
*************************************
       Commodore Free Magazine
    http://www.commodorefree.com/
*************************************

       Issue 51, May/June 2011

      Free to download magazine
  dedicated to Commodore computers
  Available as PDF, HTML, TXT, SEQ,
      D64 disk image and now as
        ePUB and MOBI e-book

=====================================

*************************************
              CONTENTS
*************************************

* Editorial
* Readers Comments
* NEWS
  - AresOne Price Reduction
  - Snapshoter updated to v1.4.9b
  - New Commodore 64
  - CBM264.com
  - XSane 0.998 for AmiCygnix
  - Yes VIC Can
  - Protovision Release Jim Slim
  - 64Copy Updated To 4.43
  - 'Escape' Full Game Found By GTW
  - Commodore News
  - Amiga Immortal Audio CD
  - IceFileSystem 2.4 Released
  - 1541U-II Update 2.1
  - New Masonicons
  - Amiga Automatic Monitor Switch
  - TOSEC Updated
  - C&A Games 3 Released
  - spellchecker.library v1.0
* Stroke World Review
* Cascade Review
* Its Magic 1 Review
* Its Magic 2 Review
* Bomb Mania Review
* Ice Guys Review
* Metal Dust Review
* Jim Slim Review
* Interview With The Protovision Team
* Protovision Website

=====================================

*************************************
              EDITORIAL
*************************************

Hi and welcome back to another issue
of Commodore Free magazine, I have
been shortening the title to C= Free
in correspondence, mainly as it's
less to spell incorrectly and saves
me slightly from RSA, I also think
it looks like of cool C=Free, Hmm
maybe not then.

This issue has the usual assortment
of random news; but to coincide with
the recent PROTOVISON release I have
dedicated most (well; all) of the
magazine to PROTOVISION. With an
interview and a look at, and reviews
of some of the many Protovision
games available. I know it may not
be to everyone's taste; but I felt
after everything the company had
done for the Commodore scene it was
a worthy gesture. Of course Amiga
users and 264, Pet users will feel
alienated, maybe I could dedicate
later magazines to something
relevant to these users

SO IN THE ISSUE YOU WILL FIND

An interview with PROTOVISION and a
review of their latest game "Jim
slim," the game is also in the news
section and there is an advert in
the PDF version of the magazine. By
the time you have finished reading
the magazine you should be pretty
much up to speed with what
Protovision can supply. You may even
feel all PROTOVISIONED out! as they
have made some truly great games and
still continue to support the
Commodore 64.

READERS COMMENTS

Wow we got some! And it seems we
have a couple of eBook readers, one
of whom reads the issue in the bath
on his eBook! Nice, thankfully he
didn't send in a picture of himself
sat in the bath with the loofah out
but decided just to send a picture
of his eBook reader and the
Commodore Free title page on screen,
hurray its working then!

Someone else suggested the eBook
version was better for his eyes,
although wished to remain anonymous
(that's fine glad to help, erm with
the eyes that is)

That's all for a short editorial

Let me know what you thought about
the issue

Regards
Nigel
www.commodorefree.com

=====================================

*************************************
          READERS COMMENTS
*************************************

To: Commodore Free
From: A Reader
Subject: Commodore Free EBOOK

Hello Commodore Free

Thanks for continuing to publish the
magazine on a monthly basis.

I have just down loaded the ePUB
version of the Commodore Free
magazine!

my eyes love you!!

ahahah I am suffering to read on the
computer screen I prefer the
contrast of my eBook.. now the
Commodore Free there!! and its a
very clean text format! **LOVELY**

ahah, I think I will try to convert
it as audio book! ;-}

take care,

User preferred to remain anonymous

COMMODORE FREE: Glad you liked the
eBook, I have had one other person
mention they prefer this version to
read on the move as it was
formatting better than a PDF on
their device, as ever comments
suggestions are always welcome, feel
free to get in touch and if you want
to be anonymous then that's no
problem.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WOW and just like buses - erm except
they come in 3`s here is another
reader comment

To: Commodore Free
Sender: Francisco
Subject: Readers Comments

Hi. I have some issues for you :-)

- You are publishing the magazine in
eBook format and you commented in
the issue 48 that you think that
maybe nobody is reading the magazine
using this format. I have read the
last issue (number 49) in an eBook
:-) I have attached a picture of it
(and yes, I also read it in the bath
:-))

COMMODORE FREE: Glad the eBook
version is working, and I am glad
you can read it in the bath as this
was the goal originally for the
creation of commodore free, please
don't sue me if you drop the device
in the bath though

- I have read the book "On the edge:
the spectacular rise and fall of
Commodore" and the book "Commodore:
a company on the edge" has just been
published. Do you have a copy of it?
Have you read it? Do you think it is
worth it?

COMMODORE FREE: OK first book I have
purchased and read and yes it was
worth the asking price the second
book I have purchased; but haven't
found time to read so cant comment ..

- I have in the queue the article
about the commodore TAP format. I am
sorry about it. I hope I could send
you some day :-S

COMMODORE FREE: I eagerly await the
article and will gladly publish it
in Commodore Free

- The project called C2N-II was
finished some time ago (it is like
the DC2N) and now is going to be
enhanced in order to support other
tape formats for ZX Spectrum and
Amstrad computers (TZX and CDT
formats). If you want you can use
the next text as a new for your
magazine:

COMMODORE FREE: Thanks you for the
information

THE C2N-II DATASSETE

The C2N-II Datassete was the M.S.
Thesis of the student Pablo Toms
Campos Valladares in order to obtain
the grade of Telecommunications with
the speciality on Electronic
Systems. This project was directed
by the professor Francisco Javier
Gonzlez Caete in the University of
Mlaga (Spain).

The objective of this project was to
develop a hardware device in order
to replace the C2N Datassete of the
Commodore computers. This hardware
is able to play the TAP image format
(this format is a dump of the
original cassettes). As this is a
digital format, no error should
occur during the load of the
software (as it can occur with the
cassettes). The TAP images are
stored in USB Drives and the C2N-II
lets you to select the file and play
it.

The C2N-II has the next
functionalities:

* Playback of Commodore TAP image
  files.

* Compatible with the Commodore VIC
  20, C64, C128, C16/116 and Plus/4
  models

* Compatible with PAL and NTSC
  systems (only PAL has been tested)

* Compatible with the TAP versions
  0, 1 and 2

* Rewind and forward the playback

* One tape position can be stored.
  This position can be restored
  using one button. This
  functionality is useful when
  multi-load games request to set
  counter to zero and to rewind to
  this position to load again the
  first stage of the game.

* The files are stored in an USB
  Memory

* Navigation through the files and
  directories using the buttons.

You can see videos demonstrating the
C2N-II:

- C2N-II loading Sanxion in a
  Commodore 128:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bBIBqXgmM4

- C2N-II loading Evil Dead in a
  Commodore 128. This game has the
  fastest loader ever created for the
  Commodore 64:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bypV8f0pWfg

- C2N-II loading Frogger in a
  Commodore VIC-20:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQ8OTmYZiTU

- C2N-II loading Saboteur in a
  Commodore Plus4:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lgCf8Qovb8

You can also visit the home page of
C2N-II at:
http://pc23te.dte.uma.es/C2N-II/

And nothing more. Only give you the
congratulations for your great
magazine.

Cheers. Francisco

=====================================

*************************************
                NEWS
*************************************

*************************************
       ARESONE PRICE REDUCTION
*************************************

The AresOne is now available for
~235! And I am talking about the
full pack which includes:

* AresOne with 2.8GHZ AMD Sempron
  (expendable via configurator)

* 2GB DDR3 RAM (expandable via
  configurator)

* 500GB SATA HD (expandable)

* Broadway including FULL Version of
  AMC the Amiga Media Center

* Or IcAROS desktop

* Windows, Linux are optional...
  Linux is a free Option (installing
  costs nothing).

The AresOne comes with AmigaForever
2009 OEM and A-live X which includes
a FryingPan key and CinnamonWriter
for AROS

You can also buy the Kit for
~199.99 including the software.

Visit www.vesalia.de

-------------------------------------

*************************************
    SNAPSHOTER UPDATED TO V1.4.9B
*************************************

New version of snapshoter is out, a
lot of improvements in this version

* Store unlimited clipboards.

* Add watermarks to your pictures.

* Post-it function.

* Compatible with Dropbox.

* Auto store text in clipboard.

* Capture pictures, or full desktop.

* Capture images with timer.

* Image compose mode.

* Scale, rotate, put border, change
  contrast, add transparency, use
  text or arrows in the collage mode.

* Infinite layers to play with your
  images in real time.

* Save the collage as JPG image.

* Languages English, Catal, Spanish
  Turkish Italian and French.

* Drag n drop picture files to the
  clipboard bar.

* Paint, compose, create, and a lot
  more...

Download your version

CHANGELOG:

* Fixed bug in copyclipboard routine.

* Added Cecilia FX icons.

* Added new powerful image composer

* Gradients, solids, outlines,
  primitives, text or arrows, easy
  intuitive and fast environment

* a lot of changes more.

* Swap layers Up and down, keep
  ratios, browse layers, auto import
  to collage mode directly clicking
  over the snapshoter bar, crop and
  cut images over the compositions
  and paste again, funny gradient
  paint effect.....

* Versions for AmigaOS 3 AmigaOS4
  MorphOS Aros and Windows

Download: www.xabierpayet.com

-------------------------------------

*************************************
          NEW COMMODORE 64
*************************************

A look at the manufacturing process
for the case of the NEW commodore 64
this is a pc in an adapted commodore
64 case, I am not sure about the
sale potential of such an item, the
pc is designed to be upgraded and
this machine can't really be
upgraded, apparently the case has
been modified from the original c64
making it taller to fit in the
motherboard and other components so
it's going to be difficult to type
on. Still I suppose it's a novelty
item

See the video on YouTube here

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcCnZc_i63c

-------------------------------------

*************************************
             CBM264.COM
*************************************

commodore16.com (Administrator)
reports

The website CBM264.com is back. From
this site you can legally download
GEOS for the C16/Plus4.

A huge thank you to James for
bringing his fabulous site back from
the grave.

http://www.cbm264.com/

-------------------------------------

*************************************
 XSANE 0.998 FOR AMICYGNIX RELEASED
*************************************

Now available on OS4-depot: The
AmiCygnix version of the scanner
driver software XSane 0.998. It
includes the Sane backends version
1.0.22.

This release supports only scanners
with USB connector or with network
interface.

FEATURES OF XSANE:

* Display an image in a viewer.

* Saves images in these picture
  formats:
  - JPEG
  - PDF
  - PNG
  - PNM
  - PS
  - TIFF

* Convert images into ASCII text
  using the OCR software "gocr". The
  program gocr V0.49 is included in
  this package.

* Do a photocopy - send a scanned
  image to the printer.

* Create multipage documents (PDF,
  PS, TIFF).

* Send a fax - needs an external
  command like "sendfax".

* Send a scanned image by e-mail.

* Colour management (CMS).

* Batch processing.

* Can be used as a gimp plug-in.

* And much more...

For more information have a look at
the included README file and the
XSane homepage.

Download:
http://os4depot.net/index.php?functio
n=showfile&file=driver/misc/xsane.lha

Homepages: http://www.xsane.org,
http://www.sane-project.org

-------------------------------------

*************************************
             YES VIC CAN
*************************************

Author: tokra (graphics mode), Mike
(converter)
Released: Apr 24, 2011
Requirements: VIC-20 (PAL) with 16K
RAM expansion (24K for Basic
Extension, 32K for SJLOAD)
Description: Demo for new graphics
mode explained in a yet to come post
in the "New Frontiers in VIC Hires"
series.

Screenshot:

Download (with source):
http://www.tokra.de/vic/yesviccan/yes
_vic_can-release-withsource.zip

Pout.net-Link (with video file):
http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=5
6893

Got 5th place (out of eight) at the
Revision Party 2011

-------------------------------------

*************************************
    PROTOVISION RELEASE JIM SLIM
*************************************

Protovision presents their latest
C64 game: "The Adventures of Jim
Slim in Dragonland" (aka "Jim Slim").

As ball Jim it is up to you to
retrieve a stolen skull and to save
the lovely Candy. This is being done
by fighting your way through the
colourful mazes. You can move by
rolling and jumping  the latter
supported by trampoline in some
places, and later through a tube
system or even via teleport.
Difficulty increases bit by bit with
the levels: You need to find
matching keys to unlock doors, and
to get rid of some opponents with a
shot collected earlier. And of
course the clock is ticking all the
while. A saveable high score list
and password system round off this
title.

Check out the Jim Slim trailer by
Poison:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=k28WMcmaNjo

More information is available here:

http://www.protovision-online.com/gam
es/jimslim.htm

Get your own impression of Jim Slim
by trail playing the two demo levels!

The full game including box and
printed manual is now available via
the Protovision Online Shop:
http://www.protovision-online.de/cata
log/

-------------------------------------

*************************************
       64COPY UPDATED TO 4.43
*************************************

http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~schepers/DOW
NLOAD/64CP444.ZIP

64COPY is an all-in-one file
converter and DOS maintenance
package. Its intended use is to
convert the various files that exist
for the C64 emulators. Files like
D64, D71, D81, D80, D82, DNP, D2M,
T64, X64, LNX, ARK, ARC, SDA, LBR,
SPY, CPK and all the ZipCodes
(Diskpacked, Sixpacked and
Filepacked) can be converted to
whatever format you need for your
favourite emulator, or for use on
the real C64. You still need to get
whatever emulator package you want
in order to use the files you have
as 64COPY does not provide any
emulator functionality, nor does it
communicate with any Commodore disk
drive.

* Changes to the Disassembler

* Discovered several nasty bugs in
  the GCR conversion routines

* Fixed some small bugs in
  ZipCode/D64 conversion,
  specifically in the ZipCode code
  portion.

* Changes to the ROM/EPROM conversion

* Added EPROM (ASCII) format
  conversion to the Alt-F10 menu.
  This function converts the common
  ASCII formats such as Intel
  Intellec 8, Motorola Exormax and
  Hexadecimal ASCII back to binary.
  The source ASCII file type is
  usually auto-detected correctly.

* Some LNX files weren't recognized
  because their signature was
  shorter than expected. I've
  changed the way LNX signatures are
  parsed to recognize shorter or
  longer ones. I've also changed the
  signature that 64Copy creates LNX
  files with, removing the version
  number and making it more generic.

* Fixed a small bug in my CheckXXX
  code dealing with logging. A
  string variable was defined too
  small and could be populated with
  a very large string causing memory
  corruption and making the logging
  fail (among other weirdness). The
  function to show the log failure
  was also somewhat broken as the
  long filename log file would be
  trimmed down to 20 characters but
  the display window would be 76
  characters wide.

* CheckZipCode6 has been enhanced to
  report if sectors were not seen or
  if sectors were seen multiple
  times on a decoded track.
  Sometimes sectors can be
  duplicated, resulting in some
  sectors being duplicated and some
  missing. Also illegal sector
  values are now reported.

* D81 subdirectory headers were
  being created with improper
  padding characters ($00) instead
  of $A0.

* The File Info (Ctrl-N) for MP3
  files didn't take into account a
  ID3 V2 TAG header. It is now
  detected and skipped. Now, the
  proper MP3 info is displayed for
  files with a V3 ID3 V2 header. The
  info box also shows if either a
  V1.x and/or a V2.x tag exists.

To download a copy head here

http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~schepers/DOW
NLOAD/64CP444.ZIP

-------------------------------------

*************************************
      'ESCAPE' FULL GAME FOUND
           BY GTW WEBSITE
*************************************

199? Timsoft

Credits

Code - Rafal Javor Jaworski
Music - Sebastian Moog Bachlinski
Graphics - Jetan, Rafal Comankh
Kwasny

A big thanks to Witold Bryndza who
gave us the heads up about this long
lost Timsoft which recently had an
article published with a download
link at C&A Fan. This was a game
developed by a team called Artcore
for Timsoft.

This is a neat little flick screen
platformer with some colourful
graphics which sees you having to
find around 13 special squares
across the map to progress further,
whilst avoiding a series of enemies
such as bats, snakes and giant
snails.

It seems this was another Timsoft
title that was caught up in the
demise of the C64 and hence never
got a full release until now. Its
unsure why it has taken so long to
surface, but we are glad it now has.

Overall it's not the most
spectacular game we have played, and
it can get a little boring and samey
to play, but it is rare to find an
unreleased title in such a complete
state, and this is a good example to
digitally preserve and share with
others.

Rafal Kwasny has been in touch and
will hopefully be shedding some more
light on their game (as well as
other Artcore titles) very soon...

Go check it out and watch this space
for more details...

Frank.

(Additional source credits - Witold
Bryndza, Rafal Kwasny)

http://www.gtw64.co.uk/Pages/e/Review
_Escape.php

-------------------------------------

*************************************
           COMMODORE NEWS
*************************************

RELEC society in partnership with
website http://www.meta-morphos.org
organizes a competition open to all
programmers on the planet.

A development machine for MorphOS is
to win: it's a EFIKA 5200B "DELUXE
EDITION", a unique prototype
proposed by RELEC. The list of
elements is given later in this
article.

Developers will send their proposal
of project (which must operate at
least on MorphOS and AmigaOS 4.x) by
mail before May 31, 2011 at the
following email address: papiosaur2
[at] hotmail.fr.

The list of all projects will be
posted June 1 at the site
meta-morphos.org

Voting will be by mail to the same
address before 1 July.

The voting results will be posted on
the website from 1 July.

The development machine will be
presented at the Alchemy 2011
(France) and it will be up when the
project is finalized.
In case of withdrawal or no results
available after 2 months it will
send the machine to the developer of
the project ranked second, etc. ...

If the winner needs to develop this
machine, it will be sent after 1
July.

The delivery of a diploma for "Best
Project MorphOS 2011" will be
officially presented at the Alchemy
2011 that will take place from 11
November to 13 November 2011 at Tain
l'Hermitage (26 - France).

The development machine is composed
of:

* A EFIKA 5200B motherboard,

* a housing epoxy polished,

* a Radeon graphic card,

* a PSU,

* MorphOS 2.7 or higher with its
  license,

* the latest pack Ultimate,

* MorphOS SDK pre-installed,

* carrying case.

-------------------------------------

*************************************
       AMIGA IMMORTAL AUDIO CD
*************************************

The fourth part of Amiga Immortal
audio CD series has been released.
Like the previous version, this is
also a double CD. First month
exclusively from maz-sound.

Most of the tracks have been created
by their original authors -
trademark of the Immortal series.
Sometimes even playing
live-instruments, you'll become
earwitness when Al Lowe himself
(Leisure Suit Larry) playing the
saxophone, Jon Hare (Cannon Fodder)
back at the microphone and Dave
Govett (Wing Commander) hitting the
drums.

The latest edition contains music
from the following games:

Atomino, Benefactor, Big Run, Cannon
Fodder, Capital Punishment,
Dangerous Streets, F17 Challenge,
Fascination, Final Fight, First
Samurai, Flashback, Flink, Fury of
the Furries, Future Wars, Gauntlet
3: The Final Quest, Jaguar XJ220,
LED Storm, Leisure Suit Larry,
Lemmings, Liberation: Captive 2,
Paradroid 90, Puggsy, T-Zero, Tales
from Heaven, TFX, Turrican 2,
Ultimate Body Blows, Walker, Wing
Commander, Wolfchild, Zarathrusta,
Zeewolf, Zeewolf 2: Wild Justice.

There are also short previews
(although only through flash player)
for all the tracks.

http://www.maz-sound.com/Immortal/

-------------------------------------

*************************************
     ICEFILESYSTEM 2.4 RELEASED
*************************************

http://blubbedev.net/icefs/

2.4 (2011-APRIL-11)

* Deleting file larger than "Max
  recycle bytes" no longer empties
  recycle dir. Max file size in
  recycledir is now "Max recycle
  bytes" / 16. (if set).

* New (optional) environment
  variable: ICE_AUTORETRYIO. Set it
  to 1..n for number of automatic
  retries of failed IO requests.

* Smaller bug in automatic renaming
  of recycledir files fixed.

* action_seek() allowed seeking
  beyond file with internal error
  requester as result, fixed.

* IceSalv did not preserve file
  dates, fixed.

* IceCheck fixes/improvements.

* FSConfig got renamed to IceConfig.

* VInfo got renamed to IceInfo.

* No changes from the rc2 version.

* 64bit file/partition/extent sizes
  (actually very close to 2^63
  bytes). No self imposed
  fragmentation of large files
  unless there is not enough
  contiguous space available.

* All metadata on disk is
  checksummed. This means any errors
  on disk will be detected a lot
  quicker.

* Meta level journaling. Journaling
  makes operations to disk atomic.

* Hardlinks (directory and file),
  softlinks, notification, examine
  all, record locking, file
  comments. Fully supported.

* Supports sector sizes from 2^9 to
  2^31, at least in theory. File
  system layout on disk is not
  dependant on a specific underlying
  sector size. File system may
  however place data on disk so that
  it is optimal for the sector size
  used.

* Supports block sizes from 512
  bytes to 32 KB. Still works very
  well with small block sizes though.

* File system does not get slower
  for larger partitions (scales very
  well), or when heavily fragmented.

* No limit in # of files/dirs in
  partition/dirs.

* Handles removable media.

* Supports optional recycle dir.

* Supports automatically truncated
  log files and file change log.

* Wastes only 128k (and
  pre-allocates another 128k for
  meta space) for file system
  administration data, regardless of
  partition size.

* Dynamic handling of cache memory.
  Memory is given back
  (progressively) to system when not
  used.

-------------------------------------

*************************************
         1541U-II UPDATE 2.1
*************************************

WHAT IS IT?

The '1541 Ultimate' is a storage
solution for your Commodore home
computer, such as the C64, C128, C
plus4, C16, etc. This piece of
hardware implements a 'real' 1541
disk drive for Commodore computers.
There are two versions of this
board; the 1541 Ultimate-I and the
1541 Ultimate-II. The 1541
Ultimate-I uses an SD-card or
MMC-card to store the floppy disks,
while the 1541 Ultimate-II uses
MicroSD and USB pen-drives. Both the
1541 Ultimate-I and the 1541
Ultimate-II contain a replica of all
the necessary hardware to be fully
compatible with a real drive.

NEW UPDATE OF THE 1541 ULTIMATE II
FIRMWARE!

* Ready for testing V2.1. If no
  unacceptable new bugs are found,
  this could be the release ;)

* Config menu is now 'hot', meaning
  that all settings that can be
  applied when exiting the menu will
  be applied immediately without
  reboot.

* Audio options added

* Stereo SID emulation added

* Initial support for Domark
  cartridges added; not yet tested
  (and no support from the menu in
  this release).

* Improvements made in file system
  handling.. (It's not 'clean' yet,
  but delete and rename now work)

* Issue solved that caused errors
  when more than one cluster was
  used for a directory. (ouch)

* Bug fixed that caused a crash when
  partition list was skipped.

* Some additional testing with SID
  support..

* Created module for selecting audio
  options in the Ultimate
  configuration menu. Address for
  second SID now configurable.

* Some experiments done with EM1010
  USB to Ethernet module. The module
  doesn't comply with the USB
  philosophy of interrupts.. it
  *always* gives an interrupt every
  poll.. (wrong!) But nevertheless,
  managed to send a DHCP discover
  and receive a reply from the
  router. :) (not yet functional in
  this release)

* Command Interface created and
  handler set up for testing VHDL.
  (not yet functional in this
  release)

* Cartridge Logic restructured to
  make it a little more plug and go..

* Reading of ISO9660 added (both as
  .ISO file, as well as from
  external USB CD-ROM..)

* Partition list skipped when there
  is just one...

For more information look at the
website http://www.1541ultimate.net/

-------------------------------------

*************************************
           NEW MASONICONS
*************************************

Two new icon sets in the AmigaOS 4.1
Update 1 design are available on the
Masonicons website.

MASONICONS COLLECTION APRIL 2011

Icons for Apps, Tools and Utilities
like a completed RDesktop and
Newscoaster set, several generic
icons for backup, default icons for
audio files, Hyperbench, QT and many
more

DISK ICONS COLLECTION

Additional Device Icons for AmigaOS
4.1

www.masonicons.info

-------------------------------------

*************************************
 AUTOMATIC MONITOR SWITCH FOR AMIGA
*************************************

Andr Pfeiffer (Ratte) developed a
automatic monitor switch for the
Amiga computer. The switch is a "Do
It Yourself" project, but there is a
very good tutorial on how to
assemble the monitor switch. The
monitor switch can be used with the
Amiga 1200, 3000 and 4000 computers
with a IndivisionAGA with
CybervisionPPC or BVision. For all
the details you can visit the
a1k.org web page

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.p
hp?p=417467

-------------------------------------

*************************************
            TOSEC UPDATED
*************************************

The Old School Emulation Center
(TOSEC) is a website and retro
computing initiative dedicated to
the cataloguing and preservation of
software, firmware and resources for
microcomputers, minicomputers and
video game consoles. The main goal
of the project is to catalogue and
audit all possible kinds of software
and firmware images for these
systems.

As of release 2011-01-19, TOSEC
catalogues over 200 unique computing
platforms and continues to grow. As
of this time the project had
identified and catalogued 389,228
different software images/sets,
consisting of over 2.95TB of
software, firmware and resources.

http://www.tosecdev.org/

-------------------------------------

*************************************
        C&A GAMES 3 RELEASED
*************************************

The 3rd release of C&A Games has
been released, This is a polish
magazine, here is a translation of
the release information from the
website

Written by TOUDIdel

Finally, after long wait, we are
pleased to present you a new issue
of C & A Games (TOC). In this third
instalment of 52 pages you will find
reviews of games and a comprehensive
description of the " TFX "and"
Flimbo 's Quest, history's about the
game , "Boulder Dash " and an
interview with Thomas Lewandowski ,
known as Levi .

We also request to you, dear
readers. If anyone feels up to and
want to assist the editors in the
form of articles, e.g. for games, we
invite you to help shape the
magazine. It depends on your
contribution to the frequency with
which will show new issues of the
magazine.

http://ca-fan.pl/

-------------------------------------

*************************************
      SPELLCHECKER.LIBRARY V1.0
*************************************

Antoine Dubourg a.k.a. Tcheko
released its latest production :
spellchecker.library 1.0

This new library offers
spellchecking feature based on a
dictionary of words. It uses common
and efficient spellchecking
algorithms : double metaphone and
Levenshtein distance (used in major
Office package like OpenOffice,
AbiWord...). This first release is
aimed mainly at developer as no
application currently uses
spellchecker.library.

Currently, this library offers
'(s)low' performances :
spellchecking is done with a simple
lookup table. Further version will
include faster spellchecking with
the help of btree.library to the
price of 'huge' memory consumption.
Tested with a French dictionary of
more than 330.000 words,
spellchecker.library took more than
80MB of memory excluding its usage
on low end hardware like Efika. Some
benchmarking were done to evaluate
the spellchecking speed : up to 1
000 words per second was achieved on
a Mac Mini@1.42 with the btree
version of the library.

Still, further version of the
library will be designed to handle
low memory case to accommodate every
kind of hardware. This library also
has been wrapped and tested with OWB
which offers internal API for
spellchecking.

Download : SpellChecker-1.0.lha
http://czeko.free.fr/public/spellchec
ker-1.0.lha (14KB)

=====================================

*************************************
         STROKE WORLD REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

Free download from Protovision

OVERVIEW

Mr. Universum was the hero of the
galaxy until a bad alien ensured
that he decreased some kilos.

The world and the whole universe
were in sweet harmony. Mr.
Universum, the uncrowned king and
hero of the universe provided for
security and the peace for all the
peoples in the galaxy. He already
struck many glorious battles,
triumphed in many fights. Only with
one nature our hero got along never
completely: with the little green
muscle eater. Now and then, always
exactly then, if Mr. Universum
counted to few on it, this small
poison dwarf emerged - in order to
make for the hero hell hot, so far
however without success. Until
someday...

Minimum system requirements: C64 or
C128 in C64 mode, 1541/1571 Floppy,
Joystick.

Also compatible with: 1541 Ultimate,
SD2IEC, uIEC/SD, CMD SuperCPU with
SuperRAM card.

This game is available as PAL or
NTSC version!

COMMODORE FREE

Stroke World consists of five
worlds; each one is divided into
five sections. In each world a new
graphic set awaits you. To leave a
section, you have to kill all
creatures on the screen and run to a
little signpost to enter the next
screen. At the end of each world you
will get a password, so you can
re-enter that world at every time by
typing in this password in the main
menu. After you have fought through
all the levels there is a really big
end boss waiting for you. Can you
destroy him?

You will want to download this file
as it's a free game from PROTOVISON
and is available from the following
url

http://www.protovision-online.de/game
s/strokeworld.htm

Main PROTOVISION website is located
here, and after this magazine you
will remember it off hand!

http://www.protovision-online.de/

If you enter the shop and look at
the games PROTOVISION have 3
categories to choose from they are

* Full price
* Mid price and
* Freeware

In the freeware section are the 2
games

Starting Stroke World we are greeted
in German this is however easily
changed by

With a joystick in port 1 press fire
and you will be given a screen with
options

Here you can select amongst other
things the language

Select English or Deutsch and then
save option

Of course it will be in German first
so its this option

Ok with that set we can then start
the game, the change happens
instantly although you will have
lost the intro in the correct
language, I couldn't find a way to
restart from the intro so it seems
you have to reload the game to get
the intro in the correct language.

The intro sets the scene but if you
don't want to read it hit the fire
button to start the game

Now I don't know about the games
history but on loading the game we
are presented with our hero lost in
a cavern

The basic idea is you can climb and
jump and punch (to kill) you have to
kill all the enemies and then go to
the anvil to exit to the next level

Here labelled in the picture from
screen 1 just to be sure you know
how to exit

Of course you are up against the
clock and you only have a limited
number of shields

On later levels it's important to
plan a route as you could get stuck
by jumping down and not being able
to get back up.

The main character is a stick man!
don't be put off though the
animation on the character is very
good indeed, jumping climbing, very
smooth, the other items are
basically animated and the
background scenery looks very nice.

Here our hero skilfully walks across
a rope bridge or is it a pipe of
some sorts

Of course when our here looses
energy he dies (ahhh shame) and does
so by "unzipping himself from head
to foot and opening himself into 2
pieces, very amusing.

To kill a creature you thump it by
pressing the fire button in the
direction you want to thump and
moving in that direction

If I could find a way to kill these
stupid bat things then I would
actually be quite good at the game

At the moment I am climbing ladders
and pointing towards it hitting like
mad in the hope I splat it into
oblivion, trouble is its not working
to well in this game, these
sometimes are quite hard to kill off.

Left on his own our here becomes
board and stats to stretch and then
dance about
Here is a scene directly after I
received a password

Watch out for the killer snowball
throwing snowmen

Remember on the later levels you can
use the joystick diagonally, this is
very useful for when on the
ropes/pipes to swing and jump off.

Drop from a height and our hero will
complain shaking his fist violently
at you, fall from a great height and
its all over, you will splat on the
ground.

Sonically the music is excellent
nice bobby music on the intro then
down to some hard hitting techno on
the first 3 screens the snow man
levels start to chill out with lots
of white noise and a more relaxed
pace of music, sadly my game playing
hasn't progressed me onto further
levels.

The game would benefit from a text
doc to set the scene and help with
the control system but as you play
it will be obvious how to control
your man, it's a very solid release
and for the price FREE you would be
mad not to download a copy and at
least give it a test drive. If this
is the sort of game PROTOVISION deem
as free just think what the paid for
versions are like

Review
Commodore Free

Graphics: 7/10
Music: 8/10
Gameplay: 8/10

OVERALL SCORE: 8/10

=====================================

*************************************
           CASCADE REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

OVERVIEW

Your task is to pop as many bubbles
as you can. In order to do this, two
neighbouring bubbles must have the
same colour. The more bubbles you
can destroy at once, the more points
you will get and if all the bubbles
are destroyed you will get 500 extra
points!

This game was first released at the
Vision 2002 but unfortunately that
version had a bug: after a while,
the music was corrupted. This is the
new 100% version.

Minimum system requirements: C64 or
C128 in C64 mode, 1541/1571 Floppy,
Joystick.

Also compatible with: 1541 Ultimate,
SD2IEC, uIEC/SD, IEC-ATA, MMC
Replay, MMC64, 1581, CMD FD, CMD HD,
CMD RAMLink, IDE64.

This game is PAL only!

This is another Freeware game from
Protovision

Available from here
http://www.protovision-online.de/game
s/cascade.htm

This game has appeared on a number
of systems from Mobile phones to
full blown commercial releases Lets
take a look at what PROTOVISION had
to offer

First you need a joystick plugged
into port two and after a brief
intro and how to play the game; we
are on the main screen, it's a
puzzler as you may have guessed and
its another of my favourite games.
The Protovision implementation is
very good indeed, cool music from
the start sets a nice relaxing pace
for the game

As the bubbles are popped they move
over to the left (assuming a space
is created on the line) and join
onto other bubbles

Of course the idea is to clear all
the bubbles from the screen and gain
as many points as possible so I
didn't do to well here. Only the
same coloured bubbles connected
together will pop. The main idea is
to get as many as possible of the
same colour together, and pop them
all at once to gain extra points

The game works out when this cant be
done here we see 3 dissimilar
colours and so the game ends and
allows you to enter a score

Functional graphics and excellent
SID sounds again for FREE you cant
go wrong with this one. To pop the
bubbles move the pointer (using the
joystick) over the bubbles you want
to pop and press fire. Easy controls
to master but the game due to its
Random starts of bubble locations
can become very frustrating, played
with others watching it can soon
turn to violence as different people
try to tell you there strategy is
the best system.

Review
Commodore Free

Graphics: 5/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 8/10

OVERALL: 7/10

=====================================

*************************************
         IT'S MAGIC 1 REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

OVERVIEW

It's Magic by Protovision is a jump
'n run with extremely cute graphics.
The main character of the game is a
little tomcat named Tommy - he is
very curious and so he wants to be
the first one who leaves his home
world, the Dream Islands. To make
this plan come true, he signs on at
a wizard. One day, the wizard is out
for some time, Tommy uses the
opportunity: He takes the magic book
and the crystal sphere and with the
right spell, he catapults himself
through time and space. Everything
goes well it seems and he finds
himself in the so called "Outside
World". Fascinating - but soon Tommy
wants to return home and realizes
that this is impossible! He needs
the crystal sphere for that, and
some magic potions... Unfortunately,
the sphere broke down into thousand
little pieces, and the potions are
guarded by some monsters... And so,
Tommy's first adventure begins, and
you can experience it with him.
Meanwhile, the successor is
available, too: It's Magic 2.

It's Magic consists of three worlds,
each one is divided into 8 sections.
In each world a new graphic set
expects you. To leave a section, you
have to collect all diamonds and
find a magic potion. This potion is
carried around by one of the little
monsters which run and fly around
everywhere. And when you reach the
level's end and cannot leave - no
problem: It's Magic scrolls to the
left and the right, so you can run
back any time. This is also useful
in other cases: For example you can
run after a monster until you get
it. To do away with these creatures,
you got an - of course magical -
shot. Depending on the kind of the
beastie more or less hits are
sufficient to let it blow up in pink
dust.

Minimum system requirements: C64 or
C128 in C64 mode, 1541/1571 Floppy,
Joystick.

Also compatible with: 1541 Ultimate,
SD2IEC, uIEC/SD.

This game is PAL only!

Free download from here

http://www.protovision-online.de/game
s/itsmagic.htm

On starting the game we are asked if
we want to use the fast loader, the
choice I suppose is down to your
hardware, and if it causes problems.
Here on a stock machine for the
review I selected yes ( however for
the record it took 1 minute with the
speed loader and about 2 minutes
5seconds without selecting the speed
loader)

Ok either way the splash screen
loads and the music comes in

WOW this is Freeware!

The music is great boppy and bubbly
with sort of clashing squeals I love
it, after about 10 minutes of
listening I decided to play the game.

Look at the screen shot

Our hero a yellow cat? Starts his
journey, and I love the clouds in
the top border floating around very
nice, there isn't any in game music
just the spot sound effects however
this doesn't really detract anything
from the game. The controls are
using the joystick with the fire
button causing our hero to jump, to
finish each level you must collect
all the diamond segments and then
find the potion, this could be
carried by any creature so you are I
suppose best to shoot everything on
sight and ask questions later.
Similar scenarios have been used on
other Commodore games so the game
play in that respect isn't unique.

A sequel exists and as you can guess
is called its "Dave the fish! Sorry
ok its called magic 2, however this
version for the review is FREE and
so you have little to loose by
downloading and playing the game.
Very polished excellent control
system and the physics (you can read
this as the gravity placed on our
character) is just right, you do
feel he is a little light when
jumping but without this he wouldn't
be able to collect everything, and
how heavy are yellow cats?
Playability is good and the
frustrating "one more go" is here I
cant really think of anything
critical to say about the game, its
well balanced and thought out. Oh
did I say I like the clouds (oh ok
sorry then for repeating that)

Excellent a very good game

Review
Commodore Free

Graphics: 9/10
Sounds: 8/10
Gameplay: 9/10

OVERALL: 9/10

=====================================

*************************************
         IT'S MAGIC 2 REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

Tom, the little tomcat, has gained a
lot of experience already in his
first adventure (It's Magic), his
journey to the outside world. After
he returned to the Dream Islands and
was celebrated as a great hero, he
since lived happily at his master's
place, the wise wizard who taught
him being a good magician as time
passed.

Now the Dream Islands - there, all
animals live together peacefully -
are in danger. And what Tom doesn't
know yet is that he himself is
conjuring up this danger by mistake!
More about this you will get to know
in the intro... But one thing is for
sure: The Dream Islands will be
pushed into chaos and the only one
who can save them is our little Tom!

It's Magic 1 was already nice, but
It's Magic 2 tops it by all means
and is on its way to become a true
C64 classic amongst the jump 'n
runs. In the picturesque intro you
are introduced to the background of
the game. A saveable high score and
a fastloader are also onboard, but
as the loader can also be disabled,
the game perfectly runs on your
FD-2000, HD or RAMLink!

Minimum system requirements: C64 or
C128 in C64 mode, 1541/1571 Floppy,
Joystick.

Also compatible with: 1541 Ultimate,
SD2IEC, uIEC/SD, IEC-ATA, 1581, CMD
FD, CMD HD, CMD RAMLink.

This game is PAL only!

While in It's Magic 1 Tom had to
proceed against his enemies with
shots and had to find magic items
for finishing one level, now in It's
Magic 2, he has advanced his magic
skills so far that he can just
vaporize the enemies by jumping onto
them, just in the very style of
Giana Sisters! Additionally there
are of course magical helpers like
invulnerability or time stoppers
that ease Tom's life in the fight
against the occupants of Dream
Island.

In the game there are five worlds in
total, each with an own, precisely
drawn multicolour graphic set. Also
in contrast to its predecessor It's
Magic 2 provides music during the
gameplay, two compositions in every
world. As hardly any other game,
It's Magic 2 uses the ability of the
C64 to display also hires elements
in a multicolour charset. This way
you will be able to discover hires
elements embedded in the levels
(like the dinosaur skeleton in level
1) that enhances the overall quality
of the game graphics significantly.

REVIEW

Released in 2000 this follow on to
its magic 2 features 6 worlds with 5
different levels with approximately
40 different monsters in the game,
each level has different graphics
and in game music

Loading up this sequel to version 1
(how can anything get much better)

We are greeted with WELL MORE OF THE
SAME REALY There does seem to be
more visual details in version 2 and
wow even more scrolling clouds in
the borders we also see the score
screen has updated along with the
timer and lives

Version 1 score board

Version 2 Score board

Something else has changed we can
now jump onto alien creatures and
kill them in part one this would
result in our hero suffering a life
loss, you bounce onto a creature and
kill it then bounce off, as is the
case in other games like this one.
The other thing is we now don't have
an option to fire from the start

Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 8/10
Gameplay: 9/10

OVERALL: 9/10 AND A BIT

=====================================

*************************************
          BOMB MANIA REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

Firstly get a four player adaptor
then plug in 4 joysticks and play
this, of course you will need to
have at least 4 friends to get the
full benefit of the game otherwise
you will need 1 other friend as you
cant play against the commuter in
this version of the classic bomb game

From the splash screen you know
something is going to be very special

And launching the game doesn't
disappoint in any way

The idea of the game is to blow up
all the opposition so you are the
last man standing, the game has
appeared on a variety of systems and
versions for the Commodore 64 exist,
but something is special about this
version.

The frustrating game pay the jazzy
boppy music, heck I have played this
game over and over with friends,
hours of time laughing and joking
and still stone sober! Commodore
Scene used to have a display with a
4 player adaptor and this game on;
and the stand was always crowded
with people wowing at the game and
asking "where can I get this".

The game play becomes obsessive the
only downside of course is you need
friends to pay as there is no
computer opponent option, you can of
course cheat and start the other
players yourself but where is the
fun in that, especially if you blow
yourself up and still don't win,
Various power-ups exist and blowing
up bits of wall will reveal them,
some are nice others not so nice.

The graphics are good and the music
excellent, I know for a fact when
you beat the opposition you will be
jumping around like mad shouting "in
your face losers" then back for
another game, Too many hours have
been lost with me playing this game.
Its one of PROTOVISONS Full price
range at 13 euro's and you can tell
why a demo is available, follow the
links from here head for the shop in
your preferred language
http://www.protovision-online.de/

various levels add to the variety
with pipes to climb in oh and watch
out for the bombing ghosts

Ha in your face losers!

Ok you played the demo now try to
stop whistling the in game music (ha
ha cant can you see what I mean, you
will now wake up singing this!)

Review
Commodore Free

Graphics: 8/10
Sounds: 9/10
Gameplay: 10/10 Yep honestly

OVERALL: 9/10

=====================================

*************************************
           ICE GUYS REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

OVERVIEW

Ice Guys is a yet another cute jump
run shoot platform game from the
Protovision team. The game can be
played by for 1 or 2 players
simultaneously. The game as you
would expect has multicolour
graphics and superb digisynth music.

The story so far: During the last,
snow-rich winter, from some unknown
location lots of little, mean
monsters came and decided to kidnap
some snowmen! And so, lots of these
beloved creatures disappeared over
night from gardens, sidewalks and
parks, leaving big holes in the
beautiful winter landscape. Two
former Antarctic researchers, which
are now retired and have opened an
ice caf, can't accept this
impertinence by any means. They work
out a plan and decide to fight
against the nasty little monsters,
to let the snowmen return to freedom.

Ice Guys features a unique game
concept, Bubble Bobble could be a
named as a far relative. The
objective is to throw snowballs at
the little unfriendly beasts, so
that these get stuck in an
avalanche. You then can push this
avalanche, it will roll down and hit
further monsters - but be careful,
as you probably don't want to hit
your team mate or even become a
victim of your own avalanche! In the
beginning the enemies can be
defeated quite easily, so you can
make yourself familiar with the
game. But soon it will become harder
and fighting the monsters won't be
that smooth!

Minimum system requirements: C64 or
C128 in C64 mode, 1541/1571 Floppy,
1 or 2 Joysticks.

Also compatible with: 1541 Ultimate.

This game is PAL only!

Ice Guys offers a number of
possibilities to proceed in the
game: Next to lots of extras you can
also collect some special symbols
which lead the player into a bonus
game. It consists of a turbo sledge
race (in 2 player mode of course
with both players at the same time)
in which you should collect as much
ice as you can, as for 10 of them
you are granted a bonus life, with
which you even can get a dropped out
second player back into the game!
Also the music in Ice Guys is high
above the average and the hot
rhythms motivate you to play. Next
to finest SID music the game
features two real digisynth pieces a
la Chris Hlsbeck or Jeroen Tel.

COMMODORE FREE

Super smooth snowball throwing
platform game, throw snowballs at
various creatures to gain points and
bonus prizes and advance to more
complex levels.

The game play is just right (for me)
the game starts out easy and as time
progresses gradually monsters speed
up and grow in numbers, until its
frantic paced.

Excellent graphics and Sonics
accompany the game play, with smooth
bouncing game play screens scrolling
into play, there is little here to
criticize. Throwing a snowball at a
creature and hitting it x amount of
time will render it defunded as the
alien creature will be turned into a
giant snowball, this gives out
heroes chance to push the ball and
kill anything in its tracks
resulting in a bonanza of prizes and
bonus points. So the real skill is
to get a monster at the top level
with the others underneath then when
you push the snowball it will blast
out all the opposing creatures.

You will be screaming at the TV on
this game, the frantic paced action

Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 7/10

OVERALL: 7/10

=====================================

*************************************
          METAL DUST REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

METAL DUST - AN OVERVIEW

* Seven different weapon systems

* Single or dual player mode

* Four really big levels with a lot
  of small, many medium and some
  very big enemies

* Giant end monsters with different
  attack behavior

* Overlay color graphic objects and
  lots of other nice graphical
  effects

* More than 1000 blocks of digi
  music data per level, exclusively
  composed by the band Welle:Erdball

* Digi music will be played with
  very high CIA rate

* Real-time mixing of digis for
  explosions and game effects

* Really soft parallax scrolling
  with high speed areas

* High end sprite multiplexer that
  still runs stable while playing
  high quality digi music

* Outro sequences with brilliant
  graphics

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

* a Commodore 64 with Heavy Duty
  Power Supply or a Commodore 128

* a 3,5" floppy drive (FD-2000,
  FD-4000 or 1581)

* a CMD SuperCPU 20 MHz Accelerator
  with SuperRAM Card (at least 4 MB)

* and of course a monitor or TV as
  well as one or two joysticks

THE MAKING OF METAL DUST

In 1995, Big User aka Stefan Gutsch
had the idea to program a Shoot 'em
Up for the Commodore 64 with the 8
MHz accelerator card "Flash8". He
started as the only coder and
graphician, and because he is not a
musician, he digitized selected MOD
music from the Amiga, using the
DAISY digitizer. But because of the
instability of the Flash8 card, Big
User stopped development soon after.

Fascinated by the project, some
people could persuade Big User in
restarting the project later on.
Because of the lack of development
tools - there was only the (a bit
unstable and buggy) "Flash8
AssBlaster" - and due to some
hardware problems, development went
very slowly. Finally, there has been
one level with some enemies and a
quite big end monster. This is the
level many of you know from scene
parties and other occasions.

At this time, about 1997, Stefan
Gutsch met Chester Kollschen,
creator of the top games Ice Guys
and Bomb Mania. Both coders had
always dreamed of creating a
Turrican-like game. The idea of an
(unofficial) successor of Turrican I
and II was born. To get every C64
user the chance to play the game, it
was decided not to require the
SuperCPU for this one. Now Stefan
could concentrate on what he can do
best, great graphics and creative
level design. Chester started with
the hard work of programming the
game, work name "Turrican 3". The
goal was to be not only as good as
but even better than the
predecessors. Finally music had been
implemented, the end monsters got
bigger and absolutely flicker free -
using a completely new designed
multiplex routine. The game could
even load data while one could move
the player. In 1998, the project was
presented to a small bunch of people
during a scene party. But during the
night, the disk was stolen and the
half completed game was spread
around the internet. Shocked by the
fact that such things could happen
even in the fantastic C64 scene,
Chester cancelled the work.
Simultaneously, Factor 5, makers of
the "Turrican" games on Amiga,
threatened because of copyright
issues. Half a year later, Chester
started again to code, this time not
a game, but a new operating system
that one time shall replace GEOS. He
thought that the SuperCPU offers a
great deal of power and so much
possibilities that there is a need
for a new, SuperCPU-only operating
system. CLiPS was born.

Fortunately, also Stefan regained
his interest for the C64 and started
coding. Surprisingly, the - actually
cancelled - project "Metal Dust" was
revived. Stefan worked hard on the
game, although programming was not
easy. Three more levels were
created, also some end monsters were
designed. But frequent setbacks and
long bug hunts more and more slowed
development down and also took away
motivation. Metal Dust died again.

Malte Mundt aka ThunderBlade could
not accept the thought that such a
fascinating game project should
never be finished. He organised a
new meeting between Stefan and
Chester, where a new cooperation had
been decided. Again Chester took
over the code work and Stefan could
concentrate on the graphics. In the
meantime, Chester has recoded the
complete game engine. The game
concept has been redesigned and
extended, for example by
implementing the two-player mode.
Malte and Chester reached an
agreement with the band
Welle:Erdball to get an exclusive
sound track for Metal Dust. The
graphics have been improved again,
the levels got much better and much
bigger. Malte digitized and arranged
the music created by Welle:Erdball.
The old enthusiasm is back. After a
long time of hard work, Protovision
can now present you Metal Dust, the
first Shoot 'em Up for the Commodore
with SuperCPU.

METAL DUST - CREDITS

Producer: Stefan Gutsch (Big User)
Programming: Chester Kollschen
Graphics: Stefan Gutsch
Level Music: Welle:Erdball
Title and End sequence Music: Lars
Hutzelmann (The Blue Ninja)
Project Management: Malte Mundt
(ThunderBlade) and Milo Mundt
(MacGyver)

COMMODORE FREE

Now for those users without a SCPU
the best I can give you is that
there are various YouTube videos
available

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rcJ7BRbXX4
and here
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie79hicxteg

and an AVI file from the Protovision
website

http://www.protovision-online.de/md/t
railer.htm

When I heard about the game I became
excited, I saw some of the previews
and then actually managed to play
the actual game at a Commodore Scene
meeting. Now some may be saying that
using a SCPU attached to the
Commodore 64 turns the machine into
something else and not a real
Commodore 64, I must admit you have
a point and how many people in the
world actually own a SCPU in the
first place. I am lucky enough to
have one and also one on order from
Maurice Randal that has bee waiting
for him to put together for
something like 6 years! I would
advise you to stay away from him.

So the game looks amazing and of
course the sounds are just samples
replayed back through the SID chip,
the music is super cool matches the
pace of the game and ties the whole
project together well. However I
think that most of the SCPU power
has been utilized to replay samples,
although the massive monsters and
super smooth scrolling look like the
game is played on a 16 bit system,
there is some confusion with objects
that are in the background and
foreground. From my point of view I
couldn't tell the difference and
kept crashing into things I thought
were background objects.

The screen is absolutely full of
bullets flying and bolder ships,
there is no question this looks
amazing, I doo feel though that the
graphics would have been better
created on the C64 instead of
porting them from other platforms.

IS IT WORTH BUYING

Well you invested in a SCPU and lets
be honest there isn't much software
that utilizes the SCPU so you really
owe it to yourself to purchase a
copy, its just unbelievable the
response from others when they see
the game playing.

On the game play front its more a
question of learning flight patterns
than anything else, I did see some
members of Commodore Scene make it
to later levels, with giant monsters
virtually filling the screen.
Its s tough game but the playability
does make you go back for more.

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 8/10 Well its mainly
replaying sampled music
Playability: 7/10

OVERALL: 8/10

It does have a Wow factor but the
SCPU power would have been suited to
more than just digi sounds playback

=====================================

*************************************
           JIM SLIM REVIEW
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

THE STORY

In ancient times, there was a world
under a spell of terror! A wicked
demon known as the warlord Gothar
ruled the darklands.

In the middle of Gothar's evil
realm, there was a peaceful little
kingdom called Blizland. According
to the land's traditions, a magic
skull had been handed down from
generation to generation.

This skull had great and mysterious
powers and was used to protect the
friendly creatures - called Blizzies
- from the evil surrounding them.

Now the warlord Gothar has stolen
the magic skull.

Darkness has fallen over the little
kingdom, world peace is at stake!

But mighty Gothar has also taken the
beautiful Candy, your true love,
captive, so this has become a
personal affair to you, young Jim
Slim.

You are the chosen one to rescue the
beautiful Candy and bring back the
magic skull.

On your search for Candy you will
have to travel through unexplored
dangerous woods, caves, mountains,
and destroy every demon, monster or
other hostile helper of Gothar that
crosses your path.

On your journey through the land of
dragons you can collect hidden
coins, treasures and keys, which
will help you to survive the battles
and get you through the maze. But
beware, you never know what's
lurking behind the doors!

Once you reached Gothar's castle,
you will have to face his menacing
servants and find your way to the
deepest dungeon of the castle,
survive your last battle by
defeating Gothar, and rescue your
beautiful Candy.

All Blizzies have left Blizland,
except one old wise man who gives
you a final piece of advice: "The
easy way is not always the good way."

You'll get yourself in the middle of
extreme trouble, but Candy is surely
worth it!

Good luck!

COMMODORE FREE

Jim Slim an original game started by
Argus Designs and now released by
PROTOVISION, who hold exclusive
rights to the game.

When you are challenged to a
labyrinth of 15 worlds filled with
monsters, and dragons challenging
mazes and superb music and graphics,
especially when World peace is at
stake, not to mention the honour of
your girlfriend, you know there
isn't any excuse but to take on the
challenge. When you are told you
will be in the form of a red ball,
then the challenge steps up a notch
or rounds of the whole scenario!
When you are then told "retrieve the
stolen skull" then this is a
challenge No one can turn down.

The game is a jump and roll plat
former, featuring colourful
graphics, that change for each world
and also changing sound track. There
are some 15 worlds with are split
into 3 levels, the game features
teleport systems, keys to collect to
open doors, shooter power-ups, tube
systems and trampolines
And is boxed in a oversize plastic
disc case with printed instructions
and another disc containing various
PROTOVISION demos and previews.

LOADING..

To load the game you type

LOAD":*",8,1

This loads a Pre-loader and then
starts to load the game

And you must have all hardware speed
loaders disabled, the game supports
a range of hardware but the minimum
requirements are a Commodore 64 and
joystick and of course a disk drive.

Also the game is currently released
as a PAL only version.

First we are greeted with the
marketing glorious PROTOVISION
splash screen, looking slicker than
anything Sony or Microsoft could put
together this really sets the scene,
it's a sort of warm feeling seeing
the Protovision logo swirl into view
and the music start, who ever is
responsible for the logo and music
must feel very pleased with
themselves as this is a work of
great art, superb looking, and with
the letters "CLASS" written all over
it, well actually its PROTOVISION
but you know what I mean.

MOVING ON..

Pressing space starts to load the
game and we are greeted with the Jim
Slim splash screen, this stays on
screen until the joystick is
pressed, where we are taken to the
story of Jim slim and something
about his fate by what appears to be
a high priestess, the swirly music
plays and the words are scrolled on
screen, the princess mouths to the
words, although it would be better
had she actually spoke them out
loud, maybe as synthesised speech.

As the story unfolds the music
begins to build up, of course
whenever you feel bored just press
the fire button to go to the start
screen. The music is very good and
really sets the scene for our hero.

ALL FIRED UP.....

Pressing fire causes the disk to
whirl as the main JIM SLIM screen is
loaded into memory, the music begins
to pump out and the options are
given to

Start the game, enter a password,
Turn the music on/off or turn the
sound effects on/off

I quickly Rushed in and started the
game.......

As the level is started, the music
fades and the first set of levels
are loaded into memory, we are given
the first password, although why we
need it for level 1 I am unsure
anyway for completeness we are given
our first password.

The happy music starts and is hero
is placed on a GO square, with the
object to get the "OK" Square to
finish the level.

The first level takes some getting
used to, not because its hard but
because you need to figure out the
controls, the best advice is to Read
the manual, then re read the control
part! and finally test things out,
holding the joystick for a longer
period for example; causes our here
to move 2 squares instead of just
one, it takes a little time but
isn't frustrating and you soon get
used to the controls by level 3 you
should be very familiar with them.

A handy hint is to stay over the
trampoline the more you bounce the
higher you will go, oh and of course
a red key opens a red door. Trial
and error then tells you the first
"person" you meet on level 1 doesn't
seem to actually want to kill you,
just to roll around; you seem quite
same rolling over him!

Once you have the first few levels
under your belt you soon get the
hang of the control system,

Bright and colourful graphics, great
animations, super Sonics power-ups
and the pressure of the clock
ticking away all add to the
addictiveness of this platform game.

The game does have a feel of Thing
on a spring and for me personally
that isn't a bad thing, I don't seem
to be very adept at this game but,
from memory I was pretty poor at
thing on a spring.

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 8/10
Game play: 8/10
Last ability: 8/10

OVERALL SCORE 8/10

=====================================

*************************************
 INTERVIEW WITH THE PROTOVISION TEAM
          By Commodore Free
*************************************

Protovision is a German based label
dedicated to development and
distribution of C64 games and
hardware.

Q- Please introduce yourself and
PROTOVISON to the Commodore Free
Readers

JTR: Hi everyone, I'm Tim Jakob aka
Jak T Rip aka JTR and I salute to
all Commodore Free users! I'm
currently active as a coder in
Protovision. A long time ago I
started working on my 4 Player Pac
Man game "Pac It" and it's still
work in progress - that needs to
change! But I was also involved in
our current release, Jim Slim in
Dragonland.

Poison: Hi and my name is Oliver
Foerster aka Poison. I'm the main
webmaster and I'm also in the
orga-team. And I made three trailer
videos for our games so far.

MacGyver: My name is Milo aka
MacGyver. I am the main an
organizer: I do public relations and
manage news. I also manage game
projects, e. g. who needs what for
which project, and who could help
out. Furthermore, I'm helping Poison
with the website. Last but not
least, I inform the press about our
new releases.

Q- So what is your fascination with
Commodore Machines?

JTR: Lots of things. First of all, I
love both the graphics and the sound
more than those of any other
computer. RGB isn't my thing. And
did you know that the C64 creates
real sound waves directly while a
usual PC sound card does not and has
to go through a digital-analogue
conversion process?

Second: quickness / reaction times.
This might come as a surprise as the
good old commies have a relatively
slow processor, but what I mean is
this: I turn on the computer and it
is there instantly. I hit a couple
of buttons and a program is loaded
in no time (I use a fast loader
cartridge). No modern computer can
keep up with this performance! As
well as this, there is never a time
where my Commodore is hijacked by
some other process and gives me a
waiting sign. Never. I am always the
master of the system and I always
know what it does. Third: sleekness.
I will never understand that people
understand how today's computers, no
matter how fast, hang at times.
Maybe only for a split second, but
there's always an unpredictable
delay no matter what you are
presenting. This definitely lacks
style. Watch the C64 demo Good
Vibrations / The Coders on a real
machine and you will know what
"sleek" means.

Poison: I think it is hard to
describe the fascination for this
machine. For myself: I'm addicted to
C64 demos, SID Music and (of course)
games. I remember when "Deus Ex
Machina" by Crest was released, I
took my C64 to my workplace and
showed my colleagues what this 1 MHz
machine is able to do. Not all my
colleagues where fascinated, but
most of them liked the music and
what this retro machine is able to
perform.

MacGyver: I love both demos and
games. The C64 graphics and music
have a unique style which make me
coming back over and over again.
While the system seems to be rather
limited at first sight, the C64 has
the most power by MHz, KByte,
colours and voices. And there are
still new tricks even after 28
years. The C64 is the VW Beetle of
the computers: It gets you where you
want to go, not overloaded with
features, but with a lot of charm.

Q- When did Protovision start and
what was the main reason for the
Business

MacGyver: Protovision was founded in
1997, first as a pure game
development label by Malte Mundt aka
ThunderBlade and Stefan Gutsch aka
Big User. I was in the background
for the first couple of years. The
idea was to produce games on a very
high quality level, for both
standard C64 and also for an
enhanced C64. The first Protovision
game released was Stroke World,
published on GO64! magazine cover
disk. Also, there were a couple of
freelance game developers also from
Germany who distributed their games
themselves, such as Chester
Kollschen (Ice Guys) and Andr
Zschiegner (It's Magic). We offered
to distribute their games, too, in
order to reach a wider public by
having one organization people could
games easier; rather than have
several small labels run by one
private person.

JTR started to distribute the games.
When the Retro Replay came up, we
included it into our catalogue, too,
as it was a great hardware. More
hardware was added over time, such
as the 4 Player Interface and
earlier version of the Micromys PS/2
mouse adapter. When JTR had to move
several times due to his studies,
Poison took over distribution in
2003. He also created the first
Online Shop for us. Poison ran the
distribution from until 2009.
Afterwards, Stefan aka Doc of Desire
took over.

Q- How many people are involved in
PROTOVISION and what do they do

MacGyver: We currently have 9
members. But there are quite some
friends and fixed partners and
freelancers cooperating with us.

Q- What does PROTOVISION stand for

JTR: Our slogan "Creating the
Future" says it all. We're
innovating, we create, and there's
no future without Commodore
computers. However, you might also
like to judge for yourself what
Protovision means.

Poison: I think it is easier to
describe what Protovision is.
Protovision is a group of
enthusiasts, who sacrifice their
free time to give other enthusiasts
new products for their hobby.
However, as JTR said "Creating the
Future" - says it all.

MacGyver: Protovision stands for a
modern C64 label from which you can
get a lot from one hand.

Poison: No, the letters PROTOVISION
weren't an abbreviation for
something. It just was simple: A
company that produces games that are
so fascinating that you want to hack
that company to get your hands on
their games. And the fact that the
word "VISION" is inside, is shown in
our slogan "Creating the Future".
But no relevance in the sense of a
literal translation into German (or
in another language).

Q- Is the business making a profit
or is it more an intention to break
even, if you do make a profit where
do the funds go

JTR: We do make a lot of profit, but
not of the financial kind. No
really, this is a hobby and there's
no point in trying to "break even"
on games you work on for 4-5 years
on a Commodore. We want to cover
material and shipping costs, and
sometimes we make a few bucks extra,
sometimes also we loose. Extra bucks
will be used to pay for
advertisements, trade fair events or
for buying copyrights to unfinished
C64 games, as was the case with Jim
Slim.

Poison: For example: whenever we
release a new game, we give out many
free boxes for magazines to review
or just people who supported us in
the one or other way. These free
boxes means losses of sales, It
takes some time to catch up these
losses and sometimes we spend our
private money to restock our storage.

MacGyver: As for most of our games,
the major part of the profit made
after we covered our costs is going
to the developers.

Q- Is all testing done "in house" or
do you have Beta testers in
different countries

JTR: We're dependent on friends for
testing, they are from different
countries.

Q- Do you still copy protect disks
or do you feel there is no point now

JTR: We don't do copy protections,
but we do crack protections. A lot
of our games have been cracked and
do not play right or have limited
functionality afterwards.

Q- How is a "typical" game developed
what is the "usual" development plan
from idea to finished product

JTR: What? You are asking for a
planned, organized approach? No, no.
We do have people like Milo and Oli
and Stefan who are really well
organized, but they do not write
programs. The coders are more the
mad professor type.

MacGyver: Indeed, most games have
their own unique way they get
developed. Typical only is that we
try to make our games compatible to
alternative devices.

Q- You make hardware and software
and sell the items in the PROTOVISON
shop can you list some of the
products available for sale, also is
all the hardware made by PROTOVISION
or are you mainly a distributor

JTR: We are mainly focussed on
producing games more than anything
else, but we also distribute third
party products if we feel they
deserve support. For hardware, we
are mainly a distributor, although
we sometimes also support its
development. Here's some of our most
loved items for sale:

4 Player Interface

This hardware has been developed by
Chester Kollschen. With this
interface, you can plug in 4
joysticks to your C64.

Bomba Mania, Tanks 3000, Team Patrol

These are games for the 4 player
adapter. Bomb Mania is our best
selling game since ever, it is a
bomberman clone with funny additions
and extra features.

Newcomer

The most extensive game experience
ever developed for the C64. It is a
mixture between an adventure and a
role playing game and is so huge
that you will need half a week to
complete it, even if you know the
shortest way where you need to click
and say what. The texts alone take
about 3.5MB of space. As well, it
does not require tasks to be
completed in any particular order,
and many things can be achieved
through different ways. As it also
has multiple possible endings,
playing it many times can result in
very different game play each time.
We did not develop Newcomer, but are
good friends with the team behind
it, and did some support.

Metal Dust

We are particularly proud of this
brilliant Katakis or R-Type space
shooter as it is the first game
using the power of a SuperCPU to
boast effects. A SuperCPU is an
enhancement to the c64 that gives
20Mhz and up to 16MB of RAM. We not
only developed Metal Dust itself,
but also the development tools
around it (assembler, graphics and
level editors) and also use these
tools for other projects.

Q- Can you list the games structure
for example some are free some mid
price and some full price

JTR: One of our principles is that
we only sell what we think deserves
a price tag. We sometimes give games
out for free if they do not deserve
being paid for or we think it was
sold enough. Ranking a game as mid
price or full price is a discussion
between us and the developer (if it
is not us). The developer gets more
or less money depending on the price
in the end, while we always only
take the same amount for covering
our costs.

Q- What products would you like to
sell and what are you doing to get
these products to market

JTR: The first question is easy: all
C64 games and hardware that is worth
it! The second one is tougher to
answer and even tougher to execute.

Sometimes we do a lot of work behind
the scenes, work out contracts,
bring people together, help
specifying hardware or getting
software to a releasable state. All
of these activities are not visible
to the outside world and only
sometimes we are successful and get
something released. For example we
tried hard to get the SuperCPU
produced again, we found producers
and all, but in the end we did not
get permission - and now the unit is
practically unavailable. Also other
hardware like the 1541 Ultimate (an
ingenious disk drive replacement,
freezer cartridge and RAM expansion
cartridge replacement) are things we
want to support by distributing
them, but in 2005 a law was passed
in the EU that disallows selling
hardware without a costly
registration, which renders most C64
hardware activities illegal.

Poison: Yes, I also think that this
EU law block the homebrew scene. As
Jakob told before, we want to
support so many cool projects but it
is too costly.

MacGyver: We send out a newsletter,
monthly based. We also send our news
to various C64/8 bit/Retro
magazines. Sometimes mainstream
magazines like Micro Mart in the UK
or GamePro and M! Games in Germany.
What is the use of a great new game
or a cool new hardware if only a few
insiders know about it? With our
productions we can prove the C64 is
living to people who would not know
otherwise.

Q- If a reader has a game they would
like you to produce how they would
contact you and what royalties do
you pay

JTR: If someone has a game that we
think is worth being published for
money, we offer taking over the
initial costs for printing manuals,
labels, boxes and keep 3-4 Euros of
every order to reimburse the costs.
The rest goes to the developer. We
do not produce on demand.

MacGyver: They would email to
contact@protovision-online.de or use
the contact form in our online shop,
then we see if and what we can
workout together.

Q- If a reader has a part completed
project hardware or software could
you help put forward funding or
would you rather take over the
project and finish it yourselves

JTR: We prefer helping others finish
their stuff themselves. It is not
possible to really "fund" a project.
Most of the work is done for free,
by us and other hobby enthusiasts.
The money you earn with a C64 game
you work on for 4 years might be
enough to go have an exquisite
dinner or two, not more.

Q- Has there ever been a problem
with the different hardware designs
of the Commodore 64 for example the
differences between PAL and NTSC
machines and differing SIDs or even
revisions of the Commodore
motherboard, has this ever caused
you to stop or put projects on hold

JTR: There are huge differences, and
we try to stay as compatible as
possible without investing too much.
It is very hard to produce things
that run on NTSC the way they run on
PAL as the timing is very different.
We never stop a project due to this,
but it keeps being an issue.

MacGyver: If an NTSC user has a TV
set/monitor which can handle PAL,
I'd recommend they get a PAL C64
e.g. over on ebay.co.uk. This will
open a new universe of C64 software
to you! Our cool game Jim Slim has
problems on a few C64s which can not
handle AGSP, due to too weak RAM or
VIC. A few of our SIDs may sound a
little different on 6581 compared to
8580, but that has never been an
issue.

Q- Would you consider supporting
other Commodore machines like the
264 range (c16 and +4)

JTR: They are cool machines, too.
But as our time is too limited even
for the open C64 projects we have,
we don't plan to extend.

Q- What is your best selling product
and also what is the most requested
product (this maybe a product you
don't sell)

JTR: Bomb Mania is the best selling
game, Newcomer the most requested.
Newcomer is appreciation ware. Many
people download Newcomer, but do not
pay the appreciation fee that is
included in our price.

Poison: Our 4 Player games sell all
very well. This is cool, because
nowadays people don't come together
to play. They sit alone in front of
their PCs or consoles and use team
speak to talk. It seems that the
usual C64 gamer is more chummy.

Q- How much life do you think is
left in the Commodore brand

JTR: A lot. You see people go crazy
for commodore logos everywhere,
t-shirts, computers, whatever.

MacGyver: I believe the old
Commodore computers are very much
alive, especially the C64. To quote
from a C64 demo regarding
Commodore/the Commodore sign: "It
was a brand, it became a symbol!".
That hits the nail on the head. The
brand went through a lot of hands
they didn't do much with it. I have
mixed feelings about devices like
Commodore 64 web it and C64 DTV, as
they rather try to emulate the
original while being pretty bad at
it, compared to today's emulators.
C64 DTV native programs are pretty
cool one the one hand, but those
hardly have to do anything with a
real C64. Let's see how things
develop with the Commodore 64 X.

Q- You have given away free 2 games
"Stroke World" and "It's Magic" why
was it decided these games were
freeware

JTR: Well they were always free,
like Snacks 4 Snakes or Quadris? We
just felt like giving them away I
guess :)

MacGyver: Not everybody got Stroke
World when it was published as not
everybody subscribed GO64!. When the
It's Magic 2 was released, we
thought it was time to make part one
free - to offer a nice game for free
to the gamers, and also to tease
people for part two ;) The were
other small games released for free
such as More.Gore's Space Battle
Deluxe (predecessor of Advanced
Space Battle). Cascade is also a
nice but small game by The Blue
Ninja, which is on our free
games/previews disk which game
customers receive in addition. Then
there is also Quadtron and Zynax III
which are rather old and would not
be worthy to sell/buy.

Q- Do you plan to support as much
hardware as possible from the basic
games design for example ensuring
the game will run on as many
machines as possible and will run
from CMD hardware and ultimate 1541
cartridges and UIEC devices etc

JTR: We try to, yes.

MacGyver: There have been many new
alternative devices in the last few
years. While this is great, it gets
harder to stay compatible to all of
them.

Q- Do you always test beta versions
on Real hardware or is this really
only important on later "builds" of
the software

JTR: Ha! You are assuming that we'd
develop on PCs and only "test" the
code on real hardware...? That is
true for most developers, yes, but
we do not go down this road,
usually. We mostly develop on the
real machine, for the real machine.

MacGyver: I know that our friends in
Ultimate Newcomer Crew as well as DJ
Gruby/Oxyron use PCs for development
and also test a lot on emulators.
Still things get tested on the real
thing even in rather early stages of
development.

Q- Do you have any games that have
been scrapped in early stages of
testing and why were they scrapped

JTR: Sure. The biggest projects that
were scrapped are Turrican 3 and
Reel Fishing (a fishing simulator).
T3 was cancelled due to legal hassle
and RF was cancelled, because we got
a lot of negative feedback claiming
we would be "commercial", which is a
slap in the face when you spend so
much time unpaid for your hobby.
Such attacks have demotivated us a
lot and has cost us a few members.

MacGyver: Mike The Magic Dragon by
ThunderBlade has been scrapped as
well. The coder's time was small
with his GO64! Activities, his
studies, the Amiga Fever magazine
project and later his full time job
at QNX. The future of Enforcer 2 and
Wor Wizards are somewhat uncertain.

Q- Feel free to promote PROTOVISION,
what new projects are in the Pipeline

JTR: Our 4 player Pac Man game "Pac
It" where you have to play in a team
of up to 4 Pac Men to solve the
levels with wit and action is in the
pipe and you can download a preview
on our website. We also have an
almost finished game called Outrage
from Cosmos Designs and desperately
need a coder who would like to get
his hands on it to finish it, and we
have Enforcer 2 that has some
stunning preview videos at YouTube.

However, all of these will still
take time to complete - as we are
doing this aside our real jobs and
life, we cannot promote or commit to
any fixed deadlines, but you can
expect them somewhere in the next
one or two decades.

MacGyver: Pieces II by Oxyron is a
nice little puzzler. While
development was rather slow since
the release of its preview, it is
going to speed up again soon. Also,
the Spanish based Los Burros del
Soft are going to get the English
versions of their games MK II and La
Carretera (aka The Road) distributed
over us.

Q- How would a reader join
PROTOVISION

JTR: We always need reliable
helpers! There are manuals to
proofread, translate or layout.
There is website work to do, emails
to answer, and of course music to
compose and graphics to pixel. But
above all we currently lack coders.
Anyone can contact us and offer
help, we'll try out how it feels
working together and if that fits,
we'll let him or her join. we are
spread around the globe!

MacGyver: Most of the PROTOVISION
members are in Germany, including
all core members.

Q- Do you have any other comments
for the Readers

JTR: Thank you for your interest in
Commodore computers! You seem to
have an eye for cool things!

Poison: Keep the spirit alive. And
share this spirit with your friends.

MacGyver: Get involved! Support what
you like.

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*************************************
         PROTOVISION WEBSITE
*************************************

Protovision isn't just about games
they have a website with s shop
store that sell a variety of things

http://www.protovision-online.de/

the main site is viewable in English
and German via the use of the
country flags at the top of the
screen.

The site is split into Graphic areas

* SHOP
* METALDUST
* APPLICATIONS
* HARDWARE
* GAMES
* PROTOVISION REVIEWS

Clicking on the shop can take you to
these areas though through sub menus

In the main shop we again see the
areas split into sections

At the top we see games

* HARDWARE
* APPLICATIONS
* MISCELLANEOUS

HARDWARE

Clicking on hardware have a further
option of cables

The current hardware as of this
writing was

Micromys V3

Micromys originated as a mouse
adapter to connect PS/2 mice from PC
to the C64. individual Computers
developed it further and equipped it
with additional features. The new
version is called Micromys V3, and
as well as the C64 it can be used
with other systems. The different
user modes can be changed via DIP
switch:

* Commodore 1351 emulation (GEOS,
  Pagefox, GoDot, Mr.Mouse,
  Prophet64 and MSSIAH)

* Amiga mode without driver (in this
  mode, the middle mouse button can
  be used, e. g. for DOpus)

* Amiga mode with mouse wheel driver

* Atari mode (Atari ST or Falcon)

Any PS/2 mouse can be used. USB mice
supporting the PS/2 protocol can be
used, too. Such USB mice typically
come with an appropriate USB-PS/2
adapter.

Micromys V3 has been equipped with a
cable, so there is room for the
USB-PS2 adapter even if space on the
desk is short.

An illustrated manual is available
at www.micromys.de.

4 player adaptor

Protovision extends your C64's
capabilities with the 4 Player
Interface - professional
manufactured by individual
Computers. Connected to the user
port of your Commodore 64 or 128, it
provides two additional standard
joystick ports for you to connect.
This enables up to four players -
with four real joysticks! - to play
together on one computer!

You can also build it yourself. Just
refer to our building instructions.
If you want to adapt or even code a
game to make use of the Protovision
4 Player interface, you are welcome.
Look at the source code example to
see how easy it is.

Cartridge Cases

Cartridge case from individual
Computers for MMC Replay, MMC64,
Retro Replay and other standard C64
cartridges.

The cases are closed with only one
opening for the cartridge connector.
If a cartridge with buttons or a
pass-through slot shall be used, the
holes/openings must be cut into the
case. This applies to the MMC
Replay, MMC64 and the Retro Replay.

Cables

Cables in stock list some 19
different models

Ranging from a c64 joystick to the
plus 4 adaptor

* Floppy drive cables

* Joystick extension cables

* Monitor cables (various from scart
  to s-video cables)

* Parallel floppy drive cables

* 1541 transfer cables

APPLICATIONS

Godot

GoDot is an C64 Image Processing
System.

It is continuously being improved.
See www.godot64.de for downloads.
GoDot is now freeware (for two Euro
youll receive GoDot on a 1541 disk)

Virtual assembler 16

Virtual Assembler 16 is a Turbo
Assembler alike tool for the
SuperCPU. It features 40/53/64
column display, very big memory for
source codes and labels and supports
all opcodes of the SCPU's 65816
processor. Virtual Assembler 16 has
been in use as an internal
Protovision tool for some time. It
is a great tool! We now decided to
make it available to everyone. So
Protovision proudly presents:
Virtual Assembler 16 pre-release
V2.84! The program is complete, but
there are some minor bugs which will
be fixed later. There are only
incomplete instructions, which are
in German language only.
Nevertheless, we don't want to delay
the release of this great tool any
further, so here it is!

Virtual Assembler 16 is
AppreciationWare. It means if you
like it, please transfer EUR 8 to
the bank account found everywhere on
this site or visit our PTV-Shop to
order it online. It is legal to use
and copy Virtual Assembler 16 as you
want. If you pay the appreciation
fee, you become a registered user,
which means you will receive special
support.

MISCELLANEOUS

And the miscellaneous section lists

Protovision branded

* bags
* t-shirts
* jackets

And a competition pro joystick

It's back now! The legendary
Competition Pro joystick, famous for
its reliability, as a remake from
Speed-Link and individual Computers.
The joystick is suitable for all
retro systems with a 9 pin
connector. These include C64, Amiga,
Amstrad/Schneider CPC, Atari and MSX.

The site is clean and neatly laid
out and of course you can pay via
PayPal, all costs are noted when
paying so you don't have any nasty
extras when you go to the pay
screen. Transactions are swift and
delivery is very quick (usually Just
a few days to the U.k.)

PAYMENT OPTIONS:

Every order is to be prepaid
(EU-Standard Banktransfer or
PayPal). When launching an order,
you will receive a confirmation mail
with the necessary data for the
means of payment. Please make sure
to pay via EU-Standard Bank
Transfer, which is free of charge.
Foreign Bank Transfer should not be
used because the bank levies charges
for that.

Shipping within Europe:

For orders under 20 Euro we have to
charge a low order fee of 3 Euro.
For orders over 20 Euro shipping is
free.

Shipping outside Europe:

For orders under 20 Euro we have to
charge a low order fee of 3 Euro.

Shipping prices are calculated by
the weight of your order:

0-500 G: 5 Euro
500-1000 G: 10 Euro
1000-2000 G: 20 Euro
2000-3000 G: 30 Euro
3000-4000 G: 40 Euro

If you live outside of the EU, you
don't have to pay the German VAT
included in our prices. Please
deduct 19% to get your correct
pricing (this will be done
automatically when you have entered
your country). There will be
additional national taxes and/or
custom fees depending on the
type/value of the ordered items.

The shop stock varies depending on
stock and availability; it also
features a traffic light system to
show GREE in stock and plenty to RED
OUT OF STOCK! so you know a product
is available and ready to send.

If products are out of stock but new
stock is coming soon, then this will
be listed on the site for example

Temporarily out of stock. Date for
restocking unsettled.

Easy to use and nothing really I
could mention as a negative I found
my transactions were dealt with
quickly and politely with courteous
emails of progress

COMMODORE FREE

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