Last month Paolo Besser released version 1.3.3 of Icaros Desktop. Now there are 3 patches available with many improvements for version 1.3.3. Changes: Improved driver for GMA chipsets. Improvements for Wanderer, Icons, LiveUpdater, Italian translation and AmiBridge. The next release of Icaros Desktop will have a new feature: You can start Amiga 68k games and demos directly from ADF files.

TIM is a home-built computer. The special thing about the TIM computer is that it has no chips inside, most of the system is build with relays. TIM is a 8-bit computer with an serial ALU, 5 registers (8-bit), 16 bytes RAM, a punch tape reader and a sound-card. The computer uses 152 relays and the speed of the system is about 8 Hz. It is possible to over-clock the system to 16 Hz.

The Youtube channel of rapidrory.

Frank Buss is working on an universal C64 cartridge. You can upload files from a PC (via USB) to the cartridge and store up to 31 cartridges (each 64 kB) on the cartridge. It can emulate any cartridge type except for cartridges with DMA access. On his web page you can find more pictures, schematics and information.

Demonstration video of the Universal C64 Cartridge.

A new edition of the English and German Amiga (paper) magazine Amiga Future has been released. In this edition: Reviews: KryoFlux, AmigaOne 500, AmigaOS 4.1 Update 4, Swamp Defense, Jack, GuideMaker, RiVA, FlipClock, Scribble, Tiny Launcher, Tracker Hero, Diver 50. Workshop: C-Workshop (11), AmigaOS 4.1 Workbench (6). Special: AROS, Classic Reflection 2, The right Amiga for everyone (4). Others: Interview Simon Archer, Editorial, News Up2Date and letters to the Editor.

C64anabalt is now official available on cartridge. The game C64anabalt was original made by Adam Saltsman (Adam Atomic) and the Commodore 64 conversion was done by Paul Koller (Paulko64). The cartridge comes with a printed manual and a specially designed box. You can choose between two different sound tracks one from Mikkel Hastrup (Encore) and one from Andreas Slotte (Ghormak).

Kananga is working on a conversion program that will make VIC-20 versions of SID music. The converter is based on the Aleksi Eeben's SID Emu and will work on a Commodore VIC-20 with an 8 kB memory expansion. You can now listen to examples he already made, such as Commando, Cybernoid, IK and Zoids.

A new version of EasyProg is now available. Changes in this version. You can now use the function Erase KERNAL/AR/SS5. The Torture Test has been improved. When a slot is erased, the slot name is erased too (also for KERNALs). The slot number is now a part of the address.
Skoe also released a new version of the EF3-Menu (v1.0.4).

More information about the EasyFlash.

Wyvern is a new Shoot 'em up game for the Commodore C64. The game is made by Christian Siege with the help of SEUCK. The music is from Richard Bayliss and the loader was done by Martin Piper. In the game the evil lord has abducted the holy dragon Wyvern, and wants to take control of Prodigia. You must help Wyvern to escape from the evil lord's castle. you can shoot with magic fireballs but do not touch the deadly background.

The web page Recorded Amiga Games added more longplay Amiga games last month. Now you can watch: Winter Olympiad 88, Space Assault, Scramble Spirits, Aladin's Magic Lamp, Calephar, I Ludicrus, Rage, Maniax, Nucleus, Rollerball, Rainbow Warrior, Trained Assassin, Cardiaxx, Belial, Carcharodon and others.

The web page c64games.de had an update. You can now find more than 5700 games on this web page. A few examples of new games are: 1000 Kung-Fu Maniacs, 3D Cubert 64, Castles and Creatures, Duel, Fairy Well, Firing Line, Get Em, Harvest, Herbert on the Slopes, Hyper Blast, Inca Curse, Nuker Preview, Pot Nabber, Psycho Hopper, Q-Bert, Qix, Quolerus, R-Bert, Rainbow Challenge, Runestone, Super Cubert, Tubyx, Ufo Defense and Woolly Jumper.

Andrew Dieffenbach is working on a 128 kB cartridge for the Commodore C64. For his cartridge he uses a 27C010 EPROM with bank-switching for the access of several 8 kB banks of data. In the demonstration video you can see the game M.U.L.E. The loading time of M.U.L.E. is reduced from 7 minutes to 1 second. After loading the first part of the game, the cartridge switches to another bank, and the second part of the game is available.

More information about Andrew's projects.

Micro64 is an cycle exact Commodore C64 emulator. The most recent changes are: Added a 64-bit version for Windows. Added a Mac OS X version with full screen mode. Many improvements in the VIC-II emulation. And there is now an alternative very exact 1541 disk drive emulation. Visit the Micro64 web page to read more about the changes.

There are new games added to the GTW web page: Arwag, Civilization, Strobe, Bronnoyquest, Pimple Panic, The Bandage, The Slippery, Zorro in Wonderland, Lupin 3, Magnetic, Tornado Tom and an unnamed Shoot Em Up game.

Magess of Midgard is a new game for the Commodore C64. The game is made by Anthony Burns with the help of SEUCK and the music is from Fredrik. In the game you must defend the city of Caer Del Taryn. If the city gets invaded too many times the civilization will perish.

The TND start page.

The new Retroinvaders calendar is now available. This calendar is available in English and Spanish. In the calendar you will find pictures of Mermaid. There is also retro calendars for other computers.

More retro calendars 2012.

Ninja / The Dreams gave a presentation on the 28th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany. In this 1 hour presentation he explains how to make a demo for the Commodore C64. The topics are: Design choices, Effects, Data compression, Loading data, Dirty tricks, Synchronization, Linking and how to keep it all in 64 kB RAM.

Cometfall is a new adventure game for the Commodore VIC-20 made by Kweepa. To play the game you need a real VIC-20 with a 16 kB expansion or an emulator. You can also play the game on-line. The game is a science fiction text game. With "help" you will get a list of possible commands and you can also use the Infocom short-keys (n,s,e,w,u,d,i,z,x).

Play Cometfall on-line.

The web page C64 Endings has added 13 new game endings last month. The latest additions are: 12 o'clock (CP Verlag), Connection Gravity (CP Verlag), Colouration (XL.C.US), Dark Caves (CP Verlag), Firequest (The Edge), Force Seven (Datasoft), Gremlins the Adventure (Adventure International), House Jack Built (Thor), I-Xera (The Power House), Joe Blade (Players), Threshold (Sierra Online), Velocipede II (Players) and Willow Pattern, The (Firebird Software).

You can now listen to a new episode of BoingsWorlds (German language). You can listen to the following articles: Jens Schönfeld, UAE-Wii 7, Amiga-Club Braunschweig Meeting, Bermuda Syndrome Engine, Amiga Mania, Aros Intel 3D unterstützung, MacroSystem Maestro, Andreas Magerl, GeniScan, CDTV Werbung, Amiga 500 Plus, VXL 30 Turbokarte, ScummVM, Baphomets Fluch, Moonstone and Operation Lemmings.

Neo-Rio released three text adventures for the Commodore C64. The games are originally made for the Tandy Coco and were published in the book "Rainbow book of adventures 3". The games are converted to Commodore BASIC 2. In "An Actor's Nightmare" you are an actor who is late for a very important performance. In "The Lost Amulet" you need to read carefully read all notes, conserve your batteries and maybe use some magic and in "The Professional" you are Joseph Benjamin Gunn, a private detective, and need to find a million dollar necklace.

Download: An Actor's Nightmare, The Lost Amulet and The Professional.

TOSEC has been updated. TOSEC, or The Old School Emulation Center, is a group of people dedicated to the preservation of games and other programs for home computer and console systems. In this update: 16 new, 61 updated and 13 removed.

Erich found a rare game for the Commodore Plus/4. The game Planetfall is a text adventure from Infocom. Planetfall was written by Steve Meretzky in 1983. In the game you work on a starship. After an explosion on board people use an escape pod to get to the nearby planet. You need to find a way home. But you are not alone, you have the help of the robot called Floyd.

This year the Commodore will be 30 years old. The C64 was the successor of the very popular VIC-20. The new computer was revealed on the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 1982. Later in the year the C64 was for sale in America. Outside America you could buy the C64 in the autumn of 1982. On the web page of reghardware.com you can read a nice article about the C64.

Another article about the C64.

In this English pdf and html magazine about the retro gaming computers the following articles: Gaming Tetralogies - The Sonic The Hedgehog Series. Apple II Incider- Adventuring With Ultima. Commodore Du Jour - H.E.R.O. MAME Reviews - Splat! Dual Perspective - Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship Of Doom. The Pixelated Mage - Alcahest. Standalone Spew. + more!

The Feeling of Power is a new game for the Commodore C64. The game was written by TheRyk, Fredrik made the music and the graphics are from LZwerch and TheRyk. The game was released at the Maximum Overdose 9 meeting, 28 - 30 December 2011 in Germany. The game reached 4th place in the Executable/Demo section.

Jazzcat started a cracker's map. He collected information about the well known cracking groups and their members. You can read about how they started, what they did and why they are remembered. The information is dug-up from the depths of times, but also directly from the people involved.

For the 1541 Ultimate 1 and 2 is a new version (v2.4) of the firmware available. New in this version: CRT load for loading a cartridge file in to the Ultimate. EasyFlash support (read only). Flashing and running custom FPGAs (Ultimate-II only) without the use of a JTAG cable. And many other small improvements.

UAE-Wii is a Amiga emulator for the Nintento Wii. The emulator is based on the UAE emulator and can emulate the Amiga 500, 600, 1000 and 1200. Changes in this version: Added rumble support and configurable aspect ratio. Reduced font size of the list file menu and UTF-8 font support. On the WiiBrew web page you can read all the details about installing the emulator on your Wii.

Source code of UAE-Wii on Google Code.

The EasyFlash 3 is now available at the retro-donald.de web page. The EasyFlash 3 is a kit, but the work you have to do is not difficult and a manual is available. The new version is bigger and you can now load 7 normal EF images into the system. With the EF 3 you can also replace the built-in Kernal with a alternative Kernal. The USB connection will be implemented in the future.

More information about the Easy Flash 3.

After a long time of development Mr Beanbag is now available. Mr Beanbag is a fast-paced platform adventure for AGA Amigas (A1200/A4000 or a emulator). Rescue Mr Fizzy Pop from the evil Count Gazpacho! Explore the world, from Mr Beanbag's home in Verdant Valley.

Bil Herd made a video where he talks about the Commodore C116. Bil was the lead hardware engineer on the TED family of Commodore Computers in the 1980's. The C116 was the first model of the TED family and was the true idea of what the TED family should be.

SIDBlaster is a new sound-card for the ZX-Spectrum. The features are: MOS 6510 CPU, 64Kb RAM, Direct playing of PSID and RSID tunes, PAL/NTSC compatible, 4 SID's (2x6581, 2x8580) and full C64-interrupt system. When the SIDBlaster is fully functional, it will be rebuild with the help of a FPGA. The hardware design is from Sergey Bagan (Prusak) and the software is done by Alexander Alexandrow (Byteman).

More information about the SIDBlaster/ZX (Russian > English)

WHDLoad offers a way to play Amiga diskette games from your hard-disk. Improved: Treasure Island Dizzy (Code Masters). New: Erazorhead (Razor 1911), Sound Disk (Zenith), Semi '93 Invitation (Manitou), Cherokee (Manitou), Almighty (Manitou), Musicland 2 (Brainstorm), Musicland (Brainstorm), Rainheart Project (Bad Company), Musication (Absolute!), Sound Engine 1 + 2, The Best of Grubi (Brainstorm), Ilyad (Alcatraz), Manchester United: Premier League Champions (Krisalis), Antares: Der Griff nach den Sternen (Bomico) and Scene Talk 3 (Submission).

Swinkels, well known for his SwinSID, has now made a C64 music player for the Samsung bada 2.0 platform. This app gives you access to the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) with more than 40.000 SID's. The player also supports extended stereo for a new experience when listening to your favorite SID tunes.

In the month January you can enter the RetroChallenge 2012 competition. You can submit anything that has to do with computers from the pre-Pentium era. Everything is allowed, hardware project, programs, multi media etc. Visit the RetroChallenge web page for more details.

C and A Fan is a Polish .pdf magazine including a diskette. In this edition the following articles: Editorial, News, Contest, Let's play like in the old days, Universal Cartridge, Interviews with Commer'em and Michael Tomczyk (Home Computer Wars), C64 SID file, Silesia Party V, Amiga Local Weather, Multimedia in Arosa, PPA 4-6, Commodore MAX Machine and the pongs 2000K and 3000H.

Unseen (Ingo Korb) has released a new version of the sd2iec firmware. Changes in this version: Improved the raw directory generation. An improved emulation when fast loaders are disabled. ULoad M3 automatically exits when ATN becomes active. And a new fast loader - ELoad v1 (EasyProg) - is implemented. The sd2iec is a controller / interface system that makes it possible to use SD memory cards as a storage device on the CBM serial bus.

There are new games for the Commodore C64 available on The New Dimension (TND) web page: Destroy all Robots X21 by Roberto Ricioppo, Strike Team Alpha by Carl Mason, Grayhawk by Alf Yngve and Purge 101 by Anthony Burns. The games are made with SEUCK (Shoot Em Up Construction Kit).

Start page of the TND web page.

AmiKit is a freeware compilation of the finest Amiga programs. A few examples of these programs are: AmIRC, FroggerNG, FryingPan,WinUAE 2.4.0, NetSurf, ScummVM, AmiTwitter, OpenSSL, Wazp3D, AfA_OS, FlashPlayer, MCP, Scalos, WHDLoad, YAM and a registered version of Magellan II. AmiKit is the way to experience the Classic AmigaOS on your Windows, Apple or Linux system.

The web page C64 Intros has added another 100 intros bringing the total to 8700 intros. A few examples of updated or new groups are: CSS, Dark Angels, Fristies, Victory Lucid, Ahead, D.S. Compware, Hurricane, Kriminal Goodsoftware Breaking, Nostalgia, Oxygen, Sunrise, Special Weapons and Tactics and Weird Science 2662.

There is a update available of the High Voltage SID Collection. There are now more then 41.250 SIDs in the collection. In this update 861 new SIDs, 156 fixed/better rips, 786 SID credit fixes, 88 SID model/clock infos, 43 tunes identified and 79 tunes moved. You can download the update from the HVSC web page.

There are new games added to the GTW web page: Nuker, Runestone, Duel, Necronom, Shao Lin's Road V1, Leopard Lord, Enduro Racer V1/V2, Microprose Soccer, Razzmatazz and 44 other new entries. The site updated also 17 entries.

TAWS (The Amiga Workbench Simulation) is a JavaScript-Simulation of the Amiga-Workbench 1.x - 3.x for IE, Firefox, Opera and WebKit-Browsers. With TAWS you can work with the Amiga Workbench inside your favorite web browser. Changes in this version: MagicMenuPrefs, Italian language added, Topaz-Fonts and many more small changes and improvements.

Arthur Jordison released a new version of CBM prg Studio. Changes in this version: Dockable windows, assembler macros, local labels and some zero page optimizations. This is a beta version, if you find an error, please contact Arthur.

On the web page Flashtro.com you can see many cracker intro’s with your browser. The original intros from the Amiga, Atari-ST, Dreamcast, PC, Playstation etc. are converted to Flash. The most recent Amiga flashtro’s are: Full Evil - Satan, The Goonies - Bionic Commando, Red Sector - Dragon's Lair, Flashtro - CrackDown, Two Live Crew - Premiere, Skid Row - Amos 3D, Paradox - Snow Strike, Accumulators - War Machine, Katarizis- Maupiti Island, Zero Defects - Puffys Saga, Wanted Team - Okrety, Anthrox - Flexi Dump, Unit A - Alternate Reality and Horizon - Tusker.

Arkanix Labs released a new version of Cartograph for the PC. With this program it is possible to make tile based maps on the PC. The maps can be used on the Commodore C64 for games or demos. Changes in this version are: Fixed a problem with the Tileset window. Added additional check when loading default Datamap and Tileset. Added an export option to the Datatypes menu. Arkanix Labs is now working on the next release (v2.5) with Multicolor, Tile animation and png support.

Arkanix Labs web page.

Monthly Page is a English pdf magazine about the Amiga. In this edition: Interview with James Caroll (Article by Phillip), Coming Out Of The Shell Part 3 (Article by Damien) and the Top ten downloads from OS4depot.

Schema (Leif Bloomquist) made a new music track. The music is made on a VIC-20 and was optimized with FL Studio (phaser/reverb/equalizer, mild overdrive). The music was made for the "Art and the Machine" (RAM) presentation. RAM is a showcase for artists who work with art and electronic technology, light, graphics, robots and virtual reality.

Rethinking Art and the Machine web page.

You can listen to new remixes on the AmigaRemix web page. In the last weeks they added the following Amiga music: Enigma Gun (Extended Mix), The Chaos Engine - The Forest, Paradroid-2010, BA1 - Beautiful Fireworks, Another World (End Theme Remix), The ultimate challenge (lotus III remix), Elvira Loader, Vroom Crack Intro (Monday Remix 2011), Turrican 2 - Level 2, Beams of Light, Interference [Szudi^Implexy RMx], Turrican II - The Great Bath [Extended Piano Mix], Atomix - Title Song - Element Thalion Industrial Mix, Agony and A Shuffled Hyperbase [Enigma - Hyperbased].

In this podcast you can hear the following music: Moonove - Ace 2 - Main Theme, Encore - Run, Rob Hubbard - Thing on a Spring, N-JOY - Warhawk, Rob Hubbard - Thrust, Rayza - Oldschool, Jens-Christian Huus - Su-Sweet, Wobbler - Mountie, Mick’s Deathride, Jeroen Tel - Cybernoid II and Markus Schneider - Golden Axe. There is also news about: Eve plays tune from The Last Ninja (piano), 18 classic SID tunes remastered, C64 podcast "Commoflage" (RSS feed), Prince of Persia and C64anabalt.