News

Templeton, one of the best coders still active in the Atari ST scene, has just finished his brand new shooter Supa Zazai Da! The game was first presented in December 2017 at the Silly Venture convention, but it wasn't yet completely finished and debugged. 3 weeks ago, Templeton got in touch with us and asked if we would like to do the announcement once the game would be ready for the public. He gave us a preview version of the STe/Mega ST release (This game uses the blitter!) while he continued working on the Falcon release.

Finally now, the Falcon version is finished also, and this is what Templeton had to say about it :

"I did not want to change the gameplay by adding more things compared to MegaST / STe versions so that the scores are identical on all machines, so I improved the realization and added options. It's a shame because according to my first tests ... I could have displayed at least 3 times more items!

The Falcon version has the real instrumental music of Nirvana (+ a new one for the last level). The music is in Mp2 format decompressed in real time by the DSP. Visually there is something extra like thicker particles, or more behind the Boss (not to change the gameplay), an animated boss, etc ...

Finally, I added options such as keyboard support and Jag PAD / Falcon PAD, an Overscan mode (stretching the image), a switch to 60/50 HZ with gameplay readjusted, VGA support with gameplay readjusted , and the ability to disable music and / or sound effects."

You can find more technical details in the txt files that accompanies the downloads. So here it is :
Supa Zazai Da in all its glory! You can find the download links in the comment section.

Oh, and even though my fingers got completely blistered by all the oldshool shooting mayhem, I was still able to write a full review of the game ;-)

Hope you all like it!

Direct download links:

1040 STE / Mega ST versions (MSA disk)

1040 STE / Mega ST versions (files)

Falcon version (files)

Hi all,

Today our Links section is open for business again. We have over 180 Atari or game related links in our section, as well as our favorite Facebook pages and YouTube channels.

If you think you have a link that needs to be in here, please use the convenient 'submit a link' box on the left side of the main links page. And sorry if we forgot anyone.

As always, this site is constantly updated, so should you stumble upon a (new) bug, or if you have suggestions or comments, please let us know.

Cheers.

Eric Safar (aka Atlantis) has recently uploaded a tune that will be used in his new game: Athanor 2. You can listen to this tune at the Soundcloud website. Please note this is the CPC version of the track. The music is composed by Hervé Monchatre (aKa Tom et Jerry), a very prolific composer on the Amstrad CPC.

We've asked Eric if the tracks will be the same on other platforms, here is his reply:

Concerning the music, some themes of the CPC version will be included on the Atari ST / Amiga versions, but they will be reworked to take advantage of the capacities of these machines. Some samples will also make their appearances to ornament the game.

Eric also said that the game would benefit from the wide color palette of the Atari STE. And last but not least: he will work on a Falcon version, too!

The CPC version of the game is nearly finished. The cover is ready to be printed. Acccording to Eric, the CPC version should be ready for the AC 2018 (French retro convention), between March-April 2018. The Atari ST version will follow, but we have no date yet. In the meantime, do not hesitate to take a look at the graphics of the Atari version that Eric sent us last November. The finalized box of the game is also visible here.

I woke this Sunday morning (21/01/2018) to see on Twitter and Facebook the sad news that Bob Wakelin had passed away.

Bob’s artwork is well known for people in their mid-40s and above. He drew the artwork that adorned a great many Atari ST releases, but also the earlier titles from the likes of Ocean and Imagine Software during the 8-bit heyday.

In some cases, it was his artwork that made people choose that particular game over another one that was vying for their pocket money on the shelves of their local computer shop.

He influenced that purchase, similarly to how Rob Hubbard’s music helped to shift a lot of Commodore 64 games. You knew you were getting quality, even if the rest of the game didn’t live up to the hype.

I, like many teenagers during the 1980s, would be looking at the cover artwork of our newly purchased 8-bit cassette whilst we sat waiting for an Ocean or Imagine game to load on my old ZX Spectrum. Most of the time, it would have been someone’s job at Ocean to attempt to transfer Bob’s artwork into a loading screen. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they didn’t.

I found a tribute video on YouTube by It's A Pixel Thing that covers most, if not all of Bob's artwork, complete with a fan remix/rendition of a classic Martin Galway C64 track to accompany it.

Atari ST related work
------------------------

Bob’s artwork graced almost 30 different titles for the Atari ST. From the early Ocean releases such as Tai Pan and Wizball, through to some of his last work that adorned titles such as Epic. See the list of Atari ST games here.

Not all of the games were great, or they felt like they were quick ports of 8-bit titles onto the Atari ST – especially back in the days when there wasn’t an Amiga version available. But we, as a buying public, bought the games sometimes because the artwork was so good.

This quote from Bob sums it up:
"A couple of times the guys at Ocean said to me 'Look Bob, this game really isn't very good so we need an extra special cover.'

I suppose I should feel guilty for it."

A full interview (circa 2015) with Bob is available on the following site.

Meeting Bob
---------------

In my later years (after hitting 40), I went to quite a few retro events around the UK. One was held at the Lass O’ Gowrie pub in Manchester. Bob was appearing at the event and he was signing copies of his artwork. That was my first glimpse in the flesh of someone I would go on to meet and work with.

A few years later, when the Lass O’ Gowrie was forced to close by the brewing company, there was a “fire sale”. It was held the day after the “closing down” party. Myself and my other half went down to see what we could pick up as there was a regular retro-gaming night held there once a month on a Tuesday and I was curious to see what I could pick-up.

We also helped with the tidying up as there was a lot of chalk-based graffiti / protest words left on the walls aimed at the brewing company that had made the decision to close down the pub!

I was lucky enough to be able to buy the three framed pieces of artwork that the Lass had got from Bob those few years earlier. These will be kept in my possession and will not be going anywhere else.

It was only after attending these numerous gaming events in the UK where I was helping to man the Attic Bug stall that I got to meet Bob. Bob would be selling, and for most visitors to the stall of a certain age, signing his prints of his well-known artwork. The A3 prints were usually the fastest ones to sell out and, if Bob wasn’t on the stall, there’d be a backlog waiting for him to sign when he got back. The prints would be rolled up and put into art tubes to ensure that the customer got the print home in one piece. Visitors from around the world would come to these events knowing that they could get a signed piece (sometimes more) of his artwork.

If you had the time to listen, Bob had many a tale to tell. He was well known as having “been there” during punk music’s early years. He was part of an act that opened up as support for Joy Division back in the day. He drew for Marvel Comics too as well as adorning our shelves of games.

Whilst he was a friend for the short time in my (and his) later years but I’m glad to say that I met him, got to know him and I will miss him.

We were christened 'Da Management' by Anna & Dave who run The Attic Bug and the photo at the top shows us posing at one of the events we attended.

Gweddill mewn heddwch!
(As Bob was born in North Wales, it is Welsh for ‘Rest In Peace’).

Our sister website Stonish.net, which is devoted to menu-disks, is celebrating its third birthday. For this occasion, it presents us the 3000th menu-disk. And not just any disk! Nr 3000 is a rare Evil Force disks, which contains tools & a huge list of cheat codes.

At Stonish, all disks are downloadable and contain games, demos, tools, docs, etc. There's almost 2 GB of packed files, so don't hesitate to browse the site, use the search engine and download anything you need.

More disks will be added in the days to come, so stay tuned.

The new version of the huge archive SNDH is available. It now offers 4925 files (total 10238 tunes). Here are the changes:

+ All the sid-i-fied tunes from HIPSid incuded
+ More SNDH-Digi tunes including Altair, Populous & Fighter Bomber
+ Tonnes of rare tunes by Mephistow & Jovis
+ More ancient un-ripped tunes by Daglish, Loriuax, Shimskey & Legace
+ Curse of Ra, innovative chip-digi driver for the time

Visit http://sndh.atari.org website to download SNDH 4.7 archive. Thanks to all people involved to the project (Grazey, Ben, Evil, TAO, Lotek Style,...) for this impressive work.