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intric8
Seattle, WA, USA

Posted Sat Mar 07, 2020 7:30 pm

One of my favorite C64 games from a nostalgic point of view is Wizard, or Ultimate Wizard, by Progressive Peripherals & Software out of Denver, Colorado.
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If you don't know Wizard, it's a Jumpman clone - featuring the same exact death animation and sound effect - except with MAGIC. It even has a level editor. It's awesome early days 8-bit platform/puzzle action.

Progressive Peripherals & Software also made a lot of software and hardware for Amiga including a terminal program called Baud Bandit, which I just picked up for the first time. Love that logo and particularly the Bandit icon.
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Ahh, early 1990s graphic design.

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I'm sensing some flip side Lone Ranger vibes.

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So glad I got the manual, as it's very well-written and easy to follow. And this program has a lot of interesting User Interface doo-hickies.

At first blush I really like the default Topaz font and built-in color palette, which is customizable. I think I just need to fiddle with a few of the preferences. And oh man - I love all these new icons!
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The Baud Bandit logo on-screen is completely different than the box. It actually reminds me a lot of Time Bandit now.

And two of the icons in particular ... I'll be using them a TON! Instead of taking pictures of my screen, now I can save on-screen text to a file with the click of a button. Or, pause screen text that's flowing too fast to read (lookin' at you, Centronian!) Woot!
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Yes, I'll buy software online when it has actual paper manuals. Sure will. Guess I'm old ... fashioned.

Here's a closeup of Baud Bandit next to Progressive Peripherals.
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I'd love to source one of their ProRAM 3000 boards some day. It plopped 64MB of RAM in your Amiga 3000 back in the day, which must have sounded obscenely mind-bending. PP&S even made high-end A2000/A3000 accelerators, too.

Talk about a multi-dimensional Commodore lovin' company!

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Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Sun Mar 08, 2020 4:28 pm

That's awesome. I didn't know that they made a Baud Bandit terminal. I only ever knew about the Baud Bandit device used to speed up other terminals.

Ultimate Wizard is one of my favorites too. Interesting factoid is that the Original version, could save high scores but the EA version ships with a disk that has no notch. I made a backup copy of it back in the day so I could have my high scores saved. I still have the back up and the original.

I have to admit that any game, in those days, that came with a level editor I was all over it. I used to love the fact that you could create and download more levels. Boulder Dash Construction Set, Racing Destruction Set, Shootem Up Construction Set and of course Pinball Construction set were ones I played a lot.

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walldog

Posted Thu Aug 24, 2023 3:35 pm

I just picked up a copy on ebay. Waiting for it to come in. I currently use ATalkIII for BBS on the Amiga. After DEEP dive in manual I finally figured out how to get better ANSI graphics BUT BUT its not 100 PERFECT. I'd like to see what this SW does. Thanks for AmigaLove for always bringing things like this forward for us users...

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Crazyeights

Posted Thu Sep 21, 2023 9:31 pm

Baud Bandit brings back some really good memories from my dial-up BBS days. At the time I knew and lived down the street from Richard Lee Stockton in Mountlake Terrace, Wa. Search for BBBBS (Baud Bandit BBS) by Richard Lee Stockton (Grammas software). It's been released for free I think at version 8.5.

It is written in Arexx and runs with Baud Bandit. Richards BBS was very well known in the Pacific Northwest area of Washington state. I did some emergency motherboard repairs on his A2000 when the board went down. I remember discussing with Richard what would happen when the files section hit 10,000 files. It worked!





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