112 MSX Basic games presents: Blitz Attack (105)

This is a simple game, just throw bombs on tanks and buildings before your plane crashes.

But there is more in "Blitz Attack" than you expect. For example: you can play in daylight or at night.

And believe me, getting a good score at "Night Blitz" is not so easy, cause you see no buildings... Of course I could make the tanks invisible during the "Night Blitz" too.
I think you find that more annoying than challenging.

Well I played the game a couple of times before I noticed the movement of the tanks are sometimes reversed ! What a clever way to make the game more interesting !



Here are the links for Gavitex and Mediafire

Until now, all the 112 MSX Basic games are typed over from some listingbooks and not from any MSX Magazine.
So the GFX of these games seems the bare minimum of which an MSX-1 computer is capable of.
Maybe it will change during the serie, I select the games on playability, fun and strictly MSX Basic, no ML code should be used.

112 MSX Basic games presents: Johnny Jump (106)

The hardest part to make this game ready to publish here was: the title of the game. Really.
The original name was "Jantje Wip" and if you translate that directly you get "Jumping Jack" or "Johnny Bounce" or "John get laid".

So I name it "Johnny Jump", not a very good name, cause our hero had to climb a lot of ladders too. It's a kind of Donkey Kong game, avoiding all strange creatures and climb to the top. After that it's getting more difficult.

The game amazed me of it's speed and playability, it's a basic game but everything moves without slowing down our hero Johnny.
Impressive work this game.
Even the Game Over screen is animated !

If you want to get a good highscore, timing is more important than speed...

PS: If you know a better name...let me know in the comments...

112 MSX Basic games presents: Granny Crunch (107)

Granny Crunch was at first a nice but boring game.
If you stay in the bottom of the screen with your "Granny" pacman, you could play it forever without any Game Over.

So I change the rules a bit to make it harder and more enjoyable.
Now you can choose between "Normal" and "Hard" mode.

The "Normal" mode the walls will be in place, but in "Hard" mode the walls will become bigger, every time you lose enough apples.

Maybe I forgot to explain what you have to do in this basic game...
With your "Granny" pacman you must eat the apples that are falling from the sky (I think, cause I see is no tree).

If you forgot to eat apples the game will soon be over, and your score will displayed.
Can you beat my highest score ? Give it a try, if you still find it boring, you are a better game player than I am.

Try it at: Gavitex and Mediafire

Fan van KONG

It was not easy to find their website, cause the word KONG is used in so many ways, with or without the KING. 

is an Dutch group of musicians,  who make instrumental music with influences from metal, ambient, chillout, house and industrial and use spoken samples to finish it.

They make perfect soundtracks for art-house movies. Some times loud and fuzzy, sometimes light and full of melody.
I start bying their CDs after I heard the song Stockhouse on a Dutch complation CD of Noorder slag Festival (Nieuw Nederland Peil).

For me:  the song visualizes what happened if you go on a rollercoaster, it's a crazy ride,
I can assure you!

Some of their albums were produced by Tom Holkenborg,with sometimes a remixe of Junkie XL (both ex-members of Nerve).
I was also fan of...but that's another story to tell someday...

Years after they broke up I got a mail links to some new tracks, but it was not KONG anymore, just another solo project.

So I bought KONG remixes 93-99, cause I like remixes...well...they all are great disappointments altough I saw some great names of early Dutch house-music composers. Famous names means great sells, not great quality...

The 2nd album of KONG was the best they ever made (Push Comes To Shove),
I played it a lot and loud !
Sadly they never are really populair in other countries, maybe the music was just not pop enough...

I checked their website and they released  already 3 albums I didnt have. But now my taste of music is slightly changed so I listen but wont buy.

PS: on their website you can hear ALL of their songs, check out the RELEASES...

Puzzle Inc Videos

When my son was much younger, we watching BabyTV sometimes.
Most of these programs were highly education
to learn children usefull things like colors, counting, new words, sizes, etc, etc.
And there was one show that wasnt very education, it was just fun to watch and was
called Puzzle Inc.

If you like the intro, the rest is even better.
Every episode creates a simple fantasy world where toys blocks come to life. The crazy voices, sounds and classical music, this strange combination let you smile and make you wonderhow it will end.
Well I recorded several episodes, but I am afraid that YouTube will taken them down soon, because of the copyright of the animation studio... and BabyTV logo.
I send the animation studio a request to post just one episode on YouTube,  no response sadly. So I give you some poor quality videos of Puzzle Inc, I think the quality was so bad YouTube had no reason to remove these videos...

* Train

* Oleadas

Puzzle Inc showed me you really can sing-along with classic music and forever changes my opinion about classic music in general. It's not boring, Puzzle Inc proofs it in every episode.

My Music Memories: Last Night The DJ Saves My Life - Indeep

Talking about basslines, this song has one of the best I ever heard (the other ones are "Radar Love" of Golden Earing and "Another One Bites The Dust" of Queen).

Listen to this bass cover (with tabs to play along) and you know what I'm talking about...

Wanna sheet music to play the song ? Here

Indeep was a one-hit-wonder, but the song "Last Night The DJ Saves My Life" got plenty remixes. The rapper, the female singer, the bassline, the guitar riff, everything is perfectly put in place, a real dance classic.

For some 80s memories: check out the original video
For the strange video ever (but a great remix)here



I love basslines like in the songs of Chic, but that's another
story...

112 MSX Basic games presents: 112-MENU.BAS

If you start a serie with 112 Basic games, you have to find an easy way to start any games without having typing names or numbers. 

So I wanted to make a menu that had room for 112 games and completly can be using with cursorkeys or joystick (1). 

That wasnt easy cause I wanted to create an MSX-1 menu in screen 2, so lots of colorspill and not much space to put texts on. My solution; check the screenshoy below.

The 112-MENU.BAS is allmost complete and fully functional and a version will be released on this blog when I have posted the first 10 MSX Basic games.

Note 1: It will take some time to translate all Dutch texts in any Basic games soon to come, so...stay tuned.

Note 2: of course if you have a AUTOEXEC.BAS menu-program 112 MSX Basic games
will not fit.
CARDS.BAS has 2 games in 1 file, so there was room on the disk for a menu-program.

112 MSX Basic games presents : Adventure (108)

At the time when MSX-1 began, text-adventures were a populair game-genre, cause at that time most computers were not able to create fast high resulution pictures. Not to mention animated pictures...

So there were commercial software based on text-adventures like The Hobbit or De Sekte and of course some MSX Basic programmers that made some very large text-adventures.
I once had a MSX Basic text-adventure that only could run from tape. It was too large to run when Disk Basic was loaded...

But here is a very small text-adventure called Marie Celeste.
I like it cause I like the way it describes the place you are. Like you are really on board on a old ship.
It's no horror story, more a hide and seek.
I never got to the end of the adventure, so many times I checked the listing for mistakes or hidden clues, no luck.

Maybe you can solve it ? If you do, send me a walkthrough please.
After all these years I still wanna know the solution.

Here is a list of commands to get you started: GET KNIFE, CLIMB ROPE, CUT ROPE, LOOK, FORARD, EXAMINE NOTE, GET NOTE, AFT, PORT, FORARD, EXAMINE BUCKET, GET KEY, STARBOARD, EXAMINE CAT, FORARD, OPEN STORES, ....

Download it from: Mediafire or Gavitex

112 MSX Basic games presents : Parrot (109)

This game gave my headaches, cause changing the layout and the controls 

(now also playable with joystick ) was not so simple. 

The maker was very good at using all kinds of MSX characters and I was forgotten that kind of information.

I added an easy and normal mode at Parrot, which is basicly a musical memory game.

Just remember the notes in the right order.

My personal record (easy mode ) is 12, I guess that's  not hard to beat.
In the easy mode you can see the directions, in normal mode you don't.
Have fun and play it with all your friends or family !

Download it at: Mediafire or Gavitex

112 MSX Basic games presents : StarTrek (110)

I hope I dont get any legal problems, the game was just named after the famous SF serie.

So StarTrek is a simple space game. 

You have to dock to fill your energie, shield and fight aliens.

 

To get to 1 position to another you have to warp. 

Warp costs energie and fighting aliens will lower your shield, so you need to get on time to the starbase to dock. 

Docking and fighting is not easy, cause the controls are opposite of what you expect. 

Once again, no joystick needed, cause most commands you need are easy to learn and it's faster to type then go with your joystick sprite to the right place on your screen. 

Of course the docking and shooting seems slow, remember timing is more important than speed...

NB: I didnt have the listingbook anymore, so I didnt know the commands to use.

By playing a lot I found out, so I made a instruction page with all commands you need.

And I changed the difficulty so you can play along in the easy mode without getting out of energie too soon. 

Have fun with STARTREK.BAS.

Download with Mediafire or Gavitex

112 MSX Basic games presents : Cards (112 + 111)

The game Cards was original a collection of 3 listings I put together in a simple menu.

 

But I didnt like the game-listing Plantoon much,
so in the end I forgot to type it over.

Still there are 2 games left:
* the blue "Concentration (Memory)"
* the green "Hi-Low".

I liked the games, cause it looks very transparant and easy to play.

Keyboard is required, I dont miss the joystick at the game. See screenshot and below the links to download CARDS.BAS.

NB : Yes, I modified "Concentration " and the main menu 

to make it more playable.

To download: 

* via Mediafire

* via Gavitex

Fan van Paul Mc Cartney and Wings

I guess that was no suprise, cause I published already some Wordstore demos with his music in it. 

My friend who liked The Beatles  just as much as me, had bought a set of MCs with songs of the The Beatles. Sadly it were no originals but a couple of nobodies singing their songs. But they did a very good job so it took a while before we noticed it. 

Any way, on the last tape there were some songs from Paul Mc Carthey and Wings. 

I liked them so I started to buy Paul Mc Cartney albums, and ...well...in my Wordstore demo's I will explain more about each album.

My older sister liked his music too, so she bought the double live album Wings Over America, Band On The Run on cassettes and Wings Greatest on LP with a couple of hickups in the song "Hi Hi Hi" (a light pick-up arm helped).

But Pipes of Peace was the last album I bought. Why ? Check out my post about my Hey Hey Karaoke Wordstore demo.

And did you know that Paul Mc Cartney also made some nice instrumental songs ?
If I would collect all of them I have on cassttes or LP , I could make a whole CD full.
To number a few I really liked: "Valentine's Day", "L.O.U.P.","On The Cuff Link" and "Rockestra Theme".

You can find the originals all over YouTube, so here are my first pick of covers
from Wings Greatest on YouTube:

"Another Day"
 "Silly Love Songs"
"Live and Let Die"
"Junior's Farm"
"With a Little Luck"
"Band On The Run"
"Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey"
"Hi, Hi, Hi"
"Let 'Em In"
"My Love"
"Jet" 
"Mull Of Kintyre"

Everyone with a guitar or piano can play these songs, but these songs are not so easy to play and sing as they seem to be...

Failures of MSX: slow cassettes

In the begin years of MSX  most programs were on cartridge or cassettes/tapes.
Cartridges were expensive, cassettes were (normally) cheaper.

And of course most of the time you did not have any choice, so you had to buy it on tape.
So when I bought my VG8235 MSX-2 computer with diskdrive, I had to buy a datarecorder if I wanted to buy some MSX software.
That should not be a problem, but the loading and saving speed of MSX datarecorder were
1200 or 2400 baud, still very slow.
It costs me almost 15 minutes to start up "Oh Shit" from a tape, while my nephews with a Commodore 64 had turbo loaders and play one game after another...

So sometimes I bought a original MSX game on tape and search on MSX BBSes with my MSX modem for a cracked version, so I could play it on disk.

Later on I got so sick of the loading times, I never bought any MSX game on tape and used my datarecorder only for recording Wordstrore+ samples...

Highlights of MSX: easy way to add more hardware

On almost every MSX-computer there were 2 cartridges slots.

These could be used for almost everything, interfaces for harddisks, diskdrives, slotexpanders, modems, rom-games, music-cartridges and more and more.

It is impossible to name every kind of hardware that could be inserted into 1 of the cartridge slots.
They were easy to use and you could choose from more than 1 company, if you wanted additional hardware for your MSX.

Even in these non-MSX times are still companies that sell their MSX games on cartridge.
Check out: http://www.msxcartridgeshop.com/

My Music memories : Different Corner by George Michael

It's not always uptempo songs that stays in my memories. 

Some ballads seems to be forgotten by me and then a memory pops up
and the song is back.

I heard "Different Corner" of George Michael when I was a trainee at a iron work industry (see "Sledgehammer") and I though why he left Wham and the happy uptempo songs and start his solo career with a such a sad song.

I wasnt happy as a trainee, cause it was dirty and sometimes heavy work and I had hard times to keep up with the other co-workers. 

But the radio was always on, so I heard all the latest hits, like this one.

And I felt less unhappy after hearing this song...

I found a video if George Michael performing "Different Corner" with a huge orchestra
in Paris, but it seems the whole orchestra was playbacking, cause it sounded just like somebody put the CD-player on.
Exactly the same sound, sad choice. So I chose the original video-clip.
I search on YouTube for a male or female singer who covers the song like never before,
but everybody sing (or tries to sing) it like G.M.

And remixes were hard to find, until I came across this Chill-Out version, with a beautiful video full of moving images.

George Michael released in the same periode "Careless Whisper" another sad ballad song,
this one stayed longer in my music memories.

My Music Memories: Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel

I heard this song (short version) for the first time, while I was working as a trainee in a iron work industry. It was always warm and dirty, the work too, but the radio played at high volume and when the brasses started I loved it instantly. And when I saw the video, it was the craziest video I ever saw until then (some parts were made by the people of Walles and Grummet)

When the song is so strange but yet so catchy, it's hard to create a version of the same song that's not a big fiasco.
But the Coloureds remix does a good make-over of the original "Sledgehammer".
And miss Morgan James covered the song like it was a gospel.

Fan of Yello

It all began with a commercial on MTV for the Video and CD Essential Yello (the best of).
I heard some songs I liked a lot and then I knew, it was all YELLO !!!

So I bought the CD an Video (with a different version of Jungle Bill and Who's Gone video).
I liked most of the songs even those I never had heard before...
After that I start search for more Yello music and bought New Mix 82-85 with some earlier stuff of Yello, but I liked it anyway.

I liked it because it was weird, funny, melodic, electronic and I was easy for me to sing along with Dieter Meyer, cause my voice was rather low.
Combine with the crazy video's featuring the members of Yello (Dieter Meyer and Boris Blank) I came more and more addicted.

After buying these compilations, I started collecting all Yello albums on CD.

The first was Claro Que Si and I was not sure if I wanted to buy more of Yello, cause 

the versions on New Mix were much better than on Claro Que Si and worst of all I didnt like the other songs very much.

After a while I was enough hungry for more Yello, so I bought them all.

The beste creative period of Yello was just before releasing Essential Yello, after that

Yello tried to be hip with experiments with house, dub, electro, dnb, but most of the time the remixes of these songs were much better than the Yello ones.

So after a few albums I better forget (Motion Picture and The Eye), Yello got back to its own style and managed to make it sound fresh again, it was called Touch Yello.
Not only on CD but there was a DVD as well, called: "The Virtual Concert"

For me a reason to stay being fan of Yello, until present time.

Yello always tries to go with the flow, their website looks cool and changed from time to time, they made an app for mobile-phones and tablets, made car-commercials, interactive online music-mixer and much more.

That's make me as a fan very happy, I am not looking for re-issues or remasters.

If you want to become a fan of Yello: check out on their website their Videology 
(click on the green block) and play a few videos.

DJ Riko:, Xmas mixer and Mashup DJ

There were times that I listened to Sky Radio, days before Christmas.
Every day I heard Wham, Slade, Maria Carey, Mud, Slade and of course somebody singing White Christmas.
I had made some tapes with our favorite songs from me and my wife and some weird tapes with modern xmas songs in rock, reggae, chillout styles.
But I thought maybe unknown artists can cover christmas songs better or even make new ones....
So I collected over 50 CD-Rs with christmas mp3 songs from artists I never heard of, who  shared their songs on a free to download websites like mp3.de and simulair.

While I was collecting, I found some Christmas mixes and podcasts full of new music. Great cause I like mixes and remixes. So one day I stumbled into:

who made almost every year a new X-mas mix !
Free for everyone to download on his own website djriko.com.

I liked DJ Riko very much, cause I discovered Mashups when listening to his other tunes and other mixes. He doesnt make much new stuff ( look at the New page), but his Mashup "P-Funk In Playing My House" is really great and even released on vinyl ! DJ Riko repeats himself in the longer mixes, so if you play 3 of his longer mixes, the rest dont matter.
His X-mas mixes however, are not to miss and a must have to play on every Christmas day. Here is the page, so download them all !

Last note: his ringtones are no ordinary tunes, check it out

My Music Mories: We all die young of Steel Dragon

Sometimes you hear a song in a movie and you just wanna know who sang it. I had it when watching the end of movie Rockstar with Mark Wallenberg.

It's a film about a boy who becomes the lead singer of a heavy metal band and all the stuff around it. At the end he quits, cause he wants to spend more time with his girlfriend than being famous. 

This song starts very gentle and later become the normal hardrock ballad. I liked it anyway cause the singer is great (not Mark W. himself ofcourse) and I like the way the song starts and build up the tension...

After I found the song, there were more songs, all were credited to a group named Steel Dragon (like in the movie Rockstar) . 

In fact it was a group called Steel Heart. 

Well, all songs are cliche heavy metal songs, but the singer is really good and the band performs solid. 

So here is the whole song, here some parts from the movie itself and Steel heart live

Wanna know more: see this blog

DnBuser & TnC: Strong & Delayed

Together with DnBuser, someone I recently met at the DJ collective called "DJ Station",
I created a serie of Drum 'n Bass soundscapes under the name "Strong &  Delayed".


We created these tracks live, afterwards I cut off the failed attempts (yes, I scr** up a lot) and added fade outs
at the end.

If you still reading, here is the link to the playlist at Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/audiotex-1/sets/strong-delayed

DnBuser likes to play DnB like Liquid Funk style of the mixes of DrumsoldieR, just the kind of style I like in DnB.
Less aggressive, more mellow.
But after this serie our paths go different ways, I have a lot
of other projects I want to do and so is he.

Maybe I will coop with another DJ from the "DJ station" collective, at this time I won't mention any name. Peace !

Introducing a new serie: 112 MSX Basic Games

During a Dutch heatwave, I often started up my old NMS 8280 MSX computer to copy some 1DD disks to 2 DD disks and make disk-images from these on my PC to use it in BlueMSX.
Of course there was a lot of crap I wouldnt dare to post it in any way, but I found a lot of forgotten Basic Games I typed in long ago from MSX listingbooks I bought when I started with MSX and had not a lot of programs to run, for example this one on the right...


I played a lot of these MSX Basic Games I typed in and I decided they should not be forgotten again.
A MSX diskette can hold no more than 112 files, so this serie will be 112 posts in total.
At this moment I don't have 112 Basic games in stock, but I'm pretty sure I can make at least 30 episodes.

Each post will have at least 2 screenshots and the game to download.
Remember: in most MSX Basic games the controls are a little slow so your response time are more importent than rapid fire. Have fun.

Mixmeister TnC Moonblaster mixes (total 7)

Hi, 

It's been a while since I post something new, but a Dutch heatwave, stress at work and some nasty Flash player malware, got me away from the keyboard and my blog.

So this once is some sort of retrospective of my MSX Moonblaster mixes so far.

Yes, I created 7 mixes, not 6, cause I refurbished my 1st mix and the result was more different than the original plan (the REPRISE). 

I uploaded all my mixes to mixcloud so you dont have to download anything, just listen.

Here is the link: https://www.mixcloud.com/NoiseCollector/

Will there a mix number 7 ?

I had already some pre-recorded songs, but I have some other interesting projects I workon so I leave it where it is right now.

If you looked carefull to all the playlist, you know that each mix is created from a diskette with 20 tracks or more (ordered alfabeticly).

So mix 7 will only included tracks begin with the letter K and L.

On the left side you see an example of the source of all mixes.
Of course I should include here pictures on Moonblaster, BlueMSX, Mixmeister Fusion and Audacity, but if you download a package from the link at mixcloud you get a lot more info about each mix and an interesting bonusdiskette too...

Terraria Game Music

After I played Minecraft a lot, my son got interested in the game Terraria.
Mainly because a friend at school had the PS3 version of the game,
there was also a PC-version and it was just like Minecraft but in 2-D instead of 3-D.

Well, that is not fair for Terraria, a lot of things are the same as in Minecraft, like creating random worlds, different diomes, mining and building.
But in Minecraft you do not a lot buying, selling (remember the villagers?) and crafting things
In Terraria there are so much usefull and unusefull items and you can get them in different ways, like killing an boss or enemy, crafting or buying from a salesman.
And there are a lot of different salesman, if you build houses enough (and kill enough bosess).
Terraria has plenty of bosses like The Twins, Destroyer, Plantera, Golem, even more smaller enemies, and there are also invasions of Pirates, Goblins, Frost Moon, Red Moon , Halloween etc etc.
You can even start a boss fight or invasion whenever you want as long as you have the right items !

Of course is Terraria multi-player and it's very easier to start one, just fill in the IP-address and it works.
Even nicer the game doesnt need much grafical power, so it can be played on laptops too.
Are there any negative sides ? Yes, after a while the created world is no challange any more cause you mined everything and beat every boss multiple times. Then it's time to start a new world and do it all over again. Nice feature in Terraria is: you can take your character to another world, so you dont have to start with a bronze sword and no armor...

And when a game is populair, people start making there own versions of the gamemusic.
Terraria has very interesting music from  Scott Lloyd Shelly 
So the soundtrack is well worth listening , but there are always people who think they can do better...
Well I search on YouTube a lot, but it's hard to beat the originals.
Here are a few, try it, maybe you like them I know I did...

And did I tell you you can play in teams and do PvP or not ?
No, I just did !

Some weird tunes from the past

I once heard a song that goes like this "They coming to take me away hoho, they coming to take me away haha like elephants on parade". So I search where the song came from, but could not find it.
My only clue was it should have been a song from a cartoon...
Yesterday I found this song (and more) in an obscure mixtape on mix.dj Theatre Of The absurd by The Tapestry Weavers. Napoleon XVI...who was that ?

And the artist was:
I took a good look at wiki and found it was a  alias for ... and it was a big hit in 1966,
and the title was "They coming to take me away haha". There was also an album with the same title full of even more weird creepy stuff...

But no elephants on parade, untill I searched on YouTube,
it was from the Dumbo movie of Disney !
No kiddin !

If you listen to the "Pink Elephants On Parade" refrein of Dumbo
and then to "They coming to take me away haha".

Do you hear some similarities ?

Strange isn't it...

Of course the song of Napoleon XIV was covered, so listen to this and that or those and them