The Pop-Culture E-Zine
Nikola Tesla was one clever cookie – imagine what he could’ve come up with if he was still around? Well, we would guess that he would use his namesake coils to perform an 8-bit cover of the Super Mario Bros. theme.
Watch out for the sparks!
source: Franzoli Electronics
It was only a matter of time that the venerable Commodore 64 would get onto the cloud! Yep, you read that right, you can now dust off your trusty breadbin and use it to communicate with a variety of clients over Azure using a SignalR client written in 6502 assembly!
If you are keen to check this out for yourself, take a look at the SignalR-C64 code on GitHub.
Long live the Commodore 64!
source: moozzyk
PS: Thanks to Matty G for making us aware of this geeky awesomeness!
We’re excited to announce the 2022 Reset C64 4KB game coding competition. This year’s competition theme is once again…. Craptastic!
“What the bloom’n heck does craptastic mean?”, I hear you ask.
It certainly doesn’t mean crap, although it can! Craptastic can mean ludicrous, bonkers, outrageous, funny, wacky, far out, and silly. The theme simply implies that the compo is just for a bit of fun, not a serious coding competition. You are more than welcome to make an excellent game to submit for the compo. Your game may contain some humour or silliness to fit more with the theme, but it doesn’t have to!
2020 Craptastic Comp Winner: Fall by Megastyle
In our previous competitions, some entries were truly excellent, others excellent but silly, others truly awful but funny! It’s just a chance for people to do something a little different if they wish and explore ideas/concepts that wouldn’t normally work well in a more serious compo.
Please remember that this competition is limited to 4KB. Yes, any entry submitted can be no more than 4KB when compressed. If your game is more than 1 file, then all the game files put together must not exceed the 4KB limit. This includes hi-score save files.
We want craptastic game entries. Remember, the key word here is fun. We want both coders and players alike to have fun and enjoy this comp!
Submit your entries to RESET64 (via email) by 30th June, 2022 (23:59:59 GMT).
Take a look at our previous Craptastic compo entries from 2018 and 2020 to help draw inspiration!
The basic rules for the competition are as follows:
We reserve the right to change, add or delete rules during the competition if deemed necessary!
2nd place in the 2020 Craptastic Comp: Dots by James
The scoring system used for Craptastic is very simple. Each game will be scored against 7 criteria, each worth 5 points. An entry can score up to 35 points. When the panel has scored each game accordingly, the totals for each individual game will be divided by the number of judges to produce a mean average. The average will be the game’s final score.
The criteria that each game will be evaluated on are:
If a panel member has entered a game themselves, then the number of points that they can award will be adjusted (in this example, to 5) and they will not score their own release.
NOTE: CSDB will not be used for voting. Also, entries should not be uploaded to CSDB, or elsewhere until after the competition has closed. Feel free to post screenshots or info though.
A craptastic gaming comp requires craptastic prizes, right? We have some fantastic prizes lined up for this year’s compo thanks to some very generous sponsors.
A big thank-you to the following sponsors and supporters: 
More sponsors to be announced!
Unkle K / Reset64
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EGRET II mini – Exclusive version coming to the West
United Games Entertainment – TAITO Partnership Continues to Grow
Ever expanding German media publishing house United Games Entertainment, with its two game publishing labels, ININ Games and Strictly Limited Games, is moving into 2022 with an exciting announcement. They have secured the exclusive rights for the distribution of TAITO’s EGRET II mini in North America and Europe! The home version of the famous arcade cabinet will be available in different exclusive editions for the Western territories starting in 2022.
Great news for all fans who have been eagerly trying to order this yet to be released console, directly from Japan. With this exciting announcement United Games Entertainment, who exclusively distribute and sell TAITO’s titles in the West, both in digital and physical form, continues its growing relationship with one of Japan’s most iconic video games companies, well-known for legendary games such as Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble and many others.
The EGRET II mini is a faithful miniaturised version of the original, successful arcade cabinet TAITO EGRET II, coming with special content and features that make it a ‘must have’ for gamers:
A total of 40 pre-installed games, including classics such as Space Invaders, Lunar Rescue, Bubble Bobble, Darius Gaiden and many more
5-inch 4:3 rotating screen (1024×768 resolution) for horizontal and vertical alignment and an optimal adaptation to the selected game
Joystick individually adjustable for each game – easily switch from 8 directions to 4 directions
HDMI output to play the games also on TV
Two USB Type-A controller ports for the different EGRET II mini controllers (that are sold separately)
Power inlet via USB Type-C port
SD card slot to add even more games
Own integrated sound through stereo speakers
Instruction panel for exchangeable instruction cards
Special in-game features like: Save states, adjustable lives and rapid fire
Games, Games and more Games!
In addition to the 40 pre-installed games on the console, 10 additional games can be added through an SD card that’s included in the EGRET II mini Paddle and Trackball Game Expansion Set, coming with Strike Bowling, Arkanoid, Plump Pop and seven other TAITO classics.
This adds up to an incredible total of 50 games of various genres, from 1978 to 1997 that will be available with the launch of the EGRET II mini!
More details about the different editions, what they will contain and where to get the EGRET II mini will follow soon!
Disclaimer: Press Release supplied by PR Hound
What can we say, we are suckers for sweet, sweet C64 SID chiptunes!
We were recently stumbled upon the Shadow Ninja chiptunes concept-album on Bandcamp by the mysterious musician SID Ninja 64. What we heard was quite impressive and literally music to our ears. The original SID tunes on this album are stylised after great C64 maestros like Tim Follin, Jonathan Dunn, Matt Gray, Ben Daglish, Jeroen Tel and Chris Hülsbeck to name just a few – a pretty good darn pedigree.
If you are into SID tunes or chiptunes in general, check out SID Ninja 64’s Shadow Ninja album right now!
image source: SID Ninja 64
Now this is our kind of thing! Firebox is selling an officially licensed Tetris Waffle Maker (£29.99), which can produce seven different cute Tetrimino-shaped waffles in just a few minutes. This would be a great Xmas gift for that special someone that loves Tetris, which is about 40+ million peeps around the world (including us!) 😉
image source: Firebox
We all owe Iain Bennie a lot of gratitude for painstakingly recreating the Commodore 64 User’s Guide and Programmer’s Reference Guide (and the Quick Reference Card)!
We recently had a notification in one of the Commodore 64 Facebook Groups that immediately piqued our interest. It was a post by Iain Bennie that advised the 24,000+ members that after restoring his breadbin 8-bit beauty, he wanted to complete the set with new copies of the (old spiral bound) C64 User’s Guide and the Programmer’s Reference Guide.
Instead of scanning the original guides, Iain re-wrote them from scratch, reconstructing every graphic, including the front and back covers, every register map, block diagram, and every table to then have a wonderful and pristine final result.
This whole process took Iain a number of months, which clearly shows in the end product. Iain also had his re-written guides printed, which we must admit, look amazing – see pics and stop drooling already!
Not surprising, these guides have garnered a lot of interest from the community, which took Iain by (a pleasant) surprise. Iain has kindly made the PDF guides freely available (here) for all of us, which is darn awesome if you ask us. Oh yeah, he even has tips on getting them professionally printed! We and the rest of the C64 community thank Iain for all of his hard work and generosity in making these guides and proving them for free! What are you waiting for, go get them now!
source: Iain Bennie via Facebook
We received the following message from a friend on behalf of Jim (from SBOR – Sinclair Book of Remembrance) so we thought we would share with you all as we think it is a great idea for the community to share their memories of Sinclair’s computers and also remembering Sir Clive Sinclair.
The Sinclair Book of Remembrance (SBOR) is a project dedicated to the memory of Sir Clive Sinclair who sadly passed away on the 16th September 2021.
Moved as I was, SBOR has been a personal labour of love, to do something in honour of “Uncle Clive”. It is not a business project. It’s completely free and non-monetised.
The objective is to create a unique digital monument, composed of our shared Sinclair memories encoded together so that the final product represents each and every one of us.
For those thinking this is an NFT thing – it is definitely not! It is an opportunity for each of us to share a memory, and together create a unique dedication to Sir Clive.
I am asking that each of us contribute a Sinclair memory, by simply sending an email with your story (with up to 4 image attachments). By sending your email to [email protected] it will trigger the system to automatically create an entry to the SBOR site – for example: https://sbor.uk/m/1?code=41ce. You will receive a reply containing the link to your contribution, which I would urge you to share far and wide!
At a pre-determined date, say the 1-year anniversary of Sir Clive’s passing, all of the entries will be combined and encoded into a single unique value. This will be unique in the universe and will represent all of our combined memories of what Sinclair meant to us and something we can all share in.
Remember the Tetris light you could build from tetrominos? Well, now there is a Super Mario Bros. light you can build too!
The Super Mario Bros Build A Level Light is a stackable 16 light-blocks set that features a host of familiar icons and characters from the much-loved Mario saga, which you can arrange as you wish. Each pixelated cube is double-sided and can be stacked in a whole host of combinations to create your own unique Mario level.
With Christmas around the corner, this is the perfect gift for gaming geeks and nostalgia junkies alike, that will brighten up their home or gaming space.
source: Firebox
story source: technabob
25 years ago, the entire World Wide Web was only 2.5 terabytes in size. Most connections were dial-up, important records were stored on tape, and a young engineer named Brewster Kahle was working on a revolutionary project—a way to archive the growing Internet.
Filmed by Marc Weber for the Web History Project, this video showcases the Internet Archive’s very first web crawl in 1996. In 2001, the project was made accessible to the public through the Wayback Machine. Today, the Internet Archive is home to more than 588 billion web pages, as well as 28 million books and texts, 14 million audio items, and 580,000 software titles, making us one of the world’s largest digital libraries.
As the Internet Archive approaches their 25th anniversary, let’s take a look at the hardware and high hopes that drove the project from the very beginning—and hear from the man whose vision made it all possible – press play here!
story source: Internet Archive