Flight patterns

Interesting video showing visualisation of data from the U.S. Federal. Flight traffic patterns and density are shown in this animation, which I have come across due to my line of work. Who would think that flight visualisation could be so trippy?

It has barely anything to do with videogames or programming, but is geeky enough to warrant a place on this blog. Enjoy!

Little wishes come true - in green

In my last post about PSPCAP32 and Amstrad Schneider CPC I mentioned that probably the only thing that might make this program a little more perfect was the monochrome display option, just like on the old green monitors.


And voila! Christmas is approaching and my wish was granted! Zx-81, the man behind porting of this emulator (and a handful of others, too) to PSP, heard my cries and added this feature to the newest release, which, by the way, happened just a couple of days after the last one. That's what you call support!


So thanks to Zx-81 you can now see these games the way I have experienced them for the first time. For me it is yet another trip down the memory lane, for younger readers unique opportunity to see how gaming used to be long time ago. I bet there are one or two other guys out there who have just shed a tear of nostalgia as well. At least I hope so, otherwise this means I am really weird.


Oh, and if you were able to tell the name of the above games based on the screenshots, you're a geek over thirty.

Answer : Knight Lore, Fruity Frank, Boulder Dash.

Amstrad CPC on PSP

Long time before I actually got my first personal computer (we would call them microcomputers back then), which would be ZX Spectrum+, my sole contact with the emerging computer science would be to implore my Dad to take me to his work, where his friend, Mariusz Smoczyński, worked on Amstrad Schneider CPC 6128. Thus begins the tale of my digital fascination, born in the green light of the monochrome screen in the 8-bit times.

Fruity Frank - in that innocent times people were
not afraid to give such name to the game...

A little anecdote here. Many years later, when I was still a student at the Technical University of Lodz and had laboratory classes in one of too many laboratories where time has stopped, we were supposed to calculate some viscosity coefficients using ... Amstrad CPC with a prepared and preloaded program. I was the only one who knew machine, so after we had finished our task, I broke the program and wrote some simple animation in Basic that would scroll our names on the screen instead of boring program. Boy, was that nerdy, but you can't beat that feeling.

Ghosts'n'Goblins - there even exists a PSP remake now.
History has made a full circle.

It is therefore understandable that I have a special place in my heart for this machine, like some have for their first girlfriend. Fortunately, the development of everything digital has allowed me to have it in my pocket, more precisely on my trustworthy PSP.

The emulator that allows me to relive my childhood adventures in other worlds is called PSPCAP32 and it's author Zx-81 has just recently released yet another version that has transformed it from a very good emulator into a perfect one.

PSPCAP interface

The emulator runs very fluidly (50fps), has nice interface, is very configurable and user-friendly. It is enough to select a disk with a game (speaking of which - all Amstrad games are legally free) and the game will load automatically. I have not yet found any game that would be incompatible. They are just like I have remembered them and I am flooded with nostalgia (if you have read Barts' News for some time, you already know I have a soft spot for good, old times.).

Green Beret - one of the hardest games back in the day

The only thing I could think of in terms of features I would like to see would be to implement some filter to make the games monochrome, as seen on the green monitors back then. But this is a very bizarre request, stemming from the fact that I played these games this way. Apart from that, PSPCAP provides the ultimate Amstrad experience on the go. Thank you Zx-81!

Drill down

Just when I thought the PSP homebrew scene is dead, I found another gaming gem. The game is called Mr Driller and I was expecting some crappy port of Drill Dozer from Gameboy Advance. Fortunately, I have decided to give it a try first.

The game turned out to be really cool. The idea is simple - player controls a character that has to drill down through multiple coloured layers, while paying attention to their oxygen levels. Air can be regenerated by collecting capsules of oxygen, but they are usually blocked by blocks that are very hard to drill through. When drilling down, player must be very careful not to destroy blocks that support other blocks, which in turn will cause rocky avalanche and flatten our hero down. So simple and yet so amusing.


The game is not perfect - there is no music, sounds are few and far between, animation is simplistic, there are no saves, game can be damn frustrating later on. Still, the most important factor, meaning gameplay, is there. This game is actually fun to play and quite addictive too. As an additional plus, it plays well in short bursts, for example on the bus. Highly recommended!

Post Scriptum for Old Geezers

And now lengthy post scriptum with a personal twist. When I was playing the game, I had a feeling of deja-vu - irritating impression that I have seen it somewhere, some day, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Fortunately, I work with other guys that started their adventure with computers in the eighties, and one of them just glanced at the game and shouted "Kret!".


Kret (meaning The Mole in English) was an old shareware game (for Dos, meaning really old) where idea was somewhat similar. I started looking for the game over the net and finally have found it here. It is abandonware anyways so feel free to give it a try. Mr Driller does not actually steal the idea, it is in fact quite different, but the mechanics of blocks falling and supporting each other looks familiar, which explains my deja-vu.

On a side note in order to make matters even more twisted, there exists a port of DosBox (Dos emulator) for PSP, so I think it should be doable to run Kret on the PSP.