Published on 12/4/2007

The world's hairiest programmer turns his back on children's comics and starts a series for Commodore Horizons magazine... anything could happen!

Confessions of a Compunet Junkie... I've had a modem for quite a while now, and up until the Commodore show I didn't really use it much, but I logged on the week after the show and... well... I haven't been to bed before Net shutdown at 3am since!

YakZappin'... Well I got my copy of Elite and sure it's zarjaz but it's just not Star Raiders... Seriously though, it's well put together; if you liked it on the Beeb then you'll love it on the C64, the docking sequence is hyper-hyper, especially if you've a Docking Computer and you put that ace '2001' music on: the computer docks at breakneck speed to the accompaniment of the Blue Danube waltz...

Compunet

The world's hairiest programmer turns his back on children's comics and starts a series for CH... anything could happen!
GREETINGS again, this time from the august pages of Commodore Horizons (well I enjoyed writing for Zzap, but it seems they didn't like my newsletter so i'm afraid I got the CHOP!)... but I don't mind at all, i'm still getting through! Confessions of a Compunet Junkie... I've had a modem for quite a while now, and up until the Commodore show I didn't really use it much, but I logged on the week after the show and... well... I haven't been to bed before Net shutdown at 3am since, and i'm definitely in line for a mega-phone-bill next quarter... The trouble is this thing got called Chatline. You can go on, upload frames into a directory, anyone hangin' around reads them and uploads their reply which you can read immediately. Sort of like on-line CB but with a longer time delay and not so many wallies (although there are some!). It's nice in that you can send text, graphic frames or even programs, and that several people can join in the chat at once.
Compunet Mailbox Screen	It gets quite 'clubby', there are several hard-core late-nighters who you regularly meet (there's even a group of late night mammals, that's YAK, ANTELOPE, RATT, COUGAR, YETI, etc.) then there's the famous Fogg with his sheep and Bogg's zarjaz music demos... Most people have their own little directory somewhere (mine's called YAK'S HAIRY BIT) into which they upload demos, graphics, anything interesting that people may want to see, and usually for free, too. You Can wander about the database at will, downloading odds'n'ends of whatever you're interested in, then logoff and try them out. Of course you can buy commercial software too in a special area called Software Park, and most of it can be saved to disk or tape therefore bypassing the ol' "is it out of disk yet?" dilemma neatly. And anything which cuts out distributors and chain stores has got be zarjaz.
The only bad things I can say about the Net are that it does slow up a bit if you go on and there's a lot of other users about (like say a Sat afternoon) but if you're like me you'll do most of your nethackin' at night... which leads me onto my other gripe: it's staggeringly addictive (the bags under poor Yak's eyes will attest to that!!) and you'll have to watch it if you're not to cop that mega-phone-bill! If you're considering going Netwize, the advice of the Yak is Go for it!! It's ZARJAZ! and i'll see you on the Chatline at 2am ok??? YakZappin'... Well I got my copy of Elite and sure it's zarjaz but it's just not Star Raiders... Seriously though, it's well put together; if you liked it on the Beeb then you'll love it on the C64, the docking sequence is hyper-hyper, especially if you've a Docking Computer and you put that ace '2001' music on: the computer docks at breakneck speed to the accompaniment of the Blue Danube waltz...	Commodore Communications Modem
Crystal Castles Coin-Op © Copyright 1983 Atari	Mind you, the docking computer HAS been known to blow it and splatter your atoms all over the side of the space station, too! I'd still like to see some 'real' bullets a la Star Raiders instead of the old lines-drawn-to-the-middle-of-the-screen jobs we got at the moment... Such gripes are only minor foibles of personal taste though; Elite on the C64 is every bit as impressive as it was on the Beeb... All this talk of mega-gamin' but today still found the Yak sittin' down and contentedly plugging away at Incentive's Moon Cresta... you know, that old arcade game which came out in the Galaxian era, where you blasted at the little fluffy balls and had to make your rockets dock every now and again. I know it's only a simple shoot-'em up but still the Yak kept pressing that ol' 6 to restart... (oh yeah Incentive how about a fire button restart next time huh?? better for us junkies)... Still into arcade conversions I now got that Crystal Castles I wuz on about, and boy is it ace (if a little mega-fast!!). Put it this way, I played the C64 version awhile then walked up to the actual game in Southampton Ice Rink and immediately scored six times as much as I ever managed on the coin-op previously... that shows a really good conversion, when you can practise on your C64 version and reap the benefits in the arcade! I hope someone does as good a job with the mega-zarjaz Marble Madness arcade game - the Yak can't get enough of that one, many Minter 10p's have disappeared into the Madness's electronic gullet...

16 bit

The Yak was also well impressed by what he saw of Melbourne's new Kung Fu one at the Commodore show... great graphixx and Oriental music too, and it's also unique in that it sustains soft-speech and animation simultaneously (although you can turn this off 'cos it does eventually sound like the Duel of the Daleks) but if you're into the martial-arts sims currently in the arkies then this is really good. Yak Hackin'... I now have one of the Nemesis Machines, the Atari 520ST... me WELL blown ayway by that one, like Totally Amaaaazing... Still, Commodore ain't doing too badly either, their C128 looks like being the finest 8bitter on the market and an obvious upgrade-path for all us C64 junkies. At first I must admit the ST overawed me and I didn't see much in the Commodore's offering, but the more I look the better it gets.
Atari 520 ST	Look, in C128 mode you get the best Basic this side of Alpha Centauri with lots of zarjaz stuff like commands for Sid and a sprite-ed built in, plus the clock (and therefore your progs) run twice as fast as on the C64. Plus you get C64 mode so you can still play whatever turns you on, then if you want to be mega-serious you get CP/M and the Z80 mode. At around £300 that's pretty good in the Yakbooks, the only real problem you'll have is whether to go to C128 (stayin' 8bit but retaining the C64 compatibility and also not having to learn that much new stuff to start exploiting your extra power) or to go 16bit with the 240ST (Atari's midrange ST; not much software at first, but if you're prepared to wait I guarantee it'll blow your brains out)...
It'll be interesting to see what Commodore make of the new Amiga, too - scheduled for launch in America this summer, I rather wonder whether Commodore will introduce it into the UK until they can get the price sub £1K. High price apart, this machine sounds mega, 3 custom graphix chips I hear, 4096 colours someone mentioned (16 per scan line they said, and if they are talkin' in scan-lines it means raster interrupts all round again, yippee!!). Even if the Amiga itself turns out really mega-expensive, there's still the possibility of Uncle Commie using similar chips in a lower-end micro... Whilst on the subject of Amiga I must relate a weird encounter I had at the Commie show... a guy, Commodore employee, comes up to me and asks me if i'll be doing any icon-driven graphic adventures (a la Shadowfire).	Commodore Amiga 1000
Why, asks a puzzled Yak? "Well" says he "we're looking for really original software for the Amiga." So he want original stuff so why he want the Yak to copy Shadowfire huh?? Perhaps he was worried about the icons... but it goes without saying we're gonna use 'em on a mouse driven sys like the Amiga, so why not Colourspace or Mama or something, why only graphadvents?? There sure is some weird thinkin' goin' on somewhere...
Jeff 'Biker' Minter
Anyway I finish now, I got subgame 2 to do, if any of you Commiefiends get Netwize do give me a MBX (id is LLAMA) or go on that Chatline, I'm the one with the bags under the eyes and not typing straight from too many latenites... Article reproduced from Commodore Horizons magazine September 1985 edition. Although all text appears unchanged, some photographs or images have been removed, added or modified for aesthetic purposes. If you would like to comment on this article then please use the comment/rating feature available. Thank you to the following websites which were used for sourcing some images that appear in this article: The Great Game Database, Kitchener Classifieds, Wikipedia.