🇬🇧 English | 🇮🇹 Italiano
The CARD program is used to develop card games for the Commodore 64.
The CARD command extends BASIC V2 to print playing cards on screen.
Cards are displayed using redefined graphic symbols.
It is possible to display any type of card anywhere on the screen.
In this animation, an example of CARDS printed randomly as the initial background of the "Poker4-en" game written in BASIC using the CARD program (real-time speed).
In 1985, Carlo and Lorenzo Barazzetta developed the "CARD" library, with which they then developed 3 games, published by Systems Editoriale in the following years.
Links to the 3 original games from the 80s:
- Black Jack (1986) in D64 format
- Black Jack (1986) as Vice C64 Emulator Snapshot
- Briscola (1987) in D64 format
- Briscola (1987) as Vice C64 Emulator Snapshot
- Poker 4 (1987) in D64 format
- Poker 4 (1987) as Vice C64 Emulator Snapshot
In the image, the Black Jack title screen.
The Poker 4 game also featured a "cover screen" and had a unique characteristic among card games: the ability to play against 3 computer opponents, each with different "personalities".
In this repository you will find game files (in D64 format and Snapshots for Vice C64 Emulator), the manual for programming other games in BASIC and the source code of Games.
The original Briscola game was updated in 2024, with these new features:
- the human player and the computer, at the beginning of each game, take turns playing the first card (who starts playing in the first game is random).
- game instructions revised for better readability
- BASIC code revised for better readability
- final score is now displayed for a longer time
- fixed a bug in the AI
In the image, the splash screen of the "Briscola 2" game updated in 2024.
You can download the files:
In 2026, the Briscola 2 game was translated into English and further improved.
In the image, the splash screen of the "Briscola" game translated into English in 2026.
You can download the files:
- Briscola Italian (2026) in D64 format
- Briscola Italian (2026) as Vice C64 Emulator Snapshot
- Briscola English (2026) in D64 format
- Briscola English (2026) as Vice C64 Emulator Snapshot
In 2026, the original Poker 4 game (1987) was revised and translated into English.
The new Italian and English versions include these fixes and improvements compared to the 1987 original:
- fixed player exclusion management: players who run out of money are now correctly excluded from the game
- fixed end game handling: the game now correctly ends when only one player remains
- currency symbol changed from Lira (£) to Euro (€) with new graphic symbol added to the CARD character set
- game instructions revised for better readability
- BASIC code revised for better readability
In the image, the splash screen of "Poker 4" English version 2026.
You can download the files:
- Poker 4 Italian (2026) in D64 format
- Poker 4 Italian (2026) as Vice C64 Emulator Snapshot
- Poker 4 English (2026) in D64 format
- Poker 4 English (2026) as Vice C64 Emulator Snapshot
In 2026, a new version of the CARD ROUTINES was developed: CARD ROUTINES 2, which extends the CARD command to support off-screen coordinates with automatic clipping.
With the original CARD ROUTINES, X must be between 0 and 33 and Y between 0 and 16, so the card is always fully visible. With CARD ROUTINES 2, X can range from -6 to 39 and Y from -8 to 24, allowing cards to be drawn partially off-screen. The visible portion is automatically clipped.
CARD ROUTINES 2 is fully backward-compatible: existing programs work without any change.
In the image, 100 random cards drawn with the new extended coordinates, some partially clipped at the screen edges.
The source code, assembly files and a test project are available in the Dev folder:
card-routines-clipping.asm- Annotated 6502 assembly sourceDev/Test/- Test project with 100 random cards in extended range- Test-clipping.D64 - Ready-to-run test disk image
In 2026, joystick support (port 2) was added to all four games in the collection: Briscola Italian, Briscola English, Poker 4 Italian and Poker 4 English.
All interactive points in the games can now be controlled with the joystick:
- Menu navigation: move up/down to select options, press fire to confirm
- Card selection: move left/right to highlight a card, press fire to play it
- Yes/No prompts: move left/right to choose, press fire to confirm
- Name input: move left/right to cycle through letters, press fire to insert a character, move up to confirm the name
All games remain fully playable with the keyboard. The joystick provides an alternative input method that works alongside keyboard controls.
In the "Wiki" section you will find the online manual for using the CARD program.
In the Dev folder you will find the source code for the various projects built with CARD.
You can modify the sources and build .D64 files using VICE: to use your own version of VICE, edit the build-d64.bat file at the line:
set VICE_DIR=D:\App\GTK3VICE-win64\bin
Have fun.