Monday, March 27, 2023

Compute!’s Gazette (June 1987)

Compute!'s Gazette was Compute!'s Commodore 64 spin-off magazine. My Commodore 64 magazine of choice was RUN but that had more to do with what was on the shelves near me. Both were excellent. The June 1987 issue of Gazette includes:

Features

The Evolution of Commodore BASIC - A history of BASIC in general plus the differences in BASIC between the PET, VIC-20, Commodore 64 and Commodore 128.

A Buyer's Guide to Programming Languages for the Commodore 64 and 128 - An overview of the many programming languages available for the Commodore 64/128, including Ada, COMAL, Forth, Pascal, Logo, PILOT, PROMAL, Fortran, C, and more.

Reviews

Tas - Technical Analysis System - A stock market technical analysis system for the Commodore 128.

Starglider and Tracker - Starglider is a space flight combat sim with wireframe graphics while Tracker is more of a 3D shooter on rails.

Parallax - A unique arcade shooter with overhead and underground components.

_{Table of Contents from the June 1987 issue of Compute!'s Gazette}

Games

Going Up? - A type-in arcade game in which the goal is to reach the top of a high-rise building featuring runaway elevators.

Play Bingo - A type-in program that generates Bingo cards (which can be printed) and picks the numbers.

Education/Home Applications

Fraction Practice - A type-in educational program featuring fractions.

Computing for Families - Classrooms Without Walls - One school district's experiment with using computers to communicate between schools.

Programming

Free-Form Flier - An easily customizable type-in database program with which you could store recipes, magazine indexes, addresses, financial info or pretty much whatever you want.

ML Base: Sorting and Searching Capabilities Added to BASIC - Machine language sorting and searching routines which you can call from your BASIC programs. The advantage of course being that machine language is much faster for such things.

Directory Filer Plus - A type-in program for managing disks. It lets you do things like lock files, delete files, print out a directory, and much more.

Disk Vacuum - A type-in utility that gives you a menu driven way to quickly delete batches of files.

Hi-Res Graphics on the 128, Part 1 - Using the Commodore 128's enhanced BASIC to manipulate high resolution screens. Something that was much easier on the Commodore 128 than on the Commodore 64.

Departments

The Editor's Notes - A look back at the Commodore PET on its 10th anniversary.

Gazette Feedback - The VIC-20 vs. the Commodore 64, saving arrays to disk, using a 1571 disk drive with a Commodore 64, reading and writing files, adventure games, and more.

Simple Answers to Common Questions - Questions answered about submitting programs to the magazine, double precision math, a Commodore 64 emulator for the Amiga, and more.

_{Back cover of the June 1987 issue of Compute!'s Gazette}

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