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[hariseldon]

So yeah this is me...



.. and thus I will not be reviewing the game.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Cunty Racket hahaha. New gamertag right there.

I know, it wouldn’t let you, but still. GAF name change perhaps!!

 

[hariseldon]

So Tower Of Babel is proving a bit harder work than I hoped. I'm going to skip to issue 6, but before I do that I've got something a bit special in the works. Apologies in advance as it's probably going to take a while. This is going to be about 20 reviews and some personal connections to it all, a pretty fucking large endeavour. Back in a few years!

 

[hariseldon]

Still working on the biggie but I’m also getting ideas about writing an ST game in STOS and diarising the developments here. Could be a fun direction to go once I’ve completed the ST Format challenge.

 

[hariseldon]

Found this..

STEEM-CRT by Mattias Gustavsson

A customized version of the SteemSSE Atari ST emulator, with a CRT emulation filter and some bundled games.

mattiasgustavsson.itch.io

.. which might be quite useful. The CRT filter will give me screenshots that are a bit more representative of how the games were on real hardware. It looks actually pretty good tbh.

EDIT: Ignore that - it breaks shit.

 

[Havoc2049]

Hey everyone, I’ve found some old footage of hariselden bebopin’ through the streets of London near his favorite video game store.

 

[hariseldon]

Hey everyone, I’ve found some old footage of hariselden bebopin’ through the streets of London near his favorite video game store.

Funny thing is that game is in the next issue of ST Format if I recall. I loved the sequel, it was an absolute masterpiece, but I never got the chance to play the original!

 

[Havoc2049]

Funny thing is that game is in the next issue of ST Format if I recall. I loved the sequel, it was an absolute masterpiece, but I never got the chance to play the original!

Ya, I’ve always wanted to play the Midwinter series, but never got around to it.

 

[hariseldon]

Ya, I’ve always wanted to play the Midwinter series, but never got around to it.

I can highly recommend 2 certainly, though getting it working on an emulator is a ballache and the controls are a tad peculiar. Visually it's amazing tbh - probably the best 3D graphics on the 16 bit systems, and some fantastic pixel art too (Microprose were always good in that regard).

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

I’ll make sure to include them in my next batch of WinUAE downloads. Never played them back in the day. Owned the first one on ST mind.

 

[hariseldon]

I’ll make sure to include them in my next batch of WinUAE downloads. Never played them back in the day. Owned the first one on ST mind.

You owned it on ST and never played it? I mean Microprose games were expensive back in the day, with their huge boxes and massive manuals. £35 vs the typical £25 if I recall. You must have been one of those rich bastards!

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Yeah it was a typical Microprose box wasn’t it.

It’s the same as modern day gaming, I have a pile of shame I’ve never played.

 

[hariseldon]

Yeah it was a typical Microprose box wasn’t it.

It’s the same as modern day gaming, I have a pile of shame I’ve never played.

Back then I couldn't afford a pile of shame. Games were so expensive! £25 in 1990 is £57 now, and £35 is £80 now. That's insane money.

 

[rnlval]

Colour swaps may be harder, who knows, who cares. They work the same on the STFM btw - just from 512 colours instead of 4096. Nobody here is trying to pretend the STE was more powerful than the Amiga, and it's beginning to come off a bit console-warriorish. I'm happy to talk Amiga in here, it's all part of that same era of awesomeness but really do we have to rehash the wars of the early 90s? It's correct that the STE was too little too late, ST owners are only too aware of Atari's shortcomings, hell even ST Format, the de facto official ST magazine of the era, was sufficiently pissed off with Atari's antics as to regularly rip into them. Frankly though both companies were run by idiots, and the demise of both companies reflects that. None of that changes how utterly fucking magical these games were.

Atari is run by the same crap Commodore style management i.e. ex-Commodore CEO Jack Tramiel.

Both Commodore and Atari wasted their graphics hardware lead. Commodore also wasted on two 256 color register chipsets i.e. C65 and AGA.

For Commodore
C65 prototype was completed in late 1990. C65 has 256 colors (8 bitplanes) with a 4096 color palette. This project is canceled after a working C65 prototype was completed.
AGA prototype was completed in Feb 1991. AGA has 256 colors (8 bitplanes) with +16 million color palette. This project was delayed until Q4 1992.
Amiga Ranger project has 128 colors (7-bitplanes) with a 4096 color palette in 1987. Jay Miner made sure that the Ranger chipset was completed and fully tested before he left Commodore. This project is canceled. LOL.

The R&D effort was split into C65 and AAA (AGA was a cut-down AAA chipset) projects. AAA chipset R&D was running late, hence the AGA fork.

Key Amiga engineers jump ship and help design 3DO. 3DO's price tag was expensive.

From 1984, almost every 3 years, the Amiga has a new chipset prototype i.e. 1984, 1987, and early 1991. Both Atari and Commodore management didn't understand Moore's law pacing i.e. a tech company must have quick internal pacing for R&D and "new" product release.

One of the main reasons for Sony selecting AMD is its R&D road map.

 

[hariseldon]

So we arrive at December 1989. Before I get to that issue of ST Format however, allow me an indulgance. December 1989, specifically Christmas Day, was when I got my Atari 520STFM.

You honestly wouldn't believe the memories that come flooding back seeing those. I was 9, coming up to 10, and I'd only had the Amstrad CPC 464, which was a machine of very limited capability. I'd done some coding on it, of course, as we all did back then, and I'd patiently waited the 10 minutes it took for games to load from tape, but it wasn't on anything like the level of the Atari ST. So I got my Atari ST, which cost about £299 it seems, which is about £750 in 2020 money. The Power Pack came with 12 disks containing 20 games, many of which were stone cold classics.

Included with the pack was a free mini-issue of ST Format - http://stformat.com/stf00/index.html - which gave a pretty solid rundown of what I needed to know about the Atari ST. It told you how to work the desktop, told you a bit about Atari, sneakily contained cheats for most of the power pack games (perhaps to stop people from spending too long on them without buying new games?) and listed some classic games everyone should have (including some in the pack). It must have done wonders for sales of the magazine, as I can't be the only one who went on to buy issue after issue (my first was issue 8, just in time for my birthday).

So, onto the games. Each disk contained 1-3 games, and most of them were absolute classics. To go with that, you got instructions on a disk-sized sheet of card, which would usually be enough to get the basic gist of how the game worked. The memorable exception was Super Huey which I could just about get airborne but no further. I suspect though that the game was just utterly shit, rather than it being an issue with the manual's content.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk A
Afterburner

This was Afterburner. Waiting for the disk to load while those magnificent planes filled my screen, like every male in the Western World I dreamed of flying those amazing fighter jets after watching too much Top Gun. Then, the music kicked in. Chip music it may have been but it had rock attitude, it had that Topgun feel.

I press fire and wait. The music carries on, the disk churns away and I'm ready. In truth, 9 year old me was enthralled, the speech samples adding to the excitement though in the cold light of day it's clear they have nothing to do with anything that's actually going on. Indeed, I'm shooting and shooting but it's not entirely clear at what. Animation chugs along at two frames per second if I'm being generous, and while still shots look beautiful, there's no doubt that it suffers in motion. Eventually I see some actual planes, and it all starts to make more sense (I thought the smoke coming at me meant something but instead it was planes overtaking me that I had to shoot).

The rendering speed improves noticeably after a weird refuelling sequence in space as I then take on planes in space. Or maybe at night. It looks like space though. While doing this I remember that you can do a barrel roll by going to one side, then rapidly flicking the stick away and then back to that side. Not quite sure what benefit there is to doing it but I'm sure as hell going to do it anyway.

In truth, it's a god-awful conversion both due to its poor speed and its complete lack of correlation between aim, firing and things exploding, but it didn't matter as a kid. It was planes doing barrel rolls and shit blowing up, and I fucking loved it.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk B
R-Type - https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-st-format-challenge.1533843/post-258080340

I've already reviewed R-Type (see the link) but I'll just give a quick mention. It's a side-scrolling shooter, a conversion of an arcade classic, with solid performance for a game of that era. I tried it this time with a proper Atari ST joystick and it was in all honesty better than when I reviewed it originally. Proper microswitches make the world of difference to how the game feels and how it responds to your actions. If you're going to play ST games, get a proper Speedlink USB joystick!

Disk C
Gauntlet 2
I have very few positive memories of childhood with my Dad - he was more interested in getting drunk or wrecked on drugs than being a parent, but Gauntlet 2 was a rare highlight. Every now and then we'd plug in a joystick each and tackle the dungeons, that rare moment of him not making perfectly clear that he thought I was a waste of space.

We open with that shot of the arcade cabinet as the game loads, then the shot of our four heroes as the sampled music plays ominously. The palette is scrolled to animate the logo, and then we get a short instructional screen telling us what's an enemy, what's food, and so on, and we all know that Red Valkyrie shot the food. The bitch.

Welcome, red warrior. That sample greeted you, and a unique sample for any other player who joined the game. The sound on this game was something special and lent it incredible charm - something I would later experience with classics like Mega Lo Mania (which was ergonomically terrific) and Stronghold where the people loathed me sire. It's amazing how the right voice sample can just make a huge difference, adding so much charm, and when you hear it decades later it can take you right back.

For those who don't know, Gauntlet is a top-down game where you and up to 3 other players (though the 3rd and 4th required an adaptor most people didn't have) can wander around shooting enemies, collecting treasure, eating (or shooting) the food, and trying to get to the next level without dying.

Enemy behaviour wasn't particularly sophisticated - for the most part a mob would swarm towards you in the fastest straight line route and would thus be outwitted by a wall, but that's fine - that was enemy behaviour not as AI but as a puzzle to solve. You could be creative picking up the amulets to gain invisibility or invulnerability, or you could just rush through and take the hits and hope you found enough food to keep you going. A wise man would always, however, take out the spawn points if possible to end the wave of enemies. A wise man also avoids the god damn teleport amulet because you can't pick anything up.

There was one enemy though which was particularly nasty. Death. Red warrior is about to die. I was never entirely clear what the black thing was, it looked a bit like a tap, but maybe it was a wizard in a dark robe. Who knows. Either way, it put the shits right up me.

Levels were wonderfully creative with walls switching on timers releasing or containing the mob, flashing floor segments either draining life or triggering level alterations (usually removing a wall). Keys would open gates, and potions would help clear an area. Graphics were technically nothing special but consider the number of sprites being thrown around, and consider that the graphics were always distinctive, you could tell what everything was and its purpose was clear, in a way a triumph of art style over technicality.

For me, Gauntlet 2 still holds up brilliantly though I think it would hold up better as a twin-stick game - it would certainly be easier.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk D
Super Hang-On - https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-st-format-challenge.1533843/post-257887920

While I've already reviewed Super Hang-On I just want to say that it's loads of fun, probably one of the best 2D racing games on the ST. The music is epic.




Disk E
Space Harrier

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Space Harrier has a curious start - the music gently playing over an animation of the player character waving while astride a giant robot as a one-eyed wooly mammoth looks around. The music is so out of place for the game.

Control is via mouse instead of joystick, and I think this is wise, giving better control of the action. For those who don't know, it's a 3rd person game where you're running (and flying) into the screen shooting wave after wave of enemies.

Clicking to start, the colourful graphics hit you straight away - a world away from what the 8-bit machines offered. The music is pretty decent by chiptune standards, and there are some lovely (if low quality) sound samples - screaming when you die and saying something like "smash dragon" when you restart. Animation is smooth despite flinging a lot of sprites around (helped in part by the ground movement being driven by palette swapping rather than actually moving bits), and the game is a hell of a lot of fun. It's shallow of course, repetitive in its way, and devilishly hard, but all those are things you expect of a coin-op conversion, where the objective is to get the next player up as quickly as possible.

Stage two is something of a pain in the arse with the indestructible pillars and I'd imagine a lot of people saw game over for colliding with one.

One interesting thing is that the game credits P. Cuisset - I recognised that name from Operation Stealth so I googled and it seemed that he went on to become the lead designer at Delphine Software, where he created Flashback. It's a small world. It seems this was his only game before joining Delphine work, so he clearly landed on his feet.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Back then I couldn't afford a pile of shame. Games were so expensive! £25 in 1990 is £57 now, and £35 is £80 now. That's insane money.

Full time employment from 16 plus 14/15 helping out during school summer holidays at my best mates family run Volkswagen restoration company got me lots of cash in hand back then. For my age.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk F
Disk F was the first multi-game disk, with a super-simple selector, none of the scrolling messages and music found on the cracking scene disks.

Starglider 1
Starglider is a 3D space combat game. Controls are simple - holding down the right button and moving forward accelerates, right button and back decelerates, moving left, right up and down work as you'd expect and the left button fires lasers. The I key interrogates silos, but that's it. That's the controls. There's a story but I won't subject myself to it - the novella with Starglider 2 was more than enough.

The game opens with some gorgeous sampled music, "staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarglider.... from rainbird rainbird rainbird rainbird...". Absolute banging tune and I'd love to hear more!



Unfortunately the game looks like this...

... and really while it's super-smooth that's because it's not really doing a lot. In the end, it's not very pretty, nor very interesting. The intro was the only thing about this game that interested me as a kid, and so it remains.


Overlander
Overlander is another of those 2D rolling-road racing games, this one with a combat element, placing it very much in the same group as the likes of Chase HQ (which always looked incredibly exciting to me as a kid but I never got to play it). It's set in a post-apocalyptic future, think Mad Max, the year 2025. The ozone layer collapsed at the end of the 20th century and now the soil is dry and scorched. People have retreated to underground cities to avoid the radiation from the sun. I'm not sure that prediction aged too well.

Your role is to deliver supplies between cities via surface freeways, as one of a select group of nutters willing to do so. You drive, you customise your car for more speed and more weapons, simple. It's a game that made appearances on C64, Atari ST and Amiga - the difference between the ST and Amiga version is surprisingly large, with the ST version really looking like an early 16-bit title in many ways.

In terms of the game itself - while the graphics are way behind the Amiga version, the frame rate is super-smooth, probably one of the smoothest of this type on the ST, which is probably in part due to the rolling road routine being somewhat unsophisticated. There seems little penalty for going past the edges of the road and much of it is simply straight with no corner, no undulation. That said, it's probably sensible to simplify tracks when there's a combat element, though this seems somewhat lacking. The car can fire bullets, and some cars will return fire, but much of the challenge actually comes from avoiding environmental hazards like poorly placed road signs, etc, for which your weapons are not much use.

It's a shame really that the game doesn't quite come off as the atmosphere is fantastic, the colour palette and the artwork gives the game a properly apocalyptic feel, but the game doesn't quite deliver, which is a shame. I recall being really impressed by this as a kid, but it doesn't hold up.

Super Huey
Honestly Super Huey is one of the worst games I've ever played. Visuals are awful, the controls are the product of insanity and the graphics wouldn't look out of place on a spectrum. I'll just leave this here.

 

[hariseldon]

Full time employment from 16 plus 14/15 helping out during school summer holidays at my best mates Volkswagen restoration company got me lots of cash in hand back then. For my age.

I was 10 so had to rely on pocket money sadly - such is life.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk G
Eliminator

Eliminator isn't a bad game necessarily, but when I reached for disk G I was only after one thing, and that was Nebulus. Sometimes Pac Mania as that was brilliant too, but mostly Nebulus. The loading screen is rather ugly, though it looks somewhat better if you apply a CRT filter.

The game itself isn't bad, visually. It has some issues in that it's hard to figure out what's a collectable and what's an enemy, and it's hard to know what can be shot and destroyed and what is indestructible. Additionally, collision detection is decidedly dodgy. In the end, it's quite easy to see why I didn't play this one.

Nebulus - https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-st-format-challenge.1533843/post-257689119

I've already reviewed this one but I just want to say that this game is an absolute classic. Bastard hard, but a classic that holds up today. This game caused endless foul language from me as a child (hey I was sweary - I had a school report stating that my language was worse than a building site), but damn it was fun.

Pac-Mania

Pac-mania is a glorious recreation of Pac-man in an isometric style. Visually it's an absolute treat. Sadly it only uses about 60% of the screen while the Amiga version uses the whole screen, probably a product of the ST's more limited capabilities, but it's still a brilliant game. If I were to find fault, such a close up view does present the problem of not being able to see enough of the overall maze and thus it being easier for ghosts to sneak up on you. That said, the isometric view isn't just for decoration as it allows you to jump over the ghosts, which can be handy when the fast orange ghost is chasing you.

The loading screen is a gorgeous bit of pixel art, and that quality carries through the entire game. Music is decent, a reasonably tuneful chip ditty. In-game the limitations of the ST's palette become somewhat clear, but it still looks excellent and scrolls at a decent pace.

See if you can spot my entries on the high score table.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk H
Predator

Confession time - I've never seen the film. Perhaps I might have enjoyed the game more if I had? Who knows. The intro is cool, with a nicely digitised shot of Arnie and then an animated UFO flying around the Earth and some scrolly text, with a suitably funky 80s chiptune which doesn't sound like it was in the film (I'm sure someone will correct me).

Predator is not a complex game. You run (slowly, through treacle), you shoot, you die. Sometimes you can throw grenades, though you have to use the keyboard (an awkward illustration of why the single-button was a mistake). The graphics look like they belong on a C64 and the game runs at a bare 2 frames per second. Like much of the world in 2020, Arnie can get fucked up by bats. Something tells me that's not in the original film. To the game's credit, collision detection is solid (if generous to the player) and there's a clear link between action performed and result, which places it ahead of Afterburner.

For the most part the game is fairly easy, with the exception of the predator being able to one-shot you. Overall, it's not quite as bad as I remember but I won't be rushing to play it again.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Ah there you go you see!

Plus one of my jobs when younger was Saturday job at an indy games shop. Used to let you borrow the games for the weekend / week. If a punter came in to buy a copy and it was the only one left you had to bring it back next day.

Also used to borrow X Copy Professional at the same time (with dongle for perfect copies)

Also I’m sure there would have been some disappointed kids when they plugged Sonic 3 into their Megadrives and found the save slots already used up - on a brand new game that we put through the shrink wrap machine downstairs while we went to ‘fetch you a copy from out back’

 

[hariseldon]

Disk I
Bomb Uzal

Bombuzal opens with a simple loading screen with an exquisitely drawn uzal and a pretty decent bomb, though the crack monster in the background is less appealing. We get treated to some twee chip music, and the game can begin. A sampled voice tells player one to get ready, and we're ready to go.

Bomb Uzal is a neat little puzzle game, presented in an isometric view, in which your objective is to blow up all the squares. Your little blue chap can trigger bombs placed around the level, or move them if they were on sliders. Some tiles would disappear after you stepped off them. Bombs would often set off chain reactions, and often a larger bomb would set off a really big bang. It was a simple idea, but one that was executed wonderfully with some really lovely graphics and presentation around what might otherwise be quite a dry concept. Certainly 9-year-old me had a good time with it, and truth be told, 40-year-old me quite enjoys it too. It's in a similar category to Jumping Jack Son for me, though perhaps JJS has a little more charm.

The first level is simple enough, and difficulty ramps up slowly, introducing new mechanics gently. The first level introduces bombs and disappearing tiles, while the second introduces ice tiles across which uzal slides and bigger bombs which have a larger explosive radius.

Bomb Jack

Bomb Jack is a different beast entirely. A simple single-screen game, technically it's not much, and yet it has buckets of charm and playability. The loading screen brings back so many memories, along with a chip tune which isn't anything special technically but is still reasonably catchy. The basic objective is to clear all the bombs, getting points for each one, and getting more if you get them in the right sequence (the clue is the fuse being lit). You have to avoid nasties wandering the level, unless you pick up a bonus that stops them moving and lets you kill them.

What makes the game is its movement, which allows your character to do a higher jump than you might expect as well as being able to slow your descent. Visually, while not technically outstanding, everything is clear and you know what each object is and does.

Xenon 1

Xenon 2 is very highly regarded, but Xenon 1, the Bitmap Brothers first game, is somewhat forgotten. In some ways it's a little lacking some of the Bitmap's classic touches - it has the chrome but lacks some of their traditional graphical flair and the colour palette isn't developed yet. That said, it's a fairly polished, if somewhat formulaic, shooter. No signs of the coming greatness but nothing to be ashamed of either. There's a hook that you can switch between ground and air but that's about as inventive as it gets. It's very very smooth by the standards of the time, albeit not moving especially rapidly.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk J
Double Dragon

I spent so much time on this as a kid, and it's one of the earliest games I remember beating, facing the gun-toting giant at the end. It opens with that wonderful sampled music over a loading screen which isn't much technically but created so much atmosphere. And then the game starts, and dear god it's ugly. And the animation is shit (2 frames to kick, 3 to walk, 1 to jump). But I don't care. I remember all the controls, and I can still have a blast with it. No, it's not as good as Streets Of Rage but who gives a shit? It's still fun.

I still love the sampled death noise. I still love the hilarious massive guys. I still enjoy the whip girls. I still think this game rocks for all that the conversion is utter shite. I still get annoyed that the weapons are useless up close. I still get annoyed that you can't throw enemies into each other. On the other hand I can throw barrels into people and the headbutt is present (it's mysteriously absent in DD2). Most importantly, in 2-player you can beat the shit out of each other.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Some legends of games there plus some absolute turds.

Used to just listen to the Starglider song at the beginning. Was shit at the game. Another good package though, story book, manual, disk etc.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk K
Black Lamp

So Black Lamp, for me looking back after playing so many games, exists in a similar place to Verminator, in that it's very pretty, the art is lovely, but it doesn't really go anywhere, it doesn't flow. The intro screen is pretty, with decent chip music. Press fire and it drops you straight into the game.

The sprites are large and well-drawn, backgrounds are detailed if perhaps not as colourful as you'd like and they're a bit cluttered so you can't be sure what's what. The frame rate is slow, and navigation is tricky as everywhere looks quite samey. One other problem is that frankly there is no way to actually avoid some of what's coming at you owing to such a limited range of movement.

Outrun

Outrun comes with a certain notoriety - we all know it's a terrible port. But I played the hell out of it as a kid. In part for the brilliant music (even if it is a chip tune version - and yes Super Hang On is better). In part just because I'm driving a god damn Ferrari in gorgeous locations. In part because when I went to any arcade I always gravitated towards the racing sims. If only I knew then that I'd be 40 and have a ridiculous VR rig with wheel and pedals at home when I grew up, and that I'd get to race against actual F1 drivers.

The game runs with all the speed of an arthritic snail, poorly coded as it was, but it looks lovely. The cars, the palm trees, the spectators, it all takes me to a wonderful place that's hard to explain to someone who's never played it. I'd forgotten the disk access between stages.. that was a ballache. The big gimmick of branching stages is present, providing a bit of longevity and no doubt that helped get some more coins out of people.

Overall, it's a poor conversion of a great game, but Super Hang On is better.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk L
Star Ray

Star Ray opens with a lovely loading screen and some reasonable chip music. It doesn't mess about - pressing fire takes you straight into the game.

The game itself is a Defender clone, albeit one that is ludicrously smooth with insane parallax scrolling. Sound isn't bad and it's reasonably solid as a game, but for whatever reason this never grabbed me. Shooters generally didn't, they didn't seem to me to have much depth (albeit I appreciate more the layers that can exist in a shooter these days). It's ok, nothing special.

Star Goose - https://www.neogaf.com/threads/the-st-format-challenge.1533843/post-257887707
Star goose is a pretty-looking game, a vertical shooter, one with a manual with an interesting sense of humour which you totally miss in the Power Pack version. It wasn't one of my most-played games, but it wasn't bad for what it was.

 

[hariseldon]

Disk M
Language Disk

The language disk is just an old-fashioned Basic, in this case First Basic. I'm not sure I'll be able to go into much depth with this one when it's been decades and I don't particularly want to learn a shit basic! As you can see, I did what I needed to do.

Disk N
Organiser

This was what we had instead of Microsoft Office. A text editor which could do bold, italic and underline, but no different fonts. A spreadsheet that I haven't yet managed to figure out how to do a formula on. A calendar which as far as I can tell just lets you type some text in each date box.

Disk O
Music Maker

Music maker is a surprisingly charming little tool to create music using either the sound chip or a connected MIDI device. It can handle rather more than you might expect and while I don't remember playing with it much as a kid I can imagine it helped a few people into the world of music. The biggest headaches I found were mostly in the drum editor where you can't have any polyphony and clicking one cell tends to trigger other cells.

Someone has kindly done a video on the Power Pack so you can see the machine and its games in action.

 

[hariseldon]

Well fuck me that was an absolute beast of a post. I split it into multiple parts to make it manageable.

 

[wolfmat]

Great stuff. Brings back memories. Thanks for posting!

Powerpack was brilliant, but couldn't hold a candle against the shopping bags full of cracked games and demos that were brought into Germany (where I am) from Denmark, France etc. That flood was inescapable.
Piracy was really something back then.

We had this lawyer dude called Günter Werner Freiherr von Gravenreuth who made it his life's mission to prosecute piracy at all costs, even if it meant going completely overboard with allegations and the cease-and-decists. Hard to forget the guy. Maybe you've heard of him? He was quite the character. Died in 2010 though.

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

I am absolutely loving this forum thread. I hope it continues indefinitely.

My family in Duluth, Minnesota were all diehard Atarians and we all had the 800XL. My grandfather later upgraded to the 130XE, although I must admit that I always preferred the older model. I kept using that computer through high school and it's still probably my all-time favorite videogame platform. I've enjoyed the PC emulators, but they've always been a bit glitchy and were never as good as the real thing.

Strangely enough, nobody in Duluth ever bought an Atari ST, even though there was a robust Atari scene (Atari Corp. even had a PO Box in town). Everybody just stuck with the 8-bits. I finally managed to play around with an ST emulator early this year and I really enjoyed it. For what it was trying to achieve in the 1980s, it was a very good series of 16-bit computers. I probably played around with the productivity software more than anything, especially the word processors, and if I owned an STe or Mega STe, I would definitely be taking advantage of those MIDI ports and recording on Cubase. Hmm, I wonder if you could create podcasts that way? That would be awesome.

For games, I only played a handful of titles so far. Llamatron is my favorite by far, especially when running in 16MHz Mega STe mode. There was one formula one racing title that I really enjoyed, although I can't remember the name. The recent Pac-Mania and Pole Position homebrew translations are both excellent and worth playing. Dungeon Master is a bonafide classic.

Overall, the Atari ST isn't quite as good as the Commodore Amiga for games, but it is very good at many specific titles and the computer is very well balanced between different software applications. I really wish that I owned one back in the day.

 

[hariseldon]

wolfmat - The Power Pack was indeed brilliant. Funny thing is I didn't have any contacts to get pirate stuff so I had to buy my games. I got an Amiga later and that was a little heavier for piracy - there was a little independent computer shop in town and they had a selection of used floppies that might just happen to have stuff on them. Very shady but it saved me a lot of money.

Daniel Thomas MacInnes I reckon it'll keep going a good while yet. We're just coming up to what I consider to be the ST's golden era - about 18 months of wall-to-wall quality with volume. It slows down a bit after that but there's still some solid material. Once ST Format is done I might fill some 16-bit gaps with Amiga Power and WinUAE, though I also plan to do a thread around making a game on the Atari ST - see if I can still do it 25 years since I last made an ST game.

 

[hariseldon]

This is a folder on my Raspberry Pi server.

Amiga Format is pretty complete.
Amiga Power - missing 35 out of 65 issues.
PC Gamer - only have a small selection - was never hugely into them
PC Zone - complete
ST/Amiga Format - Complete
ST Format - Complete
ST Review - Complete
The One For 16-Bit Games - Complete
The One For Amiga Games - Complete
The One For ST Games - Only got a few issues
Zero - Complete

I'm a sad fucker.

EDIT: Just found a server with a bunch of Amiga Power PDFs on it - currently raping said server.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Don’t forget

Atari ST User Atari magazine scans, pdf

ST Action Atari magazine scans, pdf

 

[hariseldon]

Don’t forget

Atari ST User Atari magazine scans, pdf

ST Action Atari magazine scans, pdf

ST User never really interested me - I picked up a few ST Action a while back but there's no complete collections around and while they're clearly enthusiasts the production quality was often quite poor.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

How many issues of the one for Amiga were there?

 

[hariseldon]

How many issues of the one for Amiga were there?

I’ve got May 91 to Jan 96 - that’s about 56 issues I think. Can ping you a link if you like - running off home connection so may be slow.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

I’ve got May 91 to Jan 96 - that’s about 56 issues I think. Can ping you a link if you like - running off home connection so may be slow.

Thats cool - I don't want to leech your mags off you, thanks for the offer.

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Not the best quality but top to bottom

Amiga Power, The One (dual and then The One Amiga) Zzap! 64 then some old Xbox mags on the very bottom.

Other side but out of shot, complete The Games Machine, and various Mean Machines, Super Play, C&VG, ACE and Commodore User.

 

[hariseldon]

Not the best quality but top to bottom

Amiga Power, The One (dual and then The One Amiga) Zzap! 64 then some old Xbox mags on the very bottom.

Other side but out of shot, complete The Games Machine, and various Mean Machines, Super Play, C&VG, ACE and Commodore User.

Holy shit that is genuinely amazing! Also - if there's anything missing in your collection, you're more than welcome to grab stuff from my server. Honestly, not a problem.

 

[Havoc2049]

Nice write up on the Power Pack, haridelden. I don't think the Power Pack ever came to the US. We only had the regular bundles, which came with the system disk, language disk w/BASIC and LOGO, NeoCrome and 1st Word. We did get a few of the Discovery Packs, but no where near as many as the UK. I still have my STE Discovery pack, which includes all the programs from the regular pack (without the lame LOGO), along with Sim City, Final Fight, Escape From the Planet of the Robot Monsters and 9 Lives.

I've been playing Star Raiders and Techno Cop on my ST over the past few days. I was never able to finish Techno Cop back when I was a kid, but I'm making an undaunted attempt to finish that sucker off this time. After that, I may dig into something deeper, like a RPG or a sim.

 

[hariseldon]

Nice write up on the Power Pack, haridelden. I don't think the Power Pack ever came to the US. We only had the regular bundles, which came with the system disk, language disk w/BASIC and LOGO, NeoCrome and 1st Word. We did get a few of the Discovery Packs, but no where near as many as the UK. I still have my STE Discovery pack, which includes all the programs from the regular pack (without the lame LOGO), along with Sim City, Final Fight, Escape From the Planet of the Robot Monsters and 9 Lives.

I've been playing Star Raiders and Techno Cop on my ST over the past few days. I was never able to finish Techno Cop back when I was a kid, but I'm making an undaunted attempt to finish that sucker off this time. After that, I may dig into something deeper, like a RPG or a sim.

I'm envious of you having a real Atari ST to play with. I remember seeing 9 lives in magazines - it looked absolutely amazing, I can't wait to give that a proper go. Sim City was of course a work of genius, even in 96 when I was at school everyone was playing that during IT lessons instead of doing actual work. Such an incredible game.

 

[hariseldon]

ST Format Issue 6 - Download

The World in December 1989
The biggest news would have to be on the 3rd of December, when Margaret Thatcher, George Bush (Sr) and Mikhail Gorbachev declared the Cold War over. This was back when Britain was still relevant, in large part due to sheer force of will from Maggie. 2 days later she would defeat Anthony Meyer (who?) in a leadership challenge.

In the UK, aside from Maggie's leadership challenge, we had the privatised water companies going on the stock market, making some people a LOT of money. Labour began its path towards Blairite sanity by abandoning its policy on closed shops. The economy continued to slide, inflation hit 7.8% during the year while growth dipped to 1.7%, with house prices in London falling 10% to an average of £86000 (what I wouldn't give for prices to be that sane now).

Britain experienced its worst flu epidemic since the 70s with a million infections recorded by December, with hospitals forced to cancel surgery. We did not shut the country down. The estimated death count was between 19000 and 29000.

Elsewhere in the world, the entire Socualist Unity Party in East Germany resigned en-masse, part of the growing movement toward ending Communism and the cold war. In Czechoslovakia, a new non-Communist cabinet was sworn in, and in Chile the first free election in 16 years was held, and Brazil had their first in 29 years. The Romanian revolution began, this revolution would eventually lead to the overthrow of Nicolae Ceausescu, an incredibly corrupt Communist dictator.

Honestly it's so odd - the UK's economy was fucked, but outside of that there was so much hope, so much expectation, the world was throwing off the shackles of Communism and the light of Freedom shone brightly, a beacon of hope to all. This was the end of history, the future would be forever bright and prosperous. And now, look at us. We fucked it.

On TV the big event was Clive James On The 80s, broadcast on New Year's Eve. In less welcome news, Doctor Who finally ended after 26 years - it would be a long wait for it to return with a fairly shit movie somewhere in the middle.



It's two hours, it's from a VHS recording (quality improves dramatically a few minutes in), but it's totally worth your time. I remember staying up late to watch it - I'm sure some of the jokes flew over my head but I watched it again recently and it was amazing. It puts you right there in the moment, the 80s viewed through an 80s lens.

Elsewhere, the Simpsons premiered on Fox, and would go on to be a huge part of what defines the 90s.

The film charts are fucking GLORIOUS! Ghostbusters 2 at #1, Back To The Future 2 at #2, When Harry Met Sally at #3, honestly three of my all-time favourites, with Field Of Dreams at #4. We'll never see a chart that good again.

The album chart sees Phil Collins at #1, and I know it's not fashionable to like Phil, but I do so tough titties. Anyone who doesn't like Another Day In Paradise isn't human. Meanwhile, someone was stretching a joke far too thin with Jive Bunny at #2. Kylie was doing her thing at #3 but more importantly, Tina Turner had an absolute banger of an album, Foreign Affair, at #4 with the likes of Steamy Windows, The Best and I Don't Wanna Lose You, songs which really take me right back there.

The singles chart has Band Aid 2 at number 1. It's not as good as the first one. Lambada was a bit of a sensation at #5 despite being painfully mediocre - no idea why it was in the charts in December when it was the kind of song you'd hear on holiday in Spain with all the other Brits. It's a weak top 10, but then that's how it usually was around Christmas.

The best songs were probably Tina Turner's I Don't Wanna Lose You and Madonna's Dear Jessie.




The Magazine
Issue 6 came out in December 1989, on the cusp of the 90s, so you would expect it to either summarise the 80s or showcase the 90s, mixed in with plenty of things to buy for Christmas, and for the most part this is what they do. The cover disk is a demo of Tower Of Babel, which so cruelly confused the shit out of me last issue, and perhaps the cover mount explains it getting format gold. There's a big feature on musicians using the ST, though not people you've actually heard of which is disappointing considering the kind of people who were using the ST back then - people like Queen, Madonna, Soul II Soul, etc. It really was incredible how popular the machine actually was. We also have a review covering the Atari ST's other area of strength, DTP. Calamus, the GOAT, is pitted against Fleet Street 3. Calamus weighs in at £399 and requires a Mega 2 ST to run well, while Fleet Street 3 costs £199 and requires 1MB RAM. To put that into modern context, £399 is about £914 in modern money. These programs typically used the ST's high resolution monochrome mode (640 x 400 compared to the usual 16 colour 320 x 200).

Going back a bit, the news section is quite damning, describing Atari's dismal financial results and discussing the failure of the 1040STE to hit the Christmas market with stocks running low and Atari flying in replacements, and developers not being terribly impressed by the STE (and who can blame them - it's a pretty incremental step up from the STFM that does little to challenge the superior graphics of the Amiga).

Previews
There's a lengthy chat with the developers of Champion Of The Raj, a Cinemaware-style game from Level 9 who made Scapeghost (which scored a lowly 35% this issue). The main preview section however contains single screenshots and a paragraph each for Resolution 101, Damocles (fantastic game), STUN Runner, P47, Wild Streets, Space Harrier 2, Lords Of The Rising Sun, Loom, Infestation, Cyberball, Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters and Dark Century (the first game to have raytracing allegedly).

Reviews
Games reviewed this month:
Ninja Warriors (Run And Stab - Virgin Games - £19.99 - 69%)
Pictionary (It's fucking pictionary - Domark - £24.95 - 72%)
Stormlord (Fantasy run and gun - Hewson - £19.99 - 80%)
Day Of The Viper (Sci-Fi Future First person shooter in Dungeon Master Style - Accolade - £19.95 - 80%)
Snoopy (gorgeous-looking Snoopy game with huge sprites - The Edge - £19.95)
Toobin (rafting sim - Domark - £19.95 - 74%)
Axel's Magic Hammer (Platformer - Gremlin - £19.99 - 76%)
Hawaiian Odyssey (flight sim data disk - Sublogic - £19.99 - 73%)
Batman (multi-part minigame movie tie-in - Ocean - £24.99 - 91% Format Gold)
Hard Drivin (3D Racer - Domark - £2495 - 84%)
Turbo Outrun (Racer - US Gold - £19.99 - 70%)
Powerdrift (Racer - Activision - £24.95 - 83%)
Galaxy Force (into-the-screen shooter - Activision - 68%)
Jumping Jackson (Musical puzzler - Infogrames - £19.95 - 56% - morons!)
Safari Guns (Utter turd - Infrogrames - £19.95)
Ghouls N Ghosts (run and stab - US Gold - £19.99 - 84%)
Super Wonder Boy In Monster Land (Platformer - Activision - £24.99 - 82%)
Super League Soccer (Management game - Impressions - £19.95 - 62%)
Scapeghost (Adventure - Level 9 - £19.95 - 35%)

Quite an impressive selection this month, as we head into the ST's golden 18 months. Next year issues 17 and 18 are absolutely huge, stuffed to the gills with games, but this one's pretty full, and we're starting to see some properly 16-bit stuff appear. Of those, there are quite a few I'd like to have a crack at. Ninja Warriors could be worth a punt, as could Stormlord. My love of the Peanuts cartoons means I'll have to play Snoopy. Batman and Ghouls n Ghosts are essentials, given their reputations, and Hard Drivin and Turbo Outrun are essential with my love of racing games. Jumping Jackson was awesome so I'll be doing a brief run through of that too. I'm going to be busy. 12 games are ready in my ST Games folder - locked and loaded. Might not necessarily cover all of them if some turn out a bit dull, but either way we'll get a decent selection.

I'm also planning to do a bit more with the cover disks in future as quite a few of them were pretty interesting. Might kick off with this one if it's interesting enough, might not, but it'll likely be an occasional thing.

 

[hariseldon]

Just found a useful resource btw for any ST game hunters:

https://atari.8bitchip.info/MenuDG.html

Lists the games on all the major pirate sets.

 

[SirTerry-T]

So we arrive at December 1989. Before I get to that issue of ST Format however, allow me an indulgance. December 1989, specifically Christmas Day, was when I got my Atari 520STFM.

You honestly wouldn't believe the memories that come flooding back seeing those. I was 9, coming up to 10, and I'd only had the Amstrad CPC 464, which was a machine of very limited capability. I'd done some coding on it, of course, as we all did back then, and I'd patiently waited the 10 minutes it took for games to load from tape, but it wasn't on anything like the level of the Atari ST. So I got my Atari ST, which cost about £299 it seems, which is about £750 in 2020 money. The Power Pack came with 12 disks containing 20 games, many of which were stone cold classics.

Included with the pack was a free mini-issue of ST Format - http://stformat.com/stf00/index.html - which gave a pretty solid rundown of what I needed to know about the Atari ST. It told you how to work the desktop, told you a bit about Atari, sneakily contained cheats for most of the power pack games (perhaps to stop people from spending too long on them without buying new games?) and listed some classic games everyone should have (including some in the pack). It must have done wonders for sales of the magazine, as I can't be the only one who went on to buy issue after issue (my first was issue 8, just in time for my birthday).

So, onto the games. Each disk contained 1-3 games, and most of them were absolute classics. To go with that, you got instructions on a disk-sized sheet of card, which would usually be enough to get the basic gist of how the game worked. The memorable exception was Super Huey which I could just about get airborne but no further. I suspect though that the game was just utterly shit, rather than it being an issue with the manual's content.

I think I got mine the year before, as it was an expensive bit of kit for a working class family bang in the middle of The Black Country, it was a shared present for me and my brother...and also Christmas AND birthday present

My parents ordered it from good old Silica Shop...

 

[hariseldon]

I think I got mine the year before, as it was an expensive bit of kit for a working class family bang in the middle of The Black Country, it was a shared present for me and my brother...and also Christmas AND birthday present

My parents ordered it from good old Silica Shop...

No idea where mine came from tbh - birthdays weren't ever really much of a thing for me, it was Christmas and that was it. Still no idea how my parents afforded it, it was pretty much the only decent thing they ever did (we did not get on - drunken drug-addicted arseholes and all that). That machine was so important to my life - I was kicked out of school for 2.5 years for being a violent little shit and used the time to teach myself to code among other things, leading to my career now, with a nice house, cats, and a very middle-class wife. Thanks Atari!

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

Mine was from Virgin Megastore. Single sided disk drive for me though, but still the STFM. Christmas present.

Had Guild of Thieves (adventure) Leviathan and Hunt For Red October (some simulator game, my dad must have fancied that one. Was crap, didn’t know what I was doing, could never get the sub to move) also a hacked copy of Xenon given to my parents by one of the staff at Virgin...

Eventually bought and fitted a double sided drive from Evesham Micros.

 

[hariseldon]

So Turbo Outrun is genuinely dreadful. Jerks along at 1 frame per second and really lacks anything of the quality of the original. That's disappointing. I won't be doing a review as frankly it's not good enough to be worth doing.