[download id="1"]

Features:

• One-stop information place for the individual software setup including information, downloads and status
• Reduces a PC’s vulnerability level caused by outdated software
• Personalizes updates: can be configured according to the users needs
• Enhances the “Add or Remove Programs” experience
• Simple interface and simple to use

UpdateStar is a PC utility that lets you stay up-to-date just about all your other software titles.

This way you make sure you always have the most up-to-date software, maximizing the every-day user experience.

UpdateStar is for people who rely and depend on an efficient software setup on their computer in their daily life.

Features

• One-stop information place for the individual software setup including information, downloads and status
• Personalizes updates: can be configured according to the users needs
• Enhances the “Add or Remove Programs” experience
• Simple interface and simple to use

Download UpdateStar 2.4 free from Blast Magazine!

The vertical scrolling shooter is a great, classic arcade genre.

In 1992, Epic MegaGames released this almost forgettable little EGA game called Overkill. You, the pilot, are tasked with destroying all the evil alien forces that captured six otherwise peaceful planets, enslaving the populations along the way. Destroy them.

Overkill was developed by Tech-Noir Productions and Ste Cork, and it was the first vertical shooter released by Epic (oh there would be others…). It had some period features including joystick support and MIDI music but was technologically unimpressive. Other games of the time — Commander Keen, the original Duke Nukem I and II — had far superior graphics.

The game gave the player shields/life energy, a contrast to other “one hit you’re dead” scrollers of the time and earlier. You could also collect power ups and boost your fuel, shields and weapons.

This game was a bitch to extract originally. I bought the shareware in the 90s on 3.5″ floppy at one of The Christmas Tree Shops on Cape Cod — one of many bribes from my mother for one of many excursions to the stores, which are basically the perfect visage of an adolescent male hell.

Anyway, do you know how hard it is to pull something off a floppy these days? They’re gone, baby, gone.

Come to find out, Overkill was released into the freeware realm on July 23 by Ste Cork. Now the whole world can have it.

Download the registered version of Overkill free from Blast Magazine. You will need DOSBox.

Zack didn’t like computers.

At age 3, he was diagnosed with severe autism. His parents decided to send him to a specialized school, where he could get one-on-one attention. It was there that he was first introduced to computers.

“It was impossible for Zack to use a computer,” said his grandfather, John LeSieur. “He was throwing the mouse and throwing the keyboard [in frustration].”

LeSieur is the owner of PeopleCD, a software production company that creates programs to build an interaction between the Internet and software application. PeopleCD’s released the beta of its first program, a child-friendly web browser called KidCD, in late 2006.

When the beta was released, LeSieur let his grandson try it out on their home computer and was shocked by the result.

Zack loved it.

Now, LeSieur tells stories of how Zack will go up to the computer, turn it on, and start playing around with the computer on his own. “[The computer] is a tool that he really likes and enjoys, and that he never shows any violence for, which is really good for mom,” said LeSieur.

“He was able to get the results he was looking for,” he said. “Since it’s a full screen application, the only thing he could do was to click on an icon to get results. [Zack] was very happy with his results.”

Zack is now 6, and he didn’t like the updated version his grandfather created, KidCD 2.0. Other young children who had been using KidCD 1.0 had a hard time changing the browser pages to view the other icons accessible and had just been clicking on those they could see. LeSieur changed the settings so that the icons would switch every hour to allow a variety of websites. It was this feature Zack did not care for.

“Autistic children like things when they are very organized. It’s in place, and they know they fill find a result right there,” LeSieur said.

In order to continue the successful relations Zack was having with the computer, his grandfather came up with an alternate version of 2.0. In this version, the main page was an aquarium (Zack’s favorite), and included mouse animation and stationary icons.

“He was so happy, even if [he] doesn’t speak, you can see it from what he’s doing and how many times per day he goes back to the computer,” LeSieur said.

Thus, in April, the ZAC Browser was born.

Since LeSieur made the browser accessible from his website, zacbrowser.com, over 150,000 people have installed the free program on their computer.

“I can tell you it’s amazing how many e-mails per day we get from people where it has just changed their world,” he said.

Named for his grandson, Zac also stands for “Zone for Autistic Children”.

Autism is described by the National Autism Association as a bio-neurological developmental disability that generally appears before age three, impacting the normal development of the brain in the areas of social interaction, communication skills, and cognitive function. Individuals with autism typically have difficulties with communication and social interactions.

“People are always watching for a magic teaching tool [for autism],” said Temple Grandin, science professor at Colorado University, who has autism and is seen as a poster child for adults living with the affliction. “A computer is not the magic tool. A first grade teacher is.”

Grandin said she sees the ZAC Browser as a helpful alternative for autistic children, but not a stand-alone solution for development in autistic children.

“A computer program is not your primary way that you teach young autistic children,” she said.

While Grandin acknowledged that the ZAC browser is a great activity for autistic children, especially in place of video games, she emphasized that nothing can replace one-on-one interactions with other people.

Symptoms of autism as described by the Autism Society of America are notably little to no eye contact and lack of interest in forming relationships. Children who are diagnosed with autism need to be taught things like taking turns, manners and sharing.

“They’ve got to learn not to be rude,” Grandin said.

Those types of concepts are hard to teach over a web browser.

“A lot of autistic kids are spending a lot of time on video games, but you can’t get them to do anything else,” Grandin said.

Still, a few hours on the ZAC Browser can be very beneficial for an autistic child. The browser’s filter does not allow access negative or violent websites, and those available are geared towards education. Since he first started using the browser, Zack has learned new words and started speaking more.

He has also not been violent toward the computer since his grandfather installed the ZAC Browser.

As the first web browser created specifically for those with autism, Zac has already reached amazing success with those who have accessed it, LeSieur sees the ZAC Browser as changing the future of how software is created.

The ZAC Browser has helped adults with autism as well. A woman, who identified herself only as “Mwoolhiser” on the ZAC Browser forums, told other posters of her son Robbie’s success story. At 31 years old, Robbie loved the computer but was tpp easily distracted by so many options. After his mother downloaded the ZAC Browser, Robbie was using the computer by himself within 35 minutes.

When used in accompaniment with other teaching tools, the ZAC Browser can be a great way to teach autistic children. Nothing can replace the effect human contact has in positively influencing those with autism.

Grandin’s advice to parents: A lot of computer monitors flicker, a phenomenon that we tend not to notice with our eyes. Due to the eye problems that is oftentimes a symptom of autism, many autistic children notice the flicker that we do not, and this can lead to violence towards computers. While this type of outburst is not true for every autistic child, when given the choice between a laptop and a regular table-top monitor, 20 percent of autistic children choose the monitor. Laptop screens, by contrast, are made differently than other monitors and do not produce the same flicker. In order to prevent damage to the laptop keyboard, try hooking up an external keyboard for your child to use.

For other helpful tips from Dr. Temple Grandin, visit her “Teacher’s Tips” section on Autism.com.

Download the Zac Browser free from BlastMagazine.com

It also brings 16-player multiplayer and native support to Windows XP/Vista, MacOS, and Linux/Unix.

It’s a piece of gaming history that’s been sadly losing ground with time. There has even been trouble keeping some of files hosted online.

That’s just not right.

Here’s Doomsday:

Doomsday 1.9 beta-5 for Windows

Doomsday 1.9 beta-5 for Linux/Unix

Doomsday 1.9 beta-5 for MacOS

Here are some of the addons:

To install addons, place the .pk3 into the “/doomsday/snowberry/addons” folder.

jDoom Enviroment pack (for doom and doom2)
jDoom Enviroment pack (for tnt and plutonia)

Unliminated Ammo Mod

Rain in some Doom levels
Rain and sandstorms in Hexen

Lorcan TNT music pack

jDoom high-resolution texture pack
Texture pack for other front ends

Stay tuned for more. There are full resource packs that I’ll dig up and put online.

More good stuff happening at the New Doom Forums

The developers also release a video screencast as a sneak peak of what users can expect with 2.5.

“2.5 is coming along thanks to the fantastic feedback you guys provided on RC1 (over 580 pingbacks and counting),” said WordPress developer Matt Mullenweg “We’re now ready to show you a bit more of a peek with a short screencast covering the new dashboard and uploader and Release Candidate 2.”

WordPress is the software that powers BlastMagazine.com.

One of the major additions to WordPress 2.5 is the gallery feature. Which will be the first attempt by the popular blogging and content management platform at a built-in photo gallery system. Plugins and third party services like Flickr had been used by many users in the past.

In our own case, we built a gallery module and will continue to use it, but Blast will also look carefully at the new WordPress gallery. We see applications in bulk video game screenshots and art galleries.

WordPress 2.5 was supposed to be released several weeks ago, but it suffered development delays.

At that time, the game had floundered around incompatibility issues and relative obscurity — DOSBox wasn’t a big deal yet.

The game is built on the Commander Keen 2D engine and designed as a one-man show by Jim Norwood.

This is another game I first encountered on the Aztech’s Super Shareware Games CD.

Bio Menace is just an awesome game. You play CIA operative, Snake Logan, on recon duty in Metro City, which has been taken over by the evil Dr. Mangle and a horde of vicious mutants. (The mutants look kindly cuddly in the game, but whatever.) This is a game that combines elements of action, cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic and adventure in one floppy disc-sized install.

In the game, you get to maximize Snake’s killing power with machine guns, super bullets, plasma bolts, two different kinds of grenades and even land mines. Bio Menace consists of three episodes with secret levels and hidden easter egg in the second episode.

The game is non-stop and very challenging. Snake has very limited health, and medkits are in short supply.

Bio Menace has wonderful VGA graphics, Ad Lib music and Sound Blaster compatibility.

I’ll never fully understand why this game didn’t take off in modern gaming with sequels and console remakes, but you can enjoy the original, as intended, for free.

Download Bio Menace free from Blast Magazine

Ye Olde System Requirements:

• IBM PC and compatibles
• 286 Computer (386 or higher recommended)
• 575k of conventional memory
• 5 meg of Hard Drive Space (10 meg for registered)
• Supports Sound Blaster, Ad Lib and Joystick

One of the best computer golf games is still Links LS 98 and subsequent versions for Windows, released 11 years ago by Access Software.

Access made some very good games in the 80s and 90s, including the Tex Murphy series, before they lost their identity — and eventually their existence.

Links: The Challenge of Golf was released in 1990 for Amiga and DOS. When you think of computer golf, and how far we’ve come with an amazingly popular genre from Links to Tiger Woods 08, “The Challenge of Golf” is nothing less than a piece of history. Until recently, it was a lost piece of history.

“The Challenge of Golf” was the first realistic golf sim. It had amazing graphics and based itself on real professional courses. It was the kind of game that took a lot of machine to run 18 years ago.

In the DOS days, it was an art-form to increase your amount of free system memory so that you could run games like Links and later Doom and Wolfenstein and many other golden aged titles. Access actually included a letter to its players in the “readme.bat” file:

LINKS-The Challenge of Golf
echo INFORMATION ON HOW TO INCREASE FREE AVAILABLE MEMORY
echo Last update 11-10-90
echo .
echo Dear LINKS owner,
echo .
echo We believe LINKS is the most realistic and most technically advanced golf
echo simulator ever developed. In creating such a sophisticated program, however,
echo we have had to push your computer to its limits. LINKS requires a large
echo amount of memory to manipulate terrain data and to reproduce accurately
echo all of the intricate details of the game. At least 530K bytes are needed to
echo run the program. Player comments require another 8K bytes and wildlife
echo sounds require an additional 17K bytes. Thus, 555K bytes are needed to see
echo and hear all that LINKS has to offer.
echo .
echo To verify the amount of free memory on your computer, run the DOS utility
echo called CHKDSK. The last number displayed is the amount of free memory. If
echo the number is less than 555000, then some of LINKS’ digitized sounds will
echo not be heard. If the number is less than 530000, you will not be able to
echo run LINKS.
echo .
pause
cls
echo .
echo Your 640K machine actually has 655360 bytes available. When your computer
echo boots, it loads DOS (which takes about 55,000 bytes) and then uses a file
echo called CONFIG.SYS to automatically set aside memory for file buffers and
echo other things. It also uses a file called AUTOEXEC.BAT to AUTOmatically
echo EXECute user defined instructions. Both CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT can (and
echo usually do) contain programs known as TSR’s. TSR stands for Terminate and
echo Stay Resident. These programs install themselves and then stay in memory
echo to be used when needed. A mouse driver, print spooler, keyboard enhancer,
echo disk cacher, memory manager and DOS shell are all examples of such programs.
echo THESE PROGRAMS USE MEMORY. If there are too many of them resident at one
echo time, there won’t be room for LINKS or other large programs. TO INCREASE
echo FREE AVAILABLE MEMORY, YOU MUST REMOVE OR DISABLE SOME OF YOUR TSR’S.
echo .
echo If you have more than 640K (1Meg, 2Meg, or more) this can be used as extra
echo memory for preloading sound and graphics, but not for DOS. LINKS still
echo requires at least 530K free of your first 640K.
echo .
echo LINKS AND WINDOWS
echo You must exit completely from Windows to run LINKS. Do not exit Windows by
echo way of the DOS PROMPT icon.
echo .

Microsoft bought Access games in 1999 and kept it in sort of a protected status for a few years. Access was renamed Salt Lake Games Studio and put out golf games and expansion packs, including Links 2004 for Xbox. They also repackaged their excellent DOS Links 386 game into a Windows version.

Take-Two Interactive bought the Access/Salt Lake studio in 2004. They built a few console games including the Top Spin tennis series. They also split the Amped Xbox/Xbox 360 snowboarding series between MS Games and Take-Two. Take-Two renamed the studio to Indie Built but closed the shop in 2006.

Links resurfaced in the July 2000 issue of PC Gamer, one of the best magazine CD’s ever released. The “Classic Games Collection Volume One” contained full version of Duke Nukem II, King’s Quest, Descent, Terminal Velocity, Alone in the Dark, Wing Commander, X-COM, Links, Monkey Island, Ultima Underworld, Ultima I, and Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed. It was a stacked collection of classic games.

Download Links: The Challenge of Golf free from Blast

So I dug deep into 15 years worth of archives and saving just about every file and found an old version of Instant Messenger from 2000 believed to be AIM 4.x.

Enjoy: [download id="3"]

Also, here’s AIM+
[download id="4"]
Happy Retro-AIMing!

Wikipedia’s list of AIM versions:

• AIM 1.5.234, with an unknown release date (for various Linux distributions)
• AIM 1.5.286, with an unknown release date (for various Linux distributions)
• AIM 4.3, with an unknown release date (for Mac OS 8.6 and earlier)
• AIM 4.3.2229, released in 2000, included with Netscape Communicator.
• AIM 4.7.1333, released on February 18, 2004 (for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9)
• AIM 4.8.2790, released on November 26, 2001 (for Windows 95)
• AIM 5.0.2829, released in September 2002 (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.1.3101, released in November 2002 (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.2.3292, released in July 2003 (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.5.3595, released in May 2004 (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.9.3702, September 2004 (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.9.3797, unknown release date (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.9.3844, unknown release date (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.9.3857, unknown release date (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 5.9.6089, released on August 31, 2006 (for Windows 98/NT4/ME/2000/XP)
• AIM 6.0.28.1, unknown release date (for Windows 2000/XP/XP/Vista x64)
• AIM 6.1.32.1, released on March 27, 2007 (for Windows 2000/XP/XP/Vista x64)
• AIM 6.1.41.2, released on May 3, 2007 for Windows 2000/XP/XP/Vista x64)
• AIM 6.5.4.16, released on October 10, 2007 for Windows 2000/XP/XP/Vista x64)

• AIM Pro 1.3 build 260, released on November 1, 2006 (for Windows 2000/XP)
• AIM Express, unknown release date, online version.
• AIM ET / LAIM / AIM Lite 0.31 Beta, released on June 9, 2007 (for Windows 2000/XP/Vista)

And if you’re really interested in retro instant messaging, check out the World’s Slowest Instant Messenger.