Fast RMX Review

F-Zero, and Wipeout are two beloved series that rarely seem to make an appearance anymore. Nintendo’s flagship futuristic racing series has a deep (for a racing game) storyline, a huge roster of characters, and of course, high-speed races. It used to be a guaranteed appearance on Nintendo hardware. The Super NES, Nintendo 64, and a slew of handheld releases kept futuristic racing in the limelight. Psygnosis, and Sony answered with their own futuristic racing series; Wipeout. Both of these may seem similar, because they are in premise. But each has their own nuances making them both stand out on their own. But, while not as dormant as F-Zero, Wipeout still doesn’t get the attention it used to.

But in recent years some independent studios have answered the call of those who long for proper futuristic racers. I previously looked at RedOut which will see a port to the Nintendo Switch at the end of the year. In Nintendo’s absence, German developers Shin’en created a small game on the Wii U called Fast Racing Neo. Which did well enough that it spawned some DLC. With no F-Zero on the horizon, they’ve made essentially a re-mastered director’s cut for the Switch. It includes all of the content the old game had. Plus new content. It also has a considerable upgrade in visuals. Released last year, this new version is an excellent title you might just want to pick up.

PROS: High sense of speed. Tight controls. Performance. Track layouts.

CONS: Online multiplayer has a low population.

EXPLOSIONS: Expect to see many when you’re first learning tracks.

Fast RMX is pretty great stuff. Immediately you’ll be taken back by how great this game looks considering its smaller budget. Then you’ll be taken back by just how great it performs. Where some other futuristic racers take influence from a few different franchises, this one mostly takes inspiration from F-Zero. The thing is, it does so well with the formula that it nearly rivals F-Zero many times. How close does it stick to the F-Zero formula? Pretty closely, but it does just enough to keep it from being a 1:1 knockoff of sorts.

The vehicles are very much of the F-Zero vein. The designs will instantly remind you of the hovercraft driven by the likes of Captain Falcon, Pico, Dr. Stewart, Samurai Goroh, or even Mr. EAD. Oddly enough, this is where there is a big departure from F-Zero. There are no characters. There isn’t a storyline. One of the hooks with the later F-Zero games, especially F-Zero GX, was the comic book soap opera on display. Every racer had interview clips. There was a set of difficult racing challenges that told more lore about Captain Falcon with each one you were able to win. Every driver had a theme song. There is a lot of back story in the F-Zero series.

Fast RMX dispels with any attempt to tell a story. There are no bounty hunters chasing super villains or criminals. It’s just pure, adrenaline rushing racing. Which is the most important part of any racing game. It’s the part that this game absolutely nails. Fast RMX may have a generic title, but it is succinct. There is a huge emphasis on speed on display as you’ll be boosting around hairpin turns on a rocket. The settings, and tracks continue the homages to F-Zero. Throughout the 36 tracks are space stations, futuristic cities, mining operations, and desert planets with sand worms right out of Dune. There’s even one race that takes place on a track as a giant robot is walking around, ready to step on you. It’s a pretty wild ride. A couple of tracks even retain F-Zero’s ride along the outside of a tube track designs.

So there is a lot of love thrown to Nintendo’s racer. Fast RMX looks great doing it too. The highly detailed textures on everything look great. Many of the courses take advantage of wind physics, and filters to add to the sense of speed on display. There are even some really great weather effects in this game like rain, and snow. One of the courses even has puddles that splash when you pass over them. The game even uses some Ambient Occlusion for lighting, and shading effects. Fast RMX is an impressive looking game for the Switch. The sound quality is quite good too. The humming of the engines, the bombastic explosions of wrecked ships are great. There’s even an eccentric announcer who has some quips to cheer you on when you’re doing well, or to essentially boo you when you come in dead last. The low-key Electronica fits the racing well, though personally I would have preferred some element of Rock. But that’s a minor nitpick on my part.

However, as I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a 1:1 carbon copy of F-Zero. Fast RMX has a few entirely different mechanics. First off, the energy system deviates greatly from F-Zero’s. There are no pseudo-pit stops to refill the boost meter. Instead, you have to be proficient enough to collect orbs at high speeds. These orbs will refill your boost meter instead. Secondly, your boost meter is not tied to your vehicle’s damage meter. If you run out of boost, you’re not going to explode. Third, there are explosions, but you aren’t out of the game after three crashes. You can keep going until the end of the race. However each time you destroy yourself by flying off the course, or hitting a wall you put yourself further, and further behind. Fourth, there are boost strips on the courses. But this leads to Fast RMX’s unique mechanic. Every vehicle has two phases. An orange phase, and a blue phase. Pressing the X button changes between the two, and the exhaust from your vehicle changes color to reflect that. If you’re coming up on a blue boost strip, and you’re using the blue phase, you’ll boost. If however you’re using the orange phase, you’ll be slowed to a crawl until you either shift phases or drive off of the boost strip.

This leads to all kinds of boost strip patterns, which gives the tracks a puzzle game element. Not only do you need to memorize each of the turns, branching paths, and booby trap placements (Yep, tracks have landmines, omega beams, asteroids, and turbine fans to avoid.) but you’ll need to know boost order. Orange, orange, blue, orange, blue, blue, orange on one track. The next it might be blue, orange, blue, orange, blue, orange. Suffice it to say, you’ll be playing many of these courses many times over. There are several modes in Fast RMX. The primary one being its Championship mode.  This mode starts you out with three cups, each with three races in it. You don’t have to win every single race to win the cup because every placement gives you a certain number of points. So it works a bit like Mario Kart in this regard. However, by the end you’ll need more points than everyone else to claim the top spot. So every track you do badly on, means you have to do better on the subsequent races. If you can place at least third by the end of the cup, you’re treated to a short victory animation. Then you’ll unlock a harder cup, and often a new vehicle to use.

Each of the 15 vehicles in the game handles differently, and are rated on the top speed it can reach, acceleration to that top speed, and the size of the boost power it has. Unfortunately, one bad thing about this, is it doesn’t give you any information about handling. So you have to try each one as you unlock them to see which style you like best. On the plus side, it does force you to at least take a little bit of time with each of them. One thing the ratings do tell you is that if a vehicle has a high top speed, it will take longer to get to that top speed. So these are usually going to be better if you’ve memorized every nook, and cranny of every track. Making a mistake will slow you down considerably. So when you’re just starting out you may want to pick something else. Going for a high acceleration means you’ll get to top speed faster, but you’ll want to master hitting those boost strips to compensate. Going for high boost means you’re at everybody’s mercy if you miss running over those aforementioned orbs.

Once you get through all 12 cups, you’ll be graced with the end credits. But that’s far from the end of the line here. The game has 3 difficulty runs of the championship. So you’ll have to do it again, and again. Each of the tiers gets a bit more cutthroat. Think of it like the cc ratings in Mario Kart. The courses themselves aren’t that much harder, it’s the enemy pilots who become that much more brazen. Be that as it may, even on the initial tier, the last three cups have a huge spike in challenge. Not just because of the enemies, but because of the precision some of the courses require. It will take you back to getting to the Diamond Cup in F-Zero GX. These courses are a big hurdle to overcome. But once you do, you’ll feel very accomplished upon seeing the end credits for the first time.

The game also has a mode called Hero mode. This one has you go through each individual track, one by one, and challenging you to come in first. That in of itself is pretty tough to do. Doing it on every track takes dedication. This mode is really for the player who wants to squeeze every last ounce of content out of their game. Much like the mainline championship mode, beating it unlocks another two tiers of difficulty. So if you’re looking for something that you can devote a lot of time to, Hero mode will keep you busy for a while. If that STILL isn’t enough for you, the game has Time Attack. Which is basically what it sounds like. You, practicing the tracks to get the shortest time possible. It isn’t the most exciting thing for the average player, but it is when racing games include them. If you’re having trouble with a certain track, it is nice to be able to practice it. Just as it’s nice to be able to ensure you’ve mastered it if you’re really good at the game, and want to compete in speed runs.

Rounding things out are the multiplayer modes. The game includes two main online modes. One where you can race against random players online, and another where you race against your friends. Fast RMX is quite fun to play online. The netcode is fairly stable, and I rarely ran into any lag. That isn’t to say it doesn’t exist though. If you’ve connected to players who are on the other side of the world you’ll see their vehicles warping around a bit, or if someone has a bad connection you’ll see a stalled vehicle when they finally crash out to a menu. But by, and large it isn’t a bad experience. However, being released last year, you may find you have a long wait when trying to play online against random players. It took me a nearly ten minute wait to find an opponent. Once I was able to, a few other players eventually showed up, and I had a great time racing around 20 races before heading off to sleep.

That’s really about the only complaint I could levy here, is that there is a low online player population. Unfortunately it seems to be the case with many racing games, the online competition window is a short one. Still, the fact there are online bouts, and that you can play private matches is great. Fast RMX also retains the split-screen racing fun that made F-Zero, and Wipeout awesome party games. Up to four players can play in split-screen, and the frame rate doesn’t seem to be affected too much astonishingly enough. With all of the animation, and special effects going on it still retains a fairly good performance. Though some of the visuals do take a couple of cutbacks to compensate. Fast RMX also has a LAN mode, where you can connect your Switch consoles locally. So if you want to organize a local Fast RMX tournament, or party night you can.

With its great visuals, excellent track design, and high frame rate it’s almost a no-brainer to download Fast RMX off of the Nintendo eshop. It’s an excellent game in spite of its generic title. I look forward to seeing what Shin’en brings to the table with any potential sequel. The only things to be aware of as of now, are the lack of players online this late in the game, and a big difficulty spike near the end. But in the grand scheme of things these aren’t major problems. In fact, I can’t say I ran into any major bugs while playing it. Shin’en really seems to have gone over everything with a fine tooth, and comb here. If you’re a Switch owner who hasn’t already done so, get this. Fast RMX is a winner.

Final Score: 9 out of 10

Commodore 64 mini-guide, and a concert I went to.

Sorry for being a little bit late this week. I was able to see a fantastic concert for the first time in many moons. I had to take full advantage of that fact. I got to see The Dollyrots for the second time ever (They don’t get out to New England very often), and it was awesome. An area band, Chaser Eight opened for them, and had an absolute killer set. Then the Dollyrots got on stage, and crushed it too. If you’ve never heard either band, and you like rock n’ roll, do check them out. Chaser Eight is pretty great, with elements of Alt-Rock, Glam, and straight up rock. It just works. The Dollyrots on the other hand, are an amazing Pop Punk trio led by Kelly Ogden, and Luis Cabezas. They have a really great blend of the sound of the early Rock groups like The Ronettes, and 1970’s Punk bands like The Ramones. Over the years they’ve grown as musicians but the roots are still apparent. It was a great show. Both bands were very approachable, and kind. They hung out with everyone at the bar after playing for a bit, and visited with fans like family you love, but don’t get to see all of the time. It was awesome. If either comes to your area, go see them. If they’re in your town as you’re reading this, just stop reading, and go see them. What are you waiting around for? Go!

Okay, you’re back? Good. I hope you had as great a time as I did. Anyway, lately I’ve talked a lot about the mighty Commodore 64, its library, and a great C64 peripheral. It’s one of the best platforms of all time. It was sold more than any other computer in its day, and there are a plethora of great games on it. With those, the demo scene, and even a few great bands using its sound chip, you may have thought about getting one. As a lifelong fan of the computer, I can point to some facts, and information you’ll need to know if you’re going to collect for the C64. Now this isn’t going to be the most in-depth look at the platform. There are books that go into the detailed information over the course of several hundred pages for that sort of thing. But these are some key things to look for, and some things to be aware of. There may even be a few things that intrigue a casual reader. So feel free to read on.

First of all, there were a few models. The first version is often called the bread bin model. This came in a couple of variants. The silver label variant is the earliest version, and is sought after by the most devoted Commodore fans. These have the logo in a silver style paint. The drawback with this variant is it has a 5 pin DIN connector for video, where the later models (which had a rainbow of colors next to the logo) used an 8 pin DIN connector for video. Later models also added support for S-Video which is a major jump over the stock RF cable, and switch box that all models can use. The image will be much cleaner, and clearer. Provided of course you track down one of the cables.  After the bread bin model, Commodore released the C64c, which has many of the same updates as the rainbow variant of the bread bin. It also has a couple of chip refinements, and a redesigned bezel.  It should also be noted that while you gain the S-Video, and slightly better power connector in later models, you lose the ceramics for heat reduction on chips. To remedy this, later models have a metal shield inside to draw some heat, but this still isn’t always an effective solution. In Europe some later models didn’t have a metal shield, but a metal coated cardboard one, which trapped heat in some cases.

Aside from the revisions to the standard Commodore 64, there were alternate versions altogether. The SX-64 was one of the earliest portable computers, as it had a built-in screen, and floppy drive. These things weigh a good 20 lbs. though, so they’re not portable in the sense you’re used to.  In Japan, there was a short-lived version of the C64 called the Commodore MAX. But this cut some functionality. So it didn’t compete on the games or business end, and quickly disappeared. There was also the C64 Game System. But this cut out all of the computer aspects of the computer to play cartridge games. Unfortunately this also broke compatibility with most of the game library as by 1990, the best titles were on tape or diskette.  All three of these variants are considered collector’s items. But unless you just have to have a conversation piece in your collection, I would focus on a regular C64 instead. These alternate versions can also be expensive.

The one noteworthy alternate Commodore 64 is the Commodore 128. This doubled the amount of memory in the computer, and could run all of the C64 software. The catch is it has to be run in C64 mode, as some of the revisions to the hardware led to some incompatibility in 128 mode. But the 128 did well with business, and productivity users, as there were applications that did take advantage of the extra memory. There were two versions, the standard C128, and the C128D. The latter made the keyboard an external peripheral, and included a built-in 1571 floppy diskette drive. The C128D can get expensive as a result, as finding one with a working drive is getting harder.

There are a couple of risks involved when getting into the platform. But these can be mitigated if you’re wise enough to do a couple of simple things. First, when you find a potential C64 purchase, confirm it is working. If it’s a store, they should be willing to hook it up, and confirm it’s operational. Second, make certain the Power Supply Unit not only works, but is in great shape. The PSU actually has two rails inside. One powers the motherboard, and most of the system, while the other powers the sound chip. As a means to control costs, it is encased in a resin material. However there’s a chance even a working PSU can overheat. Depending on the problem, a bad PSU can fry components inside the computer. That’s why it’s imperative you get a plug-in as pristine condition as possible. You’ll want to make sure it sits out in the open where heat can escape, and if you’re paranoid, you can always have a small desk fan blowing on it. Also keep in mind some of the later bread bin releases may have heat issues from the cost reduced RF shield. These are mostly in PAL territory releases. But again, keeping things cool can help mitigate a problem.

With that out-of-the-way, you’ll want to start gaming. But what else will you need? This depends a bit on what territory you’re in, and whether or not you plan to do any importing. Since I’m in the US, I’ll focus on that, but I’ll touch a bit on other parts of the world in a bit. When the C64 arrived on the scene, games for it started out on cartridge. They had about as much space as the ones found on consoles that were out at the time. Not every user had an external drive right away either, so it made sense for publishers to put games on cartridges. Some of the earliest software also came on cartridges, and this even includes diagnostic software, which may or may not work depending on the hardware issue. If applicable you can turn on the computer with a diagnostic cartridge, and it will let you run simple tests to determine if a chip has gone bad.  But this isn’t always a sure thing, since some hardware failures won’t give you anything other than the blackness of space on your screen. More on that later.

So a lot of the earliest stuff was out on cartridge. Activision ported many of its console games to the C64 including H.E.R.O., Beamrider, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, and River Raid. But there were a number of great games on cartridge. Eventually however, publishers found alternatives that gave developers more space at a lower cost. The first of these were cassette tapes. Games, and other programs could be published on audio cassettes. These were also cheap, and so many titles started being released on cassette.

In order to run these programs you’ll need a datasette drive. These are basically old school cassette decks. If you want an in-depth look at how these worked, I highly recommend this video from the 8-Bit Guy. In European territories this is the format nearly all of the biggest titles came on, due to the lower production costs. There is one thing for newcomers to be aware of though, and that’s long load times. A lot of larger games on tape can take minutes to load. In the grand scheme of things it isn’t that big a deal. Even today’s console games can take eons to load if you’re playing them off disc, rather than installing them. Still, if you’re short on patience, you’ll need to learn to gather some if you need to run a game off of cassette.

In North America, prices of writable media began to fall after a while though, and so many games began the move to 5.25″ Floppy Diskettes. these eliminated the storage concerns for a long time. When they cropped up again, many developers simply made games that took multiple disks to get through. To play these games you’ll need a 1541 or a 1541-II floppy diskette drive. There were a few aftermarket drives as well like The Enhancer 2000. In the USA, nearly every notable game came on floppy diskette. Even games that were previously released on cartridge or cassette tape. Most games released on floppy take a lot less time to load over cassette releases. However they’re not quite as fast as one would hope due to a slow port speed. To help with this, there are a number of Fast Loader cartridges you can get. These take some of the load off, and do shave some time off of loading. Again, 8-Bit Guy has a great video on the specifics of how this worked that I won’t go into here. Just know, that an Epyx Fast Load cartridge, or equivalent is something you want if you’re going to play games on Floppy Diskettes.

Once you have all of those in order, you’ll probably want to look into controllers. Most games took advantage of joysticks, though many also had keyboard binds. Almost any controller with a DB9 connector will fit the ports. Atari 2600 joysticks, Sega Genesis pads, and so on. However, it is NOT recommended you use a Sega Genesis pad, because the Sega Genesis pad draws more power than the controller ports need, so there is the chance you can blow a controller port in the process. So it’s best to stick to controllers built with either the C64, or Atari 2600 in mind. My controller of choice is the Slik Stik by Suncom. But there are no shortage of joystick options. Note that some games still utilized two button schemes, at a time when nearly all controllers were one button controllers. The work around most developers went with, was using the space bar.  Depending on the title it may take a little getting used to. In slower paced games it’s rarely a problem, in action games, you’ll want the joystick right in front of the computer so you can easily press the space bar when you need to.

Now the thing to remember is, this is still a computer platform. So you can do more than game on it. In fact if you’re willing to learn the Commodore variant of BASIC, you can code your own homebrew games for the machine. Which a lot of people did. So you may even have fun tracking down old, defunct Commodore 64 themed magazines. Some of them have been archived like the entire run of Ahoy!. Not only do you get the sensation you feel when looking at an old Nintendo Power, you get programs. Long before the advent of getting a CD full of demos with your game magazine, computer magazines had program articles. You could type in these programs, save them to a diskette, and run them whenever you wanted. Many of them were written entirely in BASIC, although some were written in machine language, and you typed them into a HEX editor program. But you could save them to diskette! Some of these were really good too, like Mystery At Mycroft Mews, where you had to go around a town as detectives, solve murders, and bring the right suspect to trial.

Aside from gaming, there are a wealth of old productivity, and business programs you can find, but honestly, they’re not really going to be much value beyond the history. It is nice to see the original Print Shop in action, or some of the word processors of the time. But you’re probably not going to send your masterpiece novel to a literary agent on a 5.25″ Floppy these days. Still, you can still find old dot matrix printers, and the ribbons though they’re getting scarce.

But in the more interesting range you can find things like the Koala pad, which is one of the earliest graphics tablets. You could draw with a stylus, and save your art to diskette. There were a bunch of clones that came afterward. But if you draw on a modern Wacom graphics tablet, and wonder where the earliest versions of the tech came from, their infancy took place on 8-bit home computers. You can also find the original 300 baud modems, that let users connect to services like Quantum Link back then (LazyGameReviews did a wonderful video on that service.) But these days, there are homebrew network cards, and browsers tinkerers can invest in.

One of the craziest things I have in my collection is the Hearsay 1000. A cartridge, and software combo that reads whatever you type, back to you. In a kind of creepy robot voice. The software is far from perfect, it doesn’t account for pronunciation, so it can only read things as they are spelled. So if you type in the name “Barbara” it will say it back as “Bar-Bar-A”. But this is where stuff like Dragon Naturally Speaking got its start. Building off of this early tech, or properly doing what it was trying to. If you find a Hearsay 1000, don’t use it while playing games with voice samples. It will yell “HEARSAY ONE THOUSAND!”, and then crash the computer. Then you’ll have to turn it off, disconnect the module, and turn it back on. Then load your game again. Considering you’re going to wait a while for Ghostbusters to load again, best to know that up front.

Of course not too long ago, I reviewed the SD2EIC. This is a must own peripheral because you can make disk images, or download images of stuff you own to an SD Card. It’s also great if you do happen to have old disks with personal files on them, and want to save those along with your other programs. Plus the load times, are dramatically cut down.

One also needs to take into account the difference between PAL, and NTSC territories If they plan on importing. A lot of really great games including some of the best were exclusive to Europe. While most of these are playable on a North American C64, the speed differences can often lead to all kinds of glitches. Random characters popping up, graphics showing up in grayscale rather than in color, some extreme cases will involve lock ups, and crashes. One can convert their computer via modifying it, but this isn’t recommended if you don’t know your way around altering a circuit board. My advice is to either deal with the glitches if you import a game or follow the purist. Purists will import a PAL C64, peripherals, and either a PAL monitor or else using a scaler with their HDTV to run a native 50 hz signal from the computer. You’ll also want a power converter as the electrical outlets, and standards are different. If you’re in a PAL territory, and you want some of the NTSC exclusives, you’ll see similar issues. So again, purists will want to import an NTSC setup, and use a power converter.

While some of this may get a little complicated, it is worth the plunge. Once you have a fully functional C64 setup, there really isn’t anything else like it.  The unique sound of its sound chip (known as the SID) is popular to this day. The wide, and varied library gets you a large variety of original games, multi platform games, and arcade ports. As is the case with every platform you’ll find a lot of good games, some truly great games, and a fair number of bad ones. I highly recommend visiting Lemon64 for its wealth of information, and its game archive. Plus they have a very helpful community if you do run into issues. Thanks to them I discovered a wonderful hobbyist who does repairs, and builds a lot of high quality homebrew accessories, and power supplies. When my C64c gave me a dreaded Black Screen Of Death last month I got in contact with Ray Carlsen, After some back, and forth messaging I ended up sending him the machine. Having some background in PC repairs, and upgrades I had taken it apart, checked the motherboard, found no bad capacitors. The fuse was intact, and working. I didn’t see any corrosion on chips. But I had no way to test them, and I was stumped. Well he was able to determine I had a minor issue with my power connector, and that my PSU was on its way out. He installed a breaker to prevent the components from frying from a bad PSU. I also ordered one of his homebrew PSUs. When the computer came back, not only was everything working the way it is supposed to, but he somehow got it looking much newer than when I had sent it in. Now he isn’t a traditional business, so he doesn’t do bulk jobs. Don’t go looking to send him 50 broken C64 computers. That isn’t what he is about. But he’ll charge you a fair price to fix a single machine, and take a look at some of his PSU models. With the originals drying up, it can’t hurt to have a spare.

The Commodore 64 may have been a home computer, but it was one of the most important platforms in video game history. It’s where many games went after the infamous crash in North America, and even after the rise of the NES it still retained a viable market share. In Europe it was also a major contender throughout the 80’s, and 90’s. Although there are some things to be aware of if you want to begin collecting for one, it can be a rewarding experience. Prices fluctuate constantly, but expect to spend between $50 – $150 for a working model with a good PSU. With that alone, you’ll be set for any cartridge games. But chances are you’ll want some of the higher profile releases. A 1541 Floppy drive will set you back about $50. There are deals out there to be had, but many of the cheap ones aren’t tested, so you may be buying a worn out drive. On the budget end though, Datasette drives are fairly inexpensive. So keep an eye out for one of those.

Then, you’ll be ready to pick up some C64 games! Just like on retro consoles, some games are cheap, and common. Some are rare, and expensive. A lot of times you can make out well, by buying lots. A lot of games don’t require anything beyond a floppy diskette, cartridge or cassette. But there are games that have manual protection. So do some research on a title before you buy it. For example, you’ll want to look for complete copies of certain RPGs as they require a code wheel, or manual as a means of copy protection. (IE: Type in the first word in the third paragraph on page 13.) Plus it’s nice to have the manuals, and keyboard overlays for flight sims, RPGs, or point, and click adventure games. Action genres usually didn’t have these vast control schemes requiring hot keys. But a handful did use manual protection so make sure the game you’re interested in isn’t one of them if you’re looking at a loose copy.

Also be sure to keep your disk based games in sleeves when you’re not using them, and don’t let them get too hot or cold. Definitely keep them away from magnets, as that will corrupt the disk, and destroy your game. It was a lesson we children learned quickly back when home computers were first gaining prominence.  Finally, the Commodore 64, and other computers of the era were powered by variants of Microsoft BASIC. So you’ll need to know a few basic (Ha, ha!) commands. The most important being LOAD”*”,8,1 which for all intents, and purposes tells the disk drive to load the first file on a disk (Usually the executable) into memory. Then when the computer says ‘READY” you can simply type “RUN”, press RETURN, and fire up your game.

That should about do it this time. But keep in mind how many great things the retro games, and computing scene keeps pumping out for the mighty C64. Here’s hoping the new motherboards, network cards, card readers, and even homebrew games continue preserving one of gaming’s most iconic platforms.