Topic: General news

I realise it's not very demoscene-related, but one of the strangest (in a funny way, of coz) ZX demogroups has just released a multi-platform game. "Voyage to Doopland" is the new 8-bit game from Hooy-Program, released for the ZX Spectrum, C64, and Atari. It's currently available only in Polish, but an English translation it on-the-way. I'm at work so I can't check it out -- best go do it yourselves, eh!?

A mysterious entity known only as "Joe" has unleashed his newly-rescued masterwork on the world - "Tubular Beeps", a full 22-minute 48K beeper rendition of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, painstakingly assembled on Wham! The Music Box.
In the likely event of the Angelfire site being down, grab the 8Mb download from this mirror site.

As well as the package available at POS containing a condensed history of ProTracker, there are a bunch of other updated tools scattered around the 'net, including some source for a few of them...

If you're yearning for some background music to play to yourself while you surf the web, you may want to download the latest release of the "ZX Spectrum Tracker Music" archive. Created by Sergey of AY-Emulator fame, v3.3 of his collection contains nearly 11,000 tunes in various formats by the scenes best musicians. Not sure what the full list of changes is, but it includes tracks by Fatal Snipe, Cat-Man, and ooh, others.
Hey, I also see that you can grab a collection of ProTracker versions over at POS. Handy if you want to play about with the archive you've just downloaded.

Just a little reminder of Spectrumania 2003 which is being held next week (14^th November) in sunny Stuttgart. Full details are on the Sintech website.

Ah the number of ideas I had for a headline for this article. "Factor6 - now with extra mayo." Or maybe "Flame-grilled Factor6." Or... hell, I'll just get on and tell you the news.
According to Yerzmyey, Factor6 has had some of his music included on the I'm Lovin' It (shift-click the link) compilation CD. I'm Lovin' It is of course the new ad campaign for McDonalds, the cow-burger people. I'm not certain at the moment if the tune on the CD is actually a ZX-tune or not -- perhaps someone can confirm. And if anyone knows where I can get hold of this CD, I may even try to get it signed by the man himself. The value will sky-rocket!

As you'll no doubt recall (I hope), I mentioned a while ago about the upcoming MicroMart show, and how it'll have an area dedicated to Retro machines, organised by Shaun Bebbington. Well the show is only 3 weeks away, so I thought I'd remind you that it's happening! I did have a floor-plan lying around, but I think I deleted it, natch! Well, it was nestled in my email folder along with a bunch of "honestly it's from Microsoft" executables.
Anyway. It looks like it'll be a good show, with sections dedicated to the ZX, Atari, Amiga, blah blah blah. For full details of the show check out the official site, and if you're interested in helping out with the Retro side of things, contact Shaun (i can forward on emails if need be).

In the last week or so, two of the main "commander" programs for the ZX have been updated. Optical Bros have stuck the new v2.82 of Quick Commander on their site, which includes some speed improvements, better compression, and oooh, other things. Meanwhile over at the ZX Software Archive you can get that and the latest version of Real Commander. v2.6 (available in both Russian and English versions) is ready for your download along with several other new apps, including v2.17 of BestView, JPEG Viewer 0.33, Unrar 0.50, and Hrust 2.5.

Ok, I'm sure you've all heard of Abe, the farting-belching star of a few PC (and console) games. Quality platform-'em-up gaming. Well recently as part of a game programming competition, "Abe's Mission - Escape" was created for the ZX, and now it's available from the TCG homepage translated into English (and Czech). It's a quality game, with nice animation. And a lovely little cracktro too :]
While we're talking about games you may like to check out Cronosoft too. New in the shop is "Rough Justice", which looks kinda Cybernoid-y. Well, it does from the screenshots. Anyway, it's available for just 2.99ukp. Retro gaming at Retro prices. That's what I like to see!

Reading the forums (places like WOS) There seems to be a lot of interest in "General Sound" at the moment, the sound-system for Speccies. Well if you're in the mood to hear some of it you could do worse than check out the downloads section of POS, where there's a whole bunch of GS download packs. Add to that a shed-load of 'zines, and the trip is well worth the effort.