It’s been a very busy few months, doing a lot of digital preservation work for ex-C64 developers and artists – but a very fruitful few months too. Very often, we find music files and demos which are not online anywhere and which get passed on to the relevant sources to make sure they are made available.
This time, there has been a huge amount that seems to be missing, so along with Ash and Dave’s own work – I have come up with this special post for the Christmas update and present an archive for the materials that I have found. I have tried to check where I can about if they are on CSDB or on other pages – so there could well be things which are preserved already (and I apologize if i’ve cocked up on any).
A massive thank you to Ashley Routledge, Dean Hickingbottom and Darren Melbourne, who’s allowance to preserve their C64 disks has helped save most of the following.
Download the archive here, and below is a very small sample of what you will find.
Demos
A lot of demos were found – mostly Compunet demos which we believe are missing. There are loads of demos by The Commandos, Curesoft, a Lizard demo disk and various single file demos which may well be missing currently. There is a Ian and Mic demo which doesn’t look familiar under /corrupted … but sadly, as the folder suggests, it seems to be just that! It won’t load up :( Maybe someone with a bit more skill will have more luck?
Music
Firstly, check out the Steve Barrett disk – which contains a large number of unheard tunes. Mixed in with these are tunes which you will have heard before, but which you will learn were all intended for Galactic Games, and were actually split off into several other Activision/Electric Dreams games (I wonder if Steve only got paid the once?).
There are some potentially new MoN tunes that I have extracted, which hopefully will have a few new tunes for you to check out. “various-music” contains a series of music demos which seem to have tunes which I do not recognize, and which again could well be missing.
Compunet sequence files
Not many compared to Ash and Dave’s archive – but again, some Compunet pages and bits which have been found along the way.
Cracks
Cracks are an important part of preservation, as often there were intros part of that which are new. We found a few which don’t seem to be knocking around and can be found under /various-unpreserved-cracks.
Graphics
There are many images from Clockwize, SIR-86 (including Ghostbusters and Zzap 64, which have been on SIR’s wanted list for some time), Ned Langman and many other artists. Some will be part of the lost demos lot (as standalone pictures which were uploaded to Compunet). The Lizard demo disk seems to have a few pictures that may not have been digitized yet.
