Ultimate-64 Announced!

I received my 1541 Ultimate-II+ a couple of months ago and love it (which reminds me, I really need to do a write up of it), so the news that Gideon had announced a new product today certainly caught my attention.

The Ultimate-64 is a an FPGA implementation of the entire C64 board. This means it has all the ports of an original C64, so you can attach tape & disk drives and hook it up to your old Commodore monitors. But, of course, that's not all - HDMI output and the full functionality of the Ulimate-II+ are built in.

Of course whenever I see news of someone re-implementing the C64, the first thought that crosses my mind is: "Ahh, that's all very nice, but what about the SID?". Emulated SID will be included (I assume including the ability to emulate dual SID chips), but purists will be able use actual 6581 & 8580 chips!

There's no launch date or price just yet, but this is something I'll definitely be keeping my eye on.

The Retro Show Event Added to Calendar

I've added The Retro Show to the calendar. The show's theme is the age old Speccy vs C64 battle, and promises four floors of retro computers, arcade machines, traders and more.

Confidential Magazine #1 Sept/Oct 1988

Back in 1987 I ordered a copy of the classic adventure "Guild of Thieves" along with my Amiga 500. Included in the game's package was a copy of "What Burglar?" magazine, and an advert for a mysterious "Confidential" club. Well, that's how I remember it - looking through the box now I don't see such an advert in there, though there is an offer to write in to Magnetic Scrolls to receive some swag. Or maybe there was a card/form that I filled out and posted. At any rate, I joined. This turned out to be the Special Reserve mail order club founded by Tony Rainbird, and "Confidential" was its magazine.

The mag was actually really good - always full of interesting articles, with a focus on adventure games. I'm pretty sure I still have every copy, so over the coming weeks I hope to scan them all in.

The PDF of the first issue can be downloaded here.

Contents:

• Psychobable - Adventure gaming news roundup, and details of the exclusive Magnetic Scrolls game that was coming with Issue 2: "Myth".
• Something Very Fishy - Details of the next Magnetic Scrolls game, "Fish!".
• A Mega-Game in the Making - A preview of "The Kristal". Was it worthy of all the hype?
• A Spy in the Camp - Interview with Level 9.
• Non Player Characters - Alive or Dead - Should NPCs be doing more to justify their existence?
• Whither Adventuring? - A look at Role Playing games.
• Into the Labyrinthe - Graeme Kidd goes LARPing.
• It Comes in the Mail - A round up of Play By Mail games.
• All About Infocom - Interview with Dave Lebling.
• A Wordsmith Pinned Down - Interview with Michael Baywater.
• Small Companies, Big Software - A round up of small independent mail order software companies producing quality adventures, and some advice for budding adventure creators.
• Uncle Mel's Pwoblem Corner - Mel Croucher answers readers questions (well, they may not have been real correspondents).

This month in... C&VG '89

News

The industry was abuzz with talk of Nintendo’s Game Boy. The handheld had seen a very successful launch in Japan with over 500,000 units being sold (300,000 of which were on the first day), and now the question was when would it reach the UK. Nintendo were unable to give any dates, but confirmed they had plans…

The FIST telephone game was getting a sequel (I have no idea what this was).

London was getting a new light gun game (Quasar) in a converted cinema.

C&VG apologised for incorrectly printing the phone number of Activision’s adventure helpline. The number they gave turned out to be that of a Mr Davy from Reading, who wasn’t terribly impressed with the balls up.

US Gold snapped up the home computer rights to the Crackdown coin-op.

There was a kinda bizarre new section called Bug Report. As the name suggests, this covered bugs discovered and sent in by readers. C&VG seemed surprised by the large number of responses, but they only gave two: a loading bug in “Kick Off” for the ST and one in “Fantasy Zone II” for Sega’s Master System where the player sprite would disappear when things got to frantic.

Notable Previews

• "Licence to Kill" Domark
• "Rainbow Islands" Graftgold/Firebird
• "Dragon Spirit" Domark
• "APB" Domark
• "Strider" US Gold
• "P-47" Firebird
• "Mr Heli" Firebird
• "It Came from the Desert" Cinemaware
• "Ghouls ’n’ Ghosts" US Gold
• "Beast" Psygnosis
• "Super Scramble Simulator" Gremlin
• "Oriental Games" Firebird
• "Hard Drivin'" Domark
• "Jaws" Screen 7
• "Batman - The Movie" Ocean
• "The Lost Patrol" Ocean
• "Untouchables" Ocean
• "Bloodwych" Imageworks
• "Hawkeye" Thalamus
• "Chase HQ" Ocean

Notable Reviews

• ”Phobia" Tony Crowther/Image Works - C64 88% C&VG Hit “Apart from the lack of music, Phobia is superb - pretty graphics, extremely addictive blasting gameplay, even the multiload isn’t too intrusive.“
• "Datastorm" VDT - Amiga 95% C&VG Hit “A superlative shoot ‘em up which knocks Forgotten Worlds off the top slot as the best Amiga blaster. Unmissable.“
• "Silkworm" The Sales Curve - Amiga 87% ST 84% Spectrum 80% C&VG Hit “Tremendous sound, super-smooth graphics and fiendishly addictive gameplay puts this amongst the cream of Amiga shoot ‘em ups.”
• "Chicago 30’s" Toposoft - C64 85% ST 78% Amstrad 71% “Fast and colourful - it makes a change from all those little metallic spaceships whizzing around.“
• “Honda RVF” Microstyle - ST 80% “A twisting, turning, screaming, gut-wrenching, metal-melting and incredibly satisfying belt around the tarmac.”
• “Black Tiger” US Gold - ST 86% C&VG Hit “An excellent conversion of the cult arcade machine which has a brilliant mix of platform and shooting action.”
• "Test Drive II” Accolade - Amiga 90% PC 85% C&VG Hit “This is the one you’ve been waiting for; all the pretty colours and flash of Test Drive, with a real game added to it.“
• "Vigilante" US Gold - Amiga & Spectrum 81% “Vigilante has all the stuff which made the street ninja arcade machines so popular, and is very slickly produced. BUT… it is just a variation on the same theme.”
• "Zork Zero" Infocom/Activision - Amiga 94% C&VG Hit “A superb adventure that places Infocom back in the number one slot. A must for all adventure fanatics.“
• "Rick Dangerous" Firebird - Amiga/Spectrum/C64/ST 87% C&VG Hit “An excellent platform game which is both incredibly enjoyable and highly addictive.”
• "New Zealand Story" Ocean - Amiga 88% C&VG Hit “A superb game in every respect. Ranks alongside Bubble Bobble and PacMania in the Amiga coin-op conversion stakes.“
• “Super Mario II” Nintendo - NES 97% C&VG Hit “A stunning sequel which oozes class and playability. The best Nintendo game yet released - miss it at your peril.”
• "Xybots" Domark - Spectrum 84% ST 83% “A brilliant conversion - one of the best two-player Spectrum games in ages.“

Charts

Amiga

1. "Falcon" Mirrorsoft
2. "Populous" Bullfrog/EA
3. "R-Type" Activision

All Formats

1. "Robocop" Ocean
2. "Treasure Island Dizzy" Codemasters
3. "Turbo Espirit" Encore