The latest issue of the excellent Commodore Free magazine is now available in the usual .PDF, .txt, .seq, .d64, and .html formats. Get your copy in the format of your choice here! (contents listed below)

This week's episode looks at one of my favorite science fiction adventure games, LucasArts' 1995 masterpiece The Dig. Widely poo-poohed by critics and dismissed even by some fans of Lucasfilm/Lucasarts adventures, The Dig is nevertheless a must-play game with a brilliant story and very memorable characters. I love it! I tried not to include any spoilers, but as always with an adventure game review, you should consider playing it before watching the video.

P.S. Special thanks to Bill Loguidice for the t-shirt! What a great way to celebrate turning 33!

I received an interesting e-mail yesterday from the folks at Arcade Retro Gaming regarding their Multiple Classic Computer (MCC), which is an Altera Cyclone 3 FPGA in a tiny box, which essentially goes one step beyond traditional emulation with a full simulation of the Commodore 64 (C-64) hardware. Commodore Amiga support will be added soon. The device has full Micro SD support and has a plethora of connection options, including joystick, mouse, and keyboard. It also connects directly to your TV via a high quality s-video connection, which is perfect for classic platforms such as the C-64 and Amiga. Of course, being a programmable FPGA design, future support for additional systems should be trivial.

There are many more details, so I suggest you check out their Website. It sounds like our own Mark Vergeer may be the first out of the gate to procure one, so we look forward to his impressions!

#9-#15 Bust-a-Move games
Bust-a-Move 2 : Arcade Edition (N64)
Bust-a-Move 3DX (N64)
Bust-a-Move 4 (Dreamcast)
Super Bust-a-Move 2 (PS2)
Super Bust-a-Move All Stars (Gamecube)
Bust-a-Move (Wii)
Bust-a-Move Plus (WiiWare)

I’m big into puzzle games. Like millions of others I was bitten by the Tetris bug around 1990 when the genre was born and I have always picked puzzle games up ever since. I find it hard not to enjoy these – even those games that have garnered criticism such as Tetrisphere.

If I find a particular game enjoyable I will keep on buying different versions across platforms and will follow a series. The Puzzle Bobble or Bust-a-move series is a case in point – it being one of the most addictive. It has that great balance of luck and skill that makes the puzzle video game so great. I'm not going to insult readers with the description of the basic play features but I will cover how these versions differ.

It looks like "Commodore USA" finally got a proper Commodore branding license, and this time it looks like they don't have to lie about it. In the Press Release quoted at the bottom of this blog post, the company talks about their bright idea of replicating the original Commodore 64 breadbox design and cramming PC components inside as one of their new offerings. Besides the fact that something like this would have serious usability and cosmetic issues, and considering the scam they tried to pull when they first formed, I wouldn't trust this company with a penny. With that said, if they were even half-way smart, they would forgoe this silly business with the case and strike another actual licensing deal and pre-load and pre-configure the deluxe versions of both C64 Forever and Amiga Forever, and throw in a good game controller, actually allowing all their systems to masquerade as proper "next gen" Commodores, rather than generic PCs with a Commodore sticker on it. Of course, that would be giving those guys a bit too much credit.

Press Release

Loguidice and BushnellLos Angeles correspondent, Fernanda Ezabella, interviewed me about the popularity of vintage games today and our upcoming feature film documentary, Gameplay: The Story of the Videogame Revolution, for Portuguese language newspaper, Folha de S.Paulo, Brazil's largest, which is published in São Paulo. I promised to touch base with Fernanda again when the film is closer to completion, which is the reason why you see no stills from Gameplay in the article, i.e., it's not quite at that point yet. A low resolution version of the actual newspaper article's "tear sheet" is below, but you'll have to log into the Website to see the article by itself. Naturally, it's all in Portuguese.

RetroGamingRoundUp Podcast 22, August 2010, is now available at the RetroGamingRoundUp Website and at online distribution locations like iTunes.

TOPICS COVERED IN THE SHOW:
Hardware Flashback - (00:00)
Mike'd Up - (32:20)
The Enigma Machine - (55:53)
Keith Robinson Part 1 - (75:22)
The Liberace Museum - (137:01)
Guinness Gaming Records - (138:03)
Top Ten Apple 2 Games - see our results - (139:27)
I Dream Of Jeanie - (278:29)
It Came From MAME (279:20)
Gaming Trivia - (291:36
News And Mailbag - (292:18)
Mega Drive Or Genesis LIVE! - (404:42)
URLS And Emails - (405:26)

I just saw this amazing video on Kotaku called "Making Metagun." It shows you exactly what went into making an entire game from scratch. Here's a link to the finished game, which is playable in a browser. As far as I can tell, it was built using Java and Eclipse.