Not to be taken too seriously, here’s a nerdcore production readers of this blog may appreciate:
Native C64 version:
Ultimate Audio version (PCM audio, best quality but requires an Ultimate 64):
LAMENOTER-Breadbox-Season-U64-16MB-REU.zip
VICE version (8 bit digi instead of PCM, tuned for VICE sid emulation):
LAMENOTER-Breadbox-Season-VICE-16MB-REU.zip
Original hardware version (8 bit digi, works with NSTC/PAL, 6581/8580)
LAMENOTER-Breadbox-Season-C64-16MB-REU.zip
All three in one zip:
LAMENOTER-Breadbox-Season-16MB-REU.zip
CSDB: https://csdb.dk/release/?id=264764
Instructions in the readme. Original hardware version requires a 1541 Ultimate-II with REU enabled at 16MB.
Full lyrics:
[Intro]
(SYS 64738…)
(READY.)
Yeah… breadbox season
[Hook]
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? (Which one?)
Weeks-old warez, I was never a trader (Never)
Still on the breadbox, same one from the eighties (Eighties)
SID in the speakers go crazy, crazy (Crazy)
Am I scene? Am I not? (Not)
Every color in the border that the VIC got (Sixteen)
64K and a head full of doubt
And if I code it with Claude, will they kick me out?
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? Let the scroller spell it out
[Verse 1]
’88, I was punchin’ notches in my floppies
Flippy-disk economy, my whole stack a copy
Of a copy of a copy, cracktro scrollin’ choppy
Greetings to a group that never heard of me, probably
Weeks-old warez, yeah, I always got ’em dead last
By the time it hit my mailbox it was ancient past
Elite had it day zero, modems screamin’ in the night
I was peelin’ glue off stamps just to mail it back right
Tried to pull down The Bard’s Tale at 300 baud
Mom picked up the phone, three days gone, felt like a fraud
Never cracked a single title, never coded a trainer
Never had my handle in a scroller, I was just a gamer
Didn’t have a freeze cart, just an Epyx FastLoad
Real ones froze the game and ripped the music from the code
Closest I ever came to machine code, I confess
Was typin’ pages out of Compute!’s Gazette in MLX
First scroller that I ever wrote was written in BASIC
Crawled so slow across the screen it was basically static
Just a kid in the basement with a joystick and a dream
And a question in my chest: was I ever in the scene?
[Hook]
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? (Which one?)
Weeks-old warez, I was never a trader (Never)
Still on the breadbox, same one from the eighties (Eighties)
SID in the speakers go crazy, crazy (Crazy)
Am I scene? Am I not? (Not)
Every color in the border that the VIC got (Sixteen)
64K and a head full of doubt
And if I code it with Claude, will they kick me out?
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? Let the scroller spell it out
[Verse 2]
Now I’m middle-aged, knees clickin’ like a 1541
Head knockin’ on the rail but the drive still run
Original hardware, brown keys, beige case
Raster bars in ’89, I could only dream the chase
Colors flickerin’ and tearin’, timing never steady
Twenty-three years later, 2012, they finally READY
Kids ask what a SID is, I say three voices, that’s a choir
Filter sweepin’ through the room, 6581 on fire
Other dudes hit forty and they buy a Corvette
I copped a C65 prototype, now I’m drownin’ in debt
Still chase the border trick, still open up the sides
Sprites up in the margins where the VIC said none could ride
Every byte I ever wasted, I remember where it lay
Tell me that ain’t dedication, tell me I don’t get to stay
[Hook]
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? (Which one?)
Weeks-old warez, I was never a trader (Never)
Still on the breadbox, same one from the eighties (Eighties)
SID in the speakers go crazy, crazy (Crazy)
Am I scene? Am I not? (Not)
Every color in the border that the VIC got (Sixteen)
64K and a head full of doubt
And if I code it with Claude, will they kick me out?
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? Let the scroller spell it out
[Verse 3]
Now they say I’m cheatin’ ’cause I type it on a laptop
Cross-assembler, build it, ship the PRG, then back-to-back drop
Ask GPT ’bout a timing bug, it tells me count the cycles
Sixty-three a line on PAL, I’m readin’ it like the Bible
Purists in the comments like, “That ain’t how we did it”
But the winners at the party? Cross-assembled every minute
So if I’m a lamer, then the whole compo’s lame with me
Nobody’s askin’ who was swappin’ on a BBS, see
Real ones ask one question, and it’s never what you took
It’s what you made, what you released, and did the effect look
So I’m droppin’ my first demo, doesn’t matter if it’s small
Handle in the scroller, greetings goin’ out to y’all
[Bridge]
Blinkin’ cursor, only one who really knows
Every time I asked, “Am I in?” it just blinked and let it go
LOAD “*”,8,1…
Searching for a place where I belong
Found… it was the disk I’d been holdin’ all along
READY.
(READY.)
[Final Hook]
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? (Which one?)
Weeks-old warez, I was never a trader (Never)
Still on the breadbox, same one from the eighties (Eighties)
SID in the speakers go crazy, crazy (Crazy)
Am I scene? Am I not? (Not)
Every color in the border that the VIC got (Sixteen)
64K and a head full of doubt
And if I code it with Claude, will they kick me out?
Am I ‘leet or just a lamer? Let the scroller spell it out
[Outro]
(SYS 64738…)