Thursday 29 October 2015

Open Your Eyes to Abre los ojos Commodore PET 8032 Scene Demo




I really can't resist scene demos on obscure platforms and this one's a good one. Coming in first in the wild category at the Finnish Zoo demo party, a well deserved and also inevitable result as it was the only entry, it's an abstract glitchy avant-garde micro masterpiece. As far as I can tell this is the only recent release for this system, the Commodore PET 8032, a slightly upgraded version of the original PET all in one computer. It's good to see 'cos any computer that looks as retrofuturisticly cool as the this PET deserves something cool to run on it. 


Saturday 24 October 2015

Retrokomp 2015 Demo Party Results


The Polish demo scene party Retrokomp happened this week and the competition results are up at pouet.net.

Two things that stand out on first impressions are a cool looking NES game and a demo on a fairly unusual platform, the good old Sam Coupe.




Thursday 15 October 2015

The Majesty of The Majesty of Sprites



The stunning Commodore Plus 4 homebrew game Majesty of Sprites is due for a physical release on disk, thanks to Psytronic software. When? Erm, soon, it would seem, but theres's no exact date.

The game was originally released for the Evoke 2015 party, winning an undeservedly low 3rd place in the interactive competition. Hopefully this new release, which comes as either the standard disk version or as an inevitable deluxe version, will make up for it's slightly overlooked original debut.

If you haven't seen or played the game, it's well worth a look. It makes hugely impressive use of the Plus 4's somewhat limited capabilities, with graphics that could be mistaken for a much more powerful platform.






Thursday 8 October 2015

Houston Tracker 2 - The TI calculator music tracker



Presumably named for the purported home of the hardware, not where this software originates from (it's German), Houston Tracker 2 is the complete music tracking solution for the TI 8x range of programmable calculators. If you're wondering what a music tracker is, well, it's a piece of software that let's you create music. Most classic systems have tracker programs, including some well known examples like LSDJ on the GameBoy and Soundtracker on the Amiga.
It's a pretty impressive achievement for the platform, especially considering that these calculators aren't supposed to have any sound output at all. Cleverly this software makes use of the calculators serial port for sound output and the results are pretty impressive as the above video demonstrates.

Wednesday 7 October 2015

Bathyscaphe by Red Triangle - ZX Spectrum Homebrew



A quick video of a new ZX Spectrum homebrew game from Russia. Entered in the 2015 Chaos Constructions party, it's a remake of a classic Electronika BK0010 game, and it definitely has an 80's 'arcade adventure' feel to it.


If you're wondering what the original looked like, well here it is in all it's Soviet era 8-bit glory.


I don't think the soundtrack on the above is the original one, it must have been added by the uploader. If it had any sound at all it would have been fairly sparse.

Monday 5 October 2015

Translation Sack





The game sack guys have never been ones to shy away from obscure games and systems, featuring some pretty oddball stuff at times, but this episode has to be of particular interest for the gaming obscurist. Fan translations have long been an underground phenomenon, bringing some of the best Japanese releases to English speaking audiences when the original developers can't or wont. There's a few titles that have become cherished on the translation scene, Seiken Densetsu 3, Mother 3, Bahamut Lagoon to name but a few, but in this video a selection of less well known translations are featured. Rent A Hero is a particularly pleasing inclusion as it's an interesting game, if not a good one, plus the NES visual novel version of Akira and a selction of Saturn games. Take a look if you have the time.