M.U.L.E. is an economic strategy you must have. Many consider it to be the best game ever made for eight-bit computers. I think I agree with that. One of the game’s breakthroughs is the availability of multi-player for up to four players.
We start with choosing a colour. The computer displays the next colours, the player can reserve a colour for himself by pressing the fire-button. Then we go to the choice of one of eight available races: Mechtron, Bonzoid, Flapper, Gollumer, Leggite, Packer, Spheroid or Humanoid.
The Atari 2600, originally called VCS, was my first game console. Officially produced for almost fifteen years (much longer, considering eastern fakes), the machine was one of the first consoles to use a cartridge as a game carrier. Perhaps, as the first one, it used the 6502 processor (or rather, its trimmed version - 6507).
It only had 128 bytes (yes, bytes) of RAM. The graphics chip allowed to generate graphics with a resolution of 40 x 192 px, although an efficient programmer was able to squeeze 160 x 192 px.
As a musician, I have always envied demoscene artists the possibility of working with modern software. The graphic artist will prepare the image in Photoshop, than all he needs to do is to use the converter and copy the file to his retro-computer. That’s all - art for demoarty is ready. A musician’s life is not that easy. Musician has to work with trackers, whether he wants it or not.
The Commodore 64 is the most popular personal computer of all time to this day. In the 1980s, however, the world was divided by the Iron Curtain, and things were fundamentally different on the socialist side of Europe. The Commodore 64 was not available in the countries of the Eastern Bloc. Here market was dominated by the Soviet clones Sinclair machines and… Atari 65XE.
In 1984, after leaving Commodore, Jack Tramel bought Atari.
Numen by Taquart! That’s a perfect topic for the first article. Numen (Latin word for goddes) debuted in 2002 at Polish demoparty „Lato ludzików”, it took first place in demo compo. Earliest and most technologically advanced part of this demo was made already in 1997 (authors called it „Turbo vectys” and it presents 3D blocks in last part).
But what it actually is? Imagine if Atari could run Doom – surrealistic, psychedelic version of Doom.
