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For those of you who remember my first ever retro column for this fine publication - back when the magazine was in black and white throughout excluding the covers - may also remember me mentioning a little Commodore Plus/4 game called Xeo3. Finally, after the game project being cancelled and restarted several times, it's now back on track with the first level finished, at least in design form.

To recap, this game is a screen-high horizontally scrolling shoot-'em-up in the famed tradition of R-Type and the likes and quite eagerly anticipated from fans of the short-lived machine. The first level can be viewed over at the newish website over at xeo3.splinder.com and rumours of a release some time this year are being whispered.

Another interesting and related website can be found over at plus4.emucamp.com, which is widely regarded as the community hub of the C16 and Plus/4 community. Its forums are ever active and there you may find regular announcements about this development. Needless to say, I'm again hopeful to see the final game when its finished.

After many years of Commodore Scene fanzine, alongside Allan Bairstow’s sterling work in the C64 community, it looks as though it's going to be the end of the line for most of Bairstow's activities as real life and other problems have forced him to downsize his overall operations. The first victim is the fanzine, which will run through until 2007 but only to wind up the remaining (usually high quality) editorial. There will be no new issues as such - it's just that the current 'year book' will spill over to next year. All orders of CMD hardware will be refunded in due course, with the importing service closed, and the CS-Doom challenge will be sadly stopped in its tracks. Finally, it's very unlikely there will be any CS meets for the rest of the year.

On a brighter note, the Commodore VGA adapter is still an ongoing project which is being pushed through at pace, and those people who are interested can still subscribe to the fanzine and catch the last ever issues of the decade-old Cé4 institution. As if to add to the problems, the www.commodorescene.org.uk website is currently experiencing technical problems and is not due to be back online in the immediate future, but you may contact CS HQ by emailing allan.bairstowf@btinternet.com. All hardware can now be ordered from www.protovision-online.de or www.cmdrkey.com - a word of advice though, if you want to upgrade your C64 or C128 (or in some cases a VIC-20 or C16/+4) it might be worth doing so sooner rather than later as well informed onlookers ponder how much longer such items will continue to be available, and whether or not this is the final chapter for the world’s most famous 8-bit home computer.

I certainly hope not, but warning signs have been around for a while that have been hard to ignore. Such is life.

The UK's premier Atari Lynx and Jaguar event will be held in Warrington, Cheshire starting on the weekend of the October 28th 2006. The event is once again being organised by Atari guru Garry Taylor, and the event will feature all of the gaming competitions that you'd expect. It's also likely that the Atari ST and Falcon machines will be represented at the event, and it's now been added to my diary already.

For more information, and to add yourself to the list, head over to www.jagfest.org/uk. Ticket prices will be announced shortly.