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!