112 MSX Basic games presents: PLAYMAZE.GAM (103)

Another Basic game in black and white ! And I almost forgot an MSX-1 had 15 colors !
I could add a nice background picture, flashing title screens, colorfull characterset, but no.

First of all it's too much work for me, second this game doesnt need fancy stuff.
It's perfect in b&w, believe me. The game had no title, but in Dutch it was called: "DOOLHOF.BAS".

That was a very bad name, cause I had at least 2 other Basic games
with the same name, but totally different in gameplay (if there was any...).

I decided to call this one "PLAYMAZE", because you can really play the generated maze
(instead of printing it on the screen and quit...).
And there is more, you can fill in how but the maze can be, if it will be generated visilble or not,
if the whole maze is visible or not and if you should play it or the computer.
Yes, really !
You can let the computer finds his way through the maze and see how fast he gets to the exit. Well..always faster than me.

It's amazed me how many options the programmer put into this listing.
Sadly I dont know who, I only know it was a C.U.C. member cause the listing was made for MSX-1 and Spectravideo 328/728.
I changed only minor details like deleting the Spectravideo parts and made the color of the sprite in the maze changable.

I know there was a MSX-2 maze-game called Leather Skirts,
but that was a very boring game with just a bigger maze and some drawn pictures of girls
of the red light district.

You can download PLAYMAZE.GAM from Gavitex and Mediafire
and Leather Skirts NOT, why should you play it ? Didn´t you watch that boring video ?

112 MSX Basic games presents: DETECTIV.GAM (104)

This is a very simple version of the "Guess Who" game.

So you dont owe an MSX computer to play it, you just need a computer with some Basic interpreter.
The original game was more guessing than clever thinking, so I added some difficulty levels into the game.

There are plenty of text-only games made for MSX, but I liked this one for the staging (police officiers) and the comments how the player is doing.
A P.C can ask more questions than a Inspector, so most of the time the Inspector has to quess...

There is no much left to say, so I give you the download links.

At Gavitex 
At Mediafire

I could add some colorfull backgrounds to this game, but
I dont like games with nice gfx and less gameplay.

After all, this game has not much gameplay, just fun to play for a short time... 

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