A couple of C64 games arrived today:

• R-Type
• Ikari Warriors
• Death or Glory

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Another fantastic article in RetroGamer magazine load 259: The Making of Star Trek: 25th Anniversary.

Back in the day, I definitely preferred DuoTris, but at the same time, MirrorSoft's Tetris always had a special place in my heart. It was all I had while all the boys and girls around me played the superior GameBoy version, and boy, was I jealous.

Then again, there's Wally Beben's mind-blowing 20+ minutes tune and all is balanced again

Cut to 2024. I've just found out on CSDb that there's a remaster, err, remix, err, recoded version out there and it has just received an update!

Let's boot it up!

The update is not just some graphical tweaks, no, it's a full re-implementation of Tetris following how the game played on other Platforms at the time. Further, there's an optional shadow as well as music and sfx options.

It does play great, not as snappy as current versions of Tetris, but still. The addition of slow/hard drop is great and the sfx are a nice touch too.

My main complaint is that the original tune is only played on the title screen and can't be selected as background music thanks to technical limitations. Bummer.

Anyway, grab a copy of version 1.1b and give it a try!

Oh boy, I'm lagging behind big time! Sry for the spare updated these post months.

Boxes are piling up everywhere but the time needed for scanning and uploading them is very, very rare at the moment but I do hope to manage at least one or two games per week from now on again.

Curious, what's gonna show up? Yeah, I thought so, so here's my backlog of unscanned big boxes:

• Adrenix
• Age of Empires
• Age of Empires II: The Conquerors
• Alien Breed: Tower Assault
• AotD 2 (inkl 1 & JitD)
• Archimedean Dynasty
• Baldur's Gate III
• Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast
• Black Mirror II: Reigning Evil
• Black Mirror III: Final Fear
• BloodNet
• Blue Force
• Brain Dead 13
• Burntime
• Call to Power II
• Cannon Fodder 2
• Caribbean Disaster
• Command & Conquer: Firestorm
• Command & Conquer: The Covert Operations
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun
• Creatures
• Creatures 3
• Crudader: No Regret
• Crudader: No Remorse
• Curse of Enchantia
• D
• Darklands
• Death or Glory (C64)
• Delta V
• Demonworld
• Descent: Freespace - The Great War
• Descent 3
• Die Höhlenwelt Saga: Der Leuchtende Kristall
• Dominion
• Dragon Lore II: The Heart of the Dragon Man
• Druid: Daemons of the Mind
• Dune
• Dune II Battle for Arrakis
• Dune 2000
• Extreme Assault
• Eye of the Beholder Trilogy
• Fade to Black
• FIFA International Soccer
• Flashback: The Quest for Identity
• Freespace 2
• Frontier: Elite II
• Fury of the Furries
• Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
• Genesia
• Heimdall
• Heimdall 2: Into the Hall of Worlds
• Hell: A Cyberpunk Thriller
• Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Shadow of Death
• Holiday Island
• Ikari Warriors (C64)
• Incubation: Battle Isle Phase Four
• Incubation: Mission Pack
• IndyCar Racing
• Inferno: The Odyssey Continues
• Innocent until Caught
• Ishar Trilogy
• KISS: Psycho Circus - The Nightmare Child
• Lands of Lore
• Legends of Valour: Volume 1 - The Dawning
• Little Big Adventure: Twinsen's Adventure
• Loopz (Amiga)
• Lords of Magic
• Lost Vikings
• LucsArts Classic Adventures
• Magic Carpet Hidden Worlds
• Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
• Men in Black: The Game
• Microcosm
• Noctropolis
• Novastorm
• Pandemonium
• Pictionary: The Game of Quick Draw (C64)
• Prehistorik 2
• Prisoner of Ice
• Protostar: War on the Frontier
• Quarantine
• Quest for Glory III: Wages of War
• R-Type (C64)
• R.O.M. Gold: Rings of Medusa
• Realms (The can onl be one)
• Realms of the Haunting
• Rebel Moon Rising
• Rent a Hero
• RexNebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender
• Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch
• Ripley's Believe It or Not!: The Riddle of Master Lu
• Rival Realms
• Robinson's Requiem
• S.T.O.R.M
• Sacrifice
• Sensible Soccer: European Champions - 92/93 Edition
• Shannara
• Shivers
• Shivers Two: Harvest of Souls
• Sid Meier's Civilization II
• Sid Meier's Civilization III
• SimCity 2000
• SimCity Classic
• Space Hulk
• Space Marines: Der stählerne Kaiser
• Space Quest 5: The Next Mutation
• Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier
• The Space Quest Saga: Roger Wilco
• Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
• Star Trek: Elite Force
• Star Trek: Generations
• Star Trek: Armada
• Star Trek: New Worlds
• Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
• Star Wars: Tie Fighter
• Star Wars: Tie Fighter
• Star Wars: X-Wing
• Star Wars: X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter
• Star Wars: Rebel Assault
• Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
• Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance
• Star Wars: X-Wing Vs. TIE Fighter - Balance of Power Campaigns
• StarCraft
• StarCraft: Brood War
• Stellar 7
• SuperKarts
• Swiv 3D
• Syndicate Plus
• Syndicate: American Revolt
• Synnergist
• Tachyon: The Fringe
• Take no Prisoners
• Talisman
• Tempest 2000
• Terminal Velocity
• The Daedalus Encounter
• The Dagger of Amon Ra
• The Journeyman Project
• The Last Dynasty
• The Lawnmower Man
• The Settlers III
• The Settlers IV
• Time Commando
• Torin's Passage
• Transport Tycoon
• Turrican II: The Final Fight
• Unreal
• Utopia: Creation of a Nation
• WarCraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal
• Warcraft III Battle Chest
• Waterworld
• Whale's Voyage
• Whale's Voyage II: Die Übermacht
• Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi - Special Operations 1
• Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi - Special Operations 2
• Wing Commander: Privateer
• World of Aden: Entomorph - Plague of the Darkfall
• World of Warcraft
• World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade
• World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
• World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria
• World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Litch King
• Worms
• X-Beyond the Frontier
• Zool
• Zork: Grand Inquisitor

California Games was a huge hit for Epyx and thus released on a lot of platforms back in the day. RetroGamer mag takes a look at all the versions out there in Load 259.

With pixeling for the C64 being my new love and of course still loving my big boxes too, it only was a matter of days before those two worlds crashed into each other and formed something exiting! Below, a work-in-progress screenshot of my BigBoxPixel.

It's a HiRes picture (with expanded borders) showing the first 21 games turned from 2k textures into tiny 8x40 spines using only a hint of color due to the C64's restrictions. But still, I'm sure most of the boxes are recognizable, so enjoy figuring out what's on this 8-bit shelf

OK, I've got somewhat carried away this week by joining the C64GFX.Com CharSet Logo Compo 2024 and working on my first CharSet pix. There wasn't really any concept to follow but I stumbled along while learning the graphic modes as well as the editors (Petmate and PETSCII Editor) I used.

For the PETSCII pic, I've fooled around with tiles, as in ceramic tiles and one thing lead to another an a 3DBBG (short for my social media handle @3DBigBoxGames) thingy appeared waiting to be tweaked over and over again:

Next, I tried my luck with HiRes mode, which means, pixels and color are separated and thus easier to handle. Well, it got all out of hand and I've ended up with the whole screen filled and (almost) all the available colors used in a bright fever dream color splash. One of the problems that arised is, that there's no logo there and reworking the charset to have once again 3DBBG or something there felt too tedious. I've somewhat fixed it by making this the core and just turned it into "Oh, no! What logo?" and called it quits

The competition runs from Feb 7th to April 30th, so there's still time to join in. Voting will be May 1st to May 14th.

Make sure to check out all the submitted entries:

• C64GFX.com (incl. non-demo-scener submissions like mine)
• CSDb.dk

With Nightdive Studios working on their System Shock remaster, RetroGamer magazine sat down with them and Jon Chey, the lead programmer of Shock 2, for discussing the series' beginnings, how it could be updated and what's up with Shock 3. It's a lenghy 8-page article well worth the read.

This article appeared in Load 249.

The other day, a I received a mail from RetroGamer Magazine telling me, that I can now access the complete backlog of the mag thanks to my ongoing subscription.

Full of excitement, I've opened my PocketMag app and, well, there's now 90+ issues to read through, but that's far from the whole archive. Re-reading the mail again, I've found the following footnote:

Bummer. I don't own any Apple devices.

Anyway, I've been a reader since day one of the relaunch back in 2005 and had a subscription till 2013 (which I re-newed in 2022), which means, I do have a huge pile of printed issues that are now — more or less — old enough to be considered retro themselves. That said, I've started digging through them and I'm gonna link all the relevant articles in short blog posts and add them to the related 3D boxes.

But first, here's the first ever issue that I've gotten my hands on. I do remember the day very well; I was in Wels at the train station waiting to return to Vienna and had some time to kill and usually that meant hitting the Kiosk, browsing through computer magazines and there it was: Rubber Love. A high-quality, oversized magazine looking for my attention and I couldn't believe at first what I was seeing. A whole magazine dedicated to old computers? Ignoring the price tag, it was mine and the 2h journey went by in the blink of an eye with me reading through the mag. The articles were fantastic and to top it off, there were pixelated screenshots spread out over two whole pages. It was magical!

From then on, I've not only grabbed the latest issue at the train station each month but also tracked down the first 18 issues via eBay to complete my collection and sometime later — after almost missing one issue — I've gifted myself a subscription and was happy for the following years.

I really do like to revisit International Karate (and its sequel) a lot; it's a perfect game. The music is fantastic and the sound effects crunchy — yeah, yeah, Exploding Fist fans, I hear you disagreeing — and the controls, again, perfect.

Throwing punches and kicks is simply magical but there's more.

The game's timing is pure bliss too. After sending your opponent to the ground, there's a couple of seconds that you can hold your pose for extra awesomeness and just get back to your stance right when the points are announced. Yes, show that you're 100% in control over every single muscle in your body. Show the audience that this punch or kick was not luck button mashing but the exact strike that you've envisioned and then executed flawlessly. Ahh,... the satisfaction.

Another thing I'm always aiming for is a perfect first round. Sommersault + flykick, sommersault + flykick, sommersault + flykick. Jep, three times with one half-point and two full points. All that with 27 seconds left.

A couple of games arrived today, all small boxes but definitely pretty ones.

• Drakensang (Gold Edition)
• The Witcher 2
• Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb
• Darksiders (Hellbook Edition)

Will hopefully be scanned and uploaded soon.

Gameroom Ramblings shared a post where he wondered why some games have different box art and well, that's a good question.

Me, I have of course also come across variants too. We're not talking about small layout shifts here, those are often necessary due to translated names and tag lines as well as to make space for huge USK labels, but completely different art. Here's a couple of examples from my shelf:

For some, I do like the European variant a bit more (e.g. MDK), while others, I definitely prefer the US take (e.g. Last Ninja 2) but all in all, they all have their own reasons to exist. Looking at my sample, one major reason might just come down to having different publishers with a different line-up of games to cater and — like in the case of Epxy — their own style to follow and also marketing trying to match whatever's cool with the kids right now in their part of the world.

As a collector, I am, like GR, happy knowing that there's more than just the one box art out there, waiting to be stumbled upon and put onto my shelf.

The latest issue — load 255 that is — of Retrogamer mag just dropped and guess what, there's a six page Making of article in it about Diablo II.

Blizzard added the original Diablo to battle.net the other day and with this, why not take a quick look at how to run the game.

Sure, it's been on gog.com for quite a while now, and sure, this version does support higher resolutions that the game would be rendered in, but how about making good use of those additional pixels?

In comes DevilutionX, a open source port of the game, that "strives to make it simple to run the game while providing engine improvements, bugfixes, and some optional quality of life features". Well, yes please!

I was surprised how dark my Turbo OutRun screenshots turned out to be. Settings on my micro64 were tweaked to mimic how I remember what C64 games looked like on our ol' portable color TV back in the day but never really checked the overall parameters and thus went to far. So I've sat down and tweaked it some more to get a little bit more pop out of it without overdoing it.

All in all, it's a now brighter and a bit more saturated.

I've also remembered an old website where the "original" palette was calculated and a quick google brought up Calculating the color palette of the VIC II , where Pepto did all the math and low and behold, my tweaked micro64 with all the PAL emulation bells and whistles comes pretty close to those colors now too.

After yesterday's short session with Turbo OutRun, I've sat down and played the Arcade version today. It's astonishing how many of the effects as well as the overall mood of the game could be ported over to the humble C64.

The colorful changes of scenery has also been ported flawlessly with the blazing red sun of Indianapolis IMHO even better looking in 8big

Here's some screenshots

Ever since I've played the original OutRun on C64, I've been a fan. Sure, it's not the best version out there to play OutRun, but it was all we had. Then, Turbo OutRun came along with fancier music, fancier graphics and fancier tech overall and it was a blast. While the controls aren't as tight as in the origial, it had so much more to offer that we didn't really care.

With a copy of the game now proudly sitting on my shelf, I booted up the game once again and I have to say, it's still a lot of fun.

Here's some screenshots:

Yay, sampled music \o/

First stage with gfx putting the original to shame

Minimal changes, maximal effect. Love it!

Time for tuning our car

Loosing the girl while the band jams.

Well, didn't get that far, did I?

My copy of Fast Tracks had the "Bobby Rahal Challenge" disk included. I did a quick online reseach and haven't really found anything about it, which means, this expansion is not available yet on the net. That said, I've asked over at Twitter if someone knew anything about it. I've also tagged Frank Gasking from Games that Weren't who does know a lot about preserving old disks, hoping, he could point me to somebody able to help me get the disk online.

His quick reseach brought up a post by Quapil, a fellow Austrian game collector, who shared his Fast Track boxes over at retrocollector.org. Looks like his copy has all the original paper work, so while there's of course no "Bobby Rahal Challenge" disk, there is the order form needed to grab a copy of it, which would us provide with some more details about the disk. I've mailed Quapil and asked, if he would be so kind scanning the mail oder form for us and about an hour later, I had a readable version of the form. The disk could be ordered for USD 4.95 but only from the US or Canada; also the offer ended on December 31, 1986. With the disk having not yet found its way onto the net, my take is that there weren't really that many gamers willing to spend a couple of bucks which is understandable, especially as creating your own courses was the main selling point of Fast Tracks.

Anyway, my copy of the disk will soon be shipped to Frank for creating a .d64 file and finally preserving those tracks.

To be continued...

I've grabbed two big boxes from Retro365's shelf. One is the first game by Bethsoft that I've ever played, long before their Terminator or Elder Scrolls games found their way onto my 750MB HDD and my Daggerfall obsession began.

I only had a budget jewel case CD version of Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2 that I can't find a trace off on the net but I'm pretty sure it was a German release. Anyway, I'm happy to have it now on my shelf.

The second box that I've grabbed is a copy of Hockey League Simulator (missed the PC version, but a version for Amiga was available), a sim that's what it looks like is building upon the sports game.

A small packaged showed up today with the following two boxes in it:

• RoboCop (C64)
• Kind of Magic 2 (C64, Compilation)

Just couldn't say no RoboCop and the same is true for the second of the three Kind of Magic collections by Magic Bytes; always loved the companies magical logo. I think I've only played their "Mini Golf" game and Second World though.