Category: Featured Article

Retro Revisited: Alien Breed: Tower Assault

As the tag-line to Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi horror masterpiece, Alien, so eloquently put it: “In space, no one can hear you scream.” It’s a phrase which seems remarkably apt when it comes to the Alien Breed: Tower Assault, the last in a succession of 2D top-down shooters inspired by the movie franchise, although instead of the vacuum of space,…

Retro Revisited: Avenging Spirit

With unique game features and attractive graphics, there’s plenty of fun to be had with Jaleco’s possess ’em up!

Ozmoo goes C128 and Plus/4

Screenshot of Ozmoo playing Borderzone on C128

Ozmoo Release 5 is out. Ozmoo is a Z-code interpreter (a program to play text adventures which use Infocom’s game format). The first version of Ozmoo was released in December 2018. It was written to produce playable games for the Commodore 64. Now, with Release 5, support has been added for Commodore 128 and Commodore Plus/4. Games built for the…

Going into Action! with Atari XL/XE – Part 5 – Modularization and Distributing your program

Table of contents Part 1 – Hello World! Part 2 – Graphics Part 3 – More Variables, Memory and Pointers (ugh!) Part 4 – Using VSCode and Action! with syntax highlighting Part 5 – Modularization and Distributing your program Except for early dialects of BASIC found in the 8-bit computers, the programmer can split an application source code into multiple…

Going into Action! with Atari XL/XE – Part 4 – Using VSCode and Action! with syntax highlighting

Table of contents Part 1 – Hello World! Part 2 – Graphics Part 3 – More Variables, Memory and Pointers (ugh!) Part 4 – Using VSCode and Action! with syntax highlighting Part 5 – Modularization and Distributing your program I am a bit late in this 4th part of the Going into Action! series, where I write about Action! while…

Survival Messenger Adventure – A Beautifully Illustrated Text Adventure for the Commodore 64

Survival Messenger – The Adventure, is a new illustrated text adventure game for the Commodore 64. The premise is that you find yourself lost in an island and you have to find your way out without dying – I assume that last part is goes without saying! The classic gameplay is enriched by a nice modern touch. You have at…

Going into Action! with Atari XL/XE – Part 3 – More Variables, Memory and Pointers (ugh!)

Table of contents Part 1 – Hello World! Part 2 – Graphics Part 3 – More Variables, Memory and Pointers (ugh!) Part 4 – Using VSCode and Action! with syntax highlighting Part 5 – Modularization and Distributing your program Yes, no sugarcoating! In this third part we will be talking about pointers! Hello?….. Hello? Usually, when people start to learn…

Going into Action! with Atari XL/XE – Part 2 – Graphics

Table of contents Part 1 – Hello World! Part 2 – Graphics Part 3 – More Variables, Memory and Pointers (ugh!) Part 4 – Using VSCode and Action! with syntax highlighting Part 5 – Modularization and Distributing your program If you are following this series of articles, you could be thinking right now: “What a jump! From a Hello World…

Going into Action! with Atari XL/XE – Part 1 – Hello World!

Table of contents Part 1 – Hello World! Part 2 – Graphics Part 3 – More Variables, Memory and Pointers (ugh!) Part 4 – Using VSCode and Action! with syntax highlighting Part 5 – Modularization and Distributing your program Welcome to the first part of this programming series where we will learn (or die trying!) to learn Action!, a high-performance…

Get started with C cross-development for the TRS-80 Model 1 and 3!

My first computer ever was a TRS-80 clone called JR Sysdata which I, like many of us, regrettably sold when I wanted to upgrade to something else. Today this Brazilian clone is rarer than flying cows and worth a good amount of money. Of course, we are here not to talk about childhood computers but about cross-development for the TRS-80…