I'd very much like to see a code walk through of Splatform - the more VIC-20 coding content, the better! It would be an interesting comparison to see how things are done on the VIC vs. the C64. Also I can't praise The Future Was 8 Bit enough for their products for Commodore machines. I have the earlier Penultimate cartridge (as well as several other of their C64 goodies) and that was already excellent, and this takes it to a whole new level.
I'd second that. And while Robins at it. Maybe he could feature creep it into the Deluxe version, were you can choose your own 2 colours like in Cyclons? :D
I've owned a VIC-20 Mega-Cart since 2009 which has been out of production for many years, however this Penultimate+2 looks pretty sweet. I'll need to add this to my VIC-20 collection for sure! Thanks for the video!
Same here. I love the MegaCart. The P1 was more of a side-grade/alternative, but this P2 has such a huge library. The P2 is more like a MegaCart with more software on it.
My family does have a VIC-20, but I upgraded to a C-64 as soon as I could afford to so I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for it. I wonder if any of these are good enough on their own, without nostalgia goggles?
@@geekwithsocialskills Fair enough! I loved Choplifter on the C64, and am curious to try it on the VIC-20. And I loved Imagic games on the Intellivision, so I'm curious to try them on the VIC. So I may have to get this. :)
First up, loving the Vic 20 and P+2 coverage, and in particular the amount of time and detail you put in as always. I've seen that type of glitch in Jelly Monsters before while I was developing a routine to allow smooth movement of characters such as Pac Man and the Ghosts, so I would make a guess that it is using a similar technique. It comes about by using some regular characters as small bitmaps and writing the sprite-like Pac Man and Ghosts into those bitmaps. I could give a longer explanation, but essentially for this type of technique you save the original characters and copy over their image data into your local bitmap before drawing a Pac Man or Ghost on top. Later, when moving or removing these little bitmaps you put the original characters back. It happens because the game must handle when two or more ghosts and pac man overlap, you must ensure the correct original characters are put back on the screen, typically you put them back in reverse order in which you placed the bitmap characters. Get that wrong and you leave little bits of the bitmap characters behind instead of the spaces or the pill characters, and all sorts of weird effects are seen.
That makes sense; I hope other people can replicate it so I can determine if it's a bug in the original game, or if it's caused by some sort of fault in my particular Jelly Monsters cartridge or VIC-20. I thought I saw the glitch happen when I was running JM from the PU+2 but I was unable to replicate (I tried off-camera again too) but it happened more easily with my original JM cart. But it could also be a RAM or I/O initialization bug; I'm sure the PU+2 does a lot of initialization of hardware registers and RAM in the course of starting up the menu system etc. and launching a game, while an original Jelly Monsters cartridge would not need to.
What’s peoples favorite games at this cartridge? At 80’a had Jupiter Lander, Gorf and Sargon II Chess cartridges. Also Psycho Shopper 8K tape. So these carts my favorites. There’s really nice cart games like Shamus and Lode Runner. Not sure if Choplifter was there but that’s also nice Vic20 conversion. Also had Finnish collection tape that had games like Bliz and Gridrunner. Like most Lamasoft games and Gridrunner quite amazing fast shoot ‘‘em up. There’s Highnoon 16K western shoot ‘‘em up game. It’s fun but quite hard. Some new Vic20 games quite amazing like Boulder Dan, Pentagorant and Pulse.
Wish I had a cartridge like that back in the early 80s for my VIC-20. From what I remember a simple 8-16k ram expansion back then cost as much as a whole new VIC-20. Did get a cassette deck though, good investment and overall a good introduction to computers.
Trust me, you wouldn't have wanted it. If you did, the memories wouldn't be as sweet. Half the fun is turning the Vic off, inserting another cart and turning it back on. LOL
Jupiter Lander, my favorite game on the VIC. I was a real expert at crashing into the walls. Didn't get many points that way but had me sprawled on the floor laughing. Good so see someone else smack it a few times.
What a great thing. That Pink windmill game looks like it is (loosely) related to an old British children's program starring Rod Hull and Emu - I really can't explain it, but there are episodes of Emus World out there on TH-cam
Love your vloggs Robin. I have purchase many of the books and hardware you recommend etc to help me learn so much about the vic and c64. You are so talented and are able to explain it all so well ! Bless you mate.
I never knew those Scott Adams adventures existed until I saw you mention them. I think it was in another video of yours. I need to play those sometime. I really loved Adventure and Zork, plus Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.. those type games. What a memory rush.
Very neat cart! @10:45 I was thinking the same thing about Demon Attack and the smooth movement. It would be interesting to see which technique they used to remap the character data of the enemies between frames to get such smooth results in both axes. It looks like they didn't do the same thing for their bombs/fire, as that vertical movement is noticeably more jerky.
Exactly. When you buy this cartridge you're guaranteed to have one you feel is inferior within a couple years. And if you upgrade, what do you do with the old one, since its functionality is 100% covered by the new one?
Just came across your channel. Great content here on VIC 20 which invokes so much nostalgia with a machine I had new early 80s. I got to you via Jeff Minter and Llamasoft! Remember him?❤❤❤👍🏴🏴🏴🏴
Regarding the Pink Windmill game. Based on the classic VIC20 game of Blitz, the witch is Grotbags and the bird is Emu. These are based on the characters from the Rod Hull children's television programme from the 1980's; possibly the early 1990's. In the programme the main characters lived in a pink windmill and Grotbags always wanted to get rid of Emu; but with the help of the children didn't, even though she tried various different ways of doing so. Grotbags was played by Carol Lee Scott, who was also a singer, in her earlier career. It's a slightly strange game because Emu's cannot fly, but the idea is workable at least. Hope this helps. LOL.
The Vic 20 was my first computer but I didnt keep it long. A few months after I bought it I became aware of a big brother that was about to be released called the Commodore 64! I sold my Vic 20 to a neighbor for $100 even though I had just paid $249 for it at Wards!! Once I compared the two specs I knew I had to have the 64 and willingly took the loss. Paid full retail at a computer store, $595.
My story with the VIC is similar. Although I purchased it second hand (also from a neighbour) I got it late though (around 1984) Not too long after, I ended up selling it and buying a C128
@@RodHull_TFW8b I also appreciate the way you didn't use a blue LED (like everything does these days) and use the red and green LED's as they would have been in that era. Yeah, the glow of those buttons is a very cool look.
Got Penultimate+2 two week ago. I been using previous version before. Also had Mega Cart when it was released, Behr Bonz and Final Cartridge. File browser and file favorites work great with SD card drive. I been mostly playing my own roms. It doesn’t include all Vic20 cartridges or even all Commodore cartridges. I wish it did. But many of those can be loaded from SD card or I use Megacart or Behr bonz cart for that. If one day they add option load TAP files directly to Vic20 with cable to cassette port from file browser this cart would be perfect. If add also internal SD card drive it would be more like Final cartridge or 1541 Ultimate. But external SD card drive works everything ok and many Vic20 games are at TAP format so TAP loader would be more handy. I know there’s Tapuino and I have also used that but it would be so much nice use with file browser than small lcd screen and small buttons at back of Vic20. Vic20 was my first computer at 80’s so I had to buy this cartridge. 😊
I love me some Demon Attack. It was my favorite game on the 2600 (next to River Raid) and I played hours and hours (mostly frustratingly) to get better at it. :) The good ol' days. :)
It would be awesome if the Penultimate+3 include a section on Vic-20 demos. Like, ROBOTIC LIBERATION or any demos from pwp and many other author demos. My vic20 works, but I dont have a hard disk. This would be awesome to relive those old games!!
That would be cool, but an SD2IEC device is inexpensive and should be able to load most or all VIC-20 demos. I know I've run Robotic Liberation on mine.
Hey Robin. Great video as usual. I was wondering about that custom joystick you are using. Maybe I missed a video where you talk about it. Is it an ambidextrous one or are the 2nd and third buttons POTx and POTy? What does the dial and switch do? Thanks!
I have the Penultimate+ (not this +2 version). I think mine has over 70 games or something. This new one has alot more games. Nice piece of hardware. Thanks for the video
Ever since the RetroRecipe channel blasphemed about you, I've only watched your content! Very materialistic and optically overloaded rubbish... You can tell you're really into it! Thank you, please keep it up!
I don't want to say anything wrong. It was very incidental in one of his older videos. The humor went in the direction of I'm better and he's the boring old one... That's what made me spill the last drop. Because there it was only about consumer frenzy and optical love for detail... I find it just as loveless how they ritualistically tear up fan packages and deal with the gifts completely superficially and half-heartedly. I don't like that kind of self-expression.... But the bad behavior is not the main reason why I prefer your channel.
The 20 really has some of the nicest early 80s arcade games ever. It's like having no hardware sprites, low resolution and simple sound had made the coders more competent to start with. It's that or I'm a nerd for this😀
The Jelly Monsters glitch is caused by an un-initialized variable. Memory location $1046 is not initialized but then later read. If $1046 happened to be 0 when the game started then the glitch happens, otherwise it will be fine. I have a disassembly of the game code if anyone is interested in the details.
Awesome find! Did you do the disassembly yourself? Did you already know about this glitch, or just look into after watching this video? If you wanted to send me the disassembly, my email address can be found on my TH-cam page's "About" tab, under "Details".
I had some chips pulled from a VIC-20 (CPU, VIC, VIA) laying around and decided to build my own computer out of them, which was a lot of fun. Then I came to think that I really have the same hardware as a VIC-20 and (although the memory layout is different) at least some VIC-20 games should work on it. So I decided to disassemble some games so that I can re-assemble them with the correct memory layout for my machine. When I did Jelly Monsters I ran into that same glitch. At first I thought it was an issue with my port or my computer but after some digging into the code I found that it's really a bug in the game (and can be reproduced in VICE). It's fairly easy to fix too. I'll send you an email with a link to my GitHub repo. I tried posting the link here but TH-cam keeps deleting my comments if I include links. Anyone else can find a link to my GitHub in my TH-cam profile. Look for the "vic20games" repository.
I just tried Demon Attack in PAL mode, what a mess! Jelly Monsters shows the full screen in both PAL and NTSC on the Maxi. I don't know what I did. I'm sure it was missing the bottom first time I tried it.
I played a lot of Jelly Monsters on C64 Maxi, I thought it was a PAL game. I think I used PAL mode to see the bottom of the screen. The screen size is impressive and not that obvious when using emulation at 720p. Never seen a software sprite glitch and draw tiles all over the screen before. They keep swapping graphics with the sprite animation too. Very interesting. I will try the game some more in NTSC mode.
Sorry, the Scott Adams games were written in Assembly. That's why you had to type Sys 32592 to start the games. The cartridge was so full, there wasn't even room for a basic loader, requiring the Sys call to start the games. If you peeked into the game, you could see, in Petscii, some of the games locations, items and other responses. Maybe that why you thought it was written in BASIC.
There's a VIC-20 game from early on that I'm trying to recall the name of. It was on cassette, rather simple, may have been local to the Midwest US. It was a maze / obstacle type game, player piloted a little ship through the tunnels around the screen avoiding walls and obstacles. I believe the game had only 2 levels. It had no physics per se. The ship looked like a little rocket car / shuttle type vehicle. Every joystick movement advanced one space and made a burst of engine noise. Anyone know it? Again, it was a small, no-name publisher IIRC. Maybe just a guy working from home as was so common.
Sorry, I don't, but look up "Commodore Vic-20 Gamebase" on archive dot org or elsewhere and have a look through it. It's got a LOT of games listed and maybe it's somewhere in there.
Jelly Monstors glitch - my cartridge did the same way back in 1984 - it did not matter which friends Vic 20 we played it on, on occasion it would do that glitch thing - why I have no idea.
Rod Hull made this? And it includes a game called Pink Windmill featuring an Emu and a green witch? This comment won't mean much to a Canadian but that bit was interesting.
I wonder if the idea that a lifetime after the computer was designed people would still be releasing stuff for it ever crossed the minds of the engineers.
You didnt play (or i just missed) Cosmic Cruncher, it is interesting because it s the Commodore changed version of Jelly Monster, for western market i suppose, same exact game but with the graphic changed, instead of a pacman u got a C= logo, and the setting is in space, the game program engine is Jelly Monster btw. Edit. PS: star Battle is another great vic 20 game by hal laboratory, it is one of the best galaxian clones. PPS: out of curiosity, just found there is a satoru iwata game also for the PET called Carrace II
Yes, there's lots of other interesting stories in these games that I hope to cover in future videos. There's actually three steps to the Jelly Monster story. First, HAL Laboratory coded Pac-Man for the VIC-20 which Commodore had a license to but *only* in Japan. Atari had the Pac-Man license for the rest of the world. So Commodore released the Pac-Man game unmodified except for the name as Jelly Monsters. Then of course Atari sued (or at least threatened legal action) so Commodore pulled JM. Then they modified it into Cosmic Cruncher. And yes, I covered Star Battle / Galaxian in its own video, as I discovered he actually left a hidden title screen only disabled by one modified byte in the ROM. The video is called "Restoring Satoru Iwata's 39 Year-Old Easter Egg in Star Battle for the Commodore VIC-20". Maybe I should rename it each year to keep the title accurate :)
The PC1512 only supports 640x200 (CGA) graphics, although it does have an extended 16-colour mode. The PC1640 will do 640x350 because it adds EGA support.
The problem with those old paddle controllers is their potentiometers get worn out over time and become very glitchy in their movements. It's too bad digital ones weren't a thing back then (or were they?). [edit: Interesting that the Vicatone Tv Game figured out a way to smooth out the jitter! I'd be interested to know how it was done!]
Vic-20s also commonly have paddle jitter issues due to the Vic-20 itself, so no amount of cleaning the paddle pots will fix it. If you google Vic-20 paddle jitter, the first link goes to a sleeping elephant page that describes the issue about half way down the page. I have one with this issue (paddles work great on Atari 2600, but are all over on the Vic), and I see that there are a few capacitors on the mainboard, across the pins on the chip that handle paddle input, but I've not tried replacing those capacitors to see if it has any effect.
Don't think this is necessarily worth getting if you already have the Penultimate+ and an SD card reader. Or maybe even the origonal Penultimate. But apart from that It's pretty much a must IMO.
Two of the best games from the time, Donkey Kong and Dig Dug, run too fast on the PAL VIC-20. I'm assuming that is still the case here? What do I need to do to turn a PAL VIC into an NTSC VIC?
I couldn't find Splatform C64. A database page says your games are PD, but couldn't find them anywhere. Is there a place where you have them for download?
There is a bug in the file browser, if you are searching files on your SD and there is more than 17 files when you page down to the next page it misses a file :( been testing it for a few weeks now
That's unfortunate - I didn't notice that when I tried it, but I guess if the file you want it's the one missing, then there's a good chance I wouldn't have noticed! Did you try contacting TFW8b or Tynemouth Software about the bug?
@@DaveCurran Sorry, maybe it was Rod's cheeky marketing when the original Penultimate launched that made me think there was a bit of "inspiration" going on.
Watch this video, and particularly part 2 for more info on the new things like the file browser etc. We added an awful lot to the +2, so I hope it is a worthwhile upgrade.
i used to design adventure games using tape drive to emultate memory by creating a dbase that could pull stuff from th edrive as needed was quite intense when ya consider i was only 12 years old also made a game kind a simular to a grand strategy game with no tech but ya had various cultures and there wars and even a hockey game (yup im canadian) these skills had me by time i hit grade 13 to program code that would be turned into hardware for the cafeteria inventory system of my high school hehe
As a kid I loved demon attack, but I forgot about it until I watched a documentary that showed it in the introduction and spent a couple hours trying to describe it to Google search lol. Was pointless as I have the C64 version and could have just checked which games in had on the web to find one that matched
I tried a few times, in a few different ways, to make something like this for the C64, but I don't find it a nice machine to work with. I prefer the quirks and eccentricities and sheer potential of it's elder brothers the VIC and the PET.
I'm not aware of any that have hundreds of games already in ROM for the C64, but the Kung-Fu Flash has an SD card slot and you can put many C64 games on there and choose them from the built-in menu system. So the KFF can be configured similarly.
It's that pesky side flame on jupiter lander that touches the side of the cave, resulting in the destruction of the lander, that used to annoy me about that game!
That's correct; Sword of Fargoal has been included in recent commercial releases like TheC64 (and TheVIC-20), the Evercade, and some other commercial downloadable emulator packs, so it's still an active IP, not abandoned. I believe all the games included on the PU+2 are either with the permission of the authors, or have been unavailable for years (decades).
I'm a simple man.. I see Robin upload, and I click. Even at 11:40 pm. 😅
Even when it's an hour long! :) Thanks, much appreciated.
or 4:40 pm as it was here in the UK
It is the way it must always be
The world is a better world because of Robin.
I'd very much like to see a code walk through of Splatform - the more VIC-20 coding content, the better! It would be an interesting comparison to see how things are done on the VIC vs. the C64. Also I can't praise The Future Was 8 Bit enough for their products for Commodore machines. I have the earlier Penultimate cartridge (as well as several other of their C64 goodies) and that was already excellent, and this takes it to a whole new level.
I'd second that. And while Robins at it. Maybe he could feature creep it into the Deluxe version, were you can choose your own 2 colours like in Cyclons? :D
Was 'Cheese and Onion' and 'Pentagorat' on the first Penultimate cartridge or was that just on the Plus?
I've owned a VIC-20 Mega-Cart since 2009 which has been out of production for many years, however this Penultimate+2 looks pretty sweet. I'll need to add this to my VIC-20 collection for sure! Thanks for the video!
Same here. I love the MegaCart. The P1 was more of a side-grade/alternative, but this P2 has such a huge library. The P2 is more like a MegaCart with more software on it.
@@CommodoreGreg It makes sense that the P2 would have a larger library of software since it came out a long time after the Mega-Cart.
My family does have a VIC-20, but I upgraded to a C-64 as soon as I could afford to so I don’t have a lot of nostalgia for it. I wonder if any of these are good enough on their own, without nostalgia goggles?
@@ScrapKing73 I grew up with Apple II's in elementary school and a C64 at home. I had zero experience with a VIC-20 until about 10-15 years ago.
@@geekwithsocialskills Fair enough! I loved Choplifter on the C64, and am curious to try it on the VIC-20. And I loved Imagic games on the Intellivision, so I'm curious to try them on the VIC. So I may have to get this. :)
Your game that you displayed here is awesome, Robin!
I ordered one before I even finished the video. Hope Robin gets some kind of commission off this! Maybe a Retro Salesman of the Year award?
No commission, I'm just glad it exists and they included my game and so many others!
Please add another vote for a code walkthrough of Splatform!
First up, loving the Vic 20 and P+2 coverage, and in particular the amount of time and detail you put in as always.
I've seen that type of glitch in Jelly Monsters before while I was developing a routine to allow smooth movement of characters such as Pac Man and the Ghosts, so I would make a guess that it is using a similar technique.
It comes about by using some regular characters as small bitmaps and writing the sprite-like Pac Man and Ghosts into those bitmaps. I could give a longer explanation, but essentially for this type of technique you save the original characters and copy over their image data into your local bitmap before drawing a Pac Man or Ghost on top. Later, when moving or removing these little bitmaps you put the original characters back. It happens because the game must handle when two or more ghosts and pac man overlap, you must ensure the correct original characters are put back on the screen, typically you put them back in reverse order in which you placed the bitmap characters. Get that wrong and you leave little bits of the bitmap characters behind instead of the spaces or the pill characters, and all sorts of weird effects are seen.
That makes sense; I hope other people can replicate it so I can determine if it's a bug in the original game, or if it's caused by some sort of fault in my particular Jelly Monsters cartridge or VIC-20. I thought I saw the glitch happen when I was running JM from the PU+2 but I was unable to replicate (I tried off-camera again too) but it happened more easily with my original JM cart. But it could also be a RAM or I/O initialization bug; I'm sure the PU+2 does a lot of initialization of hardware registers and RAM in the course of starting up the menu system etc. and launching a game, while an original Jelly Monsters cartridge would not need to.
It’s always a highlight when you upload a new video Robin
Looks absolutely fantastic! Added to my list of things to buy over the next few months! Amazing work on your 1K game =D
Agreed! I've been rocking my VIC-20 Mega-Cart since 2009, but I've added this Penultimate+2 to my future buy list.
What’s peoples favorite games at this cartridge?
At 80’a had Jupiter Lander, Gorf and Sargon II Chess cartridges. Also Psycho Shopper 8K tape. So these carts my favorites.
There’s really nice cart games like Shamus and Lode Runner. Not sure if Choplifter was there but that’s also nice Vic20 conversion.
Also had Finnish collection tape that had games like Bliz and Gridrunner. Like most Lamasoft games and Gridrunner quite amazing fast shoot ‘‘em up.
There’s Highnoon 16K western shoot ‘‘em up game. It’s fun but quite hard.
Some new Vic20 games quite amazing like Boulder Dan, Pentagorant and Pulse.
I just bought a Penultimate+2 and it's fantastic :)
Great video, I'm looking forward to the second part. I'm much more interested in the utilities.
Just ordered one :)
Great video! I bought mine for about 2 years now and I love it. The built-in diagnostics is also great. Thanks for sharing
Wish I had a cartridge like that back in the early 80s for my VIC-20. From what I remember a simple 8-16k ram expansion back then cost as much as a whole new VIC-20. Did get a cassette deck though, good investment and overall a good introduction to computers.
Trust me, you wouldn't have wanted it. If you did, the memories wouldn't be as sweet. Half the fun is turning the Vic off, inserting another cart and turning it back on. LOL
Imagine having games like 'Cheese and Onion' and 'Pentagorat' and 'Prince of Persia' etc on the VIC in the early eighties!
@@GarryGri Those two new racing games are pretty sweet as well, much better than the official Pole Position port.
Jupiter Lander, my favorite game on the VIC. I was a real expert at crashing into the walls. Didn't get many points that way but had me sprawled on the floor laughing. Good so see someone else smack it a few times.
What a great thing.
That Pink windmill game looks like it is (loosely) related to an old British children's program starring Rod Hull and Emu - I really can't explain it, but there are episodes of Emus World out there on TH-cam
"Hi, it's Robin."
Always excited to see a new video where i can hear that phrase.
Brilliant! I can't wait for the 2nd part! I hope to find good utilities and a machinecode monitor.
Love your vloggs Robin. I have purchase many of the books and hardware you recommend etc to help me learn so much about the vic and c64. You are so talented and are able to explain it all so well ! Bless you mate.
Thanks, that's great to hear!
I never knew those Scott Adams adventures existed until I saw you mention them. I think it was in another video of yours. I need to play those sometime. I really loved Adventure and Zork, plus Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.. those type games. What a memory rush.
Those Infocom games are now out for the VIC as well, someone converted them around 2010
Very neat cart! @10:45 I was thinking the same thing about Demon Attack and the smooth movement. It would be interesting to see which technique they used to remap the character data of the enemies between frames to get such smooth results in both axes. It looks like they didn't do the same thing for their bombs/fire, as that vertical movement is noticeably more jerky.
VIC 20 getting some attention. Very nice.
This is on the ever-growing list of accessories I want to purchase. Though by the time I get around to it, the Penultimate+3 will probably be out lol
Great video Robin! Demon Attack is by far my favorite...was also great on the Atari 2600. Thank you for sharing!
I wish they offered a way to upgrade. I bought the previous Penultimate cart months ago.
Exactly. When you buy this cartridge you're guaranteed to have one you feel is inferior within a couple years. And if you upgrade, what do you do with the old one, since its functionality is 100% covered by the new one?
Just came across your channel. Great content here on VIC 20 which invokes so much nostalgia with a machine I had new early 80s. I got to you via Jeff Minter and Llamasoft! Remember him?❤❤❤👍🏴🏴🏴🏴
Thanks, yes, Jeff Minter is definitely a legend and has made some great games.
@@8_Bit I always remember Gridrunner on my VIC 20!!!!
Eagerly awaiting the diagnostics video
Regarding the Pink Windmill game. Based on the classic VIC20 game of Blitz, the witch is Grotbags and the bird is Emu. These are based on the characters from the Rod Hull children's television programme from the 1980's; possibly the early 1990's. In the programme the main characters lived in a pink windmill and Grotbags always wanted to get rid of Emu; but with the help of the children didn't, even though she tried various different ways of doing so. Grotbags was played by Carol Lee Scott, who was also a singer, in her earlier career. It's a slightly strange game because Emu's cannot fly, but the idea is workable at least. Hope this helps. LOL.
There's somebody at the door!
aww I got a special welcome! Thanks Robin :)
Constantly amazed at what is being done with the old Vic 20 and C64.
It's like closest thing to a everdriver for the Vic-20 what a nifty cartridge to own.
The Vic 20 was my first computer but I didnt keep it long. A few months after I bought it I became aware of a big brother that was about to be released called the Commodore 64!
I sold my Vic 20 to a neighbor for $100 even though I had just paid $249 for it at Wards!! Once I compared the two specs I knew I had to have the 64 and willingly took the loss.
Paid full retail at a computer store, $595.
My story with the VIC is similar. Although I purchased it second hand (also from a neighbour) I got it late though (around 1984) Not too long after, I ended up selling it and buying a C128
It’s all great but for some reason i REALLY like how the button lights look. Curious how that was done.
Back lit with LED's with our special inhouse milky buttons. You'll find them on nearly everything I make :D
@@RodHull_TFW8b I also appreciate the way you didn't use a blue LED (like everything does these days) and use the red and green LED's as they would have been in that era. Yeah, the glow of those buttons is a very cool look.
Oohh, I want one and I don’t even have a VIC 20 😍.
Got Penultimate+2 two week ago. I been using previous version before. Also had Mega Cart when it was released, Behr Bonz and Final Cartridge.
File browser and file favorites work great with SD card drive. I been mostly playing my own roms.
It doesn’t include all Vic20 cartridges or even all Commodore cartridges. I wish it did. But many of those can be loaded from SD card or I use Megacart or Behr bonz cart for that.
If one day they add option load TAP files directly to Vic20 with cable to cassette port from file browser this cart would be perfect.
If add also internal SD card drive it would be more like Final cartridge or 1541 Ultimate. But external SD card drive works everything ok and many Vic20 games are at TAP format so TAP loader would be more handy.
I know there’s Tapuino and I have also used that but it would be so much nice use with file browser than small lcd screen and small buttons at back of Vic20.
Vic20 was my first computer at 80’s so I had to buy this cartridge. 😊
This is so good I kind of want a vic20 now
I love me some Demon Attack. It was my favorite game on the 2600 (next to River Raid) and I played hours and hours (mostly frustratingly) to get better at it. :) The good ol' days. :)
It would be awesome if the Penultimate+3 include a section on Vic-20 demos.
Like, ROBOTIC LIBERATION or any demos from pwp and many other author demos.
My vic20 works, but I dont have a hard disk. This would be awesome to relive those old games!!
That would be cool, but an SD2IEC device is inexpensive and should be able to load most or all VIC-20 demos. I know I've run Robotic Liberation on mine.
Hey Robin. Great video as usual. I was wondering about that custom joystick you are using. Maybe I missed a video where you talk about it. Is it an ambidextrous one or are the 2nd and third buttons POTx and POTy? What does the dial and switch do? Thanks!
I have the Penultimate+ (not this +2 version). I think mine has over 70 games or something. This new one has alot more games. Nice piece of hardware. Thanks for the video
Ever since the RetroRecipe channel blasphemed about you, I've only watched your content! Very materialistic and optically overloaded rubbish...
You can tell you're really into it! Thank you, please keep it up!
RetroRecipe blasphemed about me?? What was said?
I don't want to say anything wrong. It was very incidental in one of his older videos. The humor went in the direction of I'm better and he's the boring old one... That's what made me spill the last drop. Because there it was only about consumer frenzy and optical love for detail... I find it just as loveless how they ritualistically tear up fan packages and deal with the gifts completely superficially and half-heartedly. I don't like that kind of self-expression.... But the bad behavior is not the main reason why I prefer your channel.
@@zuruckvor4994 Dude, it was just a JOKE.
The 20 really has some of the nicest early 80s arcade games ever. It's like having no hardware sprites, low resolution and simple sound had made the coders more competent to start with. It's that or I'm a nerd for this😀
There's something kind of primal about VIC-20 games. Kind of raw and a bit rough and a lot of fun.
Great information 👍
The Jelly Monsters glitch is caused by an un-initialized variable. Memory location $1046 is not initialized but then later read. If $1046 happened to be 0 when the game started then the glitch happens, otherwise it will be fine. I have a disassembly of the game code if anyone is interested in the details.
Awesome find! Did you do the disassembly yourself? Did you already know about this glitch, or just look into after watching this video? If you wanted to send me the disassembly, my email address can be found on my TH-cam page's "About" tab, under "Details".
I had some chips pulled from a VIC-20 (CPU, VIC, VIA) laying around and decided to build my own computer out of them, which was a lot of fun.
Then I came to think that I really have the same hardware as a VIC-20 and (although the memory layout is different) at least some VIC-20 games
should work on it. So I decided to disassemble some games so that I can re-assemble them with the correct memory layout for my machine.
When I did Jelly Monsters I ran into that same glitch. At first I thought it was an issue with my port or my computer but after some digging into
the code I found that it's really a bug in the game (and can be reproduced in VICE). It's fairly easy to fix too.
I'll send you an email with a link to my GitHub repo. I tried posting the link here but TH-cam keeps deleting my comments if I include links.
Anyone else can find a link to my GitHub in my TH-cam profile. Look for the "vic20games" repository.
when i saw this i was like, finally, something for the vic 20 and not the commodore 64.
I'm glad i sold the majority of my cartridges a few years ago, as this unit makes nearly everything else obsolete 🙂😕
Where can i get that joystick from?
Brilliant video. Ordered one!
That's a nice joystick. Did you build it? If so, any build guide for one?
I just tried Demon Attack in PAL mode, what a mess! Jelly Monsters shows the full screen in both PAL and NTSC on the Maxi. I don't know what I did. I'm sure it was missing the bottom first time I tried it.
I played a lot of Jelly Monsters on C64 Maxi, I thought it was a PAL game. I think I used PAL mode to see the bottom of the screen. The screen size is impressive and not that obvious when using emulation at 720p. Never seen a software sprite glitch and draw tiles all over the screen before. They keep swapping graphics with the sprite animation too. Very interesting. I will try the game some more in NTSC mode.
The Scott Adams games were written in BASIC. It's one of the first things that amazed me when I started poking around in the code of various games.
Sorry, the Scott Adams games were written in Assembly. That's why you had to type Sys 32592 to start the games. The cartridge was so full, there wasn't even room for a basic loader, requiring the Sys call to start the games. If you peeked into the game, you could see, in Petscii, some of the games locations, items and other responses. Maybe that why you thought it was written in BASIC.
The greatest investment in the history of gaming, paying some Top Hatter to stick you in a maze with a frickin' T-Rex. 😂
There's a VIC-20 game from early on that I'm trying to recall the name of. It was on cassette, rather simple, may have been local to the Midwest US.
It was a maze / obstacle type game, player piloted a little ship through the tunnels around the screen avoiding walls and obstacles. I believe the game had only 2 levels. It had no physics per se.
The ship looked like a little rocket car / shuttle type vehicle. Every joystick movement advanced one space and made a burst of engine noise.
Anyone know it? Again, it was a small, no-name publisher IIRC. Maybe just a guy working from home as was so common.
Sorry, I don't, but look up "Commodore Vic-20 Gamebase" on archive dot org or elsewhere and have a look through it. It's got a LOT of games listed and maybe it's somewhere in there.
Penultimate? Phhhft. I’ll wait for the ultimate version then. ;-)
@Robin, u should do an exploration of the programming of the upcoming Command X16. Use the Emulator for now.
Demon Attack has some interesting effects animation, something that I didn't know was possible on a VIC.
When is part 2 coming?
It is impressive that they got the rights to sell so many of the old games.
Jelly Monstors glitch - my cartridge did the same way back in 1984 - it did not matter which friends Vic 20 we played it on, on occasion it would do that glitch thing - why I have no idea.
Rod Hull made this? And it includes a game called Pink Windmill featuring an Emu and a green witch? This comment won't mean much to a Canadian but that bit was interesting.
It is on my wish list.
17:38 - Wow, you're almost as good at _Jelly Monsters_ as Billy Mitchell, the bestest video gamer in the world!
*cheater
bestest is not a word
I only remember having had Raid on Fort Knox for VIC-20.
Hi Robin! Are you planning to go to VCF Mid West in September?
Yes, I plan to be there!
Robin, where is your colleage selling stick you use? It seems to be pretty awsome comparing to atari look like one button one I use.
Unfortunately he's not selling them, he just made a small number for a very lucky few.
Well, I have a new purchase to make
Can someone list the games on the cartdrige? Website doesn't have full list ... :-/
I show all the games on the cartridge right near the beginning of the video, from 0:20 - 1:02.
@@8_Bit Oh. I thought you were just randomaly scrolling through the list.
Cool. Thank you!!
Yeah, I added that as an afterthought while I was editing. I suppose I should have added a caption to explain that it was the complete list.
So colorful by modern standards
Anders Carlsson sending you a PAL VIC is a great guy!
I wonder if the idea that a lifetime after the computer was designed people would still be releasing stuff for it ever crossed the minds of the engineers.
You didnt play (or i just missed) Cosmic Cruncher, it is interesting because it s the Commodore changed version of Jelly Monster, for western market i suppose, same exact game but with the graphic changed, instead of a pacman u got a C= logo, and the setting is in space, the game program engine is Jelly Monster btw.
Edit.
PS: star Battle is another great vic 20 game by hal laboratory, it is one of the best galaxian clones.
PPS: out of curiosity, just found there is a satoru iwata game also for the PET called Carrace II
Yes, there's lots of other interesting stories in these games that I hope to cover in future videos. There's actually three steps to the Jelly Monster story. First, HAL Laboratory coded Pac-Man for the VIC-20 which Commodore had a license to but *only* in Japan. Atari had the Pac-Man license for the rest of the world. So Commodore released the Pac-Man game unmodified except for the name as Jelly Monsters. Then of course Atari sued (or at least threatened legal action) so Commodore pulled JM. Then they modified it into Cosmic Cruncher.
And yes, I covered Star Battle / Galaxian in its own video, as I discovered he actually left a hidden title screen only disabled by one modified byte in the ROM. The video is called "Restoring Satoru Iwata's 39 Year-Old Easter Egg in Star Battle for the Commodore VIC-20". Maybe I should rename it each year to keep the title accurate :)
just finished watching that video, great discovery, looking forward for the next parts of this then, keep up the excellent work :)
Would have been worth porting to the AMSTRAD PC1512 in 640x400 for the INTEL 8086.
The PC1512 only supports 640x200 (CGA) graphics, although it does have an extended 16-colour mode.
The PC1640 will do 640x350 because it adds EGA support.
Bro he's some kind of professional at Demon Attack
The problem with those old paddle controllers is their potentiometers get worn out over time and become very glitchy in their movements. It's too bad digital ones weren't a thing back then (or were they?). [edit: Interesting that the Vicatone Tv Game figured out a way to smooth out the jitter! I'd be interested to know how it was done!]
Vic-20s also commonly have paddle jitter issues due to the Vic-20 itself, so no amount of cleaning the paddle pots will fix it. If you google Vic-20 paddle jitter, the first link goes to a sleeping elephant page that describes the issue about half way down the page. I have one with this issue (paddles work great on Atari 2600, but are all over on the Vic), and I see that there are a few capacitors on the mainboard, across the pins on the chip that handle paddle input, but I've not tried replacing those capacitors to see if it has any effect.
Don't think this is necessarily worth getting if you already have the Penultimate+ and an SD card reader. Or maybe even the origonal Penultimate.
But apart from that It's pretty much a must IMO.
I bought one of the old carts way way many years back, but I never got to use it. Turns out my Vic20 wasn't working. I still need to fix it.
Two of the best games from the time, Donkey Kong and Dig Dug, run too fast on the PAL VIC-20. I'm assuming that is still the case here?
What do I need to do to turn a PAL VIC into an NTSC VIC?
Purchased. I cannot find any typing games. I hope there is some.
I couldn't find Splatform C64. A database page says your games are PD, but couldn't find them anywhere. Is there a place where you have them for download?
Go to csdb dot dk and search for splatform there.
Flicker on the VIC is caused by erasing and redrawing graphics in a slightly different place. It's not from sharing sprites like other systems.
I'll wait for the Ultimate cartridge.
Amazing! Ordered! :)
There is a bug in the file browser, if you are searching files on your SD and there is more than 17 files when you page down to the next page it misses a file :( been testing it for a few weeks now
That's unfortunate - I didn't notice that when I tried it, but I guess if the file you want it's the one missing, then there's a good chance I wouldn't have noticed! Did you try contacting TFW8b or Tynemouth Software about the bug?
@@8_Bit thanks for the reply I have sent tfw8it an email 😞
Seems like it has many of the features of the Vic-20 Mega-Cart
Yes, the Mega-Cart was a fantastic achievement and I think was some of the inspiration for the Penultimate line.
@@8_Bit I've never had a Mega-Cart, and deliberately avoided investigating what it does, wanted the Penultimate to be it's own thing.
@@DaveCurran Sorry, maybe it was Rod's cheeky marketing when the original Penultimate launched that made me think there was a bit of "inspiration" going on.
@@DaveCurran The Mega-Cart has now been added to the newest version of Gamebase Vic-20
i have the original penult cart, but no one has highlighted what exactly is the diff. is it worth getting another one?
Watch this video, and particularly part 2 for more info on the new things like the file browser etc. We added an awful lot to the +2, so I hope it is a worthwhile upgrade.
i used to design adventure games using tape drive to emultate memory by creating a dbase that could pull stuff from th edrive as needed
was quite intense when ya consider i was only 12 years old
also made a game kind a simular to a grand strategy game with no tech but ya had various cultures and there wars
and even a hockey game (yup im canadian)
these skills had me by time i hit grade 13 to program code that would be turned into hardware for the cafeteria inventory system of my high school
hehe
As a kid I loved demon attack, but I forgot about it until I watched a documentary that showed it in the introduction and spent a couple hours trying to describe it to Google search lol. Was pointless as I have the C64 version and could have just checked which games in had on the web to find one that matched
I wonder if that paddle jitter was due to a PAL/NTSC thing...
Is there a downloadable ROM (for VICE) that can be purchased as well or it just the real cartridge?
They only sell the physical cartridge, I think.
Does that make it 4th-from last, or one beyond last place?
Can I get a link to that joystick please!
cool I may buy one I think I have a link to the future with 8 bit
Wow, that cartridge is good value for money.
Also wow, your superpower must be to NOT play Robotron when it's available. Amazing.
Where can I get one of those joysticks?
Wish they can make a cartridge like this for the Commodore 64.
I tried a few times, in a few different ways, to make something like this for the C64, but I don't find it a nice machine to work with. I prefer the quirks and eccentricities and sheer potential of it's elder brothers the VIC and the PET.
Do they have any thing like that for the Commodore 64?
I'm not aware of any that have hundreds of games already in ROM for the C64, but the Kung-Fu Flash has an SD card slot and you can put many C64 games on there and choose them from the built-in menu system. So the KFF can be configured similarly.
Thanks for the info 👍🏻
Today I learnt Robin is pretty good at Space Invaders!
It's that pesky side flame on jupiter lander that touches the side of the cave, resulting in the destruction of the lander, that used to annoy me about that game!
It doesn't have Sword of Fargoal?
That's correct; Sword of Fargoal has been included in recent commercial releases like TheC64 (and TheVIC-20), the Evercade, and some other commercial downloadable emulator packs, so it's still an active IP, not abandoned. I believe all the games included on the PU+2 are either with the permission of the authors, or have been unavailable for years (decades).