde Radcliffe needing to rescue his entire family, with the main game featuring and building on the popular and humorous 'torture' screens from the first game. Whilst the relentless horizontally-scrolling shoot-'em-up Armalyte is an enhanced version of the original, allowing you to start from any level and manipulate the speed of the enemies' firepower and so on.
Side two of the disk (the C64 1541 disk drive can only read a single side on a 5.25" disk) contains the original loading screen, some music demo files and an early preview of the never released Armalyte 2. The artwork on the deluxe boxes comes courtesy of Trevor Storey, and is based on the original game boxes. To place your orders, and to find out more about Psytronik's games, head over to www.psytronik.net.
More Of Bob's Stuff
Sinclair ZX Spectrum coding guru Bob Smith is working on a trio of very different games at the moment. The first is a 2D Zelda-inspired explorer game, featuring a fish named Herbert, for the 128K machine. His task is to free an octopus who has had each of his eight tentacles locked up to keep him gaoled. Guide Herbert around this rather massive game to find each of the keys, returning them to the poor prisoner one at a time.
Both W*H*B and Factory Daze are for the 48K Speccys, and both are puzzle games. W*H*B is an isometric game in which you must move a shape to the exit, in the same manner as Bob's Stranded games, whilst Factory Daze sees you in control of a toy production line, moving the relevant plastic moulds to the automated press on time. As more plastic is sent out to be set, proceedings start to become hectic. Factory Daze is to be a free download, whilst the release status of the other two titles is currently unknown. Expect an announcement soon at www.bobs-stuff.co.uk.
