I must admit this is a little bit of a cop-out, since most anyone who ever touched a real ST will know about this game. Its like doing a game of the week and mentioning World of Warcraft. Still, as I’ve been working on OutcaST for Pandora and Wiz this week, you will have to forgive me not doing my homework and picking a more obscure title. (To be sure, I will hit up Midwinter, Virus and the Sentinal later; also to be sure I will hit up the classics like Super Sprint, Nebulus, Time Bandits and Carrier Command all in due time.)

My selection process is a trifle more complex than you might think — while certainly targeting some of my personal favourites from back in the day, I am also using this project to encourage myself to fiddle with games I did not play much or at all back then and to this discover ‘new games’ — anyone whose done their time on ebay will be familiar with the term “NOS” – New Old Stock, meaning something old but that is in new condition — and this is no different. It is further complicated by the question — am I restricting msyelf to games that are ‘playable’ on the handhelds and sites I’m frequenting, or trying to raise awareness in some small way to the platform as a whole? Am I avoiding games that just don’t work in my emu but that work in other emus? Anyway, my goal is really to have a bit of retro wankery myself and to help provide some options or long lost friends to you guys as well, so I’ll try to keep them well rounded… though I may avoid a few trouble genres — I will have to mention Falcon and F29 Retaliator every other week, but as they are unplayable on handhelds and possibly on beefy desktops as well (with such modern 3d, it is hard to go back to 5 fps 3d right? :)

Read more…

These last few weeks while writing up the “Game of the Week”, I’ve encountered many interested people are less familiar with the old ST, or who just assume it is the venerable “Atari 2600 VCS” 8-bit game console everyone had back in the day. I thought I might demystify things just a touch this round before breaking into my game suggestion.

Atari certainly was known for the “VCS”, but also for their many 8-bit consumer oriented computers — the “Atari 400″ line, the “Atari 800″, or you may know XE, XL, XEGS, or other acronyms. I was a Commodore Vic-20 kid who wanted an Amiga, but our family went to the mighty ST as it was in the same class as Amiga yet infinitely cheaper.

What was the Atari 520ST? (and subsequent machines, 1040, Mega, STacy, ST Book, TT030, Falcon, etc)

Atari wanted to enter the 32-bit consumer general purpose computer market with a machine that could also play games. They knew their brand was a strong home computer and strong gaming brand, so they wanted to marry them and build a machine to combat the Mac at its weakest point — price. The Mac was also Motorola 68000 based, but very expensive and targetting business and education. Atari had recently picked up an ex-Commodore leader and wanted to repeat that companies success  story — keep or grow the home market right out from under lazy market leaders.

Anyway, all told the ST went from concept to production in around 6-months time; the hardware, operating system including Atari specific modifications, and launch titles all built in 6 months simultaneously, is quite an achievement. (Some fantastic stories of this stressful time can be found over at Coder Dad blog, who was in there working on the OS at the time.) The overall quality of the hardware design under such constraints is also pretty good. Sure, its not a strong gaming machine (no special video hardware like a SNES game console might have), no super strong audio hardware (instead, they used cheap parts TI was trying to dump), and few custom chips (compare to the Amiga which is full of them.) Looking at it another way, Atari designed day zero to have a very powerful base with few things in there to impede, and comprised of mostly off the shelf parts. The CPU to memory bus is very efficient, the OS although admittedly goofy was not ‘in the way’ too much and was extremely easy to use, and highly advanced for its time. This is a machine full of firsts — one of the earliest fully mouse driven graphical interfaces with windows and pulldown menus at is core, and including applications even my mom figured out how to use. We looked down our nose at those poor bastards learning to read their Word Perfect keyboard templates, while we had our clicky clicky interfaces.

So it lacked custom graphic hardware, it made up for it with typical Atari spirit and fast hardware, so the games were pretty good until they got eclipsed later by the Amiga. (The Amiga, while slightly slower to start with, was an expandable hardware design and so new models and new options really drove it onward, whereas years later the ST models were still more or less similar to the launch machine. Later beefier machines were much less popular and so their new hardware was never used beyond the original specifications. Few developers made use of the STE wider colour palette or blitter hardware and simply fell back to treating it like a regular ST.)

Anyway, consider — Dungeon Master, first graphical dungeon romp using a mouse. Populous — first god game. STacy was one of the first laptops, and I think the first desktop replacement laptop — a full ST on the go, with backlit monitor and hard drive (and a good 15-30 minutes of battery life, woowoo!) Many extraordinary titles (real time 3d with Carrier Command, say), not to mention an absolutely incredible application library (including even Word Perfect, I bet you did not know that.) Fantastic desktop publishing software (second only to the Mac, in fact the ST was quite a powerhouse in publishing circles), built in MIDI (amazing for musicians, barely used by home consumers admittedly), an all around great machine.

Atari succeeded — they built a machine in the same class as Amiga and Mac, yet at a fraction of the price. For a few years, Atari was king of its class.

Later models (STFM included a floppy drive and TV-out, then the STE with enhanced graphical/memory hardware, then the Mega line with business oriented detached keyboard and hard drives, and extreme machines like the TT030 and Falcon) just got increasingly behind their competition, but were still fine machines. Still, its the original ST which simply blew everyone away at the end of 1985 and begin of 1986 that I rave about today. It was not the best in any way, but all told, it was one of the greats. I ran a BBS from approximately 1987 to 1993 or so on that little beast!

Edit: Above I was referring to Atari’s goal of a 32-bit machine; in the end, the ST is a 16/32-bit as they said (hence “ST” – Sixteen/Thirtytwo).

I’ve received a few notes regarding this ‘GotW’ effort; for one, since I mentioned I’d hoped to avoid the well-trodden path (reviewing the very best of the titles, and for the ST there are many) that perhaps I’m projecting to newbies only the mediocre games. Perhaps I should not avoid the true greats, or should do a special posting summing up a bunch of them, so that I can just point at it and say ‘therrums!’ .. I’ll leave that for a later date and instead review a title which _I_ really enjoyed back in the day. I don’t recall now if it was popular or not.  Another note questioned about genres .. as the ST was blessed with many very different kinds of games from text adventures to puzzlers to flight sims to wargames of every kind, I could easily strike gold for anyone reader only every once in awhile.. but alas I’ve not the time to knock out 5-10 of these per week to address one from each genre. Still, I’ll mull it over. There are of course a few very good ST fan sites such as Little Green Desktop, Atari Legend, Atari Forum, etc .. so feel free to hit them up :)

Inspiration for this post was drawn from a thought I had .. we all know that 3D ‘ages worse’ than 2D, and this comes quadruply so for flight-sims. While you can fire up Mario Br^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^hGreat Guiana Sisters and always enjoy it regardless of how ghetto the graphics, firing up Microsoft Flight Sim 2 will be brutal nomatter how much the nostalgia. Worse still are that with flight sims using such comprehensive controls, they’ll never really be playable even if you wanted to, anymore.. at least on a handheld or games console. Still, going back in my mind to great ST gaming moments, one will never forget chasing down the train that circled the landscape in Falcon and trying to fly through the open door in one of the railcars. I’ll never forget when that realization struck that the screamers in Dungeon Master were both edible and would slowly respawn, and so could be herded into a room with a portcullus and trapped for an infinite food supply. I’ll never forget blowing the first planet in Captive, hacking the file format of Breach so I could make my characgter ‘uber’, obliterating an army with one spell in Phantasie, taking over Chicago in Roadwar 2000, and I could go on, since I was quite the ST nerd.

And I will not forget in _D/Generation_ the first or second Genoq employee I rescued who ran over to say hello, and then got shot in the back by one of the traps I had tried so hard to avoid for myself. That’ll teach those survivors to run over to their would be rescuers!

D/Generation is a proto horror-puzzler, a game with a sensor of humour and intelligence and yet was relatively unforgiving.

Platform: Atar ST featured, but also upon Amiga and PC. It is highly tempting for me to attempt a remake :)

Play Now: Any emu of merit will handle it for your platform of choice. OutcaST on the gp2x, CaSTaway on the PSP, and OutcaST on the Pandora or Wiz when I release it (soon!), among others. (Hatari runs it fine on desktops, Wiz and Pandora, as do STeem Engine and WinSTon and others.)

A note on the ROMs floating about: As always I recommend ripping your own original disks, for both concerns of legality and also since usually they provide the best experience. Of course they often back then had painful protections (looking crap up in the manual, laser burnt holes in the disks, and so on), so do as you will. I’ve collected numerous copies and cracks of this title and must note that even some of the beefier ST emus sometimes get confused during load (unpack) time due to something some of the pack groups did. Most of them don’t like my emus too much, and I never did bother to go figure out why .. still, my original disk and a very simple crack disk work fine. (If it has a scrolling or bouncy intro, its probably the one that will not work with OutcaST. If it has an intro that blinks by that you can barely notice, you’re probably in luck. Look in the ‘complete collection’ type sources..)

Review:

Now while the artwork is functional and not striking, the gameplay I humbly submit makes up for it. One of my favorite titles of all time (Time Bandits for the ST) is also … cute, but utterly fantastic. Being a retro fan yourself I trust you can look beyong what the years have done :) The game also doesn’t really have a soundtrack, so you’ll have to go with me on this one.

Suffice to say it is an isometric perspective with your character dropped onto the top of a tower to deliver a package; sadly this tower, owned by a genetic engineering company (Resident Evil anyone?), has been taken over by the experiments (the A/Generation, B/Generation, etc) and you’ve got to find yourself a way out. Essentially each screen is a mini puzzle unto itself, with a few multi-screen gimmicks (find a key here, use it there.) Initially the player starts with no weapon and your job is to figure out which things are harmful (monsters popping out the floor, rotating on the spot, bouncing around, etc, electrified walls and floors and other traps) and which things are not (computer terminals with messages, keys, pressure plates, wall switches, doors, other civilians.) Later you’ll locate a laser pistol whose shots will rebound from the walls, letting you activate certain gadgets arond corners.

Most of the gameplay is in timing — one monster will be pivoting on the spot so you’ll have to run around it in the direction of rotation to stay out of harms way, while heading for a wall to push a button, and in basic logic — do this, then that, then t’other, to open a door out of this room. Usually you have to clear a room out and activate or utilize various gizmos in order to proceed in any meaningful way.

Death doesn’t mean too much, which is good for what in essence is a puzzler more than an action game, but they do provide only a limited number of lives, which is a shame, but after a few matches you’ll have caught onto the ‘rules’ and will know where to step and where not to, and can really get into the meat of the game.

So if you’re looking for a game with arcade but not terribly difficult bits, and where you have to pause for just a few moments to think about how to proceed, this is a great oldie. It _is_ a bit tired to look at if you’ve not got the rosie glasses of nostalgia, but its a fun game that I’ve enjoyed in the past, and also recently on my mighty GP2x. Theres a certain sense of horror-comedy to it all which is pretty entertaining, so do be sure to activate (by walking into) computer terminals and plaques and so forth. Smell the roses, being careful they’re not attack-roses first :)

I made a screenshot from the first screen; notice the rotating worm-cannon on the left, and the cowering civilian on the right.

D/Generation

I posted an idea to one of my favourite hangouts (the GP32x site) and some folks showed interest. While writing a cross-platform game of the week column would be most awesome, it is not within my powers or my time limits I’m afraid, so I will stick to offering a Game of the Week for my beloved childhood platform — the almighty Atari ST (competitor to the Amiga, not the Atari 2600 if thats what you are thinking.)

Should you have any ideas or requests or reviews of your own, do let me know and we can collaborate (here or at GP32x or elsehwere.) Really, even folks want to jump in with C64 or Amiga or SNES or the like GotW’s let me know and we can do something possibly magnificent. But I do get ahead of myself.

My goal for GotW is to highlight a lesser known but still interesting title (where ‘interesting’ can mean very good, or interesting to me for some other cryptic reason that I will endeaver to explain.) So I need not delve into the richness that is Lemmings, Dungeon Master or Civilization (play them _now_ my friends!), say, when I can instead strike a deal with … well, let me step you through the many fantastic titles you might have missed week by week shall I?

SWIV

Platform: Atari ST featured, though also popular on Amiga (and to a lesser extent on the C64 and Speccy IIRC)

Play Now: Your emulator of choice for those platforms; OutcaST for GP2x and GP2x Wiz (also known as CaSTaway for the PSP) are verified, since I wrote them :)

Atari ST ROM: Comes in many options, but I have a Medway Boys crack I must admit is most handy as it lacks any protection annoyances and includes a Trainer option

SWIV is a vertical shooter (a SHMUP for fans of the genre) which is both pretty good and interesting for its technical merits. Developed, I believe, by the same folks who ported Silkworm to the ST from the Arcade, it is in my books the spiritual successor to Xenon 1 (not Xenon 2: Megablast) and Silkworm itself. What it inherited from those titles was the playability of airborn (in this case Helicopter) or ground (Tank) and a two player game where both are in play at once. Designing the levels for a single player who could be either form (chosen at start of the game) must have proven challenging but they did an excellent job — the game is not overly difficult, and is relatively lengthy.

Silkworm itself is a decent port of an excellent Arcade title; in that game (a horizontal SHMUP) the players move right; the chopper can only fire foreward and the jeep can fire any direction but of course has limited movement options.. these limitations added teamwork strategy, but did make the level design a little painful. SWIV is this same sort of approach, though in vertical orientation.

While not the very best shooter on the platform, it garnered excellent reviews at the time for its playability and a few specific features; I admit I encountered it late in the ST game — a few years ago while developing an ST emulator in fact — but I highly recommend it to ST aficionados. It doesn’t perform too many nasty hardware tricks if I recall, but does some very interesting things in the actual code. I should not know that except that it brought out some CPU emulation issues .. so I was in the unenviable position of working through their assembly code to debug my simulated CPUs operation and witnessed some of their trickery. While playing the game you will on occasion notice the floppy disk light up, without interupting game play — they were clever with their timing to pre-cache necessary sprites and level data during gameplay to avoid large ‘level loading’ pauses. They load before needing and unload after needing to free up memory, permitting the player to tromp through enormous levels without delay. They also do some trickery to keep a large number of sprites onscreen and in motion .. the most popular ST models had no hardware sprites so this was always a weak point in the machine, but the SWIV developers pulled it off better than most others.

In summary, SWIV is not a ‘bullet hell’ type of SHMUP per se, but it certainly was working its way there — you will regularly encounter dozens of enemies on screen at once in formation, or dozens of bullets to be avoided. Its a good looking and fun to play shooter where you can play as a tank or chopper.

Good times. Of course, I am a shooter man .. Sky Shark (Flying Shark) is my poison of choice and the first arcade cabinet I picked up.

This is a non-exhaustive list of games I played or found otherwise interesting or significant on the almighty Atari ST. Of course I physically played hundreds more, but these I found interesting or amusing enough to comment about and thought they might help give focus to folks who never had an ST or the resources (*cough* BBS piracy *cough*) to see them all personally. This is of course just my list, and so won’t include a lot of great titles other people enjoyed.. but what can you do? :)

This took *way* too much time to put together :)

Around 200 games :) For details and screenshots, head over to the very good Atari Legend site. BBS games and applications like Cubase will be in another posting someday.

Legend:

‘?’ Entries beginning with ‘?’ weren’t played by me, though I intend to fire them up in an emu soon.

‘=’ Format is ‘game title’ followed by ‘=’ (equal sign) then description; no equals present if no description added. Yes, I’ll toss this in a database someday :)

‘*’ They’re not really marked by genre or score, so its less useful than it could be. I’ll try and do that sometime. But howabout I lay in a *** for games that you should try first.

—

Alternate Reality = immersive though not so pretty an RPG. Had ‘portals’ to expansion packs that never arrived =)
? Amberstar = loic keeps pushing it on me to try; supposedly one of the best RPGs.
? Another World
*** Arkanoid = great conversions, really good audio
Arkanoid 2 : Revenge of Doh
** Axel’s Magic Hammer – A fun early platformer
** BAT = real game required ST with dongle, as sound chip was in dongle; immersive, neat story, neat graphics.
Balance of Power
Barbarian (Psygnosis)
Barbarian (Palace)
Batman: The Movie = not great, but I liked it
Battle Chess
Better Dead Than Alien = not great, but I recall loving it.. and loved the play on words
Bionic Commando = Frustrating, but always came back for more
Black Tiger
Bloodwych
Breach = great simple tactical turn based shooter
? Breach 2
* Breakers = a really good text adventure; one of the few by a poet laurieat
*** Bubble Bobble
Bubble Ghost
*** Buggy Boy
*** Cadaver = awesome graphics .. a pre-Diablo little RPG by the Bitmap Brothers.
CAD 3d
? Cannon Fodder = Supposed to be amazing; great artwork.
** Captain Blood = great music, strange game
*** Captive = Awesome .. Dungeon Master with robots.
** Carrier Command = a robotic aircraft carrier sim? Yes!
? Castle Master = some loved it; a 3d dungeon romp, in true 3d
*** Civilization
*** Colonial Conquest
Conqueror = Classic.. Virus with tanks.
** D/Generation – interesting tactical platformer
** Defender of the Crown
? Deuteros – Sequal to Millenium 2.2, but couldn’t find it back in the day
Dragon Spirit
Dragons Lair = too many swaps
*** Dungeon Master = play it now. Right now.
*** Dungeon Master: Chaos Strikes Back – right after you play DM, dont’ even go to the bathroom
* Eliminator
? Elite – A true classic across all platforms, though I didn’t play it in the day
*** Empire = Very good early tactical wargame
? Enchanted Land = From Thalion, a bunch of demo coders gone platformer. Supposed to be one of the most impressive looking ST games, with full screen ’sync scrolling’.
Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters
? F-15 Strike Eagle 2
** F-19 Stealth Fighter
** F-29 Retaliator
** Falcon (and mission disks)
? Fate = Gates of Dawn
Fire and Forget
Flight Simulator 2
? Forgotten Worlds
? Frontier= Elite II
Gauntlet = not bad but not as good as the sequal
** Gauntlet 2 = very good; movable walls!
Gemini Wing = my brother loved it; windshield=wiper weapons =P
Ghosts & Goblins = a great conversion
Ghouls & Ghosts = Not as good a conversion as the earlier conversoin of the later sequal
? Goblins
*** GODS = Sweetness from the beloved Bitmap Brothers
? Golden Axe
Grav = a simple ‘Gravitar’ and ‘Oids’-like game
** Great Giana Sisters = a very good port; surprisingly, the C64 version is also good!
** Guild of Thieves = another classic text/graphic adventure from Magnetic Scrolls
Hacker = pretty addictive
*** Hard Drivin (and sequal) = Awesome; played them for hours
*** Heroquest = great conversion from the board-game; good all around RPG.
? Hillsfar = battle-RPG
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Hudson Hawk = I loved the movie; a decent game.
*** IK+ = Worlds greatest fighting game
? Immortal – well loved RPG
** Imperium = freakin’ great strategy game
? Impossamole
Infestation = some great artwork; I can’t recall the gameplay =P
** Interphase = a classic 3d sci-fi flight-shooter; ripped off ‘Drives Me Crazy’ music
Into the Eagles Nest = not so good, but I was hooked somehow..
Ishar 1 = Legend Of The Fortress (and series)
? Ivanhoe
? James Pond
Joe Blade = another game I kept coming back to, but don’t know why
Joust (Atari) = a decent arcade port
Jouse (PD) = a great remake =P
** Jumping Jack’son = great music, even
Kick Off 2 = if you’re into soccer games
Killing Game Show
Kings Quest (series) = I only played Kings Quest III
? Laser Squad (need to try it out sometime)
? Legend = always just wanted to try it
? Legend of Faerghail = Supposed to be quite a good RPG
? Knightmare (Mindscape) = An RPG like Captive
** Leisure Suit Larry 1 = In the Land of the Lounge Lizards (series)
*** Lemmings = everyone has seen this right? Truly great.
? Lethal Xcess = sequal to Wings of Death, never played it, but WoD rocks.
Llamatron = How can you be an ST fan without bringing up Minter’s Robotron-ripoff
*** License To Kill = really really good top down strategic vertical shooter, James Bond style
Lode Runner = A classy remake
? Loom = another Lucasarts game, but with a musical component; one of the first and only games ever to do such a thing.
? Lords of Chaos = sorcerous strategy game; well recommended.
*** Magic Pockets = another wicked Bitmap Brothers title, platformer
Major Motion = an alright Spyhunter rip-off; no Peter Gunn =(
? Mega-lo-mania = always wanted to try it.
** Megaroids = A demo for Megamax ‘C’ compiler, but I _loved_ it
Megatraveller – The Zhodani Conspiracy = _really_ bad, but classic because we wanted to play the pencil and paper version =P
Metal Masters = a fun beat’em’up with robots
Midi Maze = freeware, but we “LAN partied” at work long before deathmatch; really, this is the father to Doom ;) (a series apparently)
? Midwinter = raved in magazines, always wanted to try it
*** Millenium 2.2 = one of the top turn based space conquest sims ever.
Mig-29 Fulcrum = another highly rated flight-sim
Moebius = an RPG no one but me remembers; one of the first games I played to completion I suspect..
Monopoly (Shareware) = I dunno, I played a lot of this; mark me a loser.
? Mortville Manor = a game with speach as a component for play (adventure)
Moonbase = terrible, but I liked it =)
Narc = not a great conversion, but I waited for it with baited breath
*** Nebulus – a classic on many platforms
Nethack = yes, someone ported it to the ST!
? Nine Princes in Amber = I wish I had known about this at the time (and the books its based upon)
? No Second Prize = I never played it, but Earl lived it
Obliterator = another typical Psygnosis game.. gorgeous to see, not to play =)
? Obsession = For STE; supposedly really good graphics; pinball topdown.
Ogre = an ‘okay’ port of a classic board-war-game
** Oids = peope love it; not bad.. like Gravitar and Thrust
Omega = I even wrote a review; script a tank and toss him into an areana. Great for coders!
Outrun = pretty good port of the driving game; not a great port but good. (series)
* Overlander = straight forward racer with some shooting.. like Road Blasters
Pacmania = I really loved this back in the day.. isometric Pacman.
Pacific Islands = people seemed to think this was the shiz back in the day
*** Parasol Stars = a sequal to Bubble Bobble; really well done.
Pawn = another classic Magnetic Scrolls text/graphic adventure
** Phantasie (series) = one of the first RPGs to grab my soul
? Pipe Dream = everyone loved it; I never tried it.
? Pirates = Sid Meier’s.. everyone loved it, but I never tried it.
Plutos = A very primitive shooter, but it was one of the first ST games I bought I think and we played it endlessly. (1986!)
Pool of Radiance = the old goldbox series; dated, but classic.
*** Populous = what more is to say? It started the God Game. (Series, expansion discs)
Powerdrome = a 3d space-sled-racing game; I loved it!
*** Powermonger = like Populous, but for specifically for war; and for soliders to rape sheep in the forest when you’re not looking.
? Prince of Persia = everyone raved, but I didn’t ‘get’ it
? ** Rick Dangerous = a classic that never dies..
** R-Type = a respectible conversion of the classic arcade shooter
** R-Type II = another good conversion
*** Railroad Tycoon = if only I’d known it existed at the time; thankfully I didn’t =)
*** Rainbow Islands = another Bubble Bobble sequal/clone; great stuff.
Rampage = an excellent arcade conversion
Rings of Zilfin = a nasty RPG, but we didn’t have a lot back then..
*** Roadwar 2000 = a long and fun tactical wargame .. inspired by Car Wars I’m sure. Autoduel held nothing to this.
Rockstar Ate My Hampster = a rock-band sim. Fun for an hour =P
Robocop = I’m a sucker for movie and superhero games ;)
** Rolling Thunder = another great arcade conversion.
Rogue = a graphical remake of the classic unix console game
Schoolyard Slaughter (PD) = awful awful, but classic
Secret of Monkey Island = a fun LucasArts game
? Sensible Soccer = People just keep raving about it.. I need to fire it up sometime :)
? Sentinel = another game loic bugs me to try ;)
Shadow of the Beast = really really annoying; raved about, so must be over=rated.
** Shanghai = my first mahjongg.. loved it!
? Shoot’em-Up Construction Kit = Notable because the ST was _full_ of ‘construction kit’ games
Sidearms = a good conversion of a not so good arcade game, but I dug it.. it had mecha.
* Sidewinder = an early vertical shooter, wider than the screen
Silent Service = not sure if its good, but one of our first purchased games; wicked.
Silkworm = jeep or chopper, your choice.
** Sim City = one of the first games to keep me up all night.. I simply had no choice. This and Civilization.
*** Simulcra = a really great 3d level running tank/plane game. Awesome.
Sky Chase = an interesting head to head flight sim – with paper airplanes in wireframe. Fun as heck, and stupid =)
Smash TV = a decent port of the Robotron sequal
Space Harrier = not a great conversion, but okay; the title screens were simple Degas files, so I hacked them all up terribly =)
*** Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe = a great sci=fi football game
*** Spherical = a wonderful action platform puzzler
? Spitting Images = a friend of mine dug it; punch out politcal leaders!
** Star Goose! = a fun simple shooter, with elevations in the landscape
Starfleat: The War Begins = not pretty, but the classic ‘trek’ sector turn based game prettied up
** Starglider – wireframe 3d space-flight shooter
*** Starglider 2 – solid-filled 3d-space-light shooter; classic!
** Star Wars (arcade) = a great port of the arcade classic (mouse or joystick even)
* Street Fighter 2 (series) = never played it at the time as it came out fairly late for the ST; I can’t imagine playing it on a joystick with one button!
** Stunt Car Racer = Crazy 3d racer with twisty and loopy tracks; I’ve not played it much myself, but people do love it :)
? Supercars = people raved about this ‘micro machines’ type games
? Strider = Never played it much; over-rated? Everyone loved it!
** Sundog = immersive very impressive RPG-trading-space game. An ST classic.
** Super Hang-On = another great conversion translated pretty well; loved it.
*** Super Sprint = really really good arcade conversion; topdown racer.
Technocop = Amiga version was better, but I dug it all the same
Tempest = a pretty decent conversion if memory serves
Tiger Road
*** Time Bandit – looks 8-bit style, but addictive and ingenious; a true ST classic.
** Turrican 2 = very popular ‘console quality’ platform shooter
Ultima 6: The False Prophet = the ST had a pile of the early Ultima RPGs (series)
Universal Military Simulator = I don’t recall much about it, except it was one of the many “construction set” type games the ST hosted. Tonnes of mods circulated..
Universal Military Simulator II
* Verminator = giant 8-way scrolling play area; platformer. Aphyd loved it.
*** Virus = great 3d scrolling landscape; a true ST classic.
Vixen = a crappy platformer, but it was about amazons so I loved it ;)
Vroom = a well loved high speed 3d racer
Wargame Construction Set = another game maker
** Weird Dreams = not the best, but very original; a must play ST classic. Uncanny weird.
*** Wings of Death = a great primitive shooter; one of the best technical shooters on the platform.
Wonderboy in Monsterland = a great ST coin-op conversion
*** Xenon = a true ST classic vertical shooter, from the Bitmap Brothers
*** Xenon 2 = another classic shooter; really good, for the ST anyway =)
Xenophobe = don’t recall if it was good, but we played the heck out of this conversion
* Xybots = good conversion of the boring but unique arcade game
? Zany Golf = Always wanted to try out this mini=golf sim
Zork I: The Great Underground Empire = Really, how can I make a list and not include this?

As with some of my other ‘best of’ lists (see here) I made a post on one of my favourite little message boards to find out what folks thought were the best of breed for a given platform – in this case, the Commodore Amiga. Certainly this isn’t as hardcore as making a voting website with account registration and blah blah blah, but its a good way to get a list of games recommended when you’re a newbie to a given platform. So without further ado, heres a tally of the responses – the leading number is the number of times mentioned in the thread for the given game. I hope you find the list useful!

• 7 Settlers
• 7 Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasies, Pinball Illusions
• 6 Alien Breed
• 4 Stunt Car Racer
• 3 Worms
• 3 Turrican 2
• 3 Syndicate
• 3 Superfrog
• 3 Speedball 2
• 3 Scumm VM (Monkey Island, etc)
• 3 Moonstone
• 3 Lemmings
• 3 Gods
• 3 Frontier – Elite 2
• 3 Cannon Fodder
• 3 Apidya
• 2 Zeewolf
• 2 Xenon 2
• 2 Walker
• 2 Speedball
• 2 SWIV
• 2 Project X
• 2 Paradroid 90
• 2 Nuclear War
• 2 North and South
• 2 Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge
• 2 Katakis
• 2 Flashback
• 2 Dungeon Master
• 2 Civilisation
• 2 Cadaver
• 2 Battle Squadron
• 2 Battle Isle
• 2 All Terrain Racing
• 1 Zool 2
• 1 Zool
• 1 Zany Golf
• 1 Zak McKraken
• 1 Z-Out
• 1 Yo! Joe
• 1 Xenon
• 1 X-Out
• 1 Wizball
• 1 Wings of Fury
• 1 Wayne Gretzky Hockey
• 1 Vroom
• 1 Venus the Flytrap
• 1 Uridium 2
• 1 Universe
• 1 Ultima 4
• 1 UFO: Enemy Unknown
• 1 Turrican
• 1 Thunderhawk
• 1 The Lost Vikings
• 1 The Killing Game Show
• 1 The Curse of RA
• 1 The Chaos Engine
• 1 Switchblade 2
• 1 Super Twintris
• 1 Super Obliteration
• 1 Stardust
• 1 StarRay
• 1 Soccer Kid
• 1 Slam Tilt
• 1 Skidmarks
• 1 Shufflepuck Cafe
• 1 Shadow of the Beast
• 1 Shadow Warriors
• 1 Shadow Of The Beast 3
• 1 Sensible Soccer
• 1 Ruff ‘n’ Tumble
• 1 Rock’n Roll
• 1 Robocop 3
• 1 Rick Dangerous
• 1 Race Drivin’
• 1 Prince of Persia
• 1 Populous 2
• 1 Populous
• 1 Persian Gulf Inferno
• 1 Parasol stars
• 1 Panza Kick Boxing
• 1 No Second Prize
• 1 Nitro
• 1 Nebulus
• 1 Mortal Kombat 2
• 1 Mean Arenas
• 1 Magic Pockets
• 1 Liberation – Captive 2
• 1 Leander
• 1 Last Ninja Remix (legendary conversion of the original Last Ninja game)
• 1 Knights of the Sky
• 1 Kick Off
• 1 Jim Power
• 1 James Pond 2
• 1 Jaguar XJ220
• 1 It Came from the Desert
• 1 It Came From the Desert II
• 1 Indy Heat
• 1 Indianapolis 500
• 1 Ilyad
• 1 IK+
• 1 Hired Guns
• 1 Heimdall
• 1 Gridiron
• 1 Great Giana Sisters
• 1 Gravity Force
• 1 Gobliiins
• 1 Goal
• 1 Fuzzball
• 1 Forgotten Worlds
• 1 Flood
• 1 Flimbo’s Quest
• 1 Fighter Bomber
• 1 F-15 Strike Eagle II
• 1 Extreme Racing
• 1 Exile
• 1 Elite
• 1 E-Motion
• 1 Dugger
• 1 Drivin’ Force
• 1 Dragonstone
• 1 Dr. Plummet’s House of Flux
• 1 Disposable Hero
• 1 Desert Strike
• 1 Denaris
• 1 Deluxe Galaga
• 1 Crazy Sue
• 1 Cosmic Pirate
• 1 Coloris
• 1 Colonization
• 1 Clown-o-Mania
• 1 Chuck Rock
• 1 Chaos Engine
• 1 Centerbase
• 1 Captive (also on the ST) – RPG
• 1 Brutal Sports Football
• 1 Breathless
• 1 Bobo
• 1 Bob’s Bad Day
• 1 Bloodwych
• 1 Blood Money
• 1 Benefactor
• 1 Battle Chess
• 1 Ballistix
• 1 Baal
• 1 Awesome
• 1 Aunt Arctic Adventure
• 1 Arcade Pool
• 1 Another World
• 1 Alien Breed 3D 2
• 1 Alien 3

Whew!

For more background on what I’m about here, see my previous article. Essentially, I’m asking people for their ‘best of’ lists for platforms and genres so we all know what to do when we nab a new emulator or machine from the flee-market. In background I’m also working on my ‘favourite games played [by me]‘ article, which takes awhile to remember things for :) Anyway, to the task at hand!

I posted a thread at GP32x to ask what folks favourite movie conversion games were, including comic books and ‘hero games’ in general. Myself, I’ve always adored the License to Kill James Bond game on the Atari ST, and _of course_ the Star Wars arcade game among numerous others. But posted I did (without putting much thought into my own choices I must sadly admit), to see what everyone else would come up with. Heres a quick summary (with items listed multiple times preceeded by an asterisk(*) for each reference.)

• 007 (GB)
• Airwolf (Atari 800xl)
• Aladdin (SNES, Genesis)
• Alien (Spectrum, C64)
• *** Alien 3 (Megadrive/Genesis SNES)
• Alien Trilogy (PSX, great soundtrack too!)
• Alien vs Predator (Jaguar)
• Aliens (arcade)
• Batman & Robin (SNES)
• Batman (Atari ST)
• ** Batman (GB)
• Batman (Genesis)
• Batman (NES)
• ** Batman Returns (SNES)
• Bruce Lee (C64) (can you call this a movie conversion?)
• ** Die Hard Triology (PSX)
• Doom (Now theres a movie)
• ** Dune II – The Battle for Arrakis (PC, Amiga, Genesis)
• E.T. (Atari 2600; my wife loved it, but most everyone else alive hates it ;)
• Ghostbusters (C64, Atari 2600)
• Ghostbusters (arcade)
• Goonies 2 (NES)
• Gremlins 2 (NES)
• ** Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Infocom, many platforms)
• Hook (ST, Amiga)
• Hobbit (Spectrum and C64)
• Indiana Jones (SCUMM, many platforms)
• Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures (SNES)
• Into the Eagles Nest (C64, Amiga, Atari ST)
• Jurassic Park (Genesis)
• Labyrinth (C64) (basically the predecessor of Maniac Mansion)
• Little Nemo (NES)
• Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (modern machines)
• Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (modern machines)
• Maximum Carnage (SNES/Genesis)
• Ren & Stimpy – Quest for the Shaven Yak (GameGear)
• Resident Evil series
• Return of the King (modern systems)
• Robocop (NES)
• Robocop (arcade)
• Robocop 3 (Amiga)
• Scooby Doo Mysteries (Genesis & SNES) (Both different)
• Spiderman (Atari 2600)
• Spiderman vs. Kingpin (Genesis)
• *** Star Wars (Arcade)
• Star Wars (Assorted games for SNES, Super Star Wars etc)
• Superman (Atari 2600)
• Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (Arcade)
• The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay (XBOX)
• The Fourth Protocol (C64)
• ** The Goonies (Amstrad CPC, Spectrum, C64)
• The Great Escape (C64, Spectrum)
• Tron (Assorted, many platforms)
• True Lies (SNES)
• Untouchables (C64)
• Wolverine Adamantium Rage (Megadrive/Genesis)
• X-Men 1 & 2 (Genesis)
• X-Men Mutant Apocalypse (SNES)
• XMen (arcade; ok, from comics)
• XMen (assorted Megadrive/Genesis games)
• Yo! Noid (NES)

More great stuff to play when you’re bored and lonely with cornchips.

Previously, I wrote about my favourite or notable Atari ST games and the posting turned out to be fairly popular — a good way to jog the memory or find games if you never actually had an ST (or wide exposure to its game library.) With emulation being so popular, retro-gamers everywhere have all the past platforms available.. but no idea how to operate them, or what to look for if they do. (It can be funny sometimes when some 14 year old writes to ask some obscure GEM question.. how to rename a file in the mouse based GUI, etc. Weird stuff to get in your inbox :) Anyway, we all had different machines as kids (ahh, back in the day when there were different machines!) so we’re all needing to find out what to fiddle with. My family went from Atari 2600 to Commodore Vic-20 to an Atari 520ST and I proceeded to skip over the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis platforms until much later, so my gaming experiences are very different to the ‘average gamer’.

Not that I have time to actually play games of course, but you all know that I love making lists of every possible thing :) That said, I’ve started a few threads on one of my favourite message boards to ask what peoples favourites were and to help build a list of things I’d like to try when I do get time, and to amuse everyone of course! Now, I am hoping to receive an old-school joystick-to-USB adapter soon, so time will have to be made..

A quick summary follows.

Oh, I just found a site that does this, but doesn’t cover so many platforms. While it does cover SNES, it doesn’t go into Vectrex or Amiga for instance, so its not very comprehensive.. but its a good start, and I’m sure other sites abound.

For my thread about best and notable Commodore 64 games, our fine friends ar GP32x posted the following lists: (If an asterisk(*) preceeds, then it was mentioned that many times.)

• All monty mole series
• All the Dizzy Games
• Allycat
• Alter Ego (still love it, though it doesn’t work on GP32…)
• Anything by jeff minter
• Anything by shaun southern
• Archon 1 + 2
• Armalyte
• Armalyte
• Attack of the Mutant Camels
• Axis assassin
• BC’s Quest for Tires
• Beach Head
• Beamrider
• Beat It!
• Bomb Jack
• Bounty Bob Strikes Back
• ** Bruce Lee
• Bubble Bobble & Rainbow Islands
• Buggy Boy
• CJ’s elephant antics
• Commando
• Cosmic Causeway
• Crazy Comets
• ** Creatures 1&2
• Draconus
• Drelbs
• Driller
• Dropzone
• Encounter
• Fiendish Freddy (big top o’ fun)
• Firetrack
• Flimbo’s quest
• Frankie goes to Hollywood
• Gaplus
• ** Great Giana Sisters
• *** H.E.R.O.
• Hagar the Horrible
• Henry’s House
• Hunters moon
• Hydrax
• ** IK+
• **** Impossible mission 1+2
• Invade-a-load
• Iridis Alpha
• Iron Man
• Jack the nipper
• **** Jumpman Jr.
• Katakis
• Kettle
• ** Kikstart 1 & 2
• Klax
• Krakout
• Labyrinth (basically the predecessor of Maniac Mansion)
• ** Last Ninja Series
• Law of the West
• Leaderboard
• M.U.L.E. (VERY great game!)
• Master of Magic
• Mayhem in Monsterland
• ** Mega Apocalypse
• Mercenary (1 and 2)
• Metro-Cross
• Mission Impossible
• Mr Do’s Castle
• Murder on the Mississippi
• ** Nebulus
• Nemesis
• Nexux
• Omega Race
• Operation Wolf
• Overlord
• P.O.D
• *** Paradroid
• Parallax
• Park Patrol
• Pipe Mania
• Pitstop II
• Powerdrift
• ** Racing Destruction Set (very good if played with 2 players and your own tracks)
• Rampage
• Ramparts
• Ranarama
• Slapfight
• Spindizzy
• Super Pipeline 2
• Thing on a Spring
• Thrust
• To be on Top
• Trailblazer
• ** Turrican 1 + 2
• Turrican 3
• ** Uridium
• Vendetta
• Voidrunner
• Warhawk
• ** Way of the Exploding Fist
• Wizard of Wor
• ** Wizball
• Wonderboy in monsterland
• World Games
• Zenji

So there you go.. quite a list, but a bunch of classics I’ve heard of or played, and a pile of stuff I’ve never played. Lots to do on a rainy day :)