Well, what can I say? It all starded when I stumbled across a video on Youtube featuring a home made arcade cabinet. Being equally cursed and blessed with a strong drive to ride the wave of inspiration once it comes my way, I have spent some considerable time researching the possibility of having my very own arcade machine.

The prospect of building an arcade cabinet from scratch is very appealing, but in my case there is the time and space aspect to be taken into consideration. I have very little of either, and while I think I’ll manage to squeese a cabinet into my office, the space needed for construction is simply not there. The workaround came to me rather quickly, though, as I recalled having seen an ad on a Norwegian auction site about a guy in my home town who was selling an arcade cabinet. I dug out the ad on the net, and as it happened to say “expired” instead of “sold”, I took a shot at contacting the seller. Oh happy day, the cabinet was still up for grabs, so without further ado I went ahead and bought it! Rather cheap it was too. Here it is! This is a rather classy looking non-dedicated JAMMA-standard cabinet that used to sit in the very arcade I used to go to when I was a kid. Now, how’s that for a nostalgia trip?

The current status right now is that the cabinet is sitting at my parents’ place, and I plan to do the four hour drive to get it to Oslo in mid May. After that I will spend the hours I can spare to give it a considerable facelift. I hope to have it up and running both as a MAME and JAMMA cabinet by late fall, and I will be posting updates here. I’m excited!

Finally. After a detour all the way back to Austria and some negotiating with the seller, this little gem dropped into my mailbox the other day. The Sorcerer of Claymorgue is a nice text adventure published by pioneer Scott Adam’s Adventure International in 1984. I have only had the chance to play a little bit, and like most adventure games from this era the real challenge is to make the parser understand what you want to do. For instance, “cast fire spell at tree” will return the phrase “in two words, at what?”. So after a bit of head scratching you figure out that you have to divide it up like this: “cast fire spell” – “in two words, at what?” – “at tree”. And then: success! The joy of getting it right is overwhelming!

Compared to other games by the same author, this one has rather neat hi-res graphics. From what I understand the games in this series were first published without any graphics at all, and then republished with graphics from various artists. I think an important matter when it comes to putting graphics in text adventures like this is to  find the right balance so as to leading the imagination in the right direction without dictating too much. If the graphics are really poor, like e.g. in Pirate Adventure from the same publisher, it gets in the way in the sense that it bugs the eye. On the other hand, if the graphics are very good, like in The Pawn from Rainbird, it might get in the way by pushing the game from being a book, i.e. you make your own “pictures” in your head, only slightly aided by visuals on the cover etc., to being a cartoon where everything is pre-defined. Judging from what I have seen so far, The Sorcerer of Claymorgue gets this balance just about right.

I’m on a roll again with making graphics for the sequel of Knight’n'Grail. Since the release of numero uno last summer things have been quiet, but in late January Mikael got in touch with me about starting up again. It appears that he has re-coded a lot of the “engine”, if you might call it that, so the experience will be slightly different this time around. The game will still be a metroidvania type of game though, and I am really happy about this as it happens to be one of my favourite genres. So far I have done all the animations for the main character, and I am now working on monsters and background tiles for a forest section. Good fun!

I can’t reveal any of the new graphics at this point, but I am sure there will be some previews pretty soon. In the meantime, here are some screens from the previous game as well as the promo-video done by Kenz of Psytronik.

In an age of huge online games where the pvp servers are filled to the brim of real players made of real meat, you might think that retrogaming is a lonely affair. Think again! On Lemon64 there is a monthly games competition where you get to brawl against the most hardcore joystick twisters out there. Each month a new game is voted forth as the arena, and screenshots with highscores are posted as proof of glorious ownage or pitiful failure.

For 2010 my goal was to parttake every month, and I started out fresh with a miserable score in the puzzleaction game Spore. In February I couldn’t find much time to play the selected Winter Games (which I have hated ever since it first came out anyway), so I decided to make a comeback in March with LeMans from Commodore, a great overhead racing game from as early as 1982. This game is fairly common in its cartridge version, and I believe that it was a part of a C64 bundle back in the day. I own the cartridge, but the problem is that it is ment to be played with paddles – which I haven’t got. I really want to stear clear of cracked games if I can, but in this case I had to do with Nostalgia’s cracked version which has a joystick hack.

The game is hypnotically fun, and time flies fast as you gradually learn to dodge cars with the dexterity of a snake. The other day I knocked over a cup of hot chocolate while playing, but instead of mopping it up before it managed to seep into my PC keyboard, I finished the damned round. It’s that compelling. Whenever you crash, you have to go into a pitstop which slows you down in a most frustrating way. The trick is to find the balance between playing safe and still pass enough cars. For every tenth car you pass you get 1000 points, and for every 20000 points you get a time extension. After 100000 points the time counter speeds up, and this is when it get’s really hard.

I am at a point where I have to reluctantly admit defeat to the giants of the Lemon64 competition, but I still feel that this is a keeper for me in the sense that I will keep on playing it even after the competition is over. My current score is 178540, and I hope to make it to 200000 before the end of the month. Now if I can just stay out of that bloody pit!

Rating:

Making music on the Commodore 64 is somthing that is new to me, and I am still a novice as you can probably tell by my latest effort. For the Datastorm music competition I came up with this rather bouncy tune called Ride the Datastorm. It is done in Goattracker. By some unforeseen miracle it placed third.

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Most of these logos have been used in demos on the Commodore 64.

These are the best C64 full(ish)screen pictures I have released up till this point. They are all done in a fairly similar fashion. I sketch in black and white in Photoshop and then I transfer the outlines to the excellent tool Project One. From that point on its all about the music and the coffee and the pixel by pixel by dirty pixel until it looks funky.

Since this is my first post in this new blog, and since this whole blog thing apparently is about flaunting your feathers and strutting your stuff, I thought I might show off my new computer room. “This is where the magic happens”, as they all say in that very cheesy way. I have seen a lot of Commodore computer collections online over the years, and they all tend to be stored in boxes. I think it is much nicer to see computers that are actually in use, so here you go. This is what I can play with by the flick of a switch.

When you live in a smallish flat in Oslo city, some size restrictions apply. Thus the closet in the first picture. Limited space helps me prioritize, and it also gives the room a more neutral look whenever that is needed. The closet contains the following: C1701, 128DCR, C1084S, memory expanded C16, C116, Cplus/4, C1341, C1551, C1351, C2N, C64 with orange F-keys, 2xC1541, C1750, Genious mouse, Zipstick, Trojan Light Pen – and all the games I can fit in there. And do note the Barbarian II poster! This is a classic in game marketing, starring bombshell Maria Whittaker. The cover art of the original game only had the guy, Michael Van Wijk, whereas this poster featuring them both was included in the box.

The last picture features my everyday setup (well, except perhaps for the beer). C1901, C64, C2N, 1541, 1541 Ultimate w/ethernet in case – and a Tac2 joystick for those extra special high precision maneuvers.