So Many Things
So Many Things. Dan’s MEGA65 Digest for August 2025.
I haven’t been slacking, I swear! In fact, so much MEGA65 stuff has been going on in the last couple of months that I haven’t had time to work on feature articles for the Digest. I’m excited to have had the opportunity to contribute to both the Commodore International and Compute!’s Gazette revival projects. And I was able to present a talk and run an exhibit at Vintage Computer Festival West at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
Meanwhile, multiple talented people have released MEGA65 games and videos in the last month, so many that I haven’t had a chance to play them all until now. Let’s catch up a bit! We’ll pick up our color graphics series next issue, fingers crossed.
The new Commodore International
We’ve all thought about it. What would you do if you could rescue the original Commodore name from getting mired in the portfolios of private equity firms? Would you found a company with the community’s best interests at heart? Would you help foster the creativity of hundreds, and bring the joys of recreational computing to thousands? Would you take the best modern retro computing has to offer, and make it more accessible to the world?
Perifractic of the YouTube series Retro Recipes has gone and done just that. After many months of intense effort, Commodore International is now live. Not only that, they’re taking pre-orders for the Commodore 64 Ultimate, a modern all-in-one C64 with a vintage feel and modern conveniences. (Kind of like another project I’m rather fond of.) They’ve also got some pretty neat logo merch.
The team is a real who’s-who of Commodore veterans and modern retro developers. I’m grateful to be listed as a partner, though my contributions are all volunteer in my off hours.
Peri is gradually releasing a series of teaser-heavy videos laying the groundwork for the project, with more to come. Check these out if you haven’t already:
Congratulations to Perifractic and the team on this initial launch, and best wishes for the company’s success!
The new COMPUTE!’s Gazette
COMPUTE!’s Gazette, the venerable home computing magazine from the ’80s and ’90s, is also being reborn. Edwin Nagle acquired the rights to the name, and has started a new magazine all about modern retro computing across multiple platforms, old and new. The new Gazette has published its first issue, including a feature article on the new Commodore. You can buy the single issue as either a print + digital bundle or digital-only, or you can start a subscription.
I’m thrilled to announce that Gazette includes a regular column about the MEGA65, by me! I am syndicating Dan’s MEGA65 Digest feature articles with the magazine, starting with the first issue. Going forward, the column will include existing and new material, edited for the Gazette audience. The MEGA65 will have a regular presence in the magazine, in more ways than one.
Congrats to Edwin, the team at COMPUTE! Publishing, and contributors for making this happen!
retroCombs video User’s Guide, the final chapter
retroCombs has completed his video series on the MEGA65 User’s Guide, with a video all about chapter 7: transferring files.
The full series dedicates a video to each chapter of the User’s Guide, providing useful video demonstrations and commentary:
- Ch 1: Introduction
- Ch 2: Setup
- Ch 3: Getting Started
- Ch 4: Configuring Your MEGA65
- Ch 5: Upgrading the MEGA65
- Ch 6: Using Disks and Disk Images
- Ch 7: Transferring Files
Don’t miss more retroCombs MEGA65 videos for even more fun!
Level Up with Jeffrey
The YouTube channel Level Up with Jeffrey covers vintage and modern retro home computer games, with entertaining playthroughs and discussion. In the last year, Jeffrey has taken a shine to the MEGA65, in particular running Commodore 64 games in the MEGA65’s “GO64” compatibility mode (not just the C64 core). It’s great to be reminded that GO64 mode is actually quite capable. I tend to steer people toward the C64 core just to avoid disappointment with the occasional compatibility issue, but GO64 mode has workflow advantages with the MEGA65 Freezer, and is just neat from a technical perspective.
All of Jeffrey’s back catalog is fun to watch. As a programmer, I especially enjoyed his recent diversion from form, Fixing C64 Frantic Freddie: For MEGA65, in which Jeffrey uses the MEGA65’s built-in programming tools to dig into the C64 classic’s machine code. This video is a follow-up to 8-Bit Show and Tell’s recent Frantic Freddie code dive using Super Snapshot on the C64. Both videos are gold for fans of the game, or of screenfuls of assembly language.
Advanced graphics tutorials
Can’t wait for me to get around to finishing my Digest series on advanced graphics? Other MEGA65 developers have been documenting their own journeys for your benefit.
Here’s a look ahead at common abbreviations used to describe VIC-IV graphics features:
- SEAM = Super Extended Attribute Mode
- FCM = Full Color Mode
- NCM = Nybble Color Mode
- RRB = the Raster Rewrite Buffer
- pixies = sprite-like movable graphics objects implemented using the RRB
RetroCogs, the author of the upcoming side-scrolling shooter First Shot, has published two new articles on VIC-IV graphics: Setting up FCM and NCM and Using RRB for Pixies. RetroCogs has previously published a few other blog articles, MEGA65 graphics tutorials in Github, and the beginnings of a MEGA65 game development framework called GameShell65.
ubik has published a BASIC65 full-color image demo, a demonstration of full-screen images rendered with Full-Color Mode character graphics. Also check out this nifty tutorial in C for the MEGA65, with a Python script for converting images from the PNG format for use with this code.
Gurce has been doing his own SEAM experiments, in Eleven/BASIC 65, including the beginnings of a graphics editor and experiments with pixies and bounding box collision detection. Gurce reports that these advanced graphics modes are little bit too CPU intensive for performing large animations in pure BASIC, but BASIC examples are useful to understand the ideas.
I still intended to document my own journey learning these features here in this Digest. I’m grateful to everyone who has published articles and sample code, so I can compare notes.
Featured Files
GRAVMAN, a MEGA65-themed gravity-lander game by Robhawk (RobH on Discord). RUN "GRAVMAN.PRG" to start. Joystick fire to thrust upward, left and right to thrust sideways. Collect MEGA65 pieces—and pages of this Digest!—and land safely on the green pad. Level editor included (RUN "LEVEL-EDITOR"), and don’t miss the well-commended BASIC source code.
Commando B65, by SirGeldi, a tribute game to Commando for the C64, using character graphics and a scrolling playfield. Music by Gurce. Use a joystick in port 2 to move, and move + fire to shoot in the direction of movement.
HAMURABI 65, by BOBELE. A MEGA65 version of a simple economic simulation, based on the game published in 101 BASIC COMPUTER GAMES by David Ahl of Digital Equipment Corporation in 1975.
Mitosis, by ubik. A strategy board game for two players, similar to Ataxx. Claim territory by adding your pieces to the board, and mutate your opponent’s neighboring pieces.
So many people are pushing their projects forward this summer (or winter as the case may be), and sharing updates with the community. Rhialto is making steady progress on the PET core (Discord link), including in-progress SuperPET extensions, still in “pre-release” status; download the latest. sy2002 has released an experimental update to the C64 core (Discord link) specifically for use with IDE64, a modern mass storage cartridge device. TwoBitRetro continues to revise the beta version of Pascal65. Boris is keeping the alternate cores documentation up to date. xlar54 continues work on an Internet-capable networking library (see #weeip on Discord). ctalkobt is working on an assembler with text editor (see #vim). Bobby Tables is working on an all-new fast assembler engine for Mega Assembler (see #super-mega-assembler). And of course Paul is still working on the MEGAphone and posting updates to his developer blog. And these are just projects I know about from Discord discussions.
You’re all crushing it! Keep up the good work!
VCF West
I’ve been looking forward to the Vintage Computer Festival West all year, and it did not disappoint. This two-day event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, USA, received over 3,500 attendees. It featured two full days of talks, a large exhibition floor, and three rooms of consignment sales.
This year’s event celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Amiga with a special exhibit of early Amiga prototypes from 1984, multiple Amiga-related talks, and a special ticketed event recreating the famous Amiga launch event at Lincoln Center, including a bit of fun with stand-ins for Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry.
I had the honor of being the first speaker of the show. I was busy working on the talk all the way up to the last minute, including on breaks during the 14 hour drive down from Seattle. It went pretty well. I wish I had more time to fill out my thesis with research, but it was sufficient for a casual talk at a volunteer event. VCF West will upload talk videos at a later date, and I’ll be sure to mention it when they do.
I didn’t get to see much of the show otherwise, as I was also an exhibitor, and my booth had almost full-day attendance on both days. I was grateful to meet for the first time in person multiple people I already know from Discord communities, including MEGA65 owners. I also met more than one former Commodore employee, and more than one professional author of 1980’s computer books and magazine articles.
The highlight of the event for me was meeting Paul Lassa, one of the original developers of the Commodore 65. We talked for a long while about working for Commodore, the challenges of the C65 project, and the present and future of the MEGA65 project. I’m very pleased to know that Paul owns a MEGA65 and reads this newsletter. As such, I’ll try not to embarrass him further. 😅 I’m grateful that Paul sought out my exhibit and was generous with his time. Thank you Paul!
I was also delighted to briefly meet Kenneth Dyke, a graphics software engineer with a long career at Apple that also worked on the Amiga at Commodore. Kenneth also wrote the 6502 CPU Verilog implementation that the MEGA65 uses to power its Matrix Mode debugger. He was walking around the show wearing a backpack containing two Commodore 65 prototypes. I’m not sure why. We got them out and took some pictures.
I had brief moments to run around the floor and take some quick pictures. This is not a good representation of the show overall, but who doesn’t love pictures of old computers!
See magic-1.org, a website served by the Magic-1 homebrew computer.
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” — Douglas Adams
What’s next? I still have a bunch of work to finish for Commodore, which will probably eat up my hobby time for August. Then I’m off to Schaumburg, Illinois, for VCF Midwest 2025, September 13 and 14, where I will be giving another talk and running another MEGA65 exhibit. They have two speaker tracks this year, and thanks to generous volunteers, both tracks will be recorded. My speaker slot for this one is Saturday at 10:30 am in the secondary venue.
I’m eager to get back to MEGA65 ROM and documentation work, not to mention the Digest. I’d love to write a game someday. Man, too much to do.
— Dan