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The ST Format Challenge

Ozzie666

Member
The power pack for Atari ST was the 80's version of Game Pass. Has there even been a better deal for a gamer than that power pack? Seriously, there is something for everyone in that pack. Some high quality games, arcade ports etc, big name titles. This is one of the reasons why software attach rates were so low and piracy was also so high. You hardly needed or wanted to buy any more games with this pack. Best hardware bundle of all time? maybe.

Such an aggressive offer, much like Saturn with Virtual Fighter, Cop and Daytona 3 pack. As a jumping off point from 8 bit machines, C64 or Spectrum, this was a good taste of next generation at the time. This is what healthy competition or fear of your competition brings.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Jumping Jackson
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ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was going to be Automation 239 but it decided not to work. In the end I went with SuperGAU 325 which has proven more helpful. It's not got the most exciting intro but at least it works.


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Launching the game we get the Infogrames armadillo dropping into view and bouncing into position - remarkably smooth for such a massive sprite. The we get the game screen proper with a fantastic sampled rock track in the background. Ok the audio quality isn't amazing but the music has attitude and is pretty solidly put together.

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Pressing fire takes us into the menu (after a bit of loading). We're treated to the sampled music here too. Visually it's an absolute treat, it looks gorgeous. Using the joystick you then select an option, in this case the start option.

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So what's the game about? It's a tile colour puzzle game at heart, where stepping on the coloured tiles changes their colour, with your objective being to get them all the same colour to collect a record. The record must be put in a record player of the appropriate colour. Each record gets you one part of the sampled song so one might get you the beat, another might get you the bass, another the guitar, and so on. However, classical instruments are trying to stop you. You have to avoid them, or die. The sprawling levels contain various power-ups from a leather jacket to shades to help you in your quest to be a bad-ass motherfucker and kick the shit out of some classical music, while burgers and coke bottle appear which only boost your score. Other upgrades include getting an extra slot on your jukebox so you can carry more records.

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Everything happens to a beat, making it almost turn-based in some ways. In traditional puzzle game fashion, the levels introduce new mechanics one at a time, becoming steadily more complex, but rarely overwhelming. I mentioned JJS in my review of Bomb Uzal because they do have a lot in common, not least a lot of charm, though JJS probably wins there, helped by characters who are animated exquisitely and drawn with a wonderful cartoon style.


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Every now and then you'll get a 'challenge' level with a time limit. This might be to visit every square. The reward is a password for the level you're on.

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Level 5 is particularly unfair as the teleports give you very limited transport options and often leave you stuck in a corner vs an evil instrument with no means to escape.

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Hopefully you can see from all these screenshots that it's an absolutely gorgeous game, a real visual treat. What you won't see is how insanely smoothly it runs, and how awesome the music is, seeming frankly out of place on the ST on all counts. It's top-notch stuff, clearly a developer showing off his skills and all power to him when the gameplay is so good too. I highly recommend Jumping Jackson.

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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Ninja Warriors
ninja_warriors_virgin_games_french_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was going to be Automation 319 which comes on 3 disks. The intro was a suitably jolly chip tune with a real emphasis on wibbly scrolling text. I can't fucking read most of it. The game however did not load properly, so I decided to try SuperGAU 287-9. That also didn't work. Finally Pompey Pirates, which actually fucking works. No cracktro but that's fine.

So what is Ninja Warriors? Well, first up, it's not this..



.. so get that out of your head right away. The game recognises the extra RAM and takes its time loading but eventually gets there.


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It's another side scrolling slash em up, probably the closest comparison I can make is Shinobi. Animation is wonderfully fluid, though graphics aren't particularly attractive, something about the art style just doesn't do it for me. Gameplay isn't hugely interesting either. It's ok, it's technically very competent, it's just not exciting.


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Whataborman

Unconfirmed Member
I have absolutely no idea what's going on here.

I crawled through a mile of sewage for you, for your entertainment.

Let's never speak of this again.


I had the exact same ALF game for PC back in the day. I never could figure out it.
 

Ozzie666

Member
That MCA intro is classic, simple, elegant and to the point. Such good times. Sometimes better than the software following it.
Ninja Warriors wasn't a terrible port either.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
That MCA intro is classic, simple, elegant and to the point. Such good times. Sometimes better than the software following it.
Ninja Warriors wasn't a terrible port either.
No doubt it was a good port, certainly it’s very strong technically, it’s just not a very interesting game.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Had a quick look at Axel's Magic Hammer to see if it was worth reviewing - I'd say probably not. While frame rate is better than average, the game itself is poor and visually it gives a clear impression of 8-bit roots. Gameplay is hampered by a piss-poor jumping mechanic and being possible to get stuck with no way out and no way to die. Skipping this one.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Hard Drivin
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ST Format Review

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My Review

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For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was Automation 188. The intro has a pretty decent chiptune accompanying a weird monster, and scrolly text with a graphic equaliser overlaid. It's not a bad intro, perhaps not anything special technically but it looks cool.


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Hard Drivin is a coin op conversion, a 3D filled-vector racing game with two tracks, one for speed and one for stunts. It opens with a typical loading screen with chip music. It's not a bad image with some decent use of dithering, but nothing special. In a sign of the future of gaming it then shows you the tracks you have while teasing new tracks being available for purchase later just so you feel like you've not bought the whole thing. It feels shady.


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Controls are certainly unique - you move your mouse left and right to steer, clicking your left button to accelerate, your right to decelerate and both buttons to brake. Controlling the car is basically an absolute nightmare - the car doesn't exactly do what you tell it to do, randomly making a noise which I think means it's gone off road despite not going off road. This triggers an auto-correct mechanism which then sends you off to the other edge of the track. Honestly I have no idea how anyone managed to control this thing back in the day.


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Quite honestly an absolute turd.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Great review, lol, I cant understand how Harddrivin recieved such good reviews, utter junk and like you say impossible to control. I only played the Amiga version.

You'll be pleased to hear I've just found possibly an even worse racing game with even worse controls. I swear there were some serious shenanigans going on with the review scores for some of this shit.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Power Drift
power_drift_activision_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was Automation 311. Not a bad cracktro - a possibly-digitised image of a young lady in her underwear as text flies around, plus the usual scrolly text at the bottom border and a graphic equaliser at the top. For the life of me I'll never figure out how the cracking groups managed to use the ST's borders as they do. When you go to run Power Drift it bemoans Craptivision's crappy loader and invites you to a slide show. Doesn't sound like it's going to be great.


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So I get into the game and this is quite clearly using code from Super Hang-On, the screens are pretty damn similar. I guess that means I'm in for a treat, fast racing action.

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And then the game loads. Fuck me they weren't kidding about a slide show. The car is massive on the screen, as are the roadside sprites, and this must be contributing to slowdown, alongside a road which is stippled instead of using the colour stripes (the stripes are easier as you just cycle the palette as you go which is cheaper than moving chunks of graphics around). As a bonus, the road swings wildly with massive boulder columns in the way so you can't even see where you're going (meanwhile the z-order of sprites is all over the fucking shop), leading to a game which can only be described as utter shit.


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I would love to know what crack ST Format were on to give this 83% - it's like they judged it solely from the screenshots, or perhaps they played the Amiga version which was still shit but a hell of a lot smoother. A game with such a poor rolling road (to the extent that it even had gaps between the road sprites at various points) has no right to 83%.


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Here's someone with considerably more patience than me playing it.



The crack intro is the only redeeming feature of this game.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Super League Soccer aka a tale of Hariseldon's idiocy

ST Format Review


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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was Automation 451. This one is a fairly simple cracktro - scrolling colour bars behind static text with some nice chip music.It feels like a quick one knocked up for a fairly mediocre set of games. It's always a bad sign when a cracktro drops you into the desktop to start the game...


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So this is a football management game, and it looks like it's running in GEM, using native alerts, wimp, etc. That's quite unusual, and a real hint at a seriously shoddy bit of code. It's copyright Budgie UK which I'm sure was a Public Domain distributor, which does beg the question why was it selling for £19.95 through Impressions.


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I elect to have music and soon regret it. Shit chip tune. Seems to be trying to do the Batman theme without breaching copyright.


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So I change a player's name to Wankbreath.. so far this looks below the level of the little educational games I made in GFA basic when I was 11 and my mum was tutoring kids and wanted something to help with that. In hindsight she should not have been allowed near children.


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This does not look like the game ST Format reviewed. I think Automation have shafted me. I am an idiot.


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I will endeavour to find the correct game tomorrow. Tonight, I can't be arsed.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Super League Soccer
No box-art available

ST Format Review
See above

My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. After my previous fail I hunted high and low but in the end had to settle for http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-super-league-soccer_11454.html which had a dump that appears to be from a more standard (non-scene) release.

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So graphics are rudimenatary, and gameplay seems to consist of picking a formation and then picking players with no idea about their ability or any statistics as far as I can tell. Championship Manager this is not. Then matches happen with no input. I'm still not sure what the point of this game is.


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Another broken piece of shit that ST Format gave FAR too high a score to.

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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
I was an Amiga gamer but some of the games were on both, such as Jumping Jack'son above, brings back memories. Turrican II is still the greatest game ever made.
There’s a hell of a lot of crossover and I’ll likely do the Amiga Format/Power challenge to mop up the rest once I’m done with ST Format.

JJS really is awesome and still holds up well - I’d love it on my Switch.
 
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SirTerry-T

Member
Hard Drivin
hard_drivin_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review

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For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was Automation 188. The intro has a pretty decent chiptune accompanying a weird monster, and scrolly text with a graphic equaliser overlaid. It's not a bad intro, perhaps not anything special technically but it looks cool.


PmgfQzI.png


pGhNPte.png



Hard Drivin is a coin op conversion, a 3D filled-vector racing game with two tracks, one for speed and one for stunts. It opens with a typical loading screen with chip music. It's not a bad image with some decent use of dithering, but nothing special. In a sign of the future of gaming it then shows you the tracks you have while teasing new tracks being available for purchase later just so you feel like you've not bought the whole thing. It feels shady.


4Jvqz0b.png



Controls are certainly unique - you move your mouse left and right to steer, clicking your left button to accelerate, your right to decelerate and both buttons to brake. Controlling the car is basically an absolute nightmare - the car doesn't exactly do what you tell it to do, randomly making a noise which I think means it's gone off road despite not going off road. This triggers an auto-correct mechanism which then sends you off to the other edge of the track. Honestly I have no idea how anyone managed to control this thing back in the day.


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Quite honestly an absolute turd.
The loader pic is referencing "Weird Dreams", pal. An ST platformer from Rainbird. The artist was a talented fella who was working on a game that looked great called "The Ancient Mariner" for the 16 bit machines but I don't think it ever saw the light of day.
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kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
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.

Von Gravenreuth was in it for the money. He was on the hunt for people wanting to trade games. If you responded to one of his fake ads, you got a letter accusing you of copyright infringements and a lawsuit - unless you were willing to settle for 900 dmark. That must have been a very lucrative busines for him. Easy money. He got me too In the late eighties.
 

mansoor1980

Member
Ninja Warriors
ninja_warriors_virgin_games_french_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was going to be Automation 319 which comes on 3 disks. The intro was a suitably jolly chip tune with a real emphasis on wibbly scrolling text. I can't fucking read most of it. The game however did not load properly, so I decided to try SuperGAU 287-9. That also didn't work. Finally Pompey Pirates, which actually fucking works. No cracktro but that's fine.

So what is Ninja Warriors? Well, first up, it's not this..



.. so get that out of your head right away. The game recognises the extra RAM and takes its time loading but eventually gets there.


QY3OzQF.png



It's another side scrolling slash em up, probably the closest comparison I can make is Shinobi. Animation is wonderfully fluid, though graphics aren't particularly attractive, something about the art style just doesn't do it for me. Gameplay isn't hugely interesting either. It's ok, it's technically very competent, it's just not exciting.


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played this on amiga 500 back in the day...............really gud game
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Stormlord
stormlord_hewson_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. I'm using Automation 225, which gives me a nice bit of chip music and the usual array of scrolly text, in this case with wibbly bars highlighting the text for the application list.

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We get an interesting explainer from Vapour explaining why he's built this loader the way he has, and honestly I'm happy for him to do it any way he likes as he's done an important job preserving ST software.

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So Stormlord is a side-scrolling slash-em-up from Hewson, whose 8-bit roots meant they tended to put out rather simple (though often fantastic) games - they were retro even in their day. We get presented with a rather nice loading image, the art style is properly cool, and the sampled music is cool in a chilled-out way too.

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Getting to the game itself, the excellent art continues, and we have a nice pair of tits on the left which I'm sure will have surprised a few parents back in the day. Animation is smooth, the frame rate is pretty solid (probably helped by a flat black background outside of the platform tiles). Scrolling isn't the smoothest but gets the job done. Music in-game is a chip warble sadly, but it's servicable.

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The game itself is ok, controls are reasonably tight when walking and shooting but the jumping is not quite up to the job for the platforming it asks of you. Death is frequent because difficulty hasn't really been properly calibrated, as is common with games of this era. In truth this game feels more like a showcase for the artist and programmer rather than a good game in its own right.




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Here's someone else playing it as I do think it's worth letting you guys listen to the excellent intro music and also see how good the art is in motion.

 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Wonderboy In Monsterland
super_wonder_boy_in_monsterland_activision_(uk)_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
Before starting my review, I must deal with the fact that I can't hear Wonderboy without thinking of this song.



For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. I'm using Automation 214, this one's quite a simple one with the chip tune and scrolling text but really not much going on in the main screen.

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So that loading screen. It's really bad. The Master System got a much cooler one. There's no branding consistency between them. The chip music is nothing special.

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In hindsight I made a huge mistake having a look at a youtube video of the Master System version. Compare this...



.. with this..



This is a 1988 Master System game, an 8-bit console, and it looks significantly worse on the 16-bit Atari ST in 1990, and this is when graphics improved RAPIDLY. The Master System has an old 8-bit chip, bugger all RAM, though remarkably it runs at a higher resolution with more colours on screen at once (from a smaller palette).

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If I'm honest I don't think it's a particularly faithful conversion, and I don't think it belongs on the ST. Gameplay is rudimentary, far below the level the Atari ST is capable of. It's reasonably smooth I guess (though considerably less smooth than the master system version and it's running in a tiny window), but it just has so little going for it, it's not worth anyone's time if you can just play the Master System version instead. The only consolation is that the Amiga version is equally shit.


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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Smart people will note I'm getting the clunkers out of the way before hitting the main courses...
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Snoopy
44774-snoopy-the-cool-computer-game-atari-st-front-cover.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. I'm using Automation 173, a fairly simple menu with a cool picture, some chip music and some scrolling text.

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The game kicks off with a simple animated intro with some reasonable chip music. That said, it fails to move the single sprite at an acceptable speed, which doesn't bode well. It's like this was coded in GFA Basic.

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Once running however it looks gorgeous, very true to the source material. Snoopy even has some subtle shading. Controls are simple, left and right to move, up to jump, down to pick something up and fire to use what you're carrying or get some info about the nearest object. It's almost an adventure game.

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In game there's almost no sound, other than a whoosh when you jump and a fart when you land. So, my first action is to get my bowl and take it to Charlie Brown. He gets me some dinner, I wolf it down, job done. Now I can only carry one object at a time and there's a cookie jar so I assume I need to swap over. This has no effect on anything. I have a wander and meet some more characters.

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I fire a catapult at a frog on a lillypad which makes him jump and wander off.. I guess I better follow him. And he gets trapped between a raincloud and a football.


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So the game looks great, doesn't run particularly smoothly and makes no sense at all. There's no hint of logic to any of it. Unfortunately, another clunker.


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Resources
Manual: http://hol.abime.net/hol_pic.php?id...aMmxtNmVWNE16SXc2ZVY0U1cxaFoyVk5ZV2RwWTJzPQ==
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Ghouls and Ghosts
ghouls_n_ghosts_us_gold_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. I'm using Automation 199, another basic one with a simple image, scrolling text and chip tune. Not their most exciting work.


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So Ghouls and Ghosts is regarded as something of a classic overall, but what of the ST version? Is it any good? Time to find out.


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So first up, it's not as smooth as some versions, but it's perfectly serviceable and the graphics aren't too bad. Scrolling is a little jerky but it's fine other than that. Music is your standard chip tune fare, with nothing much to stand out.

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Controls are reasonably solid with little lag, and in contrast to some of the similar games I've reviewed this month, enemy arrangements make some degree of sense and beating them is about skill rather than button-bashing as 15 enemies in a big blob amble towards you.

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I may not be particularly good at it, and it's not necessarily my thing, but it is clearly a good game, well-designed, I love how your chap starts with armour and ends up in his pants and it's a game with enormous charm, overall I'd say Ghouls and Ghosts is so far second only to Jumping Jackson for this issue's releases. By the way, at one point I turned into a duck. Can anyone tell me what the buggering hell that was about? Onwards, to Batman.

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Kazza

Member
I vague remember Stormlord. At the time, the "naughty" stuff (well, to a very young kid, anyway) made me really want to play it, which I eventually did (as a demo, I think). The pixel art still looks pretty good.

This is a 1988 Master System game, an 8-bit console, and it looks significantly worse on the 16-bit Atari ST in 1990, and this is when graphics improved RAPIDLY. The Master System has an old 8-bit chip, bugger all RAM, though remarkably it runs at a higher resolution with more colours on screen at once (from a smaller palette).

This somehow made me imagine a 1980s GAF with VFXVeteran getting destroyed by Sega fanboys, as an old console gets the better of a PC :messenger_tears_of_joy: . A 80s Digital Foundry (maybe sold on monthly VHS tapes at WHSmiths) would have been really interesting, given the differences in game versions and hardware back then.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
I vague remember Stormlord. At the time, the "naughty" stuff (well, to a very young kid, anyway) made me really want to play it, which I eventually did (as a demo, I think). The pixel art still looks pretty good.



This somehow made me imagine a 1980s GAF with VFXVeteran getting destroyed by Sega fanboys, as an old console gets the better of a PC :messenger_tears_of_joy: . A 80s Digital Foundry (maybe sold on monthly VHS tapes at WHSmiths) would have been really interesting, given the differences in game versions and hardware back then.
I think the first ‘naughty’ game I can remember is the Elvira game, which had a LOT of cleavage. The Zero magazine cover was quite something.

I honestly can’t wrap my head around what happened with Wonderboy. It’s like whoever did the graphics couldn’t draw for shit. Hell I can draw better trees than that!
 

lmimmfn

Member
Power Drift
power_drift_activision_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was Automation 311. Not a bad cracktro - a possibly-digitised image of a young lady in her underwear as text flies around, plus the usual scrolly text at the bottom border and a graphic equaliser at the top. For the life of me I'll never figure out how the cracking groups managed to use the ST's borders as they do. When you go to run Power Drift it bemoans Craptivision's crappy loader and invites you to a slide show. Doesn't sound like it's going to be great.


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So I get into the game and this is quite clearly using code from Super Hang-On, the screens are pretty damn similar. I guess that means I'm in for a treat, fast racing action.

HqFTIf1.png


And then the game loads. Fuck me they weren't kidding about a slide show. The car is massive on the screen, as are the roadside sprites, and this must be contributing to slowdown, alongside a road which is stippled instead of using the colour stripes (the stripes are easier as you just cycle the palette as you go which is cheaper than moving chunks of graphics around). As a bonus, the road swings wildly with massive boulder columns in the way so you can't even see where you're going (meanwhile the z-order of sprites is all over the fucking shop), leading to a game which can only be described as utter shit.


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I would love to know what crack ST Format were on to give this 83% - it's like they judged it solely from the screenshots, or perhaps they played the Amiga version which was still shit but a hell of a lot smoother. A game with such a poor rolling road (to the extent that it even had gaps between the road sprites at various points) has no right to 83%.


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Here's someone with considerably more patience than me playing it.



The crack intro is the only redeeming feature of this game.

This was such a shit game on the 16 bits, i dont even understand why they even tried it, the 16 bits couldnt do outrun, why try and do something requiring even more processing power?
The Atari Format review is awful, i'm wondering if back then they were getting brown envelopes back then? :), for example i read Issue 81 of CVG last night:
- the cover is for last ninja 2, the review on page 18 is of the game, the version tested is Spectrum but all the screenshots are C64( which is the best 8 bit version as Speccy and Amstrad versions look like shit )?
- Beyond the Ice Palace review - page 47, the version tested is Spectrum/Amstrad, the screenshots are all from ( and pics only of ) the Atari ST yet it states "The Atari ST version has been completed but, at the time of writing, we haven't seen it yet" - its the only version in your bloody review!!!!!!!!!!

I think a thread of 8/16bit lies from the media would be fun :)

See for yourself the CVG issue - https://archive.org/details/cvg-magazine-081/mode/2up
I have a huge affinity with this issue as it was the first CVG issue we got after ordering the mag locally 6 months prior lol.

Sorry its a bit of a tangent but
 
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Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Have to push back a bit on Power Drift / Outrun etc.

Don’t forget many of these rights were bought up by publishers who just saw pound signs and games across all formats for the Christmas release schedule - who cares if you could actually port it or not as long as it sold a shit load at Christmas based on the hype created by the magazines during the build up to the festive period.

You would usually have 2 or 3 people producing all the 8 bit versions and sometimes 2 to 3 man bands producing the 16 bits, all with terrible deadlines and normally farmed out at the last minute because the main programmer had a nervous breakdown working 20 hour days trying to fit an Afteburner arcade machine into a 512k Atari ST.

So I would cut them a bit of slack personally and blame the publishers for thinking these games could be ported. But hey stick a poster and a badge in the box and have double page adverts across all the gaming press for 3 months up to the December / Christmas special issues and boom there you go.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
lmimmfn lmimmfn - For me they were going for the box-art. The game was doable if they made some compromises with smaller sprites. That said, the issue wasn't even that, it's the sheer awfulness of the rolling road that is the biggest problem with it in that unlike Super Hang-on where the motion makes some measure of sense, in Powerdrift it really doesn't, and that's not a machine capabilities problem, that's an idiot building something badly problem.

The media were certainly prone to some naughtiness in those days, though I think some of it was driven by being a little over-enthusiastic for what they were doing which is no bad thing, certainly preferable to modern cynicism. Some of it was also probably driven by the fact that most games were not that good, but more importantly most games were really very hard to write much of substance on. Oh look here's another side-scrolling slash-em-up with the same mechanics as the last 50 of the fuckers. You'll probably see I've been struggling to find interesting things to say about some of the clunkers, so I have a bit more sympathy for the reviewers now, and certainly I think it was a harder task back then than it is now.

Nitty_Grimes Nitty_Grimes While I agree that there was almost certainly a fair bit of publisher shittiness, I think we all know how amateur the business was back then with some properly shady shit going on, I will say that a 3 man team was probably about right for the era, if given sufficient time. You get 3 guys and you cover the bases. Code, music, art. Game design comes from the arcade machine you're converting so that's covered. Perhaps for a non-conversion you want a game designer in there but often that skill would exist among the other 3. What you never want is coders doing art. We aren't good at it. But back to 3 man teams.. a 3-man team building everything - the work on art and music is likely reasonably transferrable, so then it's code - at that point you might want another body to help out.

I have a feeling though that for some of these games, these guys were learning on the job. Certainly I recall an interview with the Bullfrog guys where they discussed one game as a learning on the job exercise and I imagine it was quite common. At this early stage in the ST's history, most coders simply hadn't got their heads around the hardware yet, nor had standards of what a 16-bit game actually looks like yet been properly set. This led to some wonderful things like Archipelagos and Sentinel but also to some absolute shit like Powerdrift. You'll see a bit of a change over the next 12 issues as things get steadily more professional - indeed in I think the next 6 issues you see some absolute classics come along that really show what 16-bit is about.
 

lmimmfn

Member
Ghouls and Ghosts
ghouls_n_ghosts_us_gold_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

PlzffK6.jpg


uEQGfBI.jpg



My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. I'm using Automation 199, another basic one with a simple image, scrolling text and chip tune. Not their most exciting work.


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So Ghouls and Ghosts is regarded as something of a classic overall, but what of the ST version? Is it any good? Time to find out.


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So first up, it's not as smooth as some versions, but it's perfectly serviceable and the graphics aren't too bad. Scrolling is a little jerky but it's fine other than that. Music is your standard chip tune fare, with nothing much to stand out.

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Controls are reasonably solid with little lag, and in contrast to some of the similar games I've reviewed this month, enemy arrangements make some degree of sense and beating them is about skill rather than button-bashing as 15 enemies in a big blob amble towards you.

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I may not be particularly good at it, and it's not necessarily my thing, but it is clearly a good game, well-designed, I love how your chap starts with armour and ends up in his pants and it's a game with enormous charm, overall I'd say Ghouls and Ghosts is so far second only to Jumping Jackson for this issue's releases. By the way, at one point I turned into a duck. Can anyone tell me what the buggering hell that was about? Onwards, to Batman.

7qztPIi.png
Might be worth mentioning the reimplementation on the STE( as far as i remember uses the actual arcade ROM 68000 code but redirects gfx calls to use the STE blitter/scrolling etc. ), it looks extremely impressive for an ST(Videos have invincibility enabled):
Stage 1 - look at the size of the boss at the end of stage 1 @ 1:52


Stage 3


Atari forum thread - https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtop...id=586bcf666ee7165be86aefd5ca79ab4f&start=375
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Might be worth mentioning the reimplementation on the STE( as far as i remember uses the actual arcade ROM 68000 code but redirects gfx calls to use the STE blitter/scrolling etc. ), it looks extremely impressive for an ST(Videos have invincibility enabled):
Stage 1 - look at the side of the boss at the end of stage 1 @ 1:52


Stage 3


Atari forum thread - https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtop...id=586bcf666ee7165be86aefd5ca79ab4f&start=375


Damn that looks fantastic. I'll have to play with that after work!
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
lmimmfn lmimmfn - For me they were going for the box-art. The game was doable if they made some compromises with smaller sprites. That said, the issue wasn't even that, it's the sheer awfulness of the rolling road that is the biggest problem with it in that unlike Super Hang-on where the motion makes some measure of sense, in Powerdrift it really doesn't, and that's not a machine capabilities problem, that's an idiot building something badly problem.

The media were certainly prone to some naughtiness in those days, though I think some of it was driven by being a little over-enthusiastic for what they were doing which is no bad thing, certainly preferable to modern cynicism. Some of it was also probably driven by the fact that most games were not that good, but more importantly most games were really very hard to write much of substance on. Oh look here's another side-scrolling slash-em-up with the same mechanics as the last 50 of the fuckers. You'll probably see I've been struggling to find interesting things to say about some of the clunkers, so I have a bit more sympathy for the reviewers now, and certainly I think it was a harder task back then than it is now.

Nitty_Grimes Nitty_Grimes While I agree that there was almost certainly a fair bit of publisher shittiness, I think we all know how amateur the business was back then with some properly shady shit going on, I will say that a 3 man team was probably about right for the era, if given sufficient time. You get 3 guys and you cover the bases. Code, music, art. Game design comes from the arcade machine you're converting so that's covered. Perhaps for a non-conversion you want a game designer in there but often that skill would exist among the other 3. What you never want is coders doing art. We aren't good at it. But back to 3 man teams.. a 3-man team building everything - the work on art and music is likely reasonably transferrable, so then it's code - at that point you might want another body to help out.

I have a feeling though that for some of these games, these guys were learning on the job. Certainly I recall an interview with the Bullfrog guys where they discussed one game as a learning on the job exercise and I imagine it was quite common. At this early stage in the ST's history, most coders simply hadn't got their heads around the hardware yet, nor had standards of what a 16-bit game actually looks like yet been properly set. This led to some wonderful things like Archipelagos and Sentinel but also to some absolute shit like Powerdrift. You'll see a bit of a change over the next 12 issues as things get steadily more professional - indeed in I think the next 6 issues you see some absolute classics come along that really show what 16-bit is about.

And don’t forget half the time (and you’ll get this reading articles in The One) they never even had access to the hardware, sometimes they had to watch a video of the game and port it based on that. Sometimes the coin op owner would send over the actual assets from the machine that they would load into Deluxe Paint and convert to either 32 or 16 colours for the Amiga and the ST.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
And don’t forget half the time (and you’ll get this reading articles in The One) they never even had access to the hardware, sometimes they had to watch a video of the game and port it based on that. Sometimes the coin op owner would send over the actual assets from the machine that they would load into Deluxe Paint and convert to either 32 or 16 colours for the Amiga and the ST.

Absolutely - Retro Gamer is awesome in that it has many tales of that sort. I do intend to start working through The One at some point - likely though I'll be doing a joint The One, Zero and Amiga Power run after ST Format has run its course, to mop up what remains of the 16-bit era. Btw I now have a reasonably complete set of Amiga Power, I passed all the JPEG page images from http://amr.abime.net/issues_5 through a script to stitch together pdfs for the issues I didn't have. Some pages are missing but I suspect they may be adverts. Still, I have something from every issue, likely all the reviews and previews at least. I reckon there's scope to do something with that.
 

Futaleufu

Member
Hard Drivin
hard_drivin_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

QTFdGOv.jpg


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My Review

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For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. The crack disk of choice today was Automation 188. The intro has a pretty decent chiptune accompanying a weird monster, and scrolly text with a graphic equaliser overlaid. It's not a bad intro, perhaps not anything special technically but it looks cool.


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Hard Drivin is a coin op conversion, a 3D filled-vector racing game with two tracks, one for speed and one for stunts. It opens with a typical loading screen with chip music. It's not a bad image with some decent use of dithering, but nothing special. In a sign of the future of gaming it then shows you the tracks you have while teasing new tracks being available for purchase later just so you feel like you've not bought the whole thing. It feels shady.


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Controls are certainly unique - you move your mouse left and right to steer, clicking your left button to accelerate, your right to decelerate and both buttons to brake. Controlling the car is basically an absolute nightmare - the car doesn't exactly do what you tell it to do, randomly making a noise which I think means it's gone off road despite not going off road. This triggers an auto-correct mechanism which then sends you off to the other edge of the track. Honestly I have no idea how anyone managed to control this thing back in the day.


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Quite honestly an absolute turd.

The only good versions of this game are the original arcade (it has two 16 bit CPUs, one 16 bit DSP and two 32 bit video chips) and the IBM PC version, which could brute force the game speed with a decent CPU but lacks the resolution and polygon count of the arcade.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Batman
batman_the_movie_ocean_d7.jpg


ST Format Review

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My Review
For this review I'm running Steem with my usual 1MB STFM. I'm using Automation 224, in which we get a digitised image, some wibbly text and some scrolly text. The chiptune isn't bad.


PazIRxf.png


So this is Issue 6's big ticket item, with a million adverts everywhere for the game. Review scores were good, but the big question is: Is the game good or shit?

This Batman game is based on the 1989 movie, frankly the best Batman (fight me).



The movie was quite a departure from the mainstream public image of Batman which was still shaped by the 60s TV series, moving it in the dark direction of the comics and continued with the modern films. It was hyped beyond belief at the time, I mean it was fucking everywhere. It probably paved the way for the brilliant Batman: The Animated Series which appeared a couple of years later. It was a big deal. But what of the game?


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The intro screen has some... not very good music with a reasonably well-drawn logo and Joker but slightly wonky looking Batman. Pressing fire to start I get quite a nice little cut-scene. Let's see how the game goes.

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Arriving into the game - the graphics are very muddy - too much background patterning in the same colours as the Batman sprite isn't a great start. THe actual scrollable area is pretty small with a large border and the scores at the bottom taking up a lot of space. This was obviously done to keep speed up but it's still a shame. With that said, it's smooth, controls well and the grapple-hook mechanic is pretty cool in that it offers something I don't think I've seen in any other ST games - it adds a new dimension to movement. Once in motion the muddy graphics are less of an issue, and the responsive character makes it easy to do exactly what you intend to do.

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Controls are logical, enemies well-placed (no swarms) and the platform section is basically a rock-solid implementation of this kind of thing. The game gives you plenty of ways to tackle your enemies - you can grapple-hook up onto their platform or drop down onto them, or you can rely on projectile attacks.


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The driving section is interesting. For starters it offers a different take on the rolling road, gaining its sense of speed through road markings rather than the traditional stripes. It's well-animated and I would put it on a par with Super Hang-on. What's really interesting however is the use of the grappling hook to corner, again something of a departure from the standard formula. It's a race against the clock, with collisions only slowing you down, no crashes of the type found in Super Hang-On or Outrun (scenery seems to be fine to just clip through).


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Next we get a puzzle minigame where you must select from 8 items to find 3 specific ones - you get a few goes and each time you're told how many you got right. Trial and error basically. Not too taxing.

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We get another minigame, this time flying above the road, before being deposited back to some more platform action.


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The funny thing is this is actually a good game. I was honestly expecting it to be shit, a film tie-in given an inappropriately high score, but it's actually good. It isn't a game that changed the world but it had its own small innovations which added nice extra touches to the gameplay and I'm grateful for those. All in all, further evidence that outside of the brilliant 60s Batman, 1989 Batman is the best.

hari-Seldon-Gold.png
 
From 1984, almost every 3 years, the Amiga has a new chipset prototype i.e. 1984, 1987, and early 1991.

The Amiga released in autumn 1985, though.

But I concur, that around the time the A500 released they should have had some improvements in its chipset already, like a true 64 colours mode and wider sprites at least.
Problems was that the original Amiga 1000 was a flop, and they tried to get the money from it back with the cost reduced A500.

They should have AGA ready by 1990, and AAA in 1992/93 and they could have lasted a few more years against the PC onslaught at least in Europe.


(bonus: my Amiga 1200 setup.

ZaMxPNu.png


I own a 1000, 500 and 600 as well... :)
)
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
The Amiga released in autumn 1985, though.

But I concur, that around the time the A500 released they should have had some improvements in its chipset already, like a true 64 colours mode and wider sprites at least.
Problems was that the original Amiga 1000 was a flop, and they tried to get the money from it back with the cost reduced A500.

They should have AGA ready by 1990, and AAA in 1992/93 and they could have lasted a few more years against the PC onslaught at least in Europe.


(bonus: my Amiga 1200 setup.

ZaMxPNu.png


I own a 1000, 500 and 600 as well... :)
)

At some point I'm going to have to get myself a physical 16-bit machine aren't I. This thread is giving me that urge. It's also interesting that we've clearly got past the 16-bit wars as Amiga and ST owners come together in one thread. I had a 600 personally and it was a cracking little machine, though the Atari 520STFM was the machine that made me.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
ST Format Issue 7 - Download
stf07_001.jpg


The World in January 1990
In the UK Labour had amassed a 12-point lead over the Tories which put mounting pressure on Thatcher's government. In many ways Labour blew their wad a bit too early as the Tories would retain power for a further 7 years, but I'll save the spoilers - suffice to say the year would get quite interesting politically in the UK. We also had a hurricane, not quite on the level of the great storm of 1987. Overall January was a quiet month in the UK though, with not much happening.

In US news, Manuel Noriega surrendered to US forces, Time Inc and Warner Communication merged to form Time Warner, and Douglas Wilder became America's first black governor in Richmond, Virginia. The skipper of the Exxon Valdez (of the famous oil spill) went on trial for negligence. Meanwhile George Bush made his first State Of The Union address, proposing the US and USSR make deep cuts to their militaries. McDonalds opened in Moscow.

Elsewhere in the world Poland withdrew from the Warsaw Pact and began abolishing state socialism. Bulgaria's national assembly voted to end single-party rule by its communist party. Similar happened in Yugoslavia. The pace of this change was, in retrospect, astounding. It does show that once a collapse starts, it can move very very rapidly, and that is something we in the west should be aware of.

The first internet access companies for commercial users started selling access in the US and Holland - the internet was still several years away from becoming mainstream - I wouldn't get to use it for another 6 years (and that was on the single connected machine at school).

On TV Mr Bean made his debut on ITV, sadly he would never be funny. Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles made its debut on BBC1, and Baywatch made its debut on ITV. Tissue sales soared.



The film charts saw Parenthood with Steve Martin at #1, and Turner & Hooch at #2, as Back To The Future 2 remained a huge hit at #3. Kylie Minogue's The Delinquents featured at #4 but I've never heard of it, and the other new entries are something of a mystery.

The album chart sees Phil Collins at #1, followed by Kylie, Jive Bunny, Tina Turner and Jason Donovan. A very 80s chart to open the 90s.

The singles chart saw New Kids On The Block at #1 with Hangin Tough while Kylie had a new entry at #2 but there was some hope with the 49ers at #3 with Touch Me and Mantronix at #4 with Got To Have Your Love showing the ongoing rise of dance music, with D-Mob at 7 also putting in an appearance, along with the fantastic Got To Get by Rob N Raz ft Leila K.






The Magazine
Issue 7 came out in January 1990 (yes it's called the February edition but you know how these things work). The cover theme is digitisers, while the coverdisk has a game called Skate Tribe which I've honestly never heard of. Digging deeper it seems to be a full game created in STOS and given to ST Format by Mandarin. I might have to give it a test for shits and giggles. More interestingly there's a section on multiplayer gaming using RS232 with a brief section on connecting via modem, which was quite a feat when you consider 300 baud modems were the standard of the day (that's 300 bits per second - just under 40 bytes per second in other words). I'm not sure how you send enough data to keep games in sync in that scenario but frankly it's impressive that anything worked at all. Obviously the games that work best are slower more tactical games like Populous. For me, remote play is all well and good, there are wonderful things about it like (in the modern era) finding yourself on track with Max Verstappen or Rubens Barricello on iRacing, but at the same time there's really no substitue for being in the same room as the other guy, be it co-op or vs, with the gentle abuse that comes with it. The ST didn't entirely lend itself to that because not many games were designed that way, but also because of the god-awful decision to have the two joystick ports under the machine, with one serving as the mouse port, and the problem that swapping too much would lead to the solder separating on the motherboard.

In the news we see that STOS is among many applications which don't work on the STE, though a patch was on its way. It seems a lot of software simply didn't work on the STE, and while the news article doesn't say this, it's because a lot of coders used undocumented tricks to get more out of the hardware, which the STE didn't necessarily allow (because Atari simply hadn't considered those things). In truth, backwards compatibility was harder in those days, as there was less communication between developers and hardware manufacturers and things tended to be less documented.

In more positive news, the STacy (the ST laptop) finally made its way into shops. A big heavy beast of a thing, it was more of a portable ST than a laptop, in that the battery didn't really have the grunt to get useful work done. The Stacy 1 was a 1MB machine with a floppy drive at just under £1k, while the Stacy 2 had a 20MB HD and 2MB RAM at £1299 and the 4 had 40MB/4MB at £1799. Expensive as fuck.

There's an interesting reveal that Delphine had put in some STE sound magic in Future Wars and not bothered to tell their publishers - I might give that a try to see if it's true. I might also switch up my review spec from STFM to STE fairly soon.

One thing that might prove to be of interest to some is the C tutorial - it starts in issue 7 and runs for a few more issues after that, and given the older machines are simpler it might be a nice place to start learning C for some people. The Desktop section is also pretty interesting in that it goes in-depth into things like image file formats, something pretty hardcore that you'd never see in a modern computer magazine, and certainly not on the net outside of specialist technical locations.

I notice a bit of a theme in Gamebusters, where many of the games in the Power Pack are covered. One could speculate that it's to shorten the life of those games and stimulate spending but that would imply Atari being bright enough to think of that and ask ST Format to do that.

Previews
Previews this month feature a fun selection. There's Grimblood about which I know nothing, there's Hunter Killer which is a submarine game I spent hours trying to make some fucking sense of as a kid after getting it on budget or a compilation or something of that ilk, there's BAT which had a remarkable reputation but never persuaded me to part with my cash. Theme Park Mystery gets a mention - a game I was definitely curious about but again it didn't quite get my cash (in part because I had very little - in those days games were much more expensive than now, and I was a kid with no money).

Gravity is an interesting-looking game which could be brilliant but is more likely to be shit. Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters looked like a fun little arcade conversion, Starflight looked not especially interesting, and then there was the Bitmaps oddest game, Cadaver, which I loved the demo of, and can't wait to try out the full game.

Reviews
Games reviewed this month:
Chase HQ (Racing Game With Guns - Ocean - £19.99 - 71%)
The Seven Gates Of Jambala (Platformer - Grandslam - £24.99 - 78%)
P-47 Thunderbolt (Shooter - Firebird - £24.99 - 67%)
Twinworld (Platformer - Ubisoft - £19.99 - 69%)
Ghostbusters 2 (Movie Tie-In - Activision - £19.99 - 62%)
Iron Lord (RPG/Strategy - Ubisoft - £24.99 - 90% Format Gold)
The Untouchables (Movie Tie-In Mini-games - Ocean - £19.99 - 81%)
Beach Volley (Volleyball - Ocean - £19.99 - 62%)
Time (Adventure - Empire - £24.95 - 79%)
North And South (Strategy - Infogrames - £24.99 - 58%)
Kenny Dalglish Soccer Match (Football - Impressions - £19.99 - 32%)
Warp (Shooter - Grandslam - £19.99 - 20%)
Star Wrek (Adventure - Castlesoft - £19.95 - 15%)

So among those I'd definitely like to review Chase HQ as I really wanted it as a kid but never got round to buying it, while the masochist in me wants to see if Warp and Star Wrek are as bad as the scores indicate. Possibly a look at Ghostbusters 2 and Untouchables might be in order. Iron Lord I'll probably have a look to see if I can get a review out of it, though I don't want to do it an injustice given it's not really my area. Finally I'll hunt down the STF 7 cover disk to give the free game on it (Skate Tribe) a shot.
 
It's also interesting that we've clearly got past the 16-bit wars as Amiga and ST owners come together in one thread.
I never understood that "war" even back then.

I would have loved to get an ST at that time, because most games that interested me were as good or even better on the ST. Stuff like Bard's Tale, Falcon, Elite, Carrier Command or Starglider.

The Amiga happened to be better in scrolling action games, but there were not many good of those to begin with.
 

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
Spectrum vs Commodore 64
Megadrive vs SNES
PlayStation vs Saturn
PlayStation 2 vs Dreamcast
Betamax vs VHS
Blu Ray vs HDDVD
Sky vs BSB
Henry vs Van Nistelrooy.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Spectrum vs Commodore 64
Megadrive vs SNES
PlayStation vs Saturn
PlayStation 2 vs Dreamcast
Betamax vs VHS
Blu Ray vs HDDVD
Sky vs BSB
Henry vs Van Nistelrooy.

Henry every time (as someone who is a fan of a club that is Premier League now but spent most of the 90s languishing in the lower leagues).
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
I never understood that "war" even back then.

I would have loved to get an ST at that time, because most games that interested me were as good or even better on the ST. Stuff like Bard's Tale, Falcon, Elite, Carrier Command or Starglider.

The Amiga happened to be better in scrolling action games, but there were not many good of those to begin with.

I think to a degree the different strengths of the machines shaped the kinds of games that were popular (well duh) - the Amiga definitely had more 2D scrolling action games but the ST market definitely seemed to favour 3D and slower games, which perhaps explains much of my gaming taste. Maybe if I'd had an Amiga I'd have been a different kind of gamer. Not sure what impact it would have had elsewhere - probably less likely to make music as it didn't have midi (though the tracker scene was pretty cool) and less likely to code as AMOS came out a long time after STOS and I don't think there was anything like GFA Basic as a beginner's language (though I could be wrong - my Amiga knowledge is less than my ST knowledge and there are plenty here who can correct me). ST Format freebies made a big impact on me - GFA basic and STOS for code and Sequencer One for music.

In other news we're up to 12000 views for what is a fairly niche thread. That's quite an impressive validation of EviLore EviLore 's work - clearly there are a hell of a lot of people lurking.
 
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hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Skate Tribe
No Box Image

ST Format Review
No ST Format Review

My Review

iaSRdwQ.png


So this one's a little bit different. This is a game that came free with ST Format issue 7, made in STOS. It doesn't seem to have had a commercial release, having come 2nd in a competition. Let's see if it's any good. Equipment is the usual 1MB STFM, likely I'll switch up to the STE for issue 8. Here we have the standard ST desktop with the ST Format coverdisk's traditional set of folders with Side_2 physically mapped to side B of the disk. I thought I'd get a screengrab just in case it sparked a tiny bit of nostalgia for the lovely green desktop.


iJW489D.png


The intro screen is surprisingly smoothly animated for a STOS game. Visually it's not too exciting but at least it's clean. The chip music is decent enough, tuneful and making use of a few of the different sounds available to the programmer.


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This first screen appears with a really neat unroll effect (like a roll of wallpaper unfurling down the screen).


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Animation is smooth and sprites are pretty chunky - the scrolling isn't too bad either (though it's worth noting that it's horizontal scrolling that was the ST's bete noir rather than vertical).


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Collisions are generous, but when you collide it makes sense. That said, it's not entirely clear from playing it what you're supposed to do. You collect dollar bills, but no score counter is visible, and you crash into things which hurts but there's no life bar, and there's no timer. It doesn't really give you much indication what the goal is.


7L7jI6u.png


There is a high score table (no funny name because I didn't get on it) so presumably it's scoring you - sadly it doesn't tell you on what basis which rather negates the point. Overall this is what you might expect from a competition winner. Solid execution but a lack of experience at finishing games with all the fiddly extras you might expect.
 
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