BMC64 is free, so how much does it cost?

This sounds like a bit of a stupid question. How can something free cost any money? The reason that I ask this is because I was speaking on a Discord chat group recently and a common statement that people make is that the Bare Metal Commodore 64 (BMC64) emulator is a better thing than THEC64 and THEC64 Mini. Of course, such a solution that one could build oneself would be better in many ways. One could presumably customise all of the settings to enhance the user experience, including I assume choosing which SID chip to emulate, or even have two SID chips emulated, and so on. On THEC64 platform, one doesn't have nearly as much control, not without hacking anyway.

Another reason for BMC64 being better [than THEC64 platform] is that it is free. I was specifically thinking of BMC64 kits that one may purchase when I made the point that THEC64 has likely sold a lot more units than these kits. The counter argument was that BMC64 is just software that one could install on a Raspberry Pi, so it's free like a Linux operating system is free. But how much would one need to spend to use BMC64?

If you're reading this and you've already made an investment in a Raspberry Pi then you may stop reading here; BMC64 isn't going to cost you any more money than you've already spent. But what if you don't already own a Raspberry Pi, and want a dedicated piece of kit just for Commodore C64 software? Is THEC64 or Mini a good solution compared to something for free?

Well let's look at costings for a BMC64 solution first. Assuming that BMC64 will run on any Raspberry Pi currently available, you're probably looking at spending around £30 - £40 GBP for the cheapest Pi, which I assume has the lowest specification. So we'll say £30 with postage. And then of course you'll want a keyboard, so there's another £10 - £15. And if you don't mind playing games with a keyboard rather than a controller or joystick, that's it. It's then just the time it takes to set up. So, you're looking at spending between £40 and £55 for this option, and that's if you don't already have a spare USB keyboard lying around. That's good value, but it's certainly not costing £0.

Like for like, THEC64 Mini is currently for sale here in the UK via Game outlets for around £40, at least in my local store in the West Midlands. Okay, so you don't have a keyboard included with the Mini, but do have a controller. I know THEC64 Mini joystick isn't the best version, but it's still a fair comparison for the cheapest BMC64 option. Set up time for THEC64 Mini is usually no more than a few minutes, whereas BMC64 may vary depending on how much one wants to configure. THEC64 Mini does include 64 games to get started with, and all of these are licensed games. THEC64 Mini has a custom housing, fewer USB ports and no included PSU. It requires a 5V 1amp USB charger, which will be another £5 - £10. Both solutions allow you to add your own software, but THEC64 platform is limited to USB 2 flash drives formatted to FAT32, though this is more than adequate for C64 games.

THEC64 Mini is nicely packaged. I genuinely had a warm fuzzy feeling when I initially opened my first THEC64 Mini. The guys at Retro Games Ltd did a really good job with the industrial design and packaging. I won't have that same feeling opening the packaging for a Raspberry Pi, but this may be different for you.

The suggestion in the chat wasn't for this cheap option, but to consider a Raspberry Pi 4000, as that includes a keyboard and a mouse. This is currently around £100 in the UK. How does that compare to THEC64 Classic?

THEC64 is currently retailing in the UK for around £120, it is housed in a stylist casing which matches the size of the most common C64 casing in the UK, and includes a fully functioning and properly mapped keyboard with a joystick controller. Again, everything on THEC64 is fully licensed, and the bundled joystick is much better than the THEC64 Mini joystick. At £120, this isn't costing significantly more than a Pi 4000 solution.

So whilst one may save some money with a Raspberry Pi, is BMC64 a better solution? Well that depends on what you mean by better. THEC64 and Mini work out of the box, and THEC64 has a fully mapped keyboard with a pretty accurate casing, and both run at 50 or 60FPS like the original hardware (depending on your region or what you're used to), and with no sound drift nor frame skipping like on some emulators especially running on lower specification hardware. There is an issue on some modern displays if you specifically want a 50Hz refresh rate, but I assume that this will be the case for a Pi anyway.

Whilst THEC64 emulation is more limited than with a BMC64, those things that are missing [from THEC64] are very marginal use cases. For most people who just want to play games, THEC64 is pretty good. If you are a more serious user and more invested in the C64 platform then BMC64 is very likely a more suitable option. It isn't for everyone though, like Linux isn't for everyone either.

This reminds me of the arguments that people used to have (maybe still do) between Microsoft Windows and Linux.

Linux is free, and yet you still need to spend about the same money as a Windows-installed PC to run it. Also, I've never known anyone to actually pay for a copy of Windows by itself as this cost is usually included with the computer, and that cost isn't necessarily significantly cheaper without a Windows installation. And more serious computer users probably want to build their own system anyway, and make their own choices of operating systems and other software installations.

So I don't own a BMC64 (or any bare metal emulator) solution, and at this point spending some money to get one isn't for me. I have got to an age now were I want things to work out of the box, rather than using my time with various customisations and setting, and wasting my time with any trouble shooting for when things go wrong. I already did that in the 1990s and early to mid 2000s with my Commodore C64 and C128 and all of the Creative Micro Designs hardware that I was using.

THEC64, regardless of what faults that it may or may not have, works. It's actually well supported and has seen regular updates for it, though I suspect that v1.6.1 will be the last firmware update for THEC64 as the remaining missing features, such as using a custom Kernal or emulating more than one drive, are very marginal use cases that most people who want to play classic games won't care that much about. Again, your experiences may differ here. Maybe it's essential that you have a custom Kernal installed, or have two SID chips emulated, for instance.

On that note, I'm off to play a few games of the absolute classic Wizball, and ponder the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Noel's Retro Lab bench mark test - we have a new leader

Noel's Retro Lab is a popular YouTube Channel that discusses many computers and related hardware. One thing I like about this channel is the detail Noel goes in to especially when repairing 8 and 16-bit personal computers. He gives a good overview of the hardware, and usually runs a BASIC bench mark as a way to compare one machine to another. This bench mark program is as follows:

10 FOR i=1 TO 10
20 s=0
30 FOR j=1 TO 1000
40 s=s+j
50 NEXT j
60 PRINT ".";
70 NEXT i
80 PRINT s

Noel has been adding the results (in seconds) for each machine that he has run this program on, and many of his friends and followers have contributed to this. You may see system-by-system comparisons in a Google Sheet here.

Until today, the fastest system has been the ZX Specrum Next, though it needs to be running at 28Mhz, and use Integers rather than floating point variables. It completes in 5 seconds, and for a BASIC interpreter on a Z80 computer that is pretty quick.

As I'd set up my Commodore C128D-Cr again yesterday, which has a CMD SuperCPU, RAMLink, FD2000, a Commodore 1581 and an Ultimate 1541 II attached to it (or the U1541 II alternates with the RAMLink due to compatibility issues with the two devices) I decided to try the aforementioned bench mark symbolic listing to see the results on my power system. I first tried it in C128 80 columns mode, and found that it was faster than 5 seconds (at least with BASIC or FULL optimisation enabled) - so I'd need a reliable way to time it accurately.

All variants of Commodore 8-bit BASIC have a TI$ system variable. This will tell you the number of seconds since you switched your computer on (by default) and may be set to the current time in HHMMSS format. Related to this is the TI system variable, which counts the 60ths of a second since the computer was switched on (by default), and is reset if the TI$ system variable is set to midnight. So I did a typical thing for Commodore BASIC bench marking by adding the following BASIC lines:

0 TI$="000000"
80 PRINT S:PRINT"SECONDS"TI/60,"JIFFIES"TI

At its fastest, and in C128 BASIC 7 and 80 columns mode, the bench mark completed in about 3.2 seconds with either BASIC or FULL optimisation mode set. I therefore knew that C64 BASIC 2 would be faster than this.

You may see the results on my official Twitter feed, but a heads up: in C64 mode the fastest result is under 2 seconds.

I'm now going to try this same bench marking on my Ultimate 64 at 48Mhz. I expect that the results to be under 1 second. I may optimise the U64 further to see if I can get this bench mark to run in under half a second without optimising the BASIC listing.

One thing to note about bench marking is that you may get misleading results that may or may not fit your personal agenda. I saw a YouTube video on how the Turbo Chameleon [TC] is faster than the SuperCPU. And yet, at the time of writing at least, the TC doesn't have a Doom port. Not in its C64 emulation anyway.

Do younger video game enthusiasts get the Commodore C64?

One thing that has become apparent to me over the years is that Commodore C64 games, and entertainment software on other 8-bit home computer systems like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, are often abstract and usually quite difficult. At least the ones worth playing fall into this category.

I first realised this some time when I started my University Degree in Enterprise Computing. I was in my early 30s and it was around 2009 or 2010. At the time, I was still writing my weekly column for Micro Mart magazine (published here in the UK by Dennis Publishing Ltd I think, and previously under the Trinity Mirror group). I was one of the oldest people on the course, though not the oldest, and my friend Peter, who is interested in media and a part-time radio host on a local station, had something of a curiosity in 1980s technologies. Though he was probably interested because of Nintendo's enduring name, and was also an avid Apple user then (probably still is), with the latter monolith tech company rumoured to have "invented the personal computer", which we all know is false. The first real personal computer, at least at a consumer level, was the Commodore PET, being by far the most usuable, stable and complete machine of 1977. Right?

Anyway, it was around this time that a truly great ZX Spectrum programmer Jonathan Smith aka Joffa Smiff, passed away. I had met Joffa and even somehow got an interview out of him for Micro Mart. He was an extreme introvert, and I found him to be a complete genius, and thoroughly nice chap. Unfortunately, he had suffered with his mental health and this, along with other factors, lead to his passing at just 43 years old (RIP Joffa). I spoke with his sister shortly after his passing to offer my condolences whilst writing his obituary.

I already knew of some of Joffa's work as he was developing a Spectrum game before his passing, and I had played some of his games in the 1980s and early 1990s. But I'd never played all of his games until then. I can honestly say that I've never seen such consistent quality from a single 1980s games developer. I don't think there was one game that I didn't like, and I still play Hyper Active to this day. But it was his first game, Pud Pud that got me thinking about this question: "how would I explain this game to my daughter?"

For those who don't know Pud Pud, you take control of a flying Christmas Pudding-alike creature which must eat other creatures (which ones you have to figure out yourself) and find 10 other puddings whilst avoid being kissed by the evil Mrs Pud. It's fair to say that this game is a little out there and pretty abstract though not to the level of some Jeff Minter games. I got the feeling that younger game players wouldn't get it; those who have been born into a digitally saturated world, with if not instant but pretty quick on demand digital assets at your fingertips. Many of today's games, especially for younger players, have tutorial modes and on-screen prompts. And waiting to load for more than a few seconds in this world is unusual and may often lead to younger people to grow quickly impatient. In fact a recent television advert has people destroying their wifi routers because everything has to be now, and that's okay in the 2020s. It also shows the throw-away society that we have become in my view.

Those of us who grew up with machines like the C64, we generally didn't have games in an instant. Games consoles would load in seconds, but most people in the 1980s - at least most people in the UK - opted for a home computer for their main entertainment system even if we conned our parents into the myth that "it'll help with School homework" - well in the long run it helped anyway.

Home computers might have been as expensive as an equivalent video games console, but games were usually much cheaper for computers. Doing a quick search the Internet tells me that Atari VCS-2600 games would cost around $30 USD or more, so if we assume that those same games wouldn't have been cheaper than £20 GPB, you could have purchased 10 individual C64 games on cassette for that, thanks to budget publishers like Mastertronics. Also, cassette games were much easier to copy, you only needed a blank cassette tape and a tape-to-tape hifi system.

Anyway, C64 games were limited by the times and technology. Very few games had the luxury of having explainers, so if you didn't read the manual first (and very few of us did) nor the game reviews in various popular publications of the day, you wouldn't necessarily know what you were supposed to do on your first few plays. Magazines would have hints and tips to games, but those were generally published monthly. So if you were stuck on a new game and none of your friends had worked it out either, you'd have to hope that the next issue of your favourite printed periodical would have some hints for you, in the form of hand-drawn maps, or even cheats such as POKEs that would modify the game code to provide for infinite lives, time or other cheats.

Why do I mention all of this? Well, after my recent overview THEC64 Collection 1 for the Evercade I found a video from an upcoming YouTube channel which had some pretty pejorative and I think unfair veiws on the collection. The reviewer starts out by stating that he never had a Commodore C64 and all of the games on the collection were new to him. Fair enough, but in this particular review, he ranked the game "Lee", which is actually "Bruce Lee" as 13th out of the 14 games, in other words one of the worst on the collection. More on this later.

To be fair, this guy is of a younger generation. For various reasons, even games that I wasn't good at back in the 1980s (which was most of them), I'd still replay again several times after my first try. Maybe there was something that I'd missed as I hardly ever read the manual for any software. Each binary game world was an exploration and sometimes I'd actually progress a little further. Even if that didn't happen, I could listen to the music, or wonder how the programmer made that happen inside a television screen. As I was a programmer first (albeit BASIC), seeing different game ideas was as fun to me as playing them. Also, I didn't have games on tap, I might only get one new game a month. Something less frequently. And loading times would be at least three minutes, or ages as I thought back then. So if I was going to wait for something to load, I wouldn't want to switch it off after my first go, would I?

All of this nuance, this exploration, having patience and so on, something that is in my gaming DNA if you like, tends to be lost on younger game players. This lack of patience likely started in the 1990s, when machines like the Amiga started to become more common, with its pretty fast disk loading and relatively good amount of storage per disk, and powerful processor with pre-emptive multi-tasking capabilities. But more so with consoles. Cartridges could not only allow for more instant loading, but meant the game could be as big as the developer or publisher wanted it to be. Activision was one of the first to make a game seemingly exceed the capabilities of the host hardware with Pitfall II for the Atari VCS-2600, and this certainly happened with many Nintendo titles on both the Famicom/NES and Super Famicom/SNES.

So back to Lee, how could this be the second worst game on this Evercade collection? Well, the reviewer in question made some assumptions because it isn't instantly obvious that this isn't just a beat-em up with some platforms to navigate, and some lanterns to collect. A lack of patience, lack of exploration, and no background reading, meant that he abandoned this game before even opening the trapdoor on the second screen in. He didn't see the expanding gameplay elements, increasing difficulty and puzzle elements to the plaforms and so on. The review doesn't get much better from there, and again I see the same issue repeated in each subsequent overview of each of the titles included. Things aren't always instantly obvious especially to someone with nearly no experience with the C64 or its entertainment software. Although it's not all bad, some extra play time and a bit of background research would have helped ranking the games more accurately, especially if you're not going to persist with exploration.

As the YouTube reviewer in question has a negative feeling towards THEC64 Collection 1 for the Evercade, it turned into a bit of a pile-on by either people who don't like the C64 platform, or (I suspect) those who don't have anything good to say about Retro Games Ltd, because in some parts, you are one of the Kool Kids if you hate RGL. Because reasons.

One of the commentators in the YouTube comments section even went as far to suggest that the 1988 release of Impossible Mission for the Sega Master System was better because it was made by a "professional software development house" that "streamlined" the gameplay. I don't have a problem with the suggestion that a Master System game is better than the C64 version that it is based upon. It's the implication that Epyx in 1984 wasn't a professional software development house. Epyx probably had some of the very best video games designers and developers in the whole world in 1984. By the end of 1984, Epyx had published around 20 games including Impossible Mission, Gateway to Apshai, Pitstop and Pitstop II. I can vouch for how good these games are, and I'm sure many people will agree with me on those four titles. Its not just that these are great titles, but in 1984, each game would have been amazing. Add in that the video games industry wasn't yet 10 years old if you count from the launch of the VCS-2600, and that the C64 was only just 2 years old with many of its secrets yet to be discovered. This guy may be a Sega fanboy, but possibly also one of the RGL haters.

Anyway, that's my rant over. But it's worth noting that if the C64 platform, or for that matter any other 8-bit platform, is unfamiliar to you then often the games worth playing are difficult, sometimes abstract and many times unforgiving. Some games are limited by the way that the tile mapping works, for instance, or the limitations of sprite multiplexing, and there are other quirks that you'll get used to. But if you have a bit of patience, and maybe do some exploration, or some background reading, it'll all be worth it. Probably.

THEC64 Collection 1 for the Evercade

C64 gaming on the Evercade, finally...

I purchased an Evercade Handheld shortly after release, and whilst this console is pretty good, there hasn't been much for me personally. I do like the Atari 2600 and Lynx collections, though many of the 2600 games have been repackaged in various iterations over the years, and all of the good games still worth playing are available on several devices I own already. The only other enticing cartridge was the Oliver Twins collection, however the games featured seem to be from the Nintendo Entertainment System, a console that I never really owned nor have much time for. I would have preferred original ZX Spectrum games especially for those Dizzy titles, but I guess the graphics wouldn't have looked as good as those from Nintendo versions. An issue with games from 8-bit computers being played on consoles is that some of those will require reworking to accommodate the lack of a keyboard on the host hardware, which is why THEC64 Mini has a way of mapping keyboard inputs to a multi-button joystick, and an on-screen keyboard. These features have persisted though to later THEC64 classic models even though the classic edition has a properly mapped keyboard.

It perked my interest when I heard about THEC64 collection 1 pending release for the Evercade Handheld. This was announced just after the 40th anniversary of the original Commodore C64's launch to retail (it was launched in January 1982 in the same sense that the ZX Spectrum was launched in April 1982, though no one could buy either 8-bit computer at that time). At least it's retail launch in North America; most European consumers had to wait until 1983 to get their hands on Commodore's mainstay 8-bit machine.

Included in the 14 titles of this release are some well remembered classics, although when you have a back catalogue of at least 5,000 commercial titles, and many thousands of public domain releases, you'll never please everybody. And of course, with the C64 lasting so long commercially - 10 years in the UK if you count it's [UK] launch date - there are, to my mind, several eras for the technology during the 1980s and 1990s and people will remember those games by the releases around the time they first owned the C64. No one would forget their first game on such a machine, even if it wasn't very good.

Briefly, the games included on THEC64 Collection 1 for the Evercade are as follows:

1. Alleykey, by Hewson, published in 1986;
2. Battle Valley, by Rack It/Hewson in 1988;
3. "Lee", by Datasoft, 1984 (more on this later);
4. Gateway to Apshai, by Epyx, 1983;
5. Impossible Mission, by Expy, 1984;
6. Iridis Alpha, by Llamasoft, 1986;
7. Jumpman, by Expy, 1983;
8. Marauder, by Hewson, 1988;
9. The Monster Movie Game, by Epyx, 1986;
10. Street Sports Baseball, by Epyx, 1987;
11. Stormlord, by Hewson, 1989;
12. Subterranea, by Hewson, 1988;
13. Summer Games, by Epyx, 1984, and
14. Winter Games, by Epyx, 1985.

It's fair to say then that there's a good mix of early and mid-era C64 games from its first commercial era, before 16-bit platforms like the Commodore Amiga became established (at least in the UK and Germany anyway, North American users may have a different experience), and way before everyone wanted a games console for their main home entertainment system (again, this may differ for North American readers) rather than a personal or home computer. Early adopters of the C64 may well be drawn to Jumpman, or Lee (Bruce Lee), and even those who first got their Commodore later in the 1980s will recognise either Winter or Summer games. Hewson made its name with Paradroid, Uridium and Nebulus though sadly none of these classics are included. And Lee is interesting. Whilst this is version 2 of Bruce Lee, the rights to use the Bruce Lee name would have been either not possible, or prohibitively expensive, and may have made this sub-£20 cartridge well over £25, so it's credited to Psytronik Software and Code Digital, at least on the game art on the Evercade's carousel. It's definitely version 2 of Bruce Lee by Datasoft, something that you can discover by using the onscreen keyboard during play. I suspect Code Digital own the game code, and Psytronik Software did the cover art, and maybe made some code changes to the title screen so it reads "Lee" rather than "Bruce Lee™" - this, along with Impossible Mission and Gateway to Apshai are my favourites of the collection.

I mentioned the onscreen keyboard, this is available in any of the included games by pressing the Select button in game. And although the keyboard covers the game screen, it's not too distracting as it is either semi-opaque or completely opaque at your control. But it does mean that any future releases in this range will need to be carefully chosen, or require work to map any in-game key presses to the various buttons on the Evercade. But that does make me wonder what's happening in terms of the emulation. Is it using the same bespoke version of Vice that THEC64 range uses? If so, mapping the controller buttons is as easy as a simple text file - or a "Commodore Joystick Map" (CJM) in THEC64 speak.

The games in breif

Alleykat is a pacey vertically scrolling racer and shoot-em up which oozes Andrew Braybrook's class and pedigree, although I do find this game quite difficult and can never get very far into it. I'm sure with practise it can be beaten, and it's not a bad addition. My score: 7/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.3/10

Alleykat Trivia: when run on the Commodore C128 in C64 mode, the game utilises some of the additional processing power available during the screen blanking, making for a faster game (it's difficult enough already though).

Battle Valley is a horizontally scrolling shoot-em up in which you take control of either an all-terrain tank or helicopter to destroy all enemy military installations and stop the launch of intermediate range nuclear missiles. It has some very nice graphics and excellent parallax scrolling effects. My score: 6.5/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.1/10

"Lee" (Bruce Lee) is a game in which you must guide our hero through multiple locations in a screen-by-screen platformer with elements of a beat-em up, as you face two protagonists, the Green Yamo and a nifty Ninja. Collecting lanterns unlocks other areas of the game, which leads to a secret fortress protected by a powerful wizard. Once complete, the game loops and becomes more difficult, but it never becomes tiresome. A true classic in every sense. My score: 9/10. Lemon 64 rating: 8.7/10

Gateway to Aphsai is a multi-directional dungeon exploration game in which you must guide our hero to riches, find armaments and eliminate any roaming nasties found in those dank and eerie caverns, and if you get stuck, you may simply move onto the next level though sometimes at a cost, although the exploration of this game really is engrossing and skipping to the next level should generally be a last resort (for instance, when you have run out of keys to unlock other parts of the map). My score: 9.5/10. Lemon 64 rating: 8.2/10

If the C64 ever had a killer app then Impossible Mission would be a strong candidate. The infamous speech "Another visitor... stay a while. STAY FOREVER!" greets you, and from there, you must stop the Professor Elvin Atombender from obtaining US military secrets by infiltrating Atombender's underground silo in a screen-by-screen platform and puzzle game. There are multiple rooms to access and search, all connected by various elevators. Crack the puzzle and stop Atombenders malevolent plot for world annihilation! My score: 9.5/10. Lemon 64 rating: 8.7/10

Impossible Mission Trivia: In a review from a popular Commodore magazine, issue May 1987, it is stated that this game was originally released in 1983, whilst most sources state 1984. Side note: I always wondered why an evil genius would have candy machines in a secret underground bunker populated by robots.

Iridis Alpha is a well presented and somewhat psychedelic horizontally scrolling shoot-em up with two playing areas as each level has a mirror world. This game takes a while to learn and appreciate, so it's one where I recommend reading the game instructions, something that I never did as a child C64 owner. It may be off-putting to a new player, at least initially. But don't dismiss this too quickly, as some patients and a bit of background reading will help. My score: 7/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.3/10

Another early C64 favourite is Jumpman which is a multi-level platform game with each level contained in a single screen. Simply traverse the ladders, platforms and ropes to collect tokens which affect certain aspects of the level as you go. To make things interesting, there are projectiles and other in-game objects such as robots to avoid. A note that this game requires the onscreen keyboard to start and to enter your name into the high score table. My score: 7/10. Lemon 64 rating: 8.4/10

Marauder is a well presented scrolling arcade shoot-em up in which you may fire lethal projectiles from your mobile battle car in one of eight directions. Your task is to infiltrate enemy territories, each well protected by various armaments and other leethal defences. My score: 7/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.3/10

The Monster Movie Game does exactly what it says on the tin: you play an on-screen Monster in one of six Cities and various scenarios to enact for the viewing pleasure of the cinema audience. My score: 6.5/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.3/10

Street Sport Baseball is a binary version of one of the most popular sports in North America, although it's simple enough for a non-Baseball fan to understand the rules of play, the computer player doesn't necessarily always provide the strongest of opponents. My score: 7/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.3/10

Another polished and fun platform game in this collection is Stormlord, although I find this game very difficult. Explore the levels, find the keys, use the teleports and save the fairies. My score: 7.5/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.3/10

Subterranea is a horizontally scrolling blaster with detailed graphics and silky smooth scrolling, though this is probably the weakest game of the collection. My rating: 5.5/10. Lemon 64 rating: 6.1/10

Summer Games is a mutliplayer sports simulator with a total of up to eight events to compete in, or each event may be practised until perfected. Although these events by themselves aren't at all bad, I find that the D-Pad controller on the Evercade does not allow for fluid play, especially on the joystick-busting events like the 100m Dash, although there's a mix of events where a D-Pad is just as well suited as a joystick. All events not being playable does reflect on my rating. My score: 6.5/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.7/10

Unlike Summer Games, some of the events in Winter Games requires more precise and rhythmical joystick waggling, and the D-Pad is perfectly good for that. There are seven events to compete in, or to practise, my favourite being the Biathlon which has some beautiful Nordic-esque backdrops. My score: 7/10. Lemon 64 rating: 7.3/10

Overall, I think this first THEC64 cartridge is a very good value package with three real gems in the collection. Hopefully, this won't be the only release with C64 games for the Evercade, and with it being branded THEC64, and as I mentioned to earlier, I do wonder if this is running the bespoke Vice version found in THEC64 and Mini. I also hope that there will be a "THEVIC20" collection too? If there is to be a second release (no doubt Retro Games Ltd and those people paid royalties for their wares being included in this package will be keeping a keen eye on sales) then I hope it will include at least one or more recent C64 game such as anything from the Metal Warrior series. Now that would be awesome!

A tribute to Milo Mundt - RIP :'(

Milo Mundt, also known as MacGyver to people who are in and familiar with the Commodore C64 scene has recently passed away. The sad news was relayed to me on 14th October 2022. He was just 43 years old, just two years my junior.

He was a long-time and passionate advocate of the famous aforementioned Commodore 8-bit, and I first made contact with him over 20 years ago now, and what different times they were. Back then, I was trying to establish a retro-based fanzine. I didn't want my fanzine to be purely about looking back on this game or that computer, as I knew that the C64 especially, and likely other 8-bit home computers, still had new hardware and software being manufactured, albeit no longer mass produced, but enough was happening to take note of.

After doing some research on my dial-up modem, or maybe an early ADSL line, I produced a small PDF called Retro Computing Today which was picked up by the editor of Micro Mart magazine in the UK (when it was still published by the Trinity Mirror group and was based in Birmingham). The then editor, Simon Brew, phoned me and offered me a weekly column about all of these new 8-bit developments.

One of my first few columns that was printed in Micro Mart, in fact I think my second, covered a game called Bomb Mania, published by the German-based Protovision, of which Milo was an active member. At the time, the weekly circulation figures for Micro Mart was around 25,000. And for the first time since the mid-1990s, new C64 software was being reported in a main-stream IT-based publication, before Retro Gamer from Live Publishing was a thing (of course, there was a Retrogamer fanzine, which I recall being written and published from a guy from Liverpool), and even before the Retro section in gamesTM. It was at this point that I sent a photocopy over to my column to Protovision, which appeared on the fledging official website for the 8-bit software company.

During that time, and through my 9 months or so of being a staffer at Live Publishing's Retro Gamer, I worked closely with Milo and other English speakers at Protovision to try and promote what the group were doing. Milo was always very kind to me, allowing me to know about Protovision's developments for my news columns, and sending me software to review and sometimes even preview. It was thanks to my friendship with Milo (and the fact that I owned a CMD SuperCPU) that I got to review Metal Dust in Retro Gamer, something that I'm still very proud of, and a game that is now something of a C64 legend which people either love or hate, usually for all of the wrong reasons on that latter point.

In I think 2005, I met Milo, Jakob Chen-Voos and Malte Mundt (one of the founders of Protovision and Milo's older brother). The group travelled over from Germany for the CGE UK in Croydon. In person, the guys were very kind to me and I got a free t-shirt in the process. I remember that Milo took a picture of me wearing it.

Unfortunately, my tenure didn't last at Retro Gamer, and not long after I found myself in some personal difficulties. Retraining, becoming a father, and other life events overtook my retro computing hobby, and I faded in and out of the "retro scene". But early in 2022, Milo contacted me to see if I could help with English translations of Protovision news items. Whilst I was happy to commit some time as and when, again real life events got in the way. Sadly I could not contribute as much as I would have liked, but this is something that I am trying to rectify.

Aside from the Commodore C64, Milo was a Social Worker, which is something else that I had in common with him as I had worked for Social Services before becoming a full-time writer. I knew him to be a passionate and compassionate person, and would like to extend my deepest condolences to his family and friends. May he rest in peace.

Are you only allowed to say nice things about the ZX Spectrum Next?

A few years back, after ordering on Omni 128 HD, I had the opportunity to procure a Sinclair-branded ZX Spectrum Next. The Omni is made-to-order by one guy as far as I can tell, whilst the ZX Next was a KickStarter campaign. I had to wait for both machines to turn up. And it was the Omni that turned up first, although the screen arrived before the main unit. I'm not complaining about the delays here; I'd rather get something than nothing, and I was very happy to receive my Omni and ZX Next.

The Omni itself looks like a truly authentic ZX Spectrum if viewed from the front. The video output is different, and it has an SD card slot on the side with some dip switches to configure the device. It allows the addition of rechargeable batteries, so that it can be truly portable, and once configured and running, loading games via the cassette and/or from SD card is pretty painless. It is able to load TR-DOS images too, and as we know, any Spectrum clone already has plenty of software. I was very impressed. Forget your Apple something or other; not only have I never been a fan of Apple products, I think its historical devices are considered in higher esteem than cheaper machines (such as Sinclair and Commodore computers) for no good reason. I mean, who could afford an Apple ][, with Apple itself doing not much more that pioneering the high price point. I would say that though, wouldn't I?

Anyway, everything about the Omni felt right; the keyboard, the faceplate and the flat screen is good. The only issue really is that the hand-made plastic legs to fit the screen to the computer are a little brittle, and it could do with a bit more weight in the computer itself to counter the weight of the screen. Other than this, the Omni is a great device. You switch it on. It works. It's easy to use. And it can be used anywhere with some good battery life. It feels like a proper end-user product in the Sinclair tradition. Overall, I was and am very happy with it.

Getting my ZX Next some months later was slightly disappointing. The excitement when the box arrived, and seeing it for the first time, soon led to an anti-climax. Plugging in the device and testing it was good. Then I read online that I needed to update the firmware, which I did. I tested some games, and then unplugged the unit. The power cable was removed but I still saw what looked like a crashed Spectrum screen. I panicked as I thought I'd broken it somehow, but it turns out that using the HMDI port has its issues and you must remember to unplug the HDMI cable before unplugging the power cable. Well, at least I hadn't broken anything.

Next, I noticed that there was a CP/M mode, so I thought I'd try it. I had to get online to get CP/M working in the form of downloading some binaries. Once it was up and running, I was able to load some compatible software. Now, never using CP/M before put me at a disadvantage, but something happened where I couldn't get CP/M working at all anymore. I couldn't work out what I'd done, so I didn't know how to undo it. It wasn't until some months later before I could get it working again, but I don't know how I have, so any fix is purely accidental.

Some time after buying the Omni, I found some games that use the Nirvana engine; this allows ZX Spectrum games to be much more colourful, meaning that software sprites are not limited to two colours per 8x8 character cell as usual. One of the best examples of this is Pietro Bros by Cristian M. Gonzalez, Alvin Albrecht, and Einar Saukas. This works beautifully on the Omni, so I decided to give it a try on my Next. For some reason, it wasn't working, in that the Nirvana engine didn't seem to be working. It might have played the same, but it looked woeful and there was blatant colour clash everywhere. I know the ZX Next has more precise timings than the Omni, and clearly a better specification. So, what was going wrong here?

It turned out that the RGB output wasn't supported via HDMI, only by VGA. So, in order to play this and other Nirvana engine games on the ZX Next, I had to obtain a VGA monitor. As I didn't have one spare, this meant purchasing one. My monitor arrived, and I eagerly plugged in my ZX Next to my VGA VDU. And... Nothing. No video. Had I broken it again? Okay, so I tried the HDMI and got a picture. More searching the Internet and I found out that I needed to configure the machine to the screen it was using, especially if I changed screens for some reason. Well, luckily it wasn't too difficult, and the Next would run through its screen modes with a test card until you get one that fits. All good then, right?

Now my final gripe. I know that the ZX Spectrum never had a good keyboard, but a cheap one. The Speccy+ and 128+ also had cheap keyboards. I have aging models of these that still work today. Most importantly, the keys are still in place. On my ZX Next, however, I've had two keys somehow become detached from the keyboard, and I have to be very wary about using it and travelling with it. This is hardly convenient as I now take this and other machines to show to people, and to let others play on it.

With exception to the cheap keyboard, I think the issue with the ZX Next really is this: feature creep. I was happy when I heard about the original plans for the ZX Next. I think had the original specification and scope been adhered to more strictly, it would have been a cracking machine. But it seems like, maybe due to delays, and maybe trying to please too many people at once, the machine was released in an unfinished state. The HDMI is one pointer to this. The manual is another.

I know that this feature creep has meant a more powerful machine, but why did it need to be more powerful? Why wasn't the original specification enough? For most users I suspect, they will be playing original Spectrum games on reliable, modern hardware. So all of the nice extras, and some of which I haven't even used, are for limited use-cases where no more than 10 - 15% of the userbase will ever benefit. That's fine if you're planning to make a million machines, but this is a machine which exists in the thousands, so these limited use-cases should have been ignored in my view, and any of the extra goodies that were proposed along the journey should have been dropped, like the "SID chip" support, which isn't worth the PI Zero installation really, as it doesn't handle SID files very well. I guess this is what happens when enthusiasts are leading the development of a product, rather than a singular and more realistic and hard-nosed visionary. The ZX Spectrum Next is the Snakes on a plane of "new retro".

Here is the question? If I had to choose only one, which would it be? The Next or the Omni? Well, the Omni has been much less problematic, and once set up, it works perfectly well. I would choose that over the ZX Next. Of course, the Omni doesn't have the same exact timings of the ZX Next. And the ZX Next has a far superior specification, but that doesn't mean it plays my favourite Spectrum games any better. And those games that don't load on the Omni aren't significant in number enough for me to be worried about it.

The Omni plays enough of my favourites, and I don't have to mess about just because I use a different screen as there is only one video output to worry about, and the keyboard feels really authentic. It also works with the original Mic and Ear cables, whilst the ZX Next opted - for no good reason - for the Spectrum +3 tape leads.

Don't get me wrong. I do like my ZX Next. It's just not the finished product that I was hoping for. And in conclusion, I do hope that the next ZX Next irons out these issues with the next Next Kickstarter, especially to do with the keyboard, and as I am one of the backers of it. Anyway, I'm going to give Target Renegade a quick blast. Who wouldn't, eh?

Why use THEC64 or THEVIC20? What's the point, when you have real hardware?

So, here's a question. I own an Ultimate 64 Elite with two 6581 SID chips installed, and an Ultimate 1541 II which I use in conjunction with my Commodore C128D-Cr, CMD RAMLink, SuperCPU and FD4000. I also own a C64GS, two SX-64s, some other C128Ds, and several variants of the C64 and C64c. Surely I wouldn't have a use for THEC64, would I? Not that thing with the broken joystick according to some people on the Internets.

Well, if you're talking about THEC64 Mini, no, not really. The most use I get out of my Mini units is for some testing occasionally for Retro Games Ltd. Although it's smallness is useful sometimes in the communal living room (say if I want to give Soulless published by Psytronik Software a few hours of my time, or any of the other carousel games for that matter). It's great that it works on modern-days TVs too. If I wanted to, I could take this anywhere pretty easily, and for extra software I just need a USB drive. In that way, the Mini is pretty convenient.

My main interest is actually THEVIC20 model. I think it's an aesphetically pleasing machine; I love the keyboard, and its slate-white casing, and joystick. It's a really nice tribute to Commodore's first colour computer. But why would I choose to use it? Surely I have no use for it... it's just running VICE, right? On a Raspberry Pi, right? (Definitely not, it uses Allwinner Technology boards). Why don't I just buy a Raspberry Pi anyway and spend time learning how to set up BCM (I think it's called) and get with the kool kids?

Firstly, I'm not and will never be one of the kool kids. Aside from that, I don't have time to mess about setting up emulators (even if it's relatively simple). Building my U64 Elite was about as far as I wanted to go, finding the required ROM images and getting a spare casing, keyboard and some SID chips. And I know from trying to set up a version of UAE on a Raspberry Pi that I'm not cut out for it. I mostly want things that I plug in, switch on and that's all the set up that I need these days.

Moreover, the reason that I have a use for THEC64 (or in my case, THEVIC20 - well I actually have two THEC64 units as well, and another THEVIC20) is because I actually like the VIC-20. Using the VIC-20 mode on THEC64/THEVIC20 is a really good user experience. Most importantly, the keyboard is properly mapped to the original. And secondly, THEVIC20 joystick bundled with the machine is really nice to use. Some people don't believe me, but if you've read my VIC-20 articles one published in gamesTM, and another more recently in Popular Retro magazine, you will know that I really do have a soft spot for this friendly computer. Yes, the graphics aren't the best, and the screen area is small. BASIC 2 has always had its shortcomings, and it's a very limited platform even for its original launch in October of 1980 (as the VIC-1001 in Japan). But it's a charming machine that has a warm and fuzzy feeling for me, and all of this reflected very well in THEVIC20.

More than this, my actual Commodore VIC-20s, well one of them isn't working and the other is a VC-20, they don't work well with modern days televisions, and there's a lot of messing about with various hardware to use all software available (yes, I know there are cartridge upgrades available that allow for multiple memory schemas, but I seem to have lost mine). Albeit, there aren't many releases that require more than an extra 16KB of RAM, but there is Doom for the 35K machine by Steve McCrea and all considered, it's a pretty good version too. It's also not trivial on the VIC-20 (or VC-20, or VIC-1001) to play games written for PAL if you have an NTSC machine, or NTSC if you have a PAL VIC. THEVIC20 and THEC64 handles the various VIC memory maps and NTSC/PAL pretty well, and it's fairly easy to do.

Of course, some people still don't buy this. One guy on BookFace actually said to me that there was no way I could own a U64 Elite and still use THEC64 or THEVIC20 - even though I pointed out that the U64 DOES NOT mimic or emulate the VIC-20 hardware in any way (less the shared Kernal, BASIC and CBM DOS, of course). I suspect that this guy just doesn't like the VIC-20 platform so probably doesn't see the point of loading any VIC-20 software on anything ever.

A broader point is that THEC64 platform is made for an audience that just wants something that works out of the box; no messing about with installing this or that on some Raspberry Pi and then setting up configurations, finding various ROM images (not game disk or tape images, you know, the BASIC, Kernal and character ROMs from the original hardware) and then a suitable housing and probably not properly mapped keyboard (this point is the most frustrating on modern-days PC emulation and the like, especially if you do BASIC programming like I do).

If you're happy with using a Raspberry Pi for your retro gaming needs then good for you. If you think that everything else is worthless because you own a U64, then that's pretty narrow minded and stupid. Stuff that works out of the box is good. The newer micro-switched joysticks [for THEC64 range] are good, and now there's even mouse support, and that even extends to third-party USB mouses too. In fact, I use a trackball on THEVIC20.

Yes, there are still some shortcomings of THEC64 platform, one of them is that you only have one drive locked to device 8 (although that could be a 1541, 1571 or 1581), and I'd like it to support multiple drives to try GEOS on. Most users won't be using GEOS on THEC64. Another thing that I'd like is the ability to add a second SID chip, but then again I have a U64 with two real SID chips, so this is another outlier case, and you have to manually configure the second SID to be used by the (small amount) of software that supports it anyway, and that changes from one program to another. But for most users most of the time, THEC64 set up perfectly for them.

Anyway, I'm off to play one of my favourite VIC games Rockman, on my beautiful THEVIC20.