Best of ViTNO Homebrew: We review Snake Escape for the ZX Spectrum

As regular visitors to our site will be aware, we recently unveiled our very own database of homebrew and freeware titles for our readership and the wider community to enjoy. In the first of what we hope will become a regular feature, we’ve chosen to showcase a particular title that stood out amongst our most recent uploads, something which we…

Zzap!64 Annual 2019 Kickstarter Goes Live, Check out the Perks

The Zzap!64 Annual 2019 Kickstarter has gone live. As ViTNO reported yesterday, Fusion Retro Books are collaborating with Future Publishing to produce the first Zzap!64 Annual featuring 112 full colour pages of reviews, feature articles, interviews covering the glory days and the current era of the Commodore 64 gaming scene. With the official launch of the Kickstarter, we can now…

Rick Dickinson, designer of many iconic Sinclair computers passes away

It is with great sadness that we learned that Rick Dickinson lost the battle against cancer and passed away on April 24th. Rick had a very successful career but for us, retro enthusiasts, he was well-known for the design of the ZX-81, the ZX Spectrum, and the Sinclair QL. The Sinclair machines were successful for many reasons, from price to…

Zzap!64 Annual 2019 Kickstarter Launch, Sneak Peak Now Available

Fusion Retro Books are pleased to announce that are collaborating with Future Publishing to produce the Zzap!64 Annual 2019 and are ready to go to Kickstarter to help with the funding of costs associated with printing of the publication and compensation of content contributors. Zzap!64 was the magazine that every Commodore 64 owner went to for honest, frank reviews of…

RC2018/04 – 4MB geoRAM Development – Part 2

Last weekend we finished the PCB layout and sent it out for manufacturing. The PCB is 83x58mm and fits into a standard Commodore cartridge case. All the ICs are through holes except the DRAM chips. If everything goes well I will receive the boards sometimes next week, just in time for a final blog entry. PLD Code As mentioned in…

ViTNO Homebrew Update #2: 13 New Games Added!

This April saw the launch of our very own ‘Homebrew’ gaming database, established to showcase the best and brightest titles released by retro gaming fans, the wider community for a range of the most popular retro computers platforms. The section has already proved incredibly popular, racking up several thousand hits since it went live and we’ve been busy scouring the…

Setting Up a Modern Development Environment for 6502/6509/6510/8502 Assembly Language – RetroChallenge 2018/04 – Update #8

If you are following along from the last update, you now have assembled the pieces you need to start programming in 650x Assembly language. Since my RetroChallenge is focused on the Commodore CBM II (“B Series”) machines, I am going to be showing how to set a development environment for that machine. But the same environment will work just as…

Scene World Podcast Episode #46 – User Group Meetings with Robert Bernardo

Robert Bernardo is a very known figure in the American Commdore scene, being the head of the “Fresno Commodore User Group”, we have been in touch with him since we started with Scene World 18 years ago – time to talk to him and hear about his side of our Commodore User World and Sphere! Enjoy listening to his experiences!…

Lost the last Apple II must-have CFFA3000 batch? Now you have another chance!

According to the user willwinter on sub-Reddit /r/apple2, the maker of the CFFA3000 board for the Apple II sent out an email letting people know that they have added more units to the batch #5 and also they will allow previous buyers to acquire more than the previous 2 units limit. If you don’t know what is a CFFA3000 (where have you…

Nintendo / NES, Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death Update

Sydney Hunter and the Caverns of Death for the Super Nintendo (SNES) was originally successfully funded under Kickstarter back in May 2015 with all of its stretch goals unlocked. One of these goals was to port the game to the original Nintendo (NES) system. Well, Electric Adventures has recently started work on the NES port and have just provided Kickstarter…