199 issues of LoadStar

What would have been over four hundred floppy disks in the 1980s now all fits on one CD.

Another little gem showed up in our mailbox on Friday. This time it was my copy of the complete library of the LoadStar digital magazine for the C64. This CD, cleverly packaged with a 5-1/4 floppy disk jacket as a CD sleeve, contains .d64 disk images of every issue of LoadStar that was published; one hundred and ninety nine, to be precise.

For those of you who don't remember LoadStar, back in the 80s, it was a magazine of sorts for Commodore 64 users. Instead of being published in paper, like every other computer related magazine back then, LoadStar was published in electronic form, on floppy disks. You either bought the floppy disks at the magazine counter, or you could subscribe and get them sent to you in the mail. Each issue of LoadStar had articles you could read and programs you could run on your C64.

They published computer utility software, games, and all kinds of applications. Anyone could submit programs they wrote to the magazine for publishing. It was a really good resource for strange and unusual software.

The CD also includes disk images of published issues of LoadStar 128 Quarterly, as well as UpTime Commodore, along with a bunch of supporting material (like jacket cover art of all of the LoadStar 64 disks, printed newsletters, SID music, and more). There is also a 92 page index of all of the software included in each of the disk images, organized by issue number and subject matter.

I do have a few original LoadStar publications on floppy disk, but never could afford (back in the day) to be a long-time subscriber. So it is wonderful for me to be able to have a complete collection of the magazine, as I really did enjoy the software and articles that populated each issue - at least the ones that I had.

There are well over a thousand games and applications for the C64 on this CD, so I have a lot to keep me busy for a while. I hope my C64 is up for it!

The only place you can get an “official” copy of the magazine library is from the original editor of LoadStar, Fender Tucker. If you'd like to score your own copy, visit Fender's publishing company, Ramble House.