Yesterday marked 30 years of the Commodore 64.

Meanwhile, a documentary about the origins of the UK games industry in the 70s and 80s, From Bedrooms To Billions is in the works, but needs pledges of support to be made.

If you donate, depending on the amount, you get some pretty cool gear including a digital or DVD copy, posters, your name in the credits, a T-shirt, and even a personalised portrait of yourself from ZZap64 illustrator Oliver Frey. Some of the higher donation amounts actually include vintage computers/consoles and signed (by the authors) copies of classic games for them. Zowee.

They’re aiming to raise the money by 17th of August.

From Bedrooms to Billions

Wolfenstein 3D is 20 years old. To celebrate it’s been re-released as a browser game.

And as Crikey notes, a 1992 Sydney Morning Herald reviewer was “flabbergasted” with the game: The game, we are warned, is rated PC-13 – Profound Carnage. Good advice. There’s plenty of blood and guts, and the sound effects are blood-curdling, so my sub-13-year-olds won’t be playing.

I remember playing it at my mate Brian’s place back when it was first released — the ancient computer I had at home couldn’t cope with it.

I had a go of it again last night. Sure enough, it worked well in the web browser. After about half-an-hour of shooting Nazis (and Nazi dogs) I felt a bit queasy. I think it was due to focussing on the low-res 3D, rather than the blood and guts.

(Hey, viagra online pharmacy has anybody done a Downfall parody tie-in?)

This is pretty cool: the 6502 source code to the original Apple II version of Prince Of Persia has been released.

The article also includes the story of how it was lost, found and recovered.

RIP Jack Tramiel, 1928-2012.

I rise to speak on the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (R 18+ Computer Games) Bill 2012. I am sorry that I cannot join in the debate about slide rules and slates, but, like the member for Solomon, I do remember having the Commodore 64. I do remember that, to play a computer game, you had to sit and wait for a tape player to load a game for about half an hour, and hope that it did not get caught some way through it, so that you could play a game of Aztec Challenge or Soccer. The most violent it got then was that a gorilla might throw a barrel at your head while your character was playing, but that was about it. But things have moved on enormously since then. There have been advancements in technology, advancements in innovation and advancements in people’s creativity, and that is a good thing. It is extraordinarily to be welcomed. But it is time for the law to catch up.

– Greens MP Adam Bandt in Parliament, 15/3/2012

Another one for the nostalgia buffs: a great article comparing 8-bit fonts.

From BBC’s “The Computer Programme”. The sound is loud and distorted, so turn your volume down before you click play.

I didn’t think the LEN function would work without parenthesis around the variable, but there you go.

A post for the nostalgics to read:

How many Commodore 64 computers were sold?