22nd December, 2007
A few noticeable updates to the website, specially on the Articles page. Thanks to the help of German friend Michael Obsieger, and Italian friend Giuseppe Gristina, I just added scans from rare old magazines, featuring articles and advertisements on our beloved CreatiVision. I added a few articles myself from the much sought-after Italian magazine "Video Giochi".

I also recently put my hands on a CreatiVision Mark-II model, and took pictures of it. You can find them on the popular Releases/Hardware database, as well as new pictures of the Australian Dick Smith Wizzard console box (sent by Steve Tabone).

Finally, here's the most exciting news of all. My friends Nicola, Giovanni Ortu, Kurt Woloch and I decided to send our contribute to Amnesty International by producing a "one of a kind" (unique) Christmas Edition Multicart, with many nice features:

• PCB is version "1.0+", making the cart compatible with CreatiVision Mark-II model, while the first batch of previously released Multicarts aren't.
  
• EPROM includes 2 additional ROMs (making the total of 29 featured games and programs). The first one is a nice "on-screen welcome message" showing the owner's name - of course the EPROM will be burned as soon as we know the winner's name! The second one is a unique demo: "Christmas Demo", specially coded by Austrian programmer Kurt Woloch for this auction: it's unavailable elsewhere, and the ROM will be publicly available in 2008 (for use with emulators), so this is your only chance to play it on real CreatiVision hardware
  
• stickers with Gamesniped.com and Amnesty International logos on front of box
  
• numbered 1/1 on both box and cart
  
• signed by the authors on box
  
• includes a signed postcard, designed by me and signed by Nicola, Kurt, Giovanni and I, specifically made for this Christmas edition. Postcard traveled across Europe to gather all signatures and will be included inside of the Christmas Multicart box"
• 100% of the final auction bids will be given to Amnesty International

Here's the link to the auction page. Happy bidding and merry Christmas!

22nd October, 2007
A whole lot of additions to the website today, let's see what's new!
 
- Releases/Hardware database has many pictures and scans from very rare and obscure items, such as the Funvision and Mark-II/Laser 500 consoles, the Parallel I/O interface, many Funvision games and a few WAV audio recordings of games cassettes released in Australia by Dick Smith Electronics!
 
- Emulators has many interesting additions: the new "unofficial" FunnyMu 0.47 emulator for Windows (source code available for Windows and Linux). This is the list of changes:

Changelog
=========
 0.47 unofficial
 * added cart loading routine to support 32 KBytes ROMs (new special format
   used on ROMs included in the CreatiVision Multicart)
 * added option to save screenshots in BMP format (press F12)
 * fixed screen resolution to a true 256*192 pixels (removed black borders)
 * added option to load BASIC listings from plain text file, named "load.txt",
   into emulated BASIC program (press F7)
 * added option to save BASIC listings into plain text file from emulated
   BASIC program, named "savexxx.txt" (press F5) (Courtesy of Giovanni Ortu)

Of course the new CreatiVe-UI 1.04 user interface is available, supporting the new version of FunnyMu and new ROMs:

 BASIC (1983 Funvision V.1 version)
 Titanic Frogger Demo (by Kurt Woloch, ASM source code available too!)

 Code Breaker
 Combination
 Factory Flare-up
 Statistics I
 Statistics II

30th September, 2007
Five months spent collecting ideas, experiencing and solving problems, delaying the release, dumping ROMs... five months of *very* hard work and... we finally completed the production of the CreatiVision Multicart 1.0!

The final release includes 27 ROM programs, that's all known games, BASIC revisions, demos and utilities for CreatiVision and compatible consoles.
We're very happy with the great feedback and support we received by all CreatiVision enthusiasts and fans all over the world: we had a great 55 pre-orders, that's a really nice result for beginners as we are! We have 45 more carts available for sale, so don't miss your only chance to get this masterpiece!
You can find detailed information and a picture gallery on the Multicart page!

16th July, 2007
A few good news today:
 
- new FunnyMu (unofficial) emulator, release 0.46
I've finally been able to fix a couple of nasty bugs which affected FunnyMu since its initial release. In a result, Police Jump, Mouse Puzzle, Deep Sea Adventure and Chopper Rescue run smoothly with correct colours and no math bugs anymore. Tennis still has a problem with sound emulation (which causes the game to freeze as the ball hits the net) but has correct colours too. Of course there's a new CreatiVe-UI interface (release 1.03) featuring screenshots of correctly emulated games. Here's what's new:

Changelog
=========
 0.46 unofficial
 * fixed problem with transparent colour in VDP palette. Tank Attack still
   has problems with it, but I suspect it's probably due to some problem in
   some other part of VDP emulation
 * fixed mathematics bug in 6502 emulation. Mouse Puzzle and Police Jump now
   work fine with correct "bonus score" counter

 Battleships
 Bowling
 Financial Loan
 Lunar Landing
 Wizzard Demo Tape

They've been done with Giovanni Ortu's CvTape tool, which is capable of reading WAV files taken from the original program cassette tapes, and then convert them into plain text file. Don't forget to recover your old BASIC listings too, by using the tool from his site.
 
All files are available on the Emulators page.
 
- Articles now features scans from an article taken from Electronics Australia, issue 10/1982. Thanks to Michael Davidson for providing the good work!

10th July, 2007
Lots of great news in today's update:
 
- Releases/Hardware database has new pictures and scans from rare and obscure items, such as the "reissue games" released in 1985 in tiny orange boxes, the rare Swiss CreatiVision (with manuals in German and French), games cassettes released in Australia by Dick Smith (which you can also download in their original WAV audio format) and much more! Around 25 new additions here!
 
- Technical Info has been updated with additional details on the Swiss CreatiVision.
 
- ROM Programs has two wonderful updates!
First and most important is that I just discovered an obscure version of BASIC, which appears as "intermediate" between the 1982 and 1983 versions. I name it as "1982 R2", so there's a total of four variations for the CreatiVision BASIC language, all ROMs available for download!
Of course there's an update for the Creative-UI interface, now gone to version 1.02.

Changelog
=========
 1.02
 * updated to support the newly discovered CreatiVision BASIC 1982 R2

- Multicart, we're about to release it! Around 10 more days of waiting, and we're done! And of course it will include the new BASIC 1982 R2 program, making the cart feature 26 ROMs total!
About 40 carts have been pre-ordered, so I wish more people will order their copy before they're gone forever!
 
I would like to thank this update's contributors: Adrian Schell, Mathew Damaso, Robert Boyd, Andrew Stephen, Basilio Lenzo and Garry Stone!

6th June, 2007
Today's update is so massive, I didn't expect I'd found so much stuff to add! This is what's inside:
 
- Releases/Hardware and Releases/Software database have new sets of very rare hardware pictures such as the Japanese CreatiVision and the "black box Wizzard", plus around 50 sets of scans of rare games manuals, boxes, carts and overlays, such as Rameses Basic, Crazy Pucker, Stone Age, plus Funvision, Laser 2001 and Salora Manager versions of various titles, and even scans from 6 Australian cassettes with games and utilities for use with the BASIC cartridge.
And, last but not least, a high-quality set of scans from an incredibly rare German sampler made by VCCS in 1983, (featuring circuitry to actually WRITE data on an included 2 KBytes EEPROM), titled Werben ++++ Informieren - which we also dumped, translated and saved into ROM format for use with CreatiVision emulators!
 
- Articles now features a wonderful promo flyer from Japan and a multi-language version of the European promo flyer. Also added a couple of Australian books regarding BASIC programming: Fun Way into Computers and First Book of Programs (which I still have to convert with OCR though).
 
- Emulators and ROM Programs pages have a few noticeabe additions. We've been able to find and dump a few games of which we didn't even know the existence of, and there's also the new "unofficial" FunnyMu emulator for Windows (source code available for Windows and Linux). This is the list of changes:

Changelog
=========
 0.45 unofficial
 * changed cart loading routine in order to have full compatibility with
   "CreatiVision Basic 1982" (3*4=12 KBytes ROM)
 * changed cart loading routine in order to have full compatibility with
   "Werben ++++ Informieren" (8+2=10 KBytes ROM)
 * fixed bug in 10 KBytes cart loading routine

Of course FunnyMu 0.45 is accompanied by the newly released CreatiVe-UI 1.01 user interface, which is specially built to support and recognise all the newly-dumped ROMs.
New ROMs dumped:

 BASIC (1982 CreatiVision version)
 BASIC (1983 Funvision V.1 version)
 Crazy Pucker (aka Crazy Moonie and Crazy Chewy)
 Locomotive (10 KBytes version)
 Planet Defender (6 KBytes version)
 Stone Age
 Tank Attack (6 KBytes version)
 Tennis (first release, having "Coca Cola" and "Sprite" advertisement)
 Tennis (6 Kbytes "Wimbledon" version)
 Tennis (6 KBytes "Dick Smith" version)
 Werben ++++ Informieren (original German version + English translation)

- Multicart, yes we did it! My friend Giovanni Ortu (formerly known as the author of the CvEmu2 emulator) and I, were able to design the one and only homebrew cartridge for CreatiVision! A single 8 MBit EPROM including all available CreatiVision games and software, which you can easily select by operating a friendly DIP-switch (with easy instructions).
 
We're about to start the (very expensive!) production phase, and we scheduled the release for July 30th, 2007.
 
100 numbered copies will be produced, all having full cardboard box with cartridge holder, cartridge having black plastic case (especially designed to be compatible with both CreatiVision consoles and clones), 12-page English manual and 6 cardboard overlays. Currently featuring 25 ROMs, but number may increase if we find more to add before the scheduled release date!
 
Launch price is EUR 42.95 (around US$ 57.95). You can pre-order now and we'll contact you as soon as we're about to ship your cart(s). That's not exactly an "order", it's just to let us know how many people are willing to get a copy.
 
A special "thank you" to this update's contributors all over the world: Adrian Schell, Mikko Heinonen, Nicola Ferrarese, Dieter Koenig, Federico Salerno, Reinhold Schertler and Biagio Nativo. Your help is really unvaluable!

19th March, 2007
A *big* site update today, with tons of new stuff!
- History and Tech specs now hosts a full-detailed CreatiVision history with exclusive data, documents and pictures. It's available in English and Italian. It still lacks technical and software pages (which I'll write shortly).
- Releases database has a lot of new scans and pictures of game boxes, manuals, hardware, etc. A big "thank you" to extremely kind contributors as Reinhold Schertler, Federico Salerno and Norman Pelz for providing so much stuff!
- Articles from the 80s now features great scans from the first promo pamphlet available in Europe (date 1982), also showing a screenshot of the obscure (unreleased?) "Skiing" game.

I'll be in Paris for a week, I wish you'll enjoy these special contents, and I please you to contact me in case you wish to contribute the site, or would like to make any additions to the CreatiVision history.

17th February, 2007
The new site is ready at last. It required around three weeks of hard work in order to make new graphics and contents, and I have to admit I like it much more than the previous one - so it was well worth such an effort. This is what's changed:

- CCC Forum - a link to Classic Console Center forum regarding CreatiVision
- History and Tech Specs - this page is not ready yet - will be within a few days.
- Releases database - consoles and games catalogue numbers, pictures, manuals, scans, etc.
- Downloads - all existing emulators with source codes, BIOS, ROMs and BASIC programs
- Links - useful cV-related links

I'm also releasing my personal build of FunnyMu, the emulator written by Paul Haytes in 2001, based on ColEm by Marat Fayzullin, MAME source code and SDL. This is what's changed in my "0.44 unofficial" build:

Changelog
=========
 * fixed cart loading routines in order to have full compatibility with 6,
   10, 12, 16 and 18 Kbytes ROMs
 * changed most boot messages to match the new cart loading routines
 * fixed colours palette to match the (much more realistic) one in MAME
 * disabled debugger (F1 key no longer stops emulation)
 * changed keymapping to match MAME standard (F3=reset, ESC=exit, etc.)
 * added keymapping for right joystick
 * fixed error in keymapping of "-" key
 * added full colour icon
 * changed HELP option to match the new options and keymapping
 * now distributed with SDL 1.2.11, providing *great* sound playback!
 * added save/load settings to FunnyMu.ini config file (thanks to iAN_CooG)
 * BIOS file can be selected by editing the FunnyMu.ini file
 * cleaned up code a bit

You'll also find an useful interface, named CreatiVe-UI, designed for use with FunnyMu 0.44. You may get all files from the Emulators page.

Welcome and have fun on the new CreatiVEmu site!

31st January, 2007
A few new manuals are available for download: Astro Pinball and Crazy Chicky (Australian DSW editions), and Tank Attack and Tennis (German VTech editions). Big thanks to Norman Pelz from Germany for providing scans from the original game manuals.
Get all files from the Releases/Software page.

12th January, 2007
The site is online again at last! After the fall of EmuHQ, the previous web hoster, it's been offline for around 5 years... It's now time to bring it back to the public, since I often received requests for information about the CreatiVision system... well actually the site still needs a few cleanings, but I'm willing to complete the job soon.
In the meantime the CreatiVEmu emulator has been marked as "discontinued" by Roberto Ventura, the author, while Giovanni Ortu released his own build, named CvEmu2, which is available at his personal website.

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