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I've been casually observing happenings in the 8-bit community for over five years now, and whereas many systems have had their ups and downs, I can't remember any being as vibrant as Sinclair's ZX Spectrum at this moment in time. With the passing of the machine's 25th anniversary has come issue 11 of one of the best electronic fanzines ever, and that's Colin Woodcock's ZXF.

After taking a two-year absence from producing this excellent publication, Colin is back with a new design which is reminiscent of the iconic Crash magazine, for those of you who remember it. This issue has a time-line of events from the first announcement of the Speccy, every piece of news that you need to know about, with many of the latest games reviewed and even a ZX81 section for you to mull over, all passionately written and well presented. There's also talk of being able to buy printed versions of this issue too, at a small fee, of course. But for now you can download your free copy from www.cwoodcock.co.uk [and we highly recommend you do - Ed].

Moving onto entertainment software for the rubber-keyed colossus, and Bob Smith has sent me the finished version of his new game Stranded 2.5. This is a sequel to Bob's much earlier work Stranded, and stars apparent anti-hero Tyche, who actually turned out to be the good guy after all. That's because Moosh (from the first game) has enslaved all of Tyche's people and pillaged his world's natural resources and precious gemstones after building numerous bridges to allow his henchmen to invade Tyche's planet and carry out his dirty work.

Tyche, however, manages to escape from Mooch's gaol and has taken it on himself to close the new bridges between the two worlds, and thus lead his people to freedom and peace. Stranded 2.5 features not only 100% machine code, but 48 levels spread over six worlds and some sublime AY-music, thanks again to Lee Du-Caine.

A full review will feature once I've played though everything else I've had submitted recently. Until then, why not try the playable demo?

Ever wanted to have a CD-ROM drive and Compact Flash interface built into your Commodore 64c? Well, hardware hackers in the Czech Republic have made this a reality.

Using spares from an old laptop and an IDE-64 interface, and wielding a soldering iron and imagination, the proof can be found at www.c64.cz/index.php?page=ide64andCDROM inside. Unfortunately, the text is currently only available in Czech and there isn't yet an English translation, but expect that to change in the near future.

However, the page does contain a contact e-mail address if you're interested in doing the same yourself.

Meanwhile, the games Brickout and Artillery Duel have recently received more tweaks and improvements. Brickout is a puzzle-game in which you must group the coloured bricks in three or more to remove them from the playfield. The level is complete when the screen is completely clear. And in Artillery Duel, you play via a network (such as the Internet) against another human opponent to try and blast his tank, like the classic game known as, er, Tanks. This game is now reported to be fun, though I can't imagine why it wasn't in the first place.

Still, random events such as wind have been added, but you'll need something like an RR-Net adapter for the C64 to play it. For more on Brickout, point your favourite browser at kleinhuisbehaviours.com, and information about Artillery Duel can be found over at home.ica.net/~leifb/commodore/duel