IBM Model M Mechanical Keyboard - It's a Pixel THING - Ep.#50

Finally I got my hands on one of these beauties! The IBM Model M mechanical keyboard is the forefather of modern keyboard design and the most enjoyable typing experience ever!

The Model M is considered the best keyboard ever manufactured. This particular one that I’ve managed to grab is from 1989 and features those awesome key caps and PS/2 detachable cable, not mentioning that amazing key stroke sounds produced by the buckling-spring mechanisms so particular to the Model M keyboard.

This beast weighs around 2 kilos, and, as you can see, it’s really dirty and was most likely been on a dark storage room in the past 15 years or so..  Poor thing!

Disassembly and cleaning the Model M is quite easy and a task not to be done under pressure. Just take your time and enjoy while you’re doing it!

So, let’s get to work!

....

(a couple hours later)

What a beauty! It feels like new and I can’t wait to try it out with my IBM PS/1 486 DX2!

The Model M was bundled with 8086 and 80286 IBM PS/2 computers from around 1987, but was originally introduced in 1985 as part of the IBM 3161 terminal, and it’s so durable and well-made that it will most likely be usable today, even after 30 years and probably half of that of use and abuse.

Tell me: do you know the exact date of manufacture of your actual keyboard? Well, this one was put together on the 12th of August of 1989! It can’t be more accurate than this! Every Model M keyboard comes with an ID and production date printed on a sticker on its back case and also on the inside.

The Model M is able to transmit that tactile feeling of the user-keyboard connection; it’s like driving a car and be able to feel the road surface all through the steering wheel. You know, that kind of feeling!

Just look at that proper full-sized space bar and long backspace key! Everything looks just right, with no windows or shut down keys that can accidently be pressed and ruin something that you’re working on.

This exact Model M was manufactured by IBM UK and I believe that these ones are the best Model Ms. Later, from 1993 onwards, Lexmark got the license to manufacture the Model M which features a blue IBM logo and fixed keyboard lead.

This is simply one of those pieces of hardware that are really “hard” to break and will certainly live longer than all of us! The only item that I think will be necessary to grab in the future is a Model M’s PS/2 to USB converter so that I can continue to play this awesome music!

So, guys, have you tried one of these? Do you own one? Just post below your thoughts and typing experiences you’ve had, or have, with IBM’s Model M mechanical keyboards.

Looking forward to your thoughts and comments!

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The Untouchables [1989, C64] Review

Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Andy Garcia joined forces to hunt down Robert De Niro in this amazing movie from 1987 under the direction of Brian De Palma.

Two years later, Ocean Software, the masters in movie and arcade conversions, puts us through six levels of hoodlum hassling.

The Untouchables are a special group of guys who have the power to do whatever is necessary to keep the civilians safe. So, we’ll be facing all sorts of bandits loyal to Al Capone’s own law to oppress and threaten the innocents of Chicago.

The game was available for Atari ST, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, MSX, DOS, NES and the Super NES, but the version that really stand out from the crowd was, besides the one for the ZED X Spectrum, the Commodore 64, that obtained 96% in Zzap!64 magazine.

If you liked the movie, the game is even better!

The first level, a multidirectionally scrooling platform shoot’em up type of thing, takes us to this warehouse which Capone’s gang use as their base. We need to gather some evidence of their illicit activities. In the top right of the screen an arrow will pop up showing you the direction to take to grab that evidence. In the process, pick up any extra ammunition and energy that you can find.

All levels are taken from scenes from the movie, so, in the next section, we’ll find ourselves rolling on the floor of this bridge at the US/Canadian border where Capone’s thugs attempt to illegally cross over a shipment of liquor. Shoot the barrels till they explode and, when low on energy, change your Untouchable going to the far right or the far left by shooting the bottom right corner of the character icon the appears on screen.

Next up, the alley level on our way to the train station where we must stop Capone’s accountant from leaving the country. We must get him, and the evidence, before the train leaves, but that’s not gonna be easy, as the villains are waiting for us on every corner and will try to surprise us at every turn. Once again, you have the option to chance character once in a defensive position against the wall.

Finally, at the train station, we begin chasing this runaway baby, complete with pram, down a long flight of stairs, while killing the thugs that try to get in the way. Avoid enemy fire and any obstructions and, as well, we must also avoid shooting any innocent bystanders. Run over the medical packs to restore your energy.

When this baby is safe with her mother, we’ll be faced with a hostage situation, just like the one we saw in Robocop. The accountant has been held by one of his own henchman that threatens to shoot him in ten seconds if you do not lay down your guns. In our first opportunity, we must take the thug down with a bullet through his skull. This is the only way to be sure that he releases the accountant.

With all the evidence collected, Capone is finally in court for his own trial. However, Frank, Capone’s hitman, is still at large. We must chase him across the court rooftop ‘till he falls to his bloody death down on the streets.

The Super NES version of The Untouchables have amazing graphics and sound, but failed to score big time on this platform ‘cause it was really difficult to use the gamepad in the shooting sequences.

The team behind the Robocop game have come up with another blockbuster title. Commodore 64 version of The Untouchables has extremely detailed graphics and some outstanding music that really gets you into the action.

Let me know, below, if you played this game or if movie conversions weren’t your thing back in those days.


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Trials Fusion [2014, PC] Review - It's a Pixel THING

This week's episode is about a "not so retro" title that has some good old school references. I'm talking about Trials Fusion and this game is the first Pixel THING's "Not so Retro Review" series.
Hope you enjoy watching these videos as much as I enjoy making them!

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Rock'n'Roll [1989, Commodore Amiga] Review - It's a Pixel THING

Developed and released in 1989 by Rainbow Arts, Rock’n’Roll was available for a bunch of systems, like the ZX Spectrum, the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, PC and Atari ST.

You’re looking at the Amiga version which, besides the fabulous gameplay, 

features music composed by the great Chris Hülsbeck.

In this action arcade puzzle game, there are 32 huge levels (plus 1 secret bonus level) divided across 7 continents where we control a ball with the mouse and the objective is to reach the exit in each one of them. But this apparently simple task can be, sometimes, really hard and stressful. Thankfully, the superb soundtrack keeps us tapping our foot on the floor making every level an awesome and extremely joyful adventure.

There’s numerous objects scattered throughout each level that help or hinder our path to the exit. These take the form of ventilators, which blow the ball away, magnets, which attract the ball, arrows, which roll the ball in a specific direction, etc. Many objects can also drain your energy. If you lose too much energy, your balls.. sorry, your ball will collapse.

You must avoid some occasional gaps on the surface that shows a nice parallax scrolling effect with the background. If you roll into one of these gaps, you will be dead, unless you happen to possess a little parachute. Prepare yourself to open it up before you hit the bottom and your ball will live to roll once again!

Besides the useful parachutes, there are other essential items for you to pick up, that will help you finish the level, like keys to open doors, armor for your ball, spikes to help you on ice, repair kits to fix gaps on the floor and bombs to blow up obtrusive barriers and uncover previously hidden sections of the walkway. But before you can collect any of the useful items, you must have some money to pay for them. Coins are left lying around on each level and, if you search carefully, you’ll also find valuable colored diamonds.

The ball rolls around very realistically and the programmers have got the inertia effect just right. The way the ball slips and slides over patches of ice and the way the view pans as the ball travels through pipes, are nice and extremely well done.

Rock’n’Roll is one of the most brilliantly addictive games I’ve ever come across!

Backed up by impressive graphics and a great soundtrack, Rock’n’Roll is a must for everyone who enjoys arcade puzzle games.


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Rick Dangerous [1989, Amiga / ZX Spectrum / C64 / DOS] Review - It's a Pixel THING

As the developers themselves admit, this title was heavily based on the Indiana Jones adventures. As the game starts, you’re immediately chased by a giant boulder, just like in the first Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of The Lost Ark.

Developed by Core Design and published, in 1989, by Firebird Software, it was available for the greatest machines of the time: Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, Amstrad CPC and the ZED X Spectrum. This was the first original game created by Core Design who later became famous for the success of their Tomb Raider franchise. Thinking of that, is Rick Dangerous the biological father of Lara Croft?.. Hummmm…

Part time hero and stamp collector, Rick Dangerous is hunger for adventure. Set in 1945, he hears a rumor about a lost tribe somewhere on the Amazon jungle. He plans his trip and, moments before landing, something went wrong with the airplane. A normal thing to happen when you travel air-penguin! Rick’s plane crash lands in the jungle right in the spot where the tribe was supposed to be lost! The Goolu people felt somewhat disturbed by the wreckage and starts hunting the adventurer down. Between all the mayhem, Rick Dangerous manages to get some ammo for his gun and also some dynamite to give the natives a taste of hell!

There are four levels of constant action and peril where Rick must avoid, at all costs, the hostile natives and countless traps. A good feature, kind of unique at the time, is the presence of reset points scattered throughout each level, so, if you lose a life, you won’t have to start the level all over again. Sadly, on the other hand, there’s no save option or a password that you could use later to pick up where you left off.

Level two is set in Egypt. Don’t know how he managed to travel from the Amazon jungle to this pyramid.. maybe there was a portal of some kind, just like in the ancient astronauts theory by Erich Von Daniken and one of its greatest supporter, Giorgio Tsoukalos.

After getting through the pyramid’s traps and foes, Rick sets off to recue some allied soldiers that are being kept in Castle Schwarzendumpf, a dangerous Nazi stronghold. Rick is able to jump and climb and can also carry a limited amount of ammo. Always remember that most of the traps that can kill you can also be used against the enemy! It’s very useful when you’re out of ammo.

After rescuing all soldiers, they tell us that the Nazis are planning a missile attack on London, so Rick has to infiltrate their secret missile base. If he successfully completes this last mission, Rick returns to London finding that the city is under attack by aliens! And this is the premise for its second installment: Rick Dangerous 2, released a year later, in 1990, that I personally didn’t enjoy much.

Back to Rick Dangerous One, and now examining the whole package, there’s a huge discrepancy between the cover art and the game’s cartoonish approach. Even the artwork on the instructions booklet is totally different from the box art. There was also an eight page comic book that introduces Rick and works as an intro to the game. As we can see, the original idea was to make a more serious game with Rick dangerously close to the Indiana Jones character.

To conclude, Rick Dangerous is a brilliant game that combines humorous graphics and devious gameplay. There are plenty of horrible shocks and surprises – when you think the coast is clear, a poisoned dart whizzes out of a hole in the wall or spikes pop up from the ground. There are also moving blocks, traps to puzzle out and pallets of angry enemies to dodge.

Graphical differences apart, Rick Dangerous plays identical on all formats and machines.

Try it! You won’t regret it!

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Batman: The Movie (ZX Spectrum) - It's a Pixel THING

Batman: the Movie, from 1989 is an action/platform game based on Tim Burton’s amazing film of the same name and was released for a bunch of systems: the ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, MS-DOS, Apple II and Atari ST.

There’s five action packed stages based on the movie and, when I first tried to load the 128k version of the game on my spectrum, about 14 minutes later I was blown away by the fantastic music by Mathew Cannon and all the 5 levels loaded at the same time! That was just freaking amazing!

In the first level we control Batman through the maze of platforms. We’re looking for Jack Napier and the action takes place at his Axis Chemical plant. You know what happens next: Jack falls into a container filled with acid. The Joker is born.

In the Spectrum version, the second level is a horizontal scroller where you take the wheel of the Batmobile through the streets of Gotham dodging traffic and avoiding the police using, for that matter, the grapple gun to go super-fast around corners. On the other versions of the game, the action is seen from behind the car making it look more natural but harder.

Third level is a puzzle section where Batman needs to identify all the components of the deadly chemical called Smilex that Joker launched into the market.

Succeeding this stage, we’ll be facing the parade sequence in which we’ll be flying the Batwing and use it to cut away the balloons filled with poisonous gas without hitting them.

If you get bored and wish to see right away the last level of this great game, just hold down one of the following combination of keys: “E+D+2+0+9” in reference to Robocop, or “M+I+C+K” probably referred to Mike Lamb, the programmer of the spectrum version, and you’re good to go!

The fifth and last level is similar to the first one and takes place at Gotham cathedral to finally get Joker on its knees. Although, there’s new hazards to consider like rats and platforms that crumble as you walk on them. The map seems bigger than the one on the Axis Chemical Plant and you need extra skills to get to the top of this huge Cathedral. At the very top, Joker makes his last move and tries to flee using a helicopter. You need to throw one more batarang and you get a great end sequence watching Joker falling down outside of the building.

I enjoyed this game a lot and even continue to play finishing it over and over just to beat the maximum score board points. Was I crazy or what?

Spectrum version of Batman the Movie was number one on the charts and was awarded Game of the Year in Crash magazine. Commodore 64 got the worst version that was filled with annoying bugs.

If you’re into some platforming action featuring a legendary comic book hero, you need to try this game!

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) PC/Amiga Review

For the PC I’ve recently purchased this game through Steam, but I’ve also got the Amiga’s Kixx XL 1992 floppy re-release of this awesome title.

Inside a pretty looking big box, there’s the three floppy disks, a folded manual that includes, besides all basic info, the Translation Table that is simply the copy protection codes that are asked when you start the game. Also inside comes a Kixx XL complete catalogue of their re-releases back in 1992. And, finally, the crown jewel: Dr. Henry Jones diary, like the one we see in the movie. I haven’t read it yet, but I believe that it’s filled with interesting stuff. It has hand drawings, sketches, newspaper pieces, letters and even the map showing the canyon of the crescent moon! It looks like it was written by hand. It’s just amazing the awesome stuff that used to come inside these big boxes back in the day.

Back in 1989, Steven Spielberg brought us the third movie of the Indiana Jones adventures, my favourite one. The Last Crusade transports us into the quest for the Holy Grail, where we have to fight against the Nazis and avoid Hitler getting his hands on the cup of Christ.

The graphic adventure point-and-click game was released for PC, Atari ST, Macintosh and the Amiga. There were also a CDTV edition of the game, but it had any graphical improvements over the original. It only included extra musical content on the CD.

It was published by Lucasfilm Games, the defunct LucasArts, and it was the third game to use the SCUMM engine. It follows closely the film’s plot and, sometimes, go beyond that.

Being a graphic adventure, it misses almost all the action scenes of the movie. These were present in the extreme difficult Action Game version that I played to exhaustion in my ZX Spectrum: the caves, the circus train, the Venetian catacombs, the jumping from window to window in the castle of Brunwald, the zeppelin and, finally, the traps and puzzles of the temple of Petra, in Jordan, where the holy grail is being kept. Although, the graphic adventure game had a few arcade fight sequences that could be avoided by picking your dialogue carefully.

The Spectrum version of the Action game received the best reviews and was number 2 on the charts because of RoboCop. As seen on my last post about Ocean Software, Robocop was number one for 18 consecutive months.

Lucasfilm Games introduced, in this graphic adventure, the possibility to complete the game in several different ways. They called it the IQ Score, or Indy Quotient. By doing this, George Lucas game studio found a way to maintain players interested in finishing the game more than once. This was one big problem with Sierra’s adventure games and made all the difference.

As mentioned before, this title has a built in copy protection at the start of the game. If you enter incorrect codes for three times in a row, the game goes into demo mode and when Indy is asked by Donovan to translate the tablet, he fails completely and he’s throwned outside by Donovan himself, ending the game. 

Later was also released a PC CD-ROM version with 256-colour graphics that didn’t have the copy protection.

Many of the scenes unique to the game were conceived by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg themselves during the creation of the movie. This explains the almost singular success of LucasArts in this area, not only with the Indiana Jones series, but also with their many Star Wars titles. George Lucas was always available to to give some ideas and transmit confidence to the teams behind these awesome titles.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the Adventure game, is a must for all Indy fans and point-and-click enthusiasts.



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