Winter Break

Howdy folks, just letting you know that I'm going on my traditional end-of-the-year mission in a place far away from everything, to record a new Doppelplusungut album.

That means that for the most part, Ancient Wonderworld will be on hiatus till beginning of next year. I wish all readers a nice and relaxed holiday season and a good start into 2015. Hope to see y'all around again next year.

[musicdisk] Ján Deák Tribute

A ZX Spectrum music collection in memory of Ján Deák, who recently passed away. With 1-bit music made on Ján's beeper engines by Factor6, Garvalf, Mister Beep, MovieMovies1, z00m, and myself.

Download the .tap file here.

Lotek64 - Final Issue

Another one bites the dust :( After 12½ years and 50 issues, the German language Commodore papermag "Lotek64" is discontinued in it's current form. The editors cite a lack of funding and an overbearing workload as the main reasons.

Having been an avid reader of the mag for many years, I'm of course unhappy about the news. However, Lotek64 has plans to continue in digital form, so keep an eye out on the website. There, you can also download the latest issue (published today) as well as all the other issues in pdf format.

[demo] Undesigned by Masters of Electric City and Checkpoint

A very stylish and unique prod for the Atari XL/XE. Horray for monochrome! Ran at Sillyventure, unfortunately the rankings still haven't been published.

Download and discuss here.

R.I.P. Ralph Baer

Ralph H. Baer, the inventor of the home video game console (among many other things), has passed away at the age of 92. He was a true genius who in his lifetime never quite received the fame he really deserved, so if you haven't heard about the man before please do read up on him.

I had the pleasure of attending one of his talks a few years ago. Even at this high age he seemed to posess an exceptional clarity of mind. Sad to hear the news, however I'm glad that he was able to live such a long and fulfilled live. Rest in peace, Mister Baer.

[demo] Ascend by Cluster & DMA

Yay, the first productions from Sillyventure 2014 are starting to roll in. Don't have a placing for this one yet, but that doesn't matter because it's an Atari VCS/2600 demo. And we all know VCS is teh bestest ;)

Download and discuss here.

MidiJoy - PCBs Schematics Available Soon

Phobotron has announced that he will be publishing Gerber files for his MidiJoy interface soon. There's currently also a limited amount of PCBs available. You can contact Freetz/Phobotron through Atariage.

I posted about this earlier, but in case you haven't heard about this exiting new Atari 800/XL/XE MIDI interface yet, check it out on the project page linked above.

[demo] Fleisch Bitte GmbH Ad 2/3 by Up Rough

Harharhar... More Fleisch Bitte ads for the Amiga OCS/ECS.

Download/discuss

Download/discuss

In case you missed the original Fleisch Bitte GmbH ad, you can find that here.

One Year Chipwiki.ru

Birthdays, birthdays, birthdays! Today chipwiki.ru is celebrating it's first anniversary. In just one year, this fast-growing Russian language site has become the largest chiptune resource on the web. Congratulations on this outstanding achievement.

[demo] Wonderball by introspec & triebkraft

Birthday prods are usually not exactly a highlight. This new ZX Spectrum release is quite an execption though, I'd say. Made for well-known Russian coder diver by introspec, with music by Luchi Bobra of triebkraft.

Download and discuss here.

40 Years Altair 8800

40 years ago, Popular Electronics revealed the Altair 8800. The machine was developed by Edward Roberts of MITS. Kits were offered at 397$, and fully assembled machines at 498$, beating current contenders by a large margin.

Roberts had anticipated to sell a few hundred kits throughout the following year. Instead, he had 1000 orders on his desk by February 1975, and by August had sold over 5000 units. The microcomputer craze had started.

ENIAC on Public Display Again

After years of being hidden from public view, a big portion of the ENIAC has been restored and is on public displays again. Even though the set isn't complete, and there are some doubts about the quality of the restoration, this is nevertheless exiting news.

The exhibit is on display at the Field Artillery Museum in Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Read the full story on Wired. (A side note: Dear Wired, no matter how often you repeat it, ENIAC is the world's first fully electronic computer, not the world's first computer in general - depending on the definition, that honour goes to the Zuse Z3, the Colossus, or even the ABC.)

SGDK 1.00 / XGM Music Driver for Sega Megadrive

SGDK, the Sega Megadrive/Genesis Development Kit, has reached version 1.00. With it comes an exiting new music driver called XGM. It supports 4 channels of PCM playback at 14 KHz along with the usual 5x FM, 4x PSG channels. Programmers will also be happy to know that it runs entirely on the Z80, leaving the 68000 free for game/demo logic.

SGDK comes with a utility called xmgtool, which can be used to convert .vgm files to the format required by the XGM driver.

A test rom with various sound examples can be found here. More info is available on the SGDK project page.

30 Years 'Hackers' by Steven Levy

This month it's been 30 years since Stephen Levy's book 'Hackers' was published. Arguably one of most influencial works on the subject, 'Hackers' introduced the principle of "hacker ethic". Still as fresh as it was 30 years ago:

• Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
• Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative
• All information should be free.
• Mistrust authority – promote decentralization.
• Hackers should be judged by their hacking.
• You can create art and beauty on a computer.
• Computers can change your life for the better.

Read more about the book on wikipedia, or check out the first two chapters here.

[contest] Famicompo Pico Announced

Bitpuritans have announced a new NES/Famicom music compo, with what is arguably the most epic compo announcement ever:

Details can be found at bitpuritans.eu/compo/.

Sustainable Chipmusic - New Thesis by Jansaw

Matthew "Jansaw" Janik has shared his thesis on chipmusic (or low resolution art, as he elegantly calls it). With its strong focus on networking and social dynamics, the paper sheds some light on aspects of the scene that haven't necessarily been in the spotlight so far. Overall it's pretty solid work and worth the read in my opinion.

The paper is available here.

[album] Sinapse by Pulselooper

Today's featured release brings us into calmer, yet no less dark and beautiful realms. In other words: New Pulselooper album, yay! Sinapse is his 10th release, composed over the course of two years on Gameboy Advance.

I believe this is the perfect soundtrack for a misty Autumn evening (even though it's summer in Brazil right now).



Don't miss the excellent promo video either:

[album] s/t by I Am Your Destruction

Greetings from the dark&heavy end of the Gameboy music spectrum! Four years after his last release, IAYD is finally back with his first full-length album. Extreme!

A limited edition CD is also available on the bandcamp page.

Ancient Wonderworld Reaches 10k Views

Ancient Wonderworld reached 10,000 page views yesterday. This may not seem like much, but I think it's quite an achievement for a small, highly personal and subjective blog. A big thanks to everybody who has been following.

Ján Deák Passed Away

With great regret I have to announce that Ján Deák, one of the most talented programmers in the ZX Spectrum scene, has passed away this weekend aged 46.

Ján was perhaps best known for his multi-channel beeper engines. With his 8-track ZX-7 music editor, he was the record holder for most channels in a 1-bit engine for over 2 decades. As recently as in March this year, he returned to the Spectrum scene after many years of absence to reclaim his title with the groundbreaking 16 channel routine ZX-16. As a member of Slovakia's Bytepack team, he was also involved in the production of several games such as Pick Out 2, Šach-mat, and Tetris 3.

I have only known Ján briefly through online and email conversations, but I'm nontheless deeply saddened and shocked by the news. My condolences go out to his family and friends.

TMDC17 Textmode Demo Compo Announced

The 17th round of the Text Mode Demo Contest (TMDC) starts today. Works can be submitted until December 12th. As the name suggests, this is a competition for textmode prods only. Minor bummer: Only Windows and MS-DOS demos are allowed.

Read about the details and submit your works at tmdc.scene.org.

The lovely invite by bawlz can be found on pouet.

[demo] Unlimited Bobs by French Touch

Unlimited Bobs - now available on Apple //e.

Download and discuss here.

Status Update: Prodigy Tracker

Work on Prodigy Tracker (formerly known as YMDJ) is coming along nicely, it seems. Here's a video showcasing the latest progress on the new native Sega Megadrive/Genesis tool:

For those willing to fund the development, here's a Paypal link.

Latest updates on the project can be found in this thread.

[demo] Zerofx by Defence Force

A little intro for the Oric computer. Ranked first at Kindergardens' oldskool demo compo this weekend. Overall a rather simple prod, but considering it's so rare to see anything made for that platform it deserves a thumb up anyway, I think.

Download and discussion here.

FuzixOS - A New Unixoid OS for Z80 Machines

Legendary Linux developer Alan Cox has released a new UNIX-flavoured operating system for Z80-based computers.

Although the project is currently in a very early stage, the OS already boots on suitable machines and is ready for testing purposes. Fuzix is designed to be portable, and test builds of the core code have already been done for 6502 and 6809 processors as well.

Read more about this exiciting project here.

The source code can be found on github.

[album] VA - ELO: The Video Game

A wonderful compilation of Electric Light Orchestra songs, reimagined as a video game soundtrack. With works by EvilWezil, PleaseLoseBattle, Marshall Art, Kenobit, and more. Check it out and buy at bandcamp, or (if you are a cheap bastard) download it for free here.

[demo] Comaland by Censor Design & Oxyron

So r u all ready for the winning entry from X-Party's C64 compo? Well, here you go: Comaland by Censor Design and Oxyron. Winning over Booze's entry by a very slim margin and code-wise perhaps less impressive than that one, it is stunningly well designed and directed, and the oldskool-ish soundtrack is top notch as well.

Download and discuss here.

[album] Chiptunes by Yerzmyey

I'm super happy to announce the arrival of a new Yerzmyey album! Clocking in at over 70 minutes, this lovely bunch of chiptunes made on Atari ST, Sam Coupé, ZX81, ZX Spectrum, and Amiga will make you move, whether you want to or not.



Grab the album now at yerzmyey.i-demo.pl.

UPDATE: You can now download the full album here.

[album] The Arrival by Warez Waldo

More FM goodies, this time coming from a Sound Blaster 16. "The Arrival" is the debut album of Warez Waldo, who is obviously no stranger to OPL3 synthesis. Leaning towards dark, quirky New House with heavy influences from early 90s MS-DOS games, this release is quite something.

Windows 93 Released

What is this, I don't even...

Enter Windows 93, an online, audio-visual, interactive HTML5/Javascript assault on good taste by French lo-fi genius Jankenpopp. Pure madness. And it runs LSDJ, among other things.

[album] Mist Slug by Zan-zan-zawa-veia

New Zan-zan! For realz! More beat driven than previous Zan releases, but still progressive as f*ck. Possibly one of the best chip releases this year.

Buyers get 20 minutes worth of bonus material, btw.

[demo] uncensored by Booze Design

Another prod from X-Party 2014. Booze Design brings us this stunning code fest, which took 2nd place at the C64 compo. Beautiful design? Check. Quality direction? Check. Never before seen effects? Check. It. Out.

Download and discuss here.

[album] The Next Level by Jredd

Cheapbeats releases a new Jredd Megadrive/Genesis album, yay! If you've followed Jredd's work in the past (or this blog, as a matter of fact), you know what to expect... kind of. I don't think you're quite ready for this, because this truly is the next level of Sega FM music. Also, OMG that coverart.

[demo] Bee Together by Mahoney

Hiya folx, Ancient Wonderworld is back. Got a fair bit of catching up to do, as a lot neat demos and music releases happened over the course of the last week.

Let's start with a wonderful production from the master of SID vocoding, Mahoney. Released at X-Party 2014, it took 6th place in the heavily contested C64 compo.

Download and discuss here.

[demo] Particle Accelerator by Brainstorm

And another excellent entry from Function's 256 byte compo. "Particle Accelerator" took 5th place.

Download and discussion at the usual place.

[soft] YMDJ - Sega Genesis/Megadrive Tracker

After years of hoping for a native Sega Genesis/MD tracker, it is finally happening! Behold, YMDJ - an LSDJ inspired tracker that runs on actual hardware.

The tracker is currently at a very early alpha stage, but it already looks very promising.

You can download and try the alpha here. The development thread with latest updates and changes is here.

[demo] Function by Desire & Darklight

And another slick 256 byter by Mr. HellMood, with music by rudi. Scored undeservedly low at Function's combined 256b compo due to the fact that it wasn't shown properly.

For those who prefer things a little more upbeat, there's also a version titled "we ♥ acid" ;)

Download the orginal version here.
"Druggy" version is here.

[demo] Abductee by Baudsurfer

Baudsurfer strikes again. Building on his previous works Mayan and Wolf128, 'Abductee' is yet another prime example of what mindblowing things can be done with as little as 256 bytes of code (provided your computer is fast enough to render it). The prod took first place at Function 2014, by the way.

Download and discuss here.

[album] Fearofdark - The Coffee Zone

Fearofdark has released a compilation with his best .nfs works, spanning a period of almost 4 years. Contains tracks with and without expansion chips, and includes some previously unreleased material as well. True NES chiptune wizardry, and probably my favourite FoD release to date.

[demo] Superstructure by Transistor Core

A pretty eerie 256 byte MS-DOS intro by Transistor Core. Took second place in the combined 256b compo at Function 2014. Job well done!

Download and discussion here.

[soft] A New SNES Music Editor: SNES GSS

A new music tracker for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) has appeared. Made by Shiru (of VGM Maker and 1tracker fame), the tool is mainly intended for game developers. Focusing on code/data size efficiency rather than complexity, SNES GSS does not support the full SPC700 feature set.

As is to be expected from a veteran music software author like Shiru, the tracker interface is clean and intuitive. It uses same pattern-less method first explored in 1tracker.

Downloads and information on how to obtain the source are located at the project's own google code site. The google code site no longer exists, but the tracker is still available here.

CP/M Source Code Released

It's source code time again! On occasion of CP/M's 40th anniversary, the Computer History Museum has released the source code of the once hugely popular operating system. Several of the earliest versions, released from 1975 to 1979, are now available on the museum's website, along with an in-depth article on the history and legacy of the OS.

[game] MultiDude by Denis Grachev

As you all know I rarely ever post games here, but this brand new ZX Spectrum title really caught my attention. Made by Denis Grachev, MultiDude is mesmerizing puzzle platformer.

You take control of a team of characters with various abilities, who all need to work together in order for all of them to reach an exit on each level. Easier said than done. Tons of levels and slick multicolor graphics powered by Einar Saukas' Nirvana engine await you.

Download the game here.

[demo] fluid64 by Rudi

Some fresh MS-DOS sizecoding goodness from Rudi. Discrete fluid dynamics simulated in 64 bytes.

The video is obviously quite crappy, so I recommend grabbing the binary here and running it in DOSbox.

[album] VA - Dubztract

Pulselooper, Droid-on, and Subway Sonicbeat (all of chippanze.org fame) have teamed up for this wonderfully weird, dark, experimental, and lo-fi (chip)dub compilation. There aren't many releases like this, so I suggest you better give it a listen!

[demo] Timmy by speccy.pl

Today we have something quite unusual: A demo for the Timex 2048. Released at Riverwash last weekend, it took first place in the combined demo compo, smashing the competition from PC and Amiga.

The demo may not be the most impressive ever in terms of effects, but still deserves a big fat thumbs up due to the fact that it's indeed the first demo ever made specifically for this ZX Spectrum clone. Also, it has a nice screen by Piesu, cute music by Ziutek, and is overall put together quite well.

Download and discuss

[album] 1-bit Mechanistic by Tufty

Great news for all fans of fuzzy 1-bit sound! Tufty has released a new ZX Spectrum album today.

"1-bit Mechanistic" contains some of the best beeper music I have heard in recent years. Very strong, dynamic and melody driven power ballads - this guy knows what he's doing. Also included are some stunning 1-bit renditions of "That Old Magic" by 4mat and "So Cold The Night" by the Communards.

Final verdict: Highly recommended!

[demo] Sunglasses at Night by Ghostown & Whelpz

A stylish oldskool Amiga (OCS/ECS) demo by Ghostown & Whelpz. 2nd place at Riverwash 2014 combined demo compo.

Download and discuss

[album] Jellica's Untitled EP Now Available as Musicdisk

Jellica's recently released untitled EP is now available as C64 musicdisk, so you can enjoy these excellent dual SID tunes on emulator or real hardware (provided you have a dual SID mod). It also comes with beautiful PETSCII artwork by Raquel Meyers.

Download and info here.

[talk] Yugoslavian Home Computers

A very interesting talk held by Žarko Živanov at the Hack'n'Play conference in Freiburg, Germany earlier this year is now available in the CCC mediathek. In his one hour long presentation, Mr. Živanov not only covers the (somewhat) popular Galaksija and Orao home computers, but also less known machines such as the Lola 8/8A, Galeb, and Pecom, as well as some obscure clones made in various parts of former Yugoslavia. Highly recommended!

Printer Doom

Got a Canon Pixma printer? Now you can play Doom on it:

The background of this story is much more sinister than one might think. This isn't so much about porting a 16-bit classic to a device that wasn't intended for it. The reason this was done is to once again highlight the desolate state of security in the so-called "Internet of Things".

What made the hack possible in this case was a vulnerability in the printer's firmware. This allows any attacker to remote inject malware via a forged firmware update, thanks to a broken crypto and lack of user authentication.

Read the full story on Contextis.

[album] Famifood by Protodome

New Protodome stuff, hip hip horray! Prolong your summer mood with this happy, jazzy, midiNES releases, featuring plenty of cheese, silly jokes, and some sprinkles of latino flavour thrown in here and there.

Zapilyator Compo

Zapilyator Compo is possibly the first demo compo in which you can participate with little to no programming skills.

Entries have to be made with nyuk's Crazy Demo Maker (AWW post and english instructions here). There are two categories, "pure zapill" (e.g. unmodified Crazy Demo Maker binaries), and "enhanced zapill" (e.g. demos with additional non-Demo Maker code).

The rules are as follows:

• Participants must register at retroscene.org
• No previously released material may be submitted
• No illegal and obscene contents are accepted
• Deadline is September 26th.

The winner will be determined by public online vote on September 27th and 28th on the site linked above.

[demo] Circuits 16b by HellMood

New 16 byte sizecoding goodness by HellMood. Yess!

Download

[album] Rico Zerone - Passenger

Woohoo! A new album by the king of modular spacefunk has appeared. And he really outdid himself this time. Sadly, this will be the last Rico Z release for a while, as the project is now on an indefitine hiatus. All the more reason to enjoy this release to the max.

Stream and download on chipflip. The custom player interface was done by Enso and freedrull.

Culturachip AY Music Compo

Spanish chiptune community Culturachip and AAMSX are hosting an AY music contest.

From the call for submissions:

• Music composed for a single AY chip, no restriction on what tools or computer are used as long as the result can be played on the real thing (Vortex Tracker, Soundtracker, Protracker, Arkos, Starkos,..amstrad, speccy, apple ][, PC,.. ) (AY emulation is of course allowed).
• No previously released songs
• No versions or covers
• Deadline: 12 November 2014
• Send entries to: rolemusic somesymbol gmail period com
• After deadline all contestant must vote, songs will remain anonymous till the end of voting
• A DIY CD-Audio with printable cover and loseless .iso will be done. People who want to enter on the CD must give selling rights to the rest of the contestants. We do this to help refund the cost of printing, burning, or help some cost of future selling it in stands aimed to promotion. (notice that one can enter the compo but choose not to be on the CD)
• Musicdisck on a msx computer, and maybe on amstrad and spectrum too. (we recomend using .pt3 format due its portability)

More info about the contest can be found here (in Spanish).

MidiJoy, A MIDI Interface for POKEY

Phobotron aka Frederik Holst is working on an exiting new MIDI interface for Atari 8-bit computers. Based on littlescale's A26F interface for the Atari VCS, it will be the first MIDI interface to actually make external controlling of the POKEY soundchip possible. Furthermore, the interface will also work with the SID chip, though this isn't one of the primary development goals.

Check out the details on the project page.

Sources, firmware et al. will be published end of October this year. Before that, the project is running in this year's ABBUC hardware contest. The author has vowed to publish everything for free in case his entry ends up among the top 3.

[soft] Plogue liveNES

A neat new little live tool for the NES' 2a03 sound chip, made by Plogue.

Download it here.

[album] dat fuzz by irrlicht project

After 4 years in the making, it's finally released! All my best 1-bit works for ZX Spectrum are now available in album form. Inspired mostly by 70s prog rock and metal, this is a trip to the darker side of chiptune. Enjoy!



There are also physical CDs available from bandcamp.

And thanks to massive help by introspec, there's a musicdisk version (.tap/.scl) for playback on real hardware available here.

[demo] Spirello by Rubelson

Yeah, things have been pretty slow lately... was hoping for some nice demos from Chaos Constructions, but the stuff released there mostly failed to impress me. Especially the Speccy releases were rather disappointing.

There were some nice sizecoding prods though, so here we go: First place in the Small PC Intro compo at CC, this is Spirello by Rubelson. Rather stylish and a pretty good use for 255 bytes, methinks.

Download and discuss here.

Update: Copied the attribution from youtube without proper investigation. The demo is by Rubelson, not by randomi.

Goto80 Interview for Wall Magazine

A quick interview with Goto80, filmed at H2Ö Festival in Finland.

Yerzmyey Interview on Matt Chat - Part 3

Teletext40 Looking for Submissions

Teletext40, a website dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the teletext (yes, it's this year, coming up in September), is looking for art submissions. See page 102 and up (mind the subpages!) for details.

A dedicated editor is to be released soon on-site, until then you can use CebraText, miniTED, or just a plain ol' graphics editor. And if you're too lazy to draw something yourself, you can also send them a photo of your cat. LOL! See page 150 and up for more info on that.

And even if you're not intersted in submitting at all, I'd still recommend to take a look at the site, it's obviously done with a lot of care and love for detail.

[demo] Small men with old devices by SquoQuo

Rather boring Atari 8-bit intro, but it has some sweet POKEY music by 505. The prod even got 1st place at Buenzli's combined 64/4k compo.

Download and info

Beep: Game Music Documentary Kickstarter

A kickstarter is currently underway to create the world's first documentary on the sound and music of video games. The main initiator behind this is Karen Collins, a well known researcher on chip and game music. So chances are that this will be a quality product, and I therefore recommend backing the project.

Read details on the Kickstarter page.

[album] TTFHB - Serious Musician

Do you remember the times when I used to post some chill out music on Sundays? Well, not today mwahahaha... Behold, the new EP from The Tin Foil Hat Brigade. Just by looking at the cover art you should be able to tell that that you can't pass by this Gameboy trash punk masterpiece.

There's a limited run of 50 cassettes available, so check the bandcamp page if you'd like one.

Spectrum Today Issue 00 Now Available in English

Issue 00 of the new Speccy-related PDF magazine Spectrum Today has been translated to English. The original Slovak language version came out in May, so the contents are still reasonably fresh.

Put together by ellvis of zeroteam, the mag is an excellent read. Originally, I wanted to just quickly browse through it before posting about it here, but ended up reading the whole thing because it's just so well written and put together.

On 28 tightly packed pages, Spectrum Today covers mainly a lot of the great recent game releases which I somehow never get around to reviewing here. It also looks a bit into the demoscene, and has a very nice section on programming aimed mostly at beginners.

Download Issue 00

Lotus (Amiga OST) in 1-Bit

4throck brings you this beautiful 1-bit/Tritone rendition of the Lotus 1 Amiga OST.

[album] Intergalactic Nomad by Tronimal

Some fresh, dark DMG tunes from Wuppertal, the hotspot of German chiptune. The strongest release by Tronimal yet, this not only demonstrates how to do Gameboy dance music the right way, but also contains some beautiful chip ballads with vocals. Includes a contribution by Tom Woxom, and samples by little-scale and yours truly.

Chippendales Discography Released on Soundcloud

No, it's not what you're thinking. Chippendales was an chipmusic collective that was active in 1999-2000, producing some of the finest tunes ever on the Amiga. The group consisted of Zandax, Chavez, Beathawk, Vent, Abaddon, Goto80, Curt Cool, and Tempest. Unfortunately they disbanded quickly after legal threats over the name, and realizing that few people cared about their music in that time. In Tempest's words,

"Back then chipmusic was very unfashionable and - to be honest - nobody in the demoscene gave a shit about what we were doing. We were almost 10 years too late for Amiga scene (demo/intro packs, crack intros etc), and 10 years too early for the current chipmusic craze."

A pity, really. Fortunately, the music has been preserved, and now, 14 years later, the group has released their discography as a soundcloud set. Thanks guys!





See soundcloud.com/chippendales-1 for the playlists. The original MOD files can be found here.

Wizwords Writeup on Mastertronic Cover Art

Neuron Zapper artwork by Mark Brady

Wizwords has a new article about Mark Brady and John Smyth, who created almost all the game cover art for Mastertronic back in the day. A brief, but enlightning read. Find it here.

International Teletext Art Festival Starts Today

Two is better than one by Nadine Arbeiter

The International Teletext Art Festival 2014 starts today! Check it out on ARD starting page 850, ORF/ORF3 starting page 470, SWISStext starting page 750, and arte starting page 700, or go to see the exhibitions at rbb Berlin, MuseumsQuartier Vienna, or the ARD stand at the IFA Berlin in September.

[album] 4 by Lain2097

A rather eclectic set of gloomy, industrial-technoish music made with a 4-track tape recorder and various chipsynths including midiNES, AY3, SammichFM, and more. Probably not everybody's cup of tea, but I quite enjoyed the dark mellow mood of it.

[album] Untitled by Joss Manley

Some fresh weird glitchy minimal C64 noises by the master of, uh, weird glitchy minimal chipnoises, Joss Manley. If you like this stuff, be sure to give his other new releases a listen, too.

Micromusic.net Is Back

Anybody remember micromusic.net? No? Well anyway, the site of the oldest chiptune network is back to celebrate it's 15th birthday with some new microtunez, microeventz, and other cool stuff. Check it out!

[album] Yolanda by Vince Kaichan

And yet another one of my favourite chip composers has a new release out. Vince Kaichan, the master of laid back chipgrooves, brings you this sunshine flavoured EP with 4 heart-warming Gameboy tracks that make you wish you were hanging out on a tropic beach with a cocktail with one of those silly little paper umbrellas right now.

Blocktronics WTF4 - World's Largest ANSI Art

4636 lines of ANSI art - now that's pretty WTF alright. 24 different artists collaborated to create this giant textmode artpiece. It was presented at the ANSI/ASCII compo at Evoke, where it took first place.

Update: The artpack is available for download here.

[album] Limitless by Jredd

As promised, here's some more SEGA awesomeness, this time for the Genesis/Mega Drive. Without further ado, here's the new FM album from Trevin "Jredd" Hughes. Enjoy!

[album] PSG Series 2 by Tomy

W00t? No decent new chiptune albums for like two months (at least none that really appealed to my taste) and today all of the sudden there's a whole bunch of them? Seems like the summer void is over, horray!

First up, we have something you definately don't hear every day: a whole album with SEGA Master System (SN76489) music, recorded from real hardware. And it's 90 minutes long! Thanks a lot Tomy, for giving this underdog of a soundchip some proper care.

More SEGA awesomeness coming up later, stay tuned!

[demo] rocket science by Bauknecht

Yes! A new Commodore Plus/4 demo from Bauknecht! Results from Evoke aren't in yet, but I would be surprised if this doesn't get first place in the Alternative Platforms compo. Some of the bump mapping seems a bit random at times, but the overall load of stunning effects and the beautiful TED soundtrack more than make up for it.

Update: Yep, first place. Oh, and download is here, btw. If you're going to watch it on emulator, use YAPE, not VICE.

Donate Button Added

Hi everybody,

Ancient Wonderworld is going to celebrate it's first anniversary soon. It's been a great adventure for me, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank everybody who has been frequenting the blog - I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for you.

If you like this blog and/or the stuff I do as irrlicht project, please consider a little contribution to my work. I've added a Paypal donation button on the right, so you can pass a starving artist a few bucks.

Thank you all for your support, and looking forward to bringing you another year of news and updates, finest chiptune music, and random video posts!

Codah's Ark - Sending A Crowdfunded Demoscene Satellite into Space

After recently sending a C64 demo into orbit, TRSI decided to send a second satellite. The tennis ball sized device is set for launch in 2015.

The best part of the project is: All demosceners are invited to take part. You can prepare your own 8x16px or 16x16px logo, which you can then afterwards receive live from space with a DVB-T USB stick and a cheap, easy to make antenna.

Check out the Indigogo campain to find out more.

Crazy Demo Maker

Do you miss the good old days of crappy demo makers? Well, now you can take a trip down memory lane! Russian coder nyuk has created an online tool so simple in usage, everybody can make their own ZX Spectrum craptros with it in minutes. Enter the Crazy Demo Maker.

Since the manpage is available only in Russian, here's a few pointers:

PT2/PT3 music needs a music file, obviously. Grab one from zxtunes, or make your own (eg. with Vortex Tracker)

Splash file is the load/title screen. Takes a standard 6912 byte .scr file that you can create with ZX Paintbrush, for example.

Background is, well, the background image for the main part. Upload another 6912 byte .scr file here.

The GIF file, from which an animation will be created, must be a black and white animated gif with 256 by 192 pixels. It should have a maximum size of 40kb. If the compiler throws a "Too long source! Demo can not be compiled!!!!" error at you, try reducing the gif file size and/or frame rate setting.

The rest should be pretty self explanatory. Happy demomaking ;)

Commodore128.org Is Dead, Long Live The Commodore 128

Slightly old news, but nevertheless important. In case anybody was wondering where the Commodore128.org community went, there is a new forum to be found at c-128.freeforums.net. Long live the Commodore 128!

Chipmachine - A New Multi-Chip Music Player

An mindblowing new chipmusic player has appeared. From the trusty SID to obscure tracker formats, Chipmachine supports nearly every format and platform you can ask for, including all 322 formats currently supported by the Modland archive. It also serves as a frontend to latter collection as well as HVSC, and can read and display STIL tags.

Chipmachine is rather heavy on dependancies (I had to install some 300 MB of stuff on my machine), but I think considering the feature set, it's worth it.

Anyway, check it out here. For the time being, you'll need to build Chipmachine from source. Unless you happen to use Ubuntu 64bit, in that case there's a .deb package available.

[demo] Flippin' The Dots by XayaX

Flippin' The Dots is a pretty neat prod by XayaX, which won first place in the Wild compo at Nordlicht. It runs on a flipdot display, driven by a BeagleBone (a miniature ARM based Linux computer board). Enjoy!

More info, sources and proper video here.

Yerzmyey Interview on Matt Chat - Part 2

For everybody who's been waiting for the second part of the Yerzmyey interview on Matt Chat, here is it. This time: talkin' Atari.

[demo] point16b by HellMood^Desire

HellMood has updated his 16 byte paint program for MS-DOS, making this already insane sizecoding prod even more incredible. It now has an exit function (by moving the cursor to the left border), a visible cursor, and can draw thicker lines. Check it out here. (Hint: try all possible combinations of left/right/middle mouse button for different colors.)

The asm source is included again, so you can see for yourself how this magic works.

Beep'em All 5 - Jredd Edition

XXL has released a new GTIA/1-bit music collection for Atari 8-bit computers. "Beep'em All 5" is dedicated entirely to the works of Trevin "Jredd" Hughes.

Download the .atr image here.

LSR 64 - C64-controlled Laser

Lasers are cool. Commodore 64 is cool. Put 'em together and you get this:

Yep, it's a color laser controlled in realtime by a C64 with the help of a DAC cartridge developed by ViTi, and additional code by Hermit.

The project was presented at Árok demoparty, where it not only left the audience stunned, but also took first place in the Wild compo.

More details and download of the control software here.

Yerzmyey Interview on Matt Chat

Long interview is long! And this is only the first half, more is to be expected next week.

[diskmag] Game Corner Q2/2014

And another previously overlooked release. At least this one isn't half a year old ;)

Game Corner is a fairly young C64 diskmag put together by Didi of Laxity. As the name suggests, it focuses exclusively on games. Read this if you want to catch up on all those great new titles that I don't get around to reviewing here because I'm not much of a gamer, or check out what's been going on in the cracking scene lately. It's also worth checking this out just for the dark, atmospheric soundtrack by celticdesign.

Download at CSDb.

[demo] Muco1k by Busysoft

A 1K multicolor intro for the ZX Spectrum that has unfortunately escaped my attention so far, perhaps because it was only added to Pouet yesterday. It was released at Forever 2014, where it took second place in the 1K intro compo. Hmmmm drugs....

Download here.

[demo] Emperor of the North Pole by Spaceballs

Ah, finally some gold has been discovered in the summer hole. Titled "Emperor of the North Pole", this stylish Amiga (OCS/ECS) production by Spaceballs has won first place in the oldskool demo compo at Solskogen 2014. The f*cking North Pole, that's where I'd want to be right now. Also, gotta love that classical rave soundtrack.

Download and info at the usual place.

Btw more exiting news coming up - there was a new demo for C= Plus/4 released at Árok. Will post it as soon as there's a 'tube for it.

[soft] Game Boy Tracker (aka Paragon5) Replayer Released

Stéphane Hockenhull, author of the early Gameboy tracker known as Beyond or Paragon5, has released the replay routines for his tool.

I was also surprised to learn that Stéphane has also ported this - nowadays almost legendary - tracker to Windows, OS X, and Linux. Big thumbs up for that!

Grab the download with tracker and replayer here.

For building GB ROMs, you will also need to grab a copy of RGBDS.

[demo] Manifesto by thesuper

A new, funky fresh ZX Spectrum demo from thesuper, released at DiHalt 2014, where it took first place in the 8bit demo compo.

While it has some quite impressive parts such as the mesh wormhole/tunnel, other parts like the rotating colored objects feel a bit unpolished. Love the music and the subtle stabs at recent demoscene dramas though.

Download here.

[book] Shift-Restore-Escape - Now on Presale

More stuff in German, yikes! Shift - Restore - Escape is a collection of essays and papers on computer archeology, based on a series of talks by the same name, held in 2012 at the Humboldt-University in Berlin.

Highlights include papers on Atari VCS demo programming by SvOllie; the multitasking Z80 SymbOS by Jörn Mika; the making of TEXOR, a word processor for the GDR computer KC-85 and one of the earliest word processors around by IT veteran Horst Völz, and many more. Furthermore, there's an article written by yours truly, on the history of chiptune and 1-bit music in particular. The full list of contents can be found on the editor's blog.

So, if you happen to speak some German, don't hesitate to preorder the book now from CSW Verlag.

enotracker - TMC-based Atari POKEY Tracker

Good news for all Atari 8-bit musicians! The popular Theta Music Composer is now available as a cross platform tool under the name "enotracker".

TMC/enotracker supports all the features you can ask for, including full support for stereo POKEY setups. enotracker is SDL based, so it runs on Windows as well as on *nix systems.

Download the alpha for Windows here, or check out the source on Github.

A Talk on the Zuse Z22

Lorenz Hanewinkel, the constructor of the legendary Zuse Z22 mainframe computer, recently gave an in-depth talk on the machine at the CCC's Gulaschprogrammiernacht in Karlsruhe (where one of the few remaining original working Z22s is located).

Unfortunately, the presentation is currently only available in German. Perhaps someone can pester the guys in Karlsruhe into translating this.

In the meantime, those who understand the language can (and should) check out the talk here.

International Teletext Art Festival 2014 Announced

The International Teletext Art Festival goes into it's 3rd year.

This year's ITAF will be held from August 14th to September 14th, and works will be broadcasted through the teletext pages of ARD, ORF, SwissTV and ARTE. In addition, works will also be presented at the rbb Fernsehzentrum in Berlin.

Selected works will be added to the newly founded Museum of Teletext Art
at the FixC Artist Co-op in Helsinki.

[demo] Down by Life on Mars

The most mindblowing thing to come out of the ZX Spectrum for a while. Made by introspec and friends for Sundown 2014, where it rightfully took first place in the oldskool compo.

Download here.

[album] FM Micro: Super Turbo Pocket Edition

Groovemaster303 and Jredd are funking up the summer with a new Sega Mega Drive EP. A++ material!

As a bonus, the album is also available as a ROM, to be run on real hardware or an emulator. The binary is available here.

[demo] Back to Color by AntonioND

A demo for the Gameboy Color - now that's something you don't see every day. It was made for the GBDev 2014 coding compo, which is still accepting submissions for a few more days.

The demo itself may have some room for improvements, but I'm just too happy to see a prod on this platform to not post it.

Get the binary at pouet.

Also AntonioND was kind enough to release the source of the demo on Github. Even more extra props for also releasing the OpenMPT -> GBC converter used to create the music for this demo.

FreeDOS Turns 20

Ancient Wonderworld salutes the FreeDOS team. The free MS-DOS clone has just celebrated its 20th anniversary a few days ago. Here's to another 20 successful years!

[demo] 8088 Domination by trixter^Hornet

Trixter of Hornet presented a spectacular follow-up to his 10 year old "8088 Corruption" at @party last month, where it of course took first place. The demo features -gasp- full video streaming with up to 60 fps and audio on oldschool IBM PCs with CGA graphics. 'Nuff said.

Get the binary at scene.org.

ACE Tracker 2.0 Released

After more than a decade, ACE Tracker, the #1 music tool on Atari Falcon030, has received a massive overhaul. Tons of new features have been added, including new waveforms, hi/lo/bandpass filters, advanced sample support, and many more. Grab your free download at New Beat Productions.

SNDH Updated to V4.4

The SNDH Archive, the biggest collection of Atari ST music, has been updated to version 4.4. Check out the demo below (1st place at Summarhack Atari compo) for a teaser.

The SNDH update will be available on sndh.atari.org shortly. The demo can be downloaded here.

[album] Goto80 - Files in Space

New Goto80, hiphip horray! Another super solid release, as always with a beautiful mix of chip anthems, jazzy jams, and lo-fi goodness.

It came out a couple of weeks ago, and unfortunately the physical release, a tape edition limited to 100 copies, is already sold out. However, you can of course still purchase the digital version on bandcamp.

[magazine] Lotek64 #49 Released

A new issue of what is arguably the most popular German language Commodore magazine Lotek64 has been released. Expect a truckload of hardware, software, and music reviews as well as a number of in-depth articles and interviews.

Download it here or order a physical copy at Lotek64's website.

[album] A Laser for Lovers - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Ancient Wonderworld is back after a little summer break. I'll be digging through the backlog of recent releases in the next days.

First up, we have a new release by BLEO which honestly surprised me with it's slow, dark, minimalistic grittyness. Those who purchase the album are rewarded with a nifty package with quite a few bonus items. So check it out on bandcamp and toss the guy a few bucks if you can!

Daily Dosis: Batman Returns (OST) Stage 1 Theme by Motohiro Kawashima, Mikito Ichikawa, and Yuzo Koshiro

Now haven't we heard this one before somewhere? ;)

Anyway, this is it for the Sega Master System Special. If you have any requests for further platform themed specials on Daily Dosis, let me know in the comments below!

Daily Dosis: The Flash (OST) Title Music by Jeroen Tel

Daily Dosis: Moonwalker (OST) - Bad by Takayuki Nakamura

Now here's one for the lulz:

No, it isn't just Bad, it's outright terrible. Why a talented composer like Takayuki Nakamura would butcher a simple cover song so thoroughly remains a mystery to me. Sorry for posting this, I'll make up for it tomorrow ;)

Daily Dosis: Vampire - Master of Darkness (OST) - Boss Theme by Fumie Kumatani, and Yoko Wada

Daily Dosis: Shadow Dawn (OST) - Asian Dawn by Keisuke Tsukahara

Daily Dosis: Ninja Gaiden (OST) - Samurai in Tsutenkaku by Fumie Kumatani

Daily Dosis: Zillion (OST) Title Music by Tokuhiko Uwabo, Yoshiaki Kiuchi, Shingo Kobayashi, and Jun Irie

It's time for a new DD special. This week, we take a look (or rather listen) at the SEGA Master System.

As we all know, music certainly wasn't one of the strong points of the SMS, and the Texas Instruments SN76489 used by the console counts arguably as one of the worst soundchips ever made. However, if you can look beyond the the almost complete absence of bass, there were actually some pretty killer soundtracks available on the machine back in the days.

So, without further ado, here's the Daily Dosis' SMS Special.

ZeptoBars - Disassembling Microchips Is Fun!

There's people who like to take apart trucks and cars. There's people who like to take apart computers and electronic toys. And then there's people who like to take apart microchips.

Some of these, like the Russian team ZeptoBars, are kind enough to document their unusual hobby. So, if you ever wondered what an EEPROM looks like on the inside, or you want to check out some CPUs and go "Aaah! Oooh!", then I highly recommend you check out their blog at zeptobars.ru.

SC61860 Instruction Table

Since all of the currently available information on the SC61860 (aka ESR-H) CPU used in some of Sharp's pocket calculators seems to be neither complete nor free of errors, I decided to make my own mnemonics table.

It can be found here.

If you find any errors or have additional information, please let me know in the comments!

[Demo] uswave by HellMood

HellMood strikes again, this time with this 6 byte (!) visual effect for MS-DOS. Sizecoding at it's finest.

Download

30 Years of Tetris

Happy 30th birthday, Tetris! And thanks Alexey Pajitnov for creating one of the best and most peaceful computer games of all time :)

[Demo] Plankton by fsqrt

A rather stylish 128 byte production for MS-DOS. Didn't score so well at Outline thanks to the fierce competition (only 5th place), but I think it deserves a thumb up. Download at pouet, as usual.

I'll post more from the 128 byte compo later, waiting for some proper Youtube renders atm.

osaka - A Music Demo for the Sharp PC-1403

A noisy little production by yours truly. Got first place in the wild compo at Outline 2014. Free bleeding ears included.

More info and download at pouet.

New Jellica Album Released

Cheapbeats released a wonderful spacey album by SID master Jellica. Embrace the squelch!