Month: April 2024

Reverse Engineering the 6502

This is a 52-minute talk from 2010, from the 27th Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, Germany (the talk is in English), presented by Michael Steil of Visual 6502, which successfully reverse engineered the venerable 6502 microprocessor, a chip used, in one capacity or another, in one form, or another, in all the Apple, Commodore and Atari microcomputers, the BBC Micro, the Atari 5200, in a modified from the Atari 2600 the NES, and countless arcade games, as well as in other places.

The talk is intended for a technical audience… literally. When the speaker asks who in the audience has coded in assembly before, practically everyone raises their hands. It’s recognized that we at Set Side B veer wildly between the most surface-level populist material and in-depth treatments for those with gigantic capacities for technical discussion and the attention span of a Galapagos Giant Tortoise. We like to think this is charming, and will listen eagerly if you tell us that you agree.

Anyway, here is that talk. I already mentioned that it’s 53 minutes. If that’s too long, there’s a speed-up function on Youtube. If that’s too technical, well, I don’t know how to help there. Maybe a read through pagetable.com’s documentation on the 6502. Oops! I’ve made it worse, haven’t I. Well, if you like, you might console yourself that the 6502 is really a simple processor to learn to code in. I’ve done it myself! There’s no memory management, there’s only three general-purpose registers, the stack is fixed in place, and all opcodes are one byte. It’s so simple that an extremely motivated child could learn it. Guess how I know?

27c3: Reverse Engineering the MOS 6502 CPU (Youtube, 53 minutes)

Here’s a description of the talk from the conference web site.

Commodore Free Magazine

My already distorted psyche feels pulled in multiple directions lately. In addition to packing up Dungeon for itch.io, creating the manual for it, finishing up a huge update to my Mystery Dungeon book for Limited Run games, researching (meaning: playing) Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island, and looking into other things, it’s made it difficult to keep up with the blog. But, keep up with it I am!

Keeping aligned with the C64 angle, Today’s find is COMMODORE FREE Magazine, a long-running Commodore 64 magazine in PDF format that’s been going since late 2006. It recently published its 98th issue, meaning, #100 should be bursting forth before too long! Until then issue 98 features include a history of Commodore’s 8-bit line, a comparison of versions of Commando for their favorite machines, reviews of a Commodore port of Sonic the Hedgehog and the classic title The Sentinel, and a long piece of personal non-fiction by Leonard Roach.

At 15 years running, that starts to put it in striking distance of LOADSTAR’s run! May it keep on keepin’ on.

COMMODORE FREE Issue 98 – Homepage

Sundry Sunday: Eggpo, “Mini-Boss”

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Here is the third of the Eggpo cartoons that The Brothers Chaps, creators of Homestar Runner, made for Disney XD, as part of their “Two More Eggs” series.

This one’s only 1 1/2 minutes (none of them are very long). Eggpos are Goomba-class enemy conscripts in a platformer starring Dooble (who features, in non pixel-form, in other Two More Eggs cartoons). None of the Eggpo get any respect. The cartoons focus on two particular Eggpos (is that the right plural?), one who misguidedly believes in the system, the other willing to buck it a bit if it means he doesn’t get stomped on or set aflame. Here, they are set to meet a higher-level member of the whimsical military they’re a part of.

The Eggpo series contains seven videos in all. This is #3, so we’re about halfway through them. See you again at number four.

A 30+ Year Old RPG System for the Commodore 64

It’s been months now since I announced my plans to release some project involving LOADSTAR, a 17-year computer magazine on disk, either here or on itch.io, or both. I’m still working on them.

In the meantime, I present this, a packaged-up release of Dungeon on itch.io, a complete old-school RPG gaming system for the Commdore 64, as it was released on the disk magazine LOADSTAR back in 1990.

Written by David Caruso II, Dungeon is a way of creating adventures for others to play, and a system of creating, maintaining and playing characters in those adventures. It was kind of a throwback even in 1990 (the SNES was released that year), but it definitely has charm, and an old-school kind of appeal.

You start out on the Guild screen, where you create a character from one of five fantasy races, then venture out on adventures stored on floppy disks, which in this release are provided as C64 1541 disk images. Fight monsters to earn experience points, find the object of the quest and then return to the Guild by the exit to have the chance to advance in experience level. If your character dies they’ll be revived, but only up to two times! If something happens and you don’t make it back, but don’t die either, your character will be marked as “GONE,” meaning they’re stuck in limbo until they make it back to the Guild on their own!

Your character advances in level between adventures, but they don’t get to keep any items they found on their journey. If they advance in level however, they get to permanently improve two of their stats. Getting to the maximum score of 25 grants them a special ability, but it’s really hard to get there!

This presentation of Dungeon is being made with the permission of Fender Tucker, owner and former Managing Editor of LOADSTAR. It isn’t free, but for $5 you get the Dungeon system and five pre-made adventures for it, culled from the 240+ issues of LOADSTAR. I include a stock copy of the open-source Commodore 64 emulator VICE, configured for playing Dungeon. (If $5 is too much for you, rumor has it Loadstar issues can be found online elsewhere. Dungeon was first published on issue #74.)

If you want to know more about it, I have constructed this 40-page PDF of documentation on Dungeon, from the disks of LOADSTAR in 1990, along with the instructions for the adventures and further notes on playing it from me. Here:

dungeonDownload

(file size: 2.6 MB)

The document refers to an itch.io release, that’s what I’m currently working on. Late in the document there are some spoilers for a particularly difficult adventure using the system.

Dungeon was created by someone named David Caruso II. Neither I nor long-time LOADSTAR managing editor Fender Tucker knows what became of him. I have what is almost certainly an old address for him. It’s been 33 years, and I suspect that Dungeon itself is a couple of years older than that, so it’s possible that Caruso has passed away by now. If he hasn’t, though, I’d like to talk with him. I think (hope?) he’d appreciate that people are still thinking about his creation even now.

Indie Game Showcase For 4/26/24

The weekly indie game showcases highlight the many games we play on stream and if you would like me to check out your game, please reach out. All games played are either demos or press key submissions.

0:00 Intro
00:14 Decline’s Drops
2:26 Beacon Pines
4:10 No Place For Bravery
5:55 Fortune’s Run
7:53 Squad 51 vs. The Flying Saucers
10:57 Turbo Kid

Thrilling Tales of Old Video Games, on Princess Peach Showtime

The article notes how few games in Nintendo’s many series star Peach. There’s really only been one headline game for her before, 2006’s Super Princess Peach, which was really easy. Showtime isn’t bad, but the article notes it’s more like a collection of minigames than a cohesive whole. I mean yes, it does feel a bit like nitpicking, but Peach has been playable in a good number of platformers before, going back all the way to Super Mario Bros 2., but never in the starring role. (She’s arguably the best character in Mario 2, too.)

Please excuse the “Demo Available,” this image came from Nintendo’s site.

The article notes how much Peach’s sidekick resembles Lisa Simpson, and is that ever apt.

Is this a low-effort post? Maaaybe. But the article is a good overview of Peach’s history as a playable character, I agree with their plea that she needs more time in the spotlight.

My Friendly Neighborhood Video Review

This is a video review of My Friendly Neighborhood played with a press key provided by the developer.

Palestinian Relief Bundle on itch.io

I don’t remember, did a bundle with this theme happen before? It sounds familiar. Of course this is not intended to be an advertisement, I’m just getting the word out.

Figures in this screenshot reflect when I scheduled the post, a couple of days ago.

$8 gets you 374 items on itch.io, which is, of course, an amazing deal. 213 of them are computer games, and 103 of them are physical games, where what you get are rules and you construct the game yourself, and the rest are miscellaneous items like soundtracks and game assets.

When I get one of these bundles, I largely end up playing only play two or three things from it, but I feel like the option of playing so many things is what I’m buying, that and helping out a good cause. A standout in this bundle, right up there at the top, is Adam Gryu’s A Short Hike. I also spot Bleed 2, Anodyne and They Bleed Pixels.

I think it could be argued that the ultimate benefit of these bundles, while positive, is ultimately to help make up for the failures of our nations to fucking do something about it themselves, or even helping cause it in the first place. But it is something, after all!

Monopoly Mario Illustrations in the Style of Rich Uncle Pennybags

There is no one who hates a thing more than someone who formerly loved it. As a kid I rather enjoyed Monopoly, until I came to realize its many flaws (as I like to say, it’s over long before it ends). This means I know a lot about the game, even though I find it pretty annoying to play.

One of the things about Monopoly I know is that its artwork has changed a fair bit over the years. The board mostly looks the same, but the characters are different. The character that Hasbro now calls by the generic “Mr. Monopoly,” and used to be called Rich Uncle Pennybags, was not the original mascot for the game, which was a character with a big 50s ad art-styled head. I don’t have pictures of it, just vague memories from seeing it back during the Monopoly anniversary that happened decades ago now. Google is of no help. The search continues.

Another thing that I know about Monopoly, as the rest of the developed world by now, is that Hasbro was, for a while, extremely active in pimping out the Monopoly property for making custom versions. There are several hundred of then, probably thousands by now, and they keep making more.

There have been multiple Nintendo Monopoly boards. Mario obscurites site Supper Mario Broth found one, and in one of the few examples of something I’ve found interesting about one of those damn Monopoly variants, there are drawings of Mario and Luigi on the cards done in the style of Rich Uncle Pennybags!

Most of them are pretty sad attempts to wallpaper over Monopoly game elements with a Mario pattern. In the game, houses are “power-ups,” and a hotel is an “invincibility.” But the artwork shows much more care in melding the two properties than do the rules!

Mario Parties require you pay at the door. They’re probably BYOB too.

Sundry Sunday: Umi the Cat in Super Mario Galaxy

Sundry Sunday is our weekly feature of fun gaming culture finds and videos, from across the years and even decades.

Someone edited some footage of Super Mario Galaxy, but superimposed their cat into it, and it turned out really well, and here it is. It’s like only a minute long. You’ll enjoy it. I mean why wouldn’t you? It’s a kittycat!

Keith Burgun Makes A Deckbuilder: Spellstorm

We like promoting small indie projects we think are keen, and among those is the work of Keith Burgun. Way back in the @Play guys he made the wonderful (and sadly very difficult to play these days) cartoon roguelike 100 Rogues, and more recently he made the great quasi-roguelike Auro, which can still be gotten on Steam.

Lately he’s been experimenting with more physical kinds of games, and he has a Kickstarter going for a deckbuilding game called Spellstorm!

It’s an asymmetric game, with eight characters who each play differently from each other. And if you want to try before backing, there’s already a module available for it for Tabletop Simulator (it is here), and you can download a free PDF copy of the rules for more info.

As of this reporting the Kickstarter’s just gotten underway with 27 days to go, and is approaching halfway to its goal already. $40 gets you a complete copy of the game, and $60 gets you it another another clever little game Keith made called Dragon Bridge.

Why not give it a glance over, and good luck to you Keith!

Making of Karateka Video Review

This is a video review of the making of karateka played with a press key provided by the developer.

My interview with Digital Eclipse