Loadstar 248/248.d81/t.commbook

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   THE COMMODORE 64 BOOK 1982-199x

      A preview by Andrew Fisher


    This is actually a preview of a
book I am currently writing, due for
publication in January of 2008. The
book will certainly go to print,
thanks to the pre-orders. Actually, it
would be a good idea to get your pre-
order in very soon, so you will be
guaranteed a copy as soon as it is
printed.

    I thought it would be good to
explain to Loadstar readers exactly
what the book is about and a little
about myself as the author. There are
also details of how to pre-order the
book and see sample pages.


 THE BOOK

    Actually, I have been thinking
about writing a book on the Commodore
64 for many years. I made a couple of
false starts on such a project in the
1990's, but never got much further
than writing a list of chapter
headings. It was in December 2005 that
I got the real impetus to start work.
Andrew Rollings was gearing up for the
production of his book on the
Commodore 64's great rival (especially
in Her Majesty's Realm), the ZX
Spectrum.

    Having looked at the example pages
and seen what Andrew was trying to
achieve, I got in touch with him by
e-mail. It turns out that Andrew is a
British ex-pat now living in the
United States, where the book was to
be printed. I suggested to him that a
follow-up book on the C64 would be a
good idea -- with me writing it. He
agreed and so I began to prepare a
list of games.

    The Spectrum Book features over
200 games, each reviewed as a single
page with screenshots, a scan of the
game's cover and details of how the
game plays. Small bits of trivia about
the game itself, the programmers or
the companies involved give an extra
flavour of the times, and the book is
divided into chapters covering each
year.

    So using several online lists of
top games, browsing through the
Gamebase 64 database and its own list
of classic games, and adding many of
my own favourites, I came up with a
list of over 250 titles. Thinking it
would be easy to cut down that number
at a later date, I started a few
tentative reviews.

    However, 2006 was to prove a very
busy year for me personally, and the
end result was that I made little
progress (even taking printouts of the
list and lots of blank paper on a
holiday resulted in no words being
written and no cuts to the list of
games). Andrew's book finally made it
to print and out to the customers in
December 2006, and he got in touch
with me to ask about how I was doing.
I was brutally honest and told him I
hadn't progressed very far, but was
still interested in writing the book.


 A NEW YEAR

    So, 2007 started and it was to
prove the turning point. With
motivation from the sales of the
Spectrum Book and a new enthusiasm for
the project as a whole, I started
writing. After a phone call from the
States and much discussion, a website
was launched to give a few basic
details and announce the opening of
pre-orders.

    Pre-ordering the book is intended
to help cover the cost of printing. In
an ideal world there would be a huge
demand and there would be no problem
getting a printer to take the work on
without paying up front. However,
having sufficient pre-orders lets us
gauge more accurately how many copies
to print and work out the final price
for the book.

    With the website active, I started
to promote the book and the pre-order
scheme on web forums, C64 news pages
and several other places I visit
regularly. In a week over fifty
pre-orders had come in. A web search
proved the news had spread V to
Germany, Eastern Europe, Australia and
even onto VH1's Gamebreak website.

    The book will follow a similar
format to the Spectrum Book. It is
split into chapters covering the years
1982 to the present day (the last two
chapters will cover 1993-4 and
1995-2007, with the latest homebrew
and small commercial titles). The
introductory page of each chapter will
feature a brief history of what
happened in the Commodore and gaming
world in that year, with a famous
loading screen.

    Each section is also represented
by a sprite from that year. Each game
will then have a separate page
featuring the box artwork, screenshots
and the review. This will include a
summary of what the game is like
(particularly if it is a conversion),
trivia about the release and related
games, and finally a summary of the
game's story. In addition there will
be a foreword written by an important
figure in Commodore history and a
section on emulation.


 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    My name is Andrew Fisher, and I'm
a Commodore 64 addict. It's more than
a confession; it's my qualification
for actually writing the book. I first
got my C64 in 1985, and after a few
weeks' delay while a faulty powerpack
was replaced, I played my first games.
They were Arcadia 64, which took 18
minutes to load from tape, and the
limited but enthralling 3D Time Trek
(a variation on the galactic search
game). Within a few months I had
played classics like International
Soccer and Ghostbusters, and I was
hooked.

    Fast-forward to 1990 and I
acquired my first disk drive,
prompting me to try to program in
machine code and start creating music.
I was a regular reader of the UK
magazine [Commodore Disk User], a
monthly title that came with a disk
full of utilities and games. I wrote a
few programs, sent them off and was
overjoyed to be accepted. Sadly the
magazine would fold before my work was
published, the first of several
setbacks.

    Reading [ZZAP 64] a couple of
years later, I saw the reader survey
and a particular question struck me.
It asked, "What would readers like to
see in ZZAP (for example, a technical
column)?" And so I wrote to the editor
suggesting that a technical column
would be a great idea, and I would be
the person to write it. I even mocked
up some pretend letters and answered
them.

ZZAP 64 was about to undergo a
redesign as [Commodore Force], and the
announcement went into one of the last
ZZAP issues that "Professor Brian
Strain" would answer all technical
queries if readers wrote into the
magazine. And so for 16 issues of
Commodore Force I was Professor Brian
Strain, aka the Mighty Brian (not to
be confused with [Commodore Format]'s
Mighty Brain).

    When Commodore Force closed owing
me money, I moved over to Commodore
Format to write more technical
articles about GEOS and a roundup of
user groups. This brought me into
contact with the UK fanzine
[Commodore Scene], for whom I would
write for the next ten years. You may
have guessed by now, but Commodore
Format also closed and my writing was
confined to fanzines and disk
magazines for the rest of the 1990's.
I joined the European group People of
Liberty in 2000 to help produce the
diskmag [Scene World], and also joined
the ranks of ROLE (Raiders Of the Lost
Empire).

    In 2004 a new magazine hit the
shops -- [Retro Gamer]. This looked
back at classic games, computers and
consoles. From small publisher Live
Publishing, it also came with a
regular CD of emulators and game
remakes. So I tried again, sending a
complete article to the editor hoping
he would publish it. And once again my
luck held -- THE RETRO RYDER CUP, a
round-up of golf games with a twist,
made it into issue 7 of Retro Gamer.

    Just over a year later, Live
Publishing went bust, owing me money
for an article and owing the rest of
the freelance writers a lot of money
that was unlikely to be recovered in
administration. But rather than be
downhearted, the freelancers got
together to produce the Retro Survival
CD. This magazine on a disk ran on
both PC and Mac, and featured videos,
audio clips and web links, plus many
of the articles that would have been
published in the next (but never
finished) issue of Retro Gamer.

    The pre-order scheme was also
successful for Retro Survival -- with
over 300 pre-orders and now 750 copies
sold, the costs of getting the CD
duplicated were met and it was a great
moment to pay all of the writers
involved for their work. December 2005
saw Retro Gamer return with new
publisher Imagine, and I was lucky
enough to get more articles into the
magazine over the next few months.


 PRE-ORDER

    So, how do you find out more about
the Commodore 64 Book and pre-order a
copy?