So, it was time again to dream about VIC-20. Tonight I had found some piece of hardware, supposedly to go both into the userport and cartridge at the same time. It involved some IDE interface, graphics accelerator and quite some interesting application software. It was possible to view e.g. a DVD movie through the VIC graphics output. The image was a little grainy with sparks and blinks, but it worked! One would think there was an external video generator, but the picture really was fed through the standard video out. There were lots of pull-down menus inside the software, and generally an amazing product.
I believe the cartridge was deep blue.. Schema, do you know anything about this?
Normally I only dream about unknown cartridge games, often with brilliant graphics. This may be the first time I dreamed about unknown hardware expansion and productivity software. Now, let's go to the nearby flea market to see if I can find it..
carlsson wrote:Now, let's go to the nearby flea market to see if I can find it..
I've come to the conclusion that if I want to find any kind of cartridges on a flea market around here, I'll have to convert to NES-ism, or even better SNES-ism, N64-ism or in rare cases MD/Genesism. I had a quick look on Sunday, but it was more deserted than normally. A few NES items, some junk computer stuff and someone selling soft porn movies was what brought my attention (but I didn't buy anything).
Tonight I was VIC dreaming again. This time, I had come across a website which listed some extremely rare and previously unknown titles; some which have occurred in my dreams before but have never been mentioned outside of them. The website did not only offer ROM images of the precious cartridges - when you clicked on the download link, the actual game and box materialized into your hands! I was stunned to find myself holding something that had not even been seen as a ROM image before. Not all the titles on the webpage had this feature though.
Now, I just have to find the webpage in awoken state. I'm sure the technology itself, to create matter from an Internet link, will be extremely valuable.
It is unbelievable, but this night I again dreamed about VIC-20 cartridges. I found a toy store which still had a few - previously unheard of - cartridges, boxed in mint condition. They were published by Commodore, so supposedly some VIC-19XX. However, the store asked rather much money, more than I had cash in my wallet so I had to pay with my debit card, something I never do in real life.
I bought one cartridge, and the clerk said they will put the item in one of their cars, and I could borrow the car to drive home. I asked why, since I had my own means of transportation, but they insisted and disappeared with the cartridge I just had bought. Then I got the car keys to a red Opel and they told me the license number. I went outside to look for it, but there was no such Opel to be found on the whole parking lot. I walked around for hours, was even treated a free lunch while waiting and then I returned to the toy store, quite upset. I talked to a few stupid clerks, and finally I requested to see their boss. After a private talk with their (female) boss, somehow my purchase was returned to me and I could leave the store and get home.
On my way home, I passed by some more stores, stuff and stories I can't remember exactly, but finally I got home and could play the two (!) games I had bought.
The first game was a graphic action adventure called E-something III. I looked it up on Google and found links to Denial, where someone had mentioned the first E-something adventure (not Escape .. Drash) and how rare it was. And here I was sitting with the third game in this series, which until that day was not known to have been a series!
The second game was a more simple submarine or similar kind of game, but like always, the graphics and sound were top notch and may even have involved synthesized speech. This game had been rumoured, but not known to have existed before.
The toy store may have had one or two more VIC games. In the dream, I thought "I should've brought the Cartzilla or rarity list, because I'm not sure if this game even is on it". In real life, I suppose these days it is not common to come such across a big selection of VIC-20 software that one has to decide - upon rarity, playability or whatever - which titles one wants to pick up and which to leave.
how hard would it be for you to make 'screenshots' of some of these dream games?
i would find it interesting to see, but i guess based on your mentioning that the graphics and sounds were top notch, perhaps they were beyond a real vic, and thus whatever you tried to re-imagine on a real screen might not even come close?
I'm a lousy artist, and even more lousy when I only have a vague memory from dreams about it. It is true that the graphics often are way better than a VIC-20 could ever manage, sometimes in line with Amiga quality or even better!
Tonight, my dream was not about VIC-20 but rather Jeff's web site. I found that besides Denial, he ran another forum about importing wine and beer. In Swedish! Jeff was rather good writing in Swedish, although one or two English words sometimes found their way into the messages.
The distribution of posts was rather odd too; almost all subforums only contained single digit of posts, except for one which had a thread with over 10,000 messages in it.
I used to date a sommelier (wine expert). She has a local tv show about dining now. I can't even drink a sip without getting sick.
And I'm sure you all know how poor my swedish is. I've been trying to learn for a long time now. Unlike other languages I've wanted to learn, Swedish is seldomly heard in Chicago.
I love commodore dreams. Ive had plenty of dreams where i go into a thrift store and find wierd or one of a kind games sitting there and I grab them. Ive even had dreams where ive thought that im glad im not dreaming cause now ill have these carts in my collection only to realize later it was a dream.The other night i had a dream I was in a thrift store and i found 2 boxes of nes carts. When i dropped one, it landed on the floor besides a c64 game cassette. I looked above where the boxes of nes games were and the whole top shelf was lined up with c64 cassettes! I thought wow, im buying all these, then i went to look for a box as there was too many to carry and sometime after that i woke up. Are we addicted or what? lol
Gee just the other night, I had a dream that Angelina Jolie was seducing me by rubbing a Vic-20 keyboard all over her body and Jeff was getting mad that all the keys were popping off in excitement and he didn't know why the screws on the bottom of the keyboard needed a special tool to undo them, so he could put they keys back on.
Leo, it is good to hear I'm not alone. I recognize the part about "I'm glad it is not a dream, 'cause then it will remain when I wake up".
I read about a girl who decided a career in acting and get famous was not what she was aiming for after attending a party in a Lara Croft outfit with the nerds drooling after her.
Another VIC-20 dream. This time, I was in my parents' basement and discovered a veritable pile of VICs. But they had funny keyboards. Every keyboard was different from eachother, both in layout and what the keycaps said. Some keyboards even had keys that were in a different style, looking like a poor hack. Every VIC was shrink-wrapped and some were not screwed together, resulting in an open but wrapped case. There even were some loose motherboards, with or even completely without chips.
My mother told me that all these were prototypes and I could not have a single one of them! It appeared she had collected them over years, buying here and there without my knowledge. I was too stunned to say something.
Ok, this dream was a little more absurd than the previous ones, but dreams sometimes go there.
that's how I ended up with such a large Atari collection. I just couldn't find VIC stuff at my thrift stores.