TnC Internet Adventures: Lord Music Academy & Lord Vinheteiro

Lord Vinheteiro is a Brazilian piano-player who can play almost everything from Bach to Lady Gaga. He has very original ideas for his videos and has interesting things to say.
Lord Music Academy is the more serious YouTube channel, mostly in Portuguese so translation in English is very handy. The Vinheteiro channel is the more fun channel with lots of music and some English comments. He wants to show his public that classical music is not boring at all and he proved it with lots of humor.

For example try: How To Destroy Classical Music 1 and 2.
The interaction between the pianist and the drummer staring at you is a must-see.

I always look forward to the next video he uploads, cause every time he comes with a new fresh idea in which he can perform his piano skills.

More examples coming up:
- 13 Types of Pianists
- How To Make Girls Fall in Love with Music
- Happy Songs in Sad Versions
- Evolution of Music (1680 AD - 2017)
- Top 10 of EDM of the 2000s  !!!

 

Some MSX-links: RuMSX emulator of Lex Lechz

I mentioned the RuMSX emulator of Lex Lechz. It's very outdated and it works as an emulator, still, lots of features are still missing and there are no signs it will be updated ever.
Why bother then?

RuMSX has just one feature that all other MSX emulators are missing, a complete interactive reference of all MSX Basic commands with examples and lots of information for experienced MSX-ers, like VDP registers etc.

When you click on Help and MSX help you see the page above with almost everything
you want to know about MSX (if you interested in programming of course)
Many times its information got me on the right track to solve my MSX-Basic problems.

Get it if you want to start programming in MSX-Basic, now !!!
 

TnC Internet Adventures: Online Image Editor and Gif Maker

On regular basis, my son had to make some Powerpoint presentations for speeches or overviews for books. And he needs a lot of pictures, but there are always problems like, 
it's too big or too small or it must be transparent to fit on the page, etc. etc. 

Yes yes, there are many many free image editors online, but they all have limitations and you have to pay to get these limitations removed. Not this one.

http://www.online-image-editor.com/ 

Does what it promissed, just a lot of wizards and tools you always wanted to try out on 
your images or photo's. It may be look like an ordinair image editor, it has alway great fun features for photo's. And it's totally free !
I use the transparantcy tool often, it works okay but it takes some time to get the best result.
Well, it's much easier and cheaper than using Photoshop, any way !!!

But wait, there is more.
By accident I clicked on Animation button and discovered another treasure:

http://www.online-image-editor.com/gifmaker/ 

It is so simple to create an animated GIF with this tool, you will not believe it.
Just upload your pictures (make sure they have the same resolution), change the transition (delay between showing the pictures), choose from different transitions by clicking on the box and click on create animation. Then the animated GIF will be made in seconds and by clicking with rightmousebutton, you can save the GIF with your own chosen name. 

I used the GIF maker a lot of times in the latest posts, for me a new way to show more pictures without messing with the texts.

 

Some Basics 4 MSX Basic ( Introduction)

I am not proud to present a new series of posts. 

My  Introduction of the Wordstore+ Picture Demo's series was longer than I expected, 

due to some technical details about the files on the disk I wrote about. 

It seemed to me like long boring stories and remove the too technical issues. 

Then I got the idea to share some of  my MSX Basic tips and tricks, I used the software 

I wrote for the Wordstore+ Picture Demos. Now I am not planning to create a complete course of MSX Basic programming, there is enough for you to find at msx.org. 

I just take simple tricks I use often, explain it with an example. Nothing fancy. I learned MSX Basic with the manual on disk Wegwijs op uw MSX ( it had also some games, 

see my 112 posts about Hexapion) and the MSX Handbook of Albert Sickler (???), 

which was not really a study book, more a reference book with good examples. I used the book so much, lots of pages got lose and I throw it away. 
Nowadays I use RuMSX as my MSX handbook when I want to know how to use an MSX Basic command. I will create a post for RuMSX later.

Well, back to the subject now.

The tricks and tips I want to post about will work on any MSX unless I mention it. 

However, I don't own a TURBO-R or an MSX-2+ ( I sold my Sanyo to an MSXer called Peter Schellekens so he could play MSX-2+ games - we used to go together to any MSX Fair, he rarely bought something,  I bought way too many ;-), so most tips will be MSX -1/2. 

I don't have much experience in MSX Basic programming,  I mostly modify existing software and write simple stuff like all kinds of menus. Stil, I believe my tips and tricks can be helpful, but remember there are multiple solutions for the same problem. So my solutions are just one of the many possibilities. 

First I will post about the tips and tricks I used in the 112 series, Wordstore+ Picture demos and the Fourseasons MSX disk. When I am out of ideas I have some old note books written by me, where I wrote all kinds of useful info ( like cheats for games and high scores) . 

There are some very clever tricks written down in it.
 

Have a look at the posts and leave a comment with your version of the solution to my problem.

Each post will have the same layout:

- Problem
- Solution
- Example

 So from now follow this series to get a couple of tricks to use in your MSX Basic programs.

My Music Momories / TnC House Classics presents : Flashdance - Deep Dish

I was not sure if this song belongs to My Music Memories or TnC House Classics, 

cause I never owned this track. 
It is a kind of dance track, so here it is in 
both series.

The track is a sort of cross-over between rock and dance, a bit repetitive and very hypnotic, the rock-riff stays in your head 
for days.

The original came from the soundtrack of Flashdance (...What a feeling..) and was called "He's a dream" by Shandi Sinnamon.
 I listen to it, but the whole song was ruïned 
by the producers, it started okay, then in the middle...you better listen for yourself...

So Deep Disk took the best parts of the song, hired a better singer and WHAM !!!

Whole Flashdance track is 
so simple, so lots of remixes made their own versions.

Most of them could not add more interesting stuff for having an excuse creating long remixes of Flashdance with a duration 9 minutes or longer.

But some remixes are not bad at all, check these out.

There was a DJ Sultan who made an interesting cross-over remix with Money for Nothing of Dire Straits and Flashdance of Deep Dish, called "Flash for Nothing"

Lately, I was searching for Icebaer remixes and a guy called Sim0ne remixed it just in the style of Deep Fish Flashdance, but more monotone.

More Wordstore+ Picture Demo : Tug Of Peace - Paul McCartney

Here is the 5th and last Picture Demo, called Tug Of Peace. 

If you know more about the Loup Picture Demo's, check this.

Tug of Peace is a kinda funk version with bits and pieces from Tug Of War song
and the Pipes Of Peace (the Xmas) song. Well, the lyrics are.
And if you search for the message behind the song, good luck to you.

But I like the song from the Pipes Of Peace album a little better than Hey Hey
from the same album, it's just less boring.

Now I think, I said enough about the Pipes Of Peace album, I was very disappointed.
If Paul had recorded more songs in the same style, it could save the whole album.

Somehow I still believe a lot of songs on Pipes of Peace were left-overs from 
the Tug of War sessions.

Any way.
Enjoy the intro in Wordstore+ and listen to the full length of the song in slowly nature animation

More Wordstore+ Picture Demo : Old Siam Sir - Wings

Another song of Back To the Egg Album, the last album of Wings.

It's a solid rock song, and had a great intro which I sampled it in Wordstore+.
When I was listening to the whole song, I was missing something.
 

The song keep repeating itself, so in the end it's quite boring.
If Old Siam Sir had more lyrics or some great guitarsolo's...

The new Wings members were just recruited session musicians, 

so not much input from them.They just play as they told to.

Well I found a nice medley of the best songs of Back To The Egg, 

with a video made from the TV-special to promote Back To The Egg album.

This YouTuber rockchick2112 did a great job.

Enough said about Back To The Egg album, but I found more other interviews
from Steve Holly and Laurence Juber, the newest ex-members of Wings.

Interview with the drummer Steve Holly, the last Wings drummer.
An audio interview with Steve and Laurence

The reason of the end of Wings was of course the cancelled tournee in Japan, cause Paul McCartney got arrested with some soft-drugs.

More Wordstore+ Picture Demo: Reception - Wings

This is already the 3rd Picture Demo I post about.

Reception was the first song of the Back To the Egg album of Wings.
It's a short instrumental, which should have been a great intro for
a funky song. Maybe with even a rappin' Paul in it ?
But no, lucky for us it was edited, cause the long version I found
was more boring than the original.

Did they just record a radio playing in the background ?

There is not much to talk about Reception, the song, so I continue
with my thoughts about the Back To the Egg album.

Back To The Egg was the last Wings album I bought, and it was almost
my favorite album of Paul McCartney and Wings.
But that was before I heard songs like After The Ball, Million Miles,
Love Awake, Winter Rose, and The Broadcast.

Those songs should be perfect on McCartney II, not on a Wings group album.
It seems to me that Paul had not enough songs to record with Wings.
So side 1 "Sunny Side up" was okay, side 2 "Over easy" was a big disappontment.

In some songs Paul sang like he was yelling the whole night before.
Listening at the songs, I can help that some of them are just leftovers
or just other versions of the songs from London Town.

Later I found out Paul was smoking during the recording period.

It sounds good when he have to rock, but when it's a ballad he sounds a bit off-tune.

My favorite songs were Spin It On, Old Siam Sir, Rockestra Theme, To You,
So Glad To See You Here, still not enough to like the whole album.

I found an interesting interview with Laurence Juber, ex-Wings guitarist,
who was playing on most recording of Wings in the period.

More Wordstore+ Picture Demo : Valentine's Day of Paul McCartney

When I had collected all songs from the Beatles I started to collect Paul Mc Cartney albums

and started with his first solo-album, called...you guessed it! (no, not with an I at the end ).
 
He played all instruments and Linda sang sometimes in the background (well, she tried).

I didn't know any song from the album, so I let the record play in the music store.

I heard the first song, Lovely Linda, I didn't wanna buy it anymore.
But the people in the shop were very busy, so I listened to the second song 
(That Would Be Something). Even worse...
Paul tried to sing like Elvis in a song nobody wants to hear, it sounded like a never 
finished demo.

Then the 3rd song began: Valentine's Day and I expected it was another ballad going nowhere. No, it was a short instrumental with a raw guitar, solid drum riff, bass 

and acoustic guitar.
Not too long, just right, and when Valentine's Day ended, I bought the record.

Until now, nobody made a nice video for the song, it certainly deserves one.
And you won't find it on any Valentine's Day album, cause it's not a sweet song.

The rest of the McCartney album had more unfinished than finished songs, 
and the songs that were finished, I didn't like very much.
 

So I liked Valentine's Day (of course), Every Night (Paul has performed this song a couple
of times live) a bit boring, OO You (I will talk about this one later), Sing Along Junk (instrumental version of Junk, ( I liked it better than when Paul sang it) and the first part 
of Momma Miss America, with the catchy keyboard/piano loop and pounding drums,
the 2nd part was a sort of Valentine's Day part 2. What a waste of talent.

Well, you can judge for yourself now.

Some tribute band called Flying Horses tried to play Valentine's Day live, 
no thumbs up from me.

More Wordstore+ Picture Demo: 99 Luftballons of Nena

The first Picture Demo in the series.

99 Luftballons was the biggest hit of Nena, mostly successful in the German language. 
The English version called "99 Red Balloons" had other lyrics, which the band members afterward did not like, so they always played the German version.

I thought it was the only hit Nena had. But it depends on which country you live.
In the Netherlands, we knew almost nothing of Nena, while in America, UK and of course Germany the group had a couple of hits.
 

I listened to some and I liked "Nur Getraumt", "Rette Mich", "Lass Mir Ein Pirat Sehen", "Leuchtturm", "Es Regnet", "Irgendwie, Irgendwo, Irgendwann" in the original German or English versions and the remakes of 2002.
I prefer the German version more than English, the translating is fine, Nena just sounds better in the German language. "Anyplace Anywhere, Anytime" (with Kim Wilde) and other remakes of 2002 are a bit different from originals, mostly just better.
 
Which is rare, I remember Alannah Myles and her own remake of the "Black Velvet" hit 
and it was like she sang along the same old music tapes.
Still, still a great song...I mean...99 Luftballons of course.

More Wordstore+ Picture Demo's (Introduction)

It has been a long time since I released the last Wordstore+ Karaoke demo. 
To be precise, 7th of December 2014. In the meantime, I was now and then working on the Wordstore+ Mixer Demo's, cause I didn't know what to do with the other Demo's, 
with the working title Wordstore+ Mega Demo.

As you may know, when you play a Wordstore sampler with the Basic replayer, 
you can't execute any other Basic commands. So any animation during playing the sample is impossible. I already tried a couple of ideas for creating some kind of animation and make it interactive, like in my LOUP demos. I just could not find fresh ideas for those demos for the Mega Demo. Until last year, 2017.

After creating some kind of workflow for my Mixer Demo's, but it seemed so much work 
I did not dare to start building it. Instead, I throw away the idea of a Mega Demo and start to create a Picture Demo. I searched for pictures, convert them to SC2 and SC8, just like in the LOUP demos, made a better loop for each Wordstore+ sample and collect them on separate disks. Each demo was not more than 1 SC2 or 2 SC8 pictures that were shown while the sample was played. A bit boring. 

So I had the idea of creating a Mega Picture Demo on 1 disk, with a nice menu and where you could choose between 1 Picture Demo or all Picture Demo in any order. 
There were 5 Picture Demos, so the menu had to show 5 pictures, I used Photoscape album page function to do the trick, but I had to edit a lot to get the names of the demos at the right position. Then all fall down. 
The Picture Demos and the menu pictures didn't fit on a single 720kb disk, which is my standard format (2DD if you like). 


I had the rethink the whole project and I felt like I never gonna finish it.
After a while, I realized it could be a 2 disk Picture Demo so some demos would be on disk 1 and other on disk 2. However, this was also the end of playing all demos in sequence.
You can only play 1 demo at the time, then you had to start the menu again.
Not the best solution, but I believed it was the only way to release those 5 demos.

And more trouble was coming my way. I had to check somehow which disk was in the drive and I want also the Picture Demo to work with 2 drives so it could start any demo from any drive.I searched in my toolbox, checking on diskname and number of drives. 
Checking on disk name means editing the boot sector and starting a demo on disk 2 from disk 1 and otherwise, were new obstacles for me. 
I did not like the idea that you had to modify the boot sector, before the demo would work on a new disk. And starting a demo on disk 2 from disk 1 was too much for my computing skills. I didn't know what to do with it. 

This was all done in 2017. Then it was March 2018 and I had just finished some small videos and a disk of Fourseasons MSX Software, with a new menu I made from scratch.
I found my Wordstore Demos map again, start my latest unfinished software and saw what went wrong. No so much and I liked the menu as it was. 
New ideas came up for a much easier disk check and I disabled the 2 disk support.

First I made the SC8 menu (which was maybe 70% already made in 2017) complete, 
then I found out I need to make a SC2 menu too. So again I started to collect new ideas how to create a nice SC2 men, without the MSX-2 features I used.
The colorspill on SC2 was always a bit of a problem, but it look okay now, I think.
When the SC2 and SC8 menu were finished, I had to look at the AUTOEXEC.BAS.

Yeah, well, it tried to perform some tests to make sure it's a MSX-1 or higher with at least 64kb ROM, but how can I test it in Basic ? I decided to display a warning if the computer was an MSX-1. Wordstore+ works only on 64 Kb ROM MSX computers. 

And because all Picture Demos were also made for MSX-1, the AUTOEXEC.BAS will ask, 
when you have a MSX-2 computer, if you want to see the MSX-1 versions.

BTW: If you choose l (instead of y or n), you will go to the secret LOUP Demo menu.

I add it to disk 2, cause there was so much diskspace left and somehow the LOUP Demos seemed to be in its place on a Picture Demo disk. I included also the hidden ones, before nobody would notice them.


So on Disk 1, you find the Picture Demo's : ( Mediafire / Pcloud )
- 99 LUFTBALLONS
- VALENTINE'S DAY
- RECEPTION

On Disk 2, you find the Picture Demo's : ( Mediafire / Pcloud )
- OLD SIAM SIR
- TUG OF PEACE
- LOUP

I will go into details about each song in other posts, except  the LOUP Picture Demo's

Fan of The Nits ???

Well, not me. 

But my older sister was a big fan of the Dutch group The Nits and bought any album of them. To me, only some songs got me hooked, like their biggest hit In the Dutch mountains or Nescio or J.O.S. Days or The Train. 

I mostly remember The Nits as a quartet and trio with Henk Hofstede as the lead singer, composer and driving force behind the group. The interaction between Stips and Hofstede made the group steady a lot of years. 

After they split up, my sister was not fan anymore and I forgot all about them. 

Yes ,they had a comeback (and still have),  just like so many other groups, but for me the thrill has gone. Who wants to see some old man playing old songs they played better 10 

or 15 years ago ? I don't. 

The Nits were maybe the first Dutch group that disvovered the theater as a new form to get more audience for their music ( and more record sales). It is hard to describe their music, 

it's a sort of experimental pop with influences from other for away countries.

If you know there are no mountains in the Netherlands, only hills, but the Dutch people call them mountains, you get the joke of "In the Dutch mountains" and understand the musicvideo better.

 

My Music Memories : Eisbaer van Grauzone

Once upon a time, I found a way to download songs from Grooveshark.com, an online music service, like Spotify, without paying. 


Very illegal, but they didn't have much music 
I liked.I got the idea to collect all my fav rock songs to mix them together in 1 big mix. 

It would include favs like "Girls School of Wings" but also "Language of Love of Cliff Richard", "Downpayment Blues by AC/DC".

So it would be rock songs in all variations. 

Including some German stuff, I still liked, for example, "Major Tom of Peter Schilling",  "Dreiklangsdimensionen of Rheingold" and "Skandal Im Sperrbezirk of the Spider Murphy Gang". 

While I was searching on YouTube for finding the right title and artist names of these German songs, I found also this one, "Eisbear of Grauzone". Songs about an icebear are not very common and I started to listen to the video and the animated icebear. 

The song starts just like so many other soft rock songs, sang in the German language when its time for the chorus the song really starts. Uncontrolled guitarnoises backed up with weird computersounds. 

Of course the message of Eisbaer is not hard to miss. The global warming-up let the ice melt and the icebear has less room to live. And in the animated video, you see an icebear looking for a new place to live and ends up in a busy city. Although I found the song by accident, its seems to be a real rock-classic, lots of people tried to improve the song by creating slightly different mixes. I listened a lot of these and the only remix that really matters was the house version of Groove Zone.


The message is almost the same, it's hard to find any icebears in their natural habitat. Maybe we must find a way to cooldown our planet to get earth in balance again... 

Have fun with this My Music Memories.  Grauzone made more songs, 
This one caught my eye and my soul. 
Well, Nena (again) covered a Grauzone song ballad and she made it better than 
the original, a really lovely song.

After I wrote this, I found some really interesting remixes, see my playlist
I am sure there will be some mixes you will like too.

Albert Sgaggero MSX Basic Collection (MSX part)

I may have spoiled the fun in my last post, but here I will go more into detail about the MSX stuff of Albert Sgaggero (BCO). When I started to collect his MSX listings, it was clear you could catalog them in the following sequence: 

 

* kaleidoscopes

* Xmas demos

* games

* other demos

* tools

Most of the listings are not that long. The best parts are the Xmas demos, most of them are very colorful and original. The games are quite simple, the most finished one is 

Mr. MoneyEd. I didn't know you could create a whole game when you only have to press 'z' the whole time...

I mentioned the kaleidoscopes earlier, Albert Sgaggero made also a SCREEN 2 and SCREEN 3 variation, with some random notes playing, in a very clever way I never have seen before. 

From the other demos, I like the rectangles of ASCII characters in SCREEN 1 very much, cause until now I didn't know it was possible. And it's not slow either.

There were not many tools, but I like the simple sprite editor, although a self-generated sprite loader is missing. Now I can make a sprite, but I must figure out how to display it.

When I was finished collecting I put them on a 720 Kb MSX disk-image.

Enough programs so I started to create a menu program with a little color animation in it

and submenus.  It took more time than expected, cause not all listings worked as expected

and submenu's given me headaches.

In 1 listing Mr. MoneyEd (again) I got an "Out of data" error. First I blamed the creator to publish a listing with errors and try to fix them, by adding more data lines and change the intro-screen. When I looked at the video of the game on YouTube and checked the listing on the website http://fourseasons.altervista.org it was exactly the same listing! So where came the errors from? BCP used the é and the í to create money signs and walls, but when converting these characters from PC (website) to MSX (BlueMSX), MSX created from the é 2 very different graphics sign, same happened with í. I tried to find the é and í on my (emulated) MSX keyboard and changed the listing until it worked again.

All is fine now, so you can download the MSX disk with BCO stuff.

Mediafire / Pcloud

 

Albert Sgaggero MSX Basic Collection ( WWW part)

Remember a post I made for a nice MSX Xmas demo completely written in MSX-BASIC,  with music? 

That was Albert Sgaggero. Recently,  he uploaded a kaleidoscope SCREEN 1  version 2.0 

I was always interested in automatically generated graphics on my MSX,  so I went to the website fourseasons.altervista.org to see if there was more MSX Basic stuff. I'm glad  I did. 

There was a small selection of MSX listings, but also some Amiga, PC and Vic 20 stuff.  

#Fourseasons was a group which published mostly puzzle games. But also a nice 1vs1 pinball game I wish someone would remake it on MSX 2. It is simple, just play against the CPU, but it could be a great game on MSX 2.

Now you can play it in your browser, cause it is a flash game. 

I don't know if Albert Sgaggero, alias BCO, still like to be creative on MSX or Amiga or PC. 

The latest videos on YouTube are all MSX, so maybe. 

I don't have anything against people that liked more than 1 computer system.

When (many years ago) the MSX world tried to proof MSX was better than CBM 64 

and MSX-2 was better than Amiga 500, I knew better.

Maybe I will mention the subject in a post about MSX Highlights or MSX Failures.

For now, check the MSX stuff and play the PC flash game, a good waste of time.

Paul says "donk" (10 minutes) - TnC vs Swede Mason

After seeing maybe 3 times "Paul McCartney Rabbithole" of Swede Mason, I knew I had to make a very long "Donk" version of it. So I started cutting the beginning, the "donk" part and the very ending. That was not too difficult, so I had the beginning ready in no-time. 

The "donk" part, that must be looped was very hard and when I let my son hear the pre-recorded "donk" video of 10 minutes, he told me the idea was good, the loop was not. Yeah, "the "donk" loop was the most important part of the video, so I had to go back again, started cutting and pasting the "donk" part in my video editor. 

By accident, I cut off a lot of the start of the "donk" part and forgot to cut just before the "one note". I copied the part 3 times and listened with headphones. No bad, not bad at all. I save the new "donk" loop, created a new project from scratch, copy the beginning, copy-pasted the "donk" loop enough times for 10 minutes and copy the ending in it. I listen to the whole thing for maybe 3 minutes and the ending and I was sure this was much better than the first attempt.

But the ending was also a kind of struggle, first I wanted no more than only the last sentence "I wanna sue this guy" with the original logo of Swede Mason, an extra title by myself and the word "sue" replace by "donk". That was not so easy cause the "donk" was not so loud as the spoken voice of Paul. I had to crack the sound up to get a harder "donk" to put into the sentence. 

And that's not all, cause it's a kind of rap, the sentences and subtitles are soo fast it was not possible to cut just the last sentence. So I start the ending with the drum clash, the 2 sentences about "the meaning" and the last sentence with the "donk" in it.

I don't know if Swede Mason would like it, my editing skills are zero compared to his skills in the original video. I only hope it would get banned and maybe even get a couple of likes.

It was just an idea, like so many others I have, now it's published I can go on with other ideas I still have. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, enjoy your 10 minutes stay at  Paul says "donk"

 

 

112 MSX Basic games presents : 112-60 edition

I write already at MIDGET-G.GAM about my inpatients to release the next edition of this disk. With still 59 to go, its a lot of work, I really want to finish the whole series. 

When I play a game for some time I always get fresh ideas about what could be better and what should be untouched. Some ideas work out great and some I had to forget. 
Now we take a quick look at the next countdown of games, from 78 til 60.

78 MINDBUST.GAM
77 PATIENCE.GAM
76 PARAS.GAM
75 KESHISAR.GAM
74 BALBAL.GAM
73 CATCH.GAM
72 BREAKMAN.GAM
71 MRTOPHAT.GAM
70 ADD221.GAM
69 HAL.GAM
68 ICECREAM.GAM
67 SWATFLY.GAM
66 BULLS.GAM
65 SNACKBAR.GAM
64 BTTLSHIP.GAM
63 SUPERHEL.GAM
62 GRAVYARD.GAM
61 SQUARES.GAM
60 MIDGET-G.GAM 

A very diverse collection of games, with a good balance between action, sport and mind games. And I count 3 Pacman clones, BREAKMAN, MRTOPHAT and GRAVYARD. 
There are some listings from former Dutch magazines, like ICECREAM, HAL, SNACKBAR, GRAVYARD, and MIDGET-G. 
Finding a good name for these mostly Dutch games was not always easy, cause translation gave me such strange results,  I had to think hard for a better one. 
But I think I succeed most of the time.

When I started this series, I had no clue, when its gonna end, now I don't mind. 
When I need a break from my other projects, I play some MSX Basic games and try to translate and improve them. 

Some things will stay the same, adding a manual, controls for cursor keys and joysticks,  save high scores. However every game is made in a different way, so I had to dig deep into the listing to change it. And I still like it as long as I don't have to do it every day. 


I may have some surprises in store for the next series 59 til 40, I don't have them all ready by now, I hope some very soon.

BTW: I changed some colors in the menu and the cursor doesn't blink anymore. Hope you like it.

Download this collection 112-60 at Mediafire/Pcloud

Last notes: I still didn't beat my high score in PATIENCE game, I think I made the game too difficult. 

TnC Internet Adventures: Swede Mason

The first post in this series had to be about YouTuber Swede Mason. As I was searching for De Eskimo song of Andre van Duin YT showed me Trump vs Tthe Talking Heads. Being a fan of 80s music and a good musical joke I clicked on it and ... This was video editing at it best, Swede Mason cut just words from speeches of the president Donald Trump and let him speak the whole intro, just like in the original song. But that was not all, he let Trump swinging and dancing all over the screen all in perfect sync with the music. I felt completely numb and all my ideas about my next video seemed to be useless and not worthy to spend time on it. This Swede Mason does his magic not once, but in every video, he made so far, from 2010 til now. Some videos are a bit boring, but if you can let the cast of Game of Thrones rap Ice Ice Baby of Vanilla Ice in perfect sync with the video and audio, you are a real magician. Some other highlights are Masterchef Synesthesia ( with several remixes made by DJs) and Paul McCartney playing rapping and singing ("Donk Donk") a techno song, while the whole video is pieces of interviews and other documentaries. Swede Mason meant to be also a big fan of Arnold Swartsenagger, beware..and the Coke video clip, made from clips of a lot of movies, is really something to remember.

And if you like the songs in the YT vids...
Try this: Swede Mason Mini Mega Mix (Fairly Sweary)

My Music Memories: De Eskimo of Andre van Duin

Now the winter is coming to the Netherlands and lots of people tried to skate on every ditch, that's been frozen, I remembered this Dutch song of a very known (and old) Dutch comedian, Andre van Duin. Why cause I don't like the weather when the temperature goes below zero. 
I always have cold feet and hands, not able to do much when I am outside. 
But sometimes I have to and this song shows exactly the state I am in.

It's, of course, a Dutch song, with Dutch lyrics so I used Google translate and the translation made the song funnier than the Dutch version.
Here are the lyrics:

Try to sing along with the English lyrics, while listening to the Dutch version!
Big fun!

Note: Andre van Duin released another Eskimo song, it was a parody on "Mexico" of the Zangeres Zonder Naam (who sang a Dutch translation of "Le chanteur de Mexico"). 
He made a lot of parodies of songs an although he was also a composer of lots of other songs he released, I still remembered his parody's the best.

TnC Internet Adventures: An Introduction

A new series of posts. In this series want to post about all the things I have found on the net, but don't want to spend a whole post on just 1 subject. Most of them will be not MSX related ( see MSX Google posts ), but these posts will have a lot to do with any music 
I found. These may include some of older stuff from ZooiTroep, most recently discovered.

The internet is big and all the search engines in the world (there are more than just Google and Bing) can find it all. So by using different kind of searches I have found some stuff that seems to be forgotten. In every post, I will try to describe how I find it and will tell something about it why I like it. I guess YouTube will be in the series very often, cause everybody is free to post everything. If it's not get banned of course...

At this point, I don't know if every post will contain more than one discovery. It depends how much I can write about the subject, I guess.

So stay tuned for this new series of posts.  TnC Internet Aventures is starting NOW !!!

 

112 MSX Basic games presents : MIDGET-G.GAM (60)

Finally, the 60th game. I am more than half way the my list. Still 59 to go. 
I really wanted to release the next episode of the 112 MSX Basic games disk edition 
112 til 60, cause it's a kinda milestone and although I like the serie very much, 
it is sometimes very hard to improve the game with the ideas I have. 

My programming skills are limited and from time to time I stepped over the border 
and had to take steps back to be able to save and release the game. 

This means, some ideas would not be realised and some would become simpler than 
the original idea. 

For example: for SQUARES.GAM I wanted a 2 player mode, but it was too hard to manage and for GRAVYARD.GAM I wanted to update the scores with the difficulty level, however it was very fuzzy how the score worked ( and when you go to the next level ) so now you wont get extra points when playing on higher difficulty.  

Let's talk about MIDGET-G.GAM, a midgetgolf game in true MSX Basic. 

Again a listing from the MSX-Gids magazine, also a very good one. 

The Pro's  are: good soundeffects, great layout with scores, fast generated holes.  

The Con's are: just 7 holes, no highscore, hole 7 is nearly impossible, no manual. 

I added a highscore, a manual and a retry function, but I didnt know what to do with hole 7, so I leave it this way. Maybe you find the noise of the ball collision annoying, I prefer it above no sound at all. I have seen more golf games in MSX Basic, but this was the best I could find, even if it had only 7 holes, instead of the normal 18. Well, hole 7 will keep you occupied for quite some time, so I think the (unknown) creator had made a good choice to make no more holes than 7. 

 

The highscore is 2000 and it will be easy to improve that 

( if you manage to get the ball in hole 7, har har ). 

Just a tip, if you had chosen too many strength, then shoot the ball in the oposite direction, the results will suprise you. 

I know there are too many golf games made for MSX 

(by Konami, HAL, Pack-In-Video, etc ), but this game 

doesnt try to copy them.

It's a simple midgetgolf game, with a good playability. 

Hint: Watch where the dot is, and you know what to do.

Goto Mediafire / Pcloud