Please redirect your links and feed readers over here: http://thejoyofsticks.co.uk. It’s not just a move, it’s a relaunch, a revamp, a revitalisation! Hop over there and let me know what you think.

All you crazed, gun-toting xenophobes out there rejoice, for there is a brand new opportunity to vapourize E.T. and his glowing-fingered buddies from the comfort of your ST.

Paradize have released a Missile Command/Galaxian inspired shooter called Attack Wave. Coded by SimonSunnyBoy, and featuring music and graphic contributions from Marcer and Malodix respectively, it looks like a classic score attack game in the vain of the arcade games of old. Watch this space for the imminent review! It is available now on the Paradize homepage. Go there, be happy!

You can trace Super Sprint’s ancestry right back to the dawn of arcades with arguably the first ever sports simulator: Gran-Trak (Gran-Trak was also the first game to use on-board ROM enabling the use of sprites instead of Pong and its imitator’s primitive blocks). Gran-Trak’s popularity led to many me-too arcade cabinets and many successful spin-offs and updates from Atari themselves.

One such spin-off – Sprint – was the first racing game to benefit from a microprocessor (the 6502) which enabled the developers to include two computer-controlled cars with rudimentary vector-based AI to race against. Later editions to the series Sprint 4 and Sprint 8 updated the graphics and added the capacity for more human players (four and eight respectively).

After a long wait (1986; almost ten years) Sprint fans were treated to another sequel: Super Sprint. Like its forebears, Super Sprint is a top-down single-screen racer where simplicity of control and concept make it instantly accessible to all, while the perfectly pitched difficulty curve compels attempts at mastery. Exemplifying the notion of ‘evolution not revolution’, Super Sprint takes everything that made Sprint a success and builds on it with more varied tracks, hazards, better drone car AI, full colour visuals, car upgrades and more.

In 1987, responsibility fell to Electric Dreams to bring the experience home. Not an easy task considering the game’s high resolution display and dedicated steering-wheel and pedal controller. Electric Dreams developed versions for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and (of course) the Atari ST each with varying degrees of success. Atari’s own game division Tengen produced a version for the NES (which is, curiously, the least faithful of all the points, though still very playable).

Let’s weigh up the ST port’s positives and negatives.

Michael Schumacher
Hazard Perception – Super Sprint keeps things fresh by adding collectables (point bonuses and wrenches that can be traded in for car upgrades), and – later on in the game – hazards (moving barriers, oil and water patches, cones and whirlwinds) make the eight avaliable tracks all the more challenging.

Three’s a crowd – more players = more fun. Simple as that really.

Finely tuned – The controls have been superbly implemented; a remarkable feat considering the arcade original’s control system. Left and right on the stick rotate your car, and the fire-button accelerates; with deft and well timed use of these three inputs you can negotiate all the corners and hazards the game can throw at you. The cars are extremely responsive, ripping around corners with ease, allowing you to add a touch of over-steer by releasing the fire-button momentarily, giving you a great sense of precision.

Silverstone++ – Not only do the tracks all look great and very faithful to the arcade (as do the cars, which can’t have been easy when reducing the original’s resolution), they also offer lots of variation with chicanes, jumps, closing doors, bridges and cross-roads to test your driving ability.

Michael Winner
Occasional glitch – On a couple of the levels it is possible to crush your opponents into a wall, where they will re-spawn (via the ever ready helicopter) only to blow up again and again ad infinitum. Also, on a couple of occasions, I have got stuck to a wall losing valuable seconds, an explosion being the only escape.

ABS – The way a drone car can maintain control and steer himself around the trickiest of corner during a whirlwind or oil-slick-induced spin is extremely irritating.

CD changer optional – The music that plays between each round can become quite repetitive.

The Atari ST port of Super Sprint is very faithful to the arcade original and due to the arcade’s inimitable controller it is still the best way to play at home today, unless you happen to have a MAME cab with freely-rotating steering wheels (or the original cab for that matter).

Score:

Gameplay Video

Further Reading

• Commodore 64 version (Lemon64)
• ZX Spectrum version (World of Spectrum)
• Arcade original (KLOV)

My highlights were a fascinating insight into the Jaguar scene and its bizarre politics, an interview with TomChi about r0x, and the features on STOT. There is also a great Switchblade review which also looks at the 8-bit versions.

So, stop reading this and go there, be happy!

Dave oldcorn’s PD pinball game Starball, heavily influenced by Devil Crash/Devil’s Crush/Dragon’s Fury (depending on where you live and what system you own) skill-shot its way onto the Atari ST in 1994 courtesy of Volume 11. I came across it on an ST Format cover disk, and was very surprised at the quality of a game given away as a freebie.

This piece premieres a new style of review inspired by Kotaku’s device of highlighting a game’s pros and cons in an effort to simultaneously tell you my opinion of the game and allow you to draw your own conclusions too, while also being quick and easy to read. Without further ado, let’s get this show on the road.

Starball’s table is split into three sections: organic, space, and supernatural themed, all featuring enemies to destroy and targets to hit. There are all the usual things to expect from a pinball table: skill-shots, multipliers, bumpers, kickers etc. Certain actions must be completed in order to reach bonus stages. For example, successfully building the spaceship in the central section, and then hitting the launch ramp will take you to the Space Invaders bonus stage. You control each flipper with the corresponding shift key, and can pause the action with the space bar. As ever with pinball games, you are looking to increase your score at every opportunity, though the reward of seeing something new also pushes you forward. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons.

Oooh isn’t it lovely: The sprites and backgrounds in the game are superbly finished, giving the game a sense of style while ensuring everything is clearly visible and distinguishable. The intro features a trippy mod, and the in-game sound effects add to the atmosphere nicely. This gives the game a proffesional feel with visual and aural flair that surpasses many a commercial release.

This is pinball: One of the joys of pinball is learning a table; finding its nuances, its foibles and learning to exploit it for all its juicy points. Each area of the table has tasks to complete and hidden bits to unlock, and you will not want to stop playing until you’ve destroyed every minion, hit every hole and discovered every secret.

Star Control: Your control of the ball via the flippers is nice and precise, allowing you – with the right reflexes – to hit the intended targets. The inherent frustration at the randomness of pinball is somewhat abated by your ability to aim the ball accurately.

Homage me do: Some of the bonus levels are based on arcade classics, and hidden away quite well is a Jeff Minter pastiche (though I’m not sure it is entirely respectful), all of which were a joy to discover.

Lemon squeezy: There is a very low risk way to increase your multiplier, protect that multiplier (so that you do not lose it if you lose your ball), earn free balls, and get some juicy bonuses. By doing this each ball you cannot fail to score big. I’m not going to tell you how, because that will just spoil the game for you.

Lack of variation: Because of the above, games could theoretically go on forever, and the game’s one table with 3 areas and a handful of bonus levels isn’t enough to sustain interest over a game of titanic proportions.

Wonky ball physics: Not game breaking by any means, and you soon adapt. However, pinball games live and die by their physics engine, and the slightly off bounce and inertia of the ball could be better.

I know I’ve mentioned it twice already, but it really is worth me ramming it down your neck: Starball is a PD game. If I hadn’t told you that (and if it didn’t say so on the title screen – ‘not just your ho-hum everyday PD game’) you would have never guessed. It stands up well against the mostly shocking library of pinball games on the ST, and does not look out of place standing alongside the great Obsession.

Starball is a wonderful pinball game, its charms outweighing its flaws by some distance. You may lose interest when you reach the point of getting hundreds of millions of points each play, but getting to that point is going to be lots of fun.

Score:

Screenshots

Video

When news of this game first broke, I took one look at the screenshots over at RGCD and thought to myself: ‘Wow! A new shoot ‘em up for the ST!’ as this is the first action game released for the ST for some time, and I was very excited. However, SimonSunnyBoy pointed out to me that r0x was not a shooter, but in fact an avoid-em-up, and a closer look at said screenshots and their lack of bullets (or any kind of projectyle) confirmed this. I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

With r0x nominated for season 2, round 21 of STOT (ST Off-line Tournament), I put my disappointment behind me and set about trying to get a high score and, boy! How miss-placed was my disappointment?

Scrape me, do it, oh do it again. Whoa-oh-oh scrape me...

r0x is an extremely well presented vertically scrolling avoid ‘em up where rocks (hence the title) fly down the screen towards your delicate little craft. Amongst this asteroid field are also crystalline rocks that can be mined for points, bombs which can be picked up and used to clear the screen at hairy moments, lettered collectables spelling ‘EXTRA’ that boost your life count, stranded astronauts who offer a score bonus, and extra lives. As the pace picks up in the second half of the level, you must be on your toes to be able to differentiate these from hazards, and react accordingly.

Thanks to the super-smooth movements of all the sprites in the game combined with plentiful extra lives and life-saving bombs, this game would be quite straight forward and, dare I say it, easy. However, in a devilish twist of design inspired by modern shooters like Bangai-O and Psyvariar II, in order to glean the highest scores from this game you are forced to put your ship into danger. Huge bonuses are awarded for scraping your wings against the rocks as they fly past. It is an inspired addition to the gameplay: your ship’s hit-box (area of vulnerability) does not include the vehicle’s stubby wings, so if you risk getting your craft’s vulnerable hull close enough to the rocks so that your wings are touching them, huge bonuses and scores never before possible await you.

It is this play mechanic that separates r0x from its peers, and elevates it beyond the realm of any standard shooter. As you play, you constantly weigh up the risks and rewards of scraping a particular rock, ready to peel off at a moments notice to avoid an oncoming maelstrom or to dash across the screen for that ‘X’ you’ve been desperate to collect for the past two levels.

r0x features some truly elegant pixelling, especially evident in the r0x themselves where the artist has created some lovely effects using the limited palette available. All the sprites are well realised and easily recognised, even when hurtling at you at high speed. Accompanying the striking visuals and dizzyingly addictive gameplay is a rocking soundtrack provided by aural luminaries Crazy-Q, DMA-SC, and TomChi. As the readme instructs, attaching a loud sound system to your STE is essential.

Which brings me to the only down point of this whole package: the system requirements. r0x needs an STE with at least 2MB of RAM to run, which may prove to be a barrier to those hoping to play the game on real hardware. However, Heavy Stylus has provided a version that is bundled with STeem – the excellent Atari STE emulator – and a batch file that runs r0x on a Windows machine using the ideal STeem setup, making r0x easily accessible to those without a 2MB STE or emulating experience.

Add to all this an excellent two-player VS. mode and some hidden content to be unlocked by the best r0x scrapers and I’m left with only one conclusion: r0x, disappointing? Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Head over to the RGCD web site to see for yourself.

Score:

Gameplay footage

Further reading

• RGCD homepage
• Pouet.net entry
• Matty On Games review

image taken from pouet.net

r0x, a brand spanking new avoid ‘em up is brought to you by TomChi (No Extra) and Heavy Stylus (RGCD). The current version is 0.98 and has been two years in the making. The eventful stop-start development cycle as well as details of the game can be found on Heavy Stylus’ RGCD website. Looking forward to getting my stick around this one! Review to follow…

It’s great to get CodeJunkie’s view of these games; due to his experience of programming an Atari ST emulator, he has intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Atari ST, and can provide commentary on how they utilize the CPU and any unusual programming tricks they employ.

Go there, be happy!

Well, there you go. Awful scrolling, well composed but poorly executed music, no attempt at animation. Yet somehow it just works.

Read my Civilization review here.

Jamie Woodhouse (author of the rather spiffing ST game Nitro and Amiga’s Qwak) has made available his playable prototype of Sideways, a sidescrolling (figures) shoot ‘em up that features more than the odd nod towards classic shooters Uridium, Goldrunner and Xenon.

Though only a prototype, the code is very playable and is a tantalising glimpse at what could have been with the odd tweak and pixel-push (to paraphrase Jamie’s comments). The game updates at one VBL (thats 50 frames per second to you and me) meaning that everything is very smooth and fast. Action isn’t compromised to achieve this, though: you can speed along at break-neck speed (as long as you have the reactions of a jedi) as you fly backwards and forwards in an attempt to destroy enemies, dodge bullets, and land to collect precious energy crystals. Inbetween each stage you are presented with a number of upgrades you can purchase to increase your chance of success on the next.

Once again those D-Bug boys are in the thick of it, and their ULS code enables you to store this baby on your hard disk. Click here to visit them and download it (don’t forget to say thanks in their forums!), and have a look at Jamie’s blog for more info and something else to look forward to!

Gameplay video