C64 Assembly : Multicolour Alphabet

We all would love to be jumping into coding some amazing games when beginning any new language. Before we do this however, we need to master some basics. Let’s get something displaying on the screen. We left our last lesson with the simple ‘Hello World’ example. Lets switch this up to printing the characters of […]

C64 Assembly : Hello World

I wanted to start out with something simple when beginning to look at Assembly. The traditional Hello World output seemed like the best choice for this. I’ve taken an example from the excellent ‘The Anatomy of The Commodore 64‘ and Old Skool Coder‘s Youtube channel for this one. Starting the Code Block The first thing […]

Setting up for C64 Assembly Coding

In this brief tutorial I want to look at how we can setup KickAssembly for the C64 and Visual Code in order to code, compile and run programs on the C64. Things you will need: 7-Zip Up to date Java installation which can be found at the Java Website A copy of Vice – the […]

Joffa Smith – A Retro Legend

A friend of mine posted up a series of pictures of him playing through Cobra on the ZX Spectrum. My mind immediately went to the architect of this incredible arcade title. Jonathan Smith was a legend among game programmers. Someone who managed to push the systems he worked on further than others. He was a […]

D & D NES-STYLE…WIZARDRY: PROVING GROUNDS OF THE MAD OVERLORD

By Mark Michel As a life-long gamer dating back to the 70s, I have had the fortune of watching the gaming industry and culture grow for over 4 decades. I’ve watched home gaming grow from the simplistic Pong-type games to the near-terabyte sized games. I have played fighters, puzzle games and strategic games, but one […]

Top 5 ZX Spectrum Games

Oh Opinions, they can be dangerous things, it’s an impossible task to go through the many hundreds of innovative Spectrum titles to attempt a top five. In time I may do a top ten or even twenty. These are titles which I have recently played and found to be not only entertaining or wonderful technical […]

Mario Brothers: The Beginning – Atari 2600

By Mark Michel One of the most iconic video game characters in the past forty years can be identified by one name – Mario. That joyful robust little plumber we’ve all come to know, and love has been giving gamers lots of wonderful memories since he came onto the gaming scene in 1981 – when […]

GRYZOR – ZX SPECTRUM

In the late 80’s there was nothing better than watching violent action films starring Arnie. Especially when you were 7 or 8 years old. Scenes where Arnie emptied a machine gun into bad guys looked cool and it was fun to run around the playground emulating this, complete with sound effects. It was clean, healthy […]

WRITING CODE FOR THE C64: 4- BEGINNING BASIC #3

Thinking through Problem Solving as a Programmer Most of us have been exposed to the idea that computers can make decisions. This is true but before the computer can make a decision, the programmer must tell it how. One of the magic elements about computer science is that after you have written a program and […]

Trantor: The Last Stormtrooper – ZX Spectrum

We begin with a lone ship piercing through the night sky, it descends with accuracy into a narrow canyon. The red wall of rock rise slowly as the ship makes its journey to the unknown depths below. The radar dish rotates rapidly, searching for a signal and eventually the ship reaches a landing platform. The […]