Showing posts with label 2021. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2021. Show all posts

Sunday, December 26, 2021

Old Towers



Yet another brand new game!!

On Christmas Eve, totally out of the blue, came a brand new game for the Atari ST by Andy Noble. It's a conversion of a RetroSouls' Sega Megadrive game which takes place inside a massive tower filled with nasties, puzzles and many yellow dots that need collecting. Personally, I was instantly reminded of Nebulus and Yopaz IceStar.

Old Towers is actually a simple concept and one that works incredibly well. We are in control of a cute little guy(s) who runs around a vertical tower collecting yellow pills like our friend from that maze. He can run in all four directions but, once he begins to move, his momentum continues in that direction until coming into contact with a wall or object. Once all the yellow items are collected he can head towards the exit tile and onto the next level.

Sounds cool, right? Yep, so let's check out some screenshots of this funky little game...



Look at him move! So fast he leaves a blur of light that Superman would be proud of.


Starting level 6 introduces a new concept of solo/multi-control for the player!


Zip-Zap Crazy Fast!

As you play the first few levels, you will get a feeling for how the game thinks and the challenges it presents. The earlier levels break you into the style of control, how to solve puzzles and the thought processes you need to employ to beat it. The difficulty soon increases but I'm pleasantly surprised there is no timer as that would only pressurise the player into making mistakes. This lack of a timer is excellent and enhances the experience enormously.

It's a hazardous tower! Monsters roam, spikes are always going to hurt, and some rocks will spit out a dart in the style of Rick Dangerous. Thankfully, these aren't crowding the levels and only help to make the game challenging rather than impossible. However, I cannot speak for the later levels - blame my lacking skills for that!

Thankfully, there are helpful parts of the tower we can use to assist us: some blocks only appear after passing through their placeholder. Arrowed areas allow you to pass through, but only in the direction that they are pointing. Angled panels will throw you around the tower without any control. Useful but how will you stop?

Take a look at my video recording to see how well this game plays. Tell me it isn't fun zooming through the levels at a speed that puts Sonic to shame? Also, my video shows how I finally sussed out level 10 (slow brain!) but then I made a stupid blunder and died right before completing it... Enjoy!! 

No screenshots can do the gameplay any justice but, just to be awkward, here are some anyways...



Notice the square placeholder on the right? Zip over that to turn it into a rock. Very handy!


Level 8 is when my old brain began to stress! How can I reach the yellow square to exit?


Input & Output

Directional controls are sharp and responsive for quick action when zapping around the screen like a crazy fool. Hitting the fire button flips over to the other character - if he's knocking around. It's great having a helper inside the tower. Also, if the joystick doesn't work for you then there is an option to redefine your own keys.

Hitting ESC not only gives the option to quit but can restart a level after you realise you have gotten yourself stuck in a corner! Hold down the fire-button activates the option to scroll the screen without you moving. This helps view what's ahead without accidentally bumping into something deadly.

Graphically, this is hot. It looks great with a cracking design and funky colour palette. The animations are nice with smooth scrolling that keeps up with the pace of the gameplay. In fact, Old Towers gave me an odd C64 feel, which I really liked, but with a ton more colour. I don't get that either but it's how I feel. I love the visuals!!

Sonix are neat with nice effects and YM tunes blurping away by Oleg Nitkitin. During the game, we have a rendition of the Popcorn tune which I've always found quite irritating but it grows on you I must admit. The title screen music is brilliant and plays whilst rotating through a number of the intro screens. This is beautiful chip music.

So it looks and sounds brilliant which means I'm gonna dump some more screenshots right here...


An arrow hits my head on the 9th level. It's a killer so don't rush!! Just listen to those sound effects...


It may have taken me a couple of attempts but here is proof I finally made it to level 10 :)


The CryptO'pinion?

What an amazing treat it is to play something new, especially as it was completely unexpected. Okay, I'm not the biggest fan of puzzle games, my skills in the video certainly prove this, but what the video doesn't show is just how much enjoyment I got from this game. Old Towers is polished and thoroughly entertaining whilst challenging the player to use their mind and reactions equally. I think I'll be playing this a lot over the holidays...

I would like to thank Andy for going to the effort of converting this game over to the often-forgotten Atari 520ST. Check out his website which includes a download link. Eat, drink, be merry and enjoy this fantastic puzzler.

I managed to reach the 8th stage on my first play. In fact, I would have done much better but for all the eating and drinking I needed to do. Ahem, honest... burrrrrp!! Merry Christmas everyone :)

Friday, April 09, 2021

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge #AtariSTe



It's finally here, folks!!

After months in development, the time has now come to ditch your PC and dust off the old Atari. Yes, a public release of the Atari STe upgraded Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge will be available to download from tomorrow - April 10th. The only caveat is that your computer requires 1MB Ram and a working floppy disk drive. Surely nothing too drastic to ask?

The original plan was to update Lotus with all the features missing from the original ST release. Jon added sky rasters, revamped roadside details and boosted the framerate. He later used the Blitter Chip to crunch those car sprites and smoothly scroll the landscape which delivered even more speed. Jamie Hamshere worked on the DMA audio to ditch the horrendous chip effects. As you can imagine, the end result of all this effort is quite staggering.

I'd like to thank Jon for all his hard work and for sharing with me everything that he was working on over the months. It's been great to follow, a fascinating experience and tons of fun. I would like to thank Jamie & Masteries for their incredible DMA skills; I'll never forget the first time I played Lotus with sampled sound effects alongside the chip music.

Downloads will be available from tomorrow morning via AtariMania. Well, that's my weekend sorted...



One day I'll get myself a sports car and I'll live the game for real. One day...


Did you know?

The new Lotus Esprit actually works on the Atari ST and features nice sky rasters, faster gameplay and more. The only caveat is the requirement of 1MB Ram and also a Blitter Chip (check the Options menu in GEM if you're unsure!). All Mega STs meet these requirements and late-model STFM's have an empty socket... Feeling tempted to upgrade?

Worried that you don't have a working floppy disk at hand? Well, the download is compatible with floppy disk replacements and can also run off a hard drive/ultrasatan using programs like Floppy Image Runner. Check that out!

The 16MHz Mega STe can run Lotus at dizzy speeds - just hold down the SHIFT key at bootup to activate it. Also, if you're missing the peculiar YM sound effects then press the ALT key at bootup to disable the cool DMA samples.

Finally, if you have extra hardware connected to your Atari STe, like hard drives, then disconnect and power them off. Do not try leaving the hard drive on and attempting to bypass that auto-booting. Power it off and cold boot the computer.



Check it out, I made the high score table. Honest, I swear I did... ahem!!


Preview Release Timeline Updates (for reference)

I've made a few video recordings to flaunt the features of each release. All credit to Jonathan Thomas, Jamie Hamshere & Masteries (DMA audio) for all their hard work with each new release. Don't worry, the fantastic chip music remains as an option and the STe's DMA playback has no negative effect on the framerate. Great work lads, keep it up!!

For reference, here are the links from each development build I have received:

Apr 10th - It's finally here to download from AtariMania!!
Mar 31st - video #6 Player two has sky gradient, Blitter scrolls the landscape per pixel, more audio refinements and a higher framerate!
Mar 28th - video #5 Portugal track (audio sample for the intro and many improvements made to the volume balance of YM/DMA.
Mar 21st - video #4 Practice track with a massive change to the audio. Lotus can play play DMA sound effect samples alongside the glorious Ben Daglish chip music!!! Volume refinements to come thanks to Jamie...
Mar  7th - video #3 Iceland track (DMA sfx).
Feb 28th - video #2 Mexico track (chip music).
Feb 21st - video #1 Italy track (chip sound effects).
Feb 21st - website feature with information, specs, photos, etc.. :-)
Dec 24th - Jon posted on Atari-Forum about his Lotus plan!