Belote

Gamblers Anonymous!

It's been far too long since I posted anything in our Box Art section! With that in mind, behold my latest purchase, and possibly my last (for a time). Belote is a card game, quite unlike what I would normally purchase but I'm always eager to try something new and support a company that loves the Atari ST as much as we all do.

As the box shows, Belote is by Jean-Stephane Martin for Côté Gamers, the same guys that published L'Abbaye Des Morts, Iceblox, Toogle, and the marvellous Democyclopedia book (use SEARCH on the right). Originally, it was to be released in 1989 by ESAT Software but they went bankrupt so it was doomed to wander the forgotten deserted wastelands.

Decades later, Cote delivers a boxed version with extra features and three bonus games: Le Pendu, Master Mind and Simon. The box is of the usual high standard that includes an exceptional manual - this is superbly written with loads of extra information I never expected about the author, his story, the history of this game, and much more.

The 80s and 90s are long gone but I don't care. These glorious times are still rocking in my 16-bit world!

• Obviously, there isn't a download but you can see a video recording on YouTube.
• You can view Jean-Stephane's entire catalogue on Atarimania.
• I would also like to personally thank Cote Gamers for going the extra mile - despite the nasty intentions of the French postal service! Click here for all their other Atari ST products.

I look forward to getting my teeth into this game and hopefully, I'll learn a thing or two. However, at the moment, I have no idea what's going on and have lost every game (no change there then). Yeah, I have a mountain to climb!!

Okay, wanna see what's inside the box? Of course, you do so carry on scrolling...

The back of the box. This is gripping stuff, right? ;-)

What's better than buying a new product in the 21st century - and it's on a floppy disk!

Cote Gamers excelled themselves - the manual is a corker!!

Oh, if only you could feel the pages flick through your fingers. You're missing out!

The manual has a wealth of information about the history of the product and more.

What???  Hey Cote, I want my money back!!

shooter.prg

When nerds play...

I'm not big on social media, as you know, but one of the reasons I remain on the cesspool that is Twitter is to follow people like Jonathan Thomas. Yep, that same dodgy fella who developed Pole Position for the Atari STe and then dared to update Lotus Turbo II in ways we never thought possible back in the day. Okay, I guess he's not a bad lad...

Anyhow, his tweets are often fascinating because he pokes deep within the depths of ST games. It's here that weird techniques are discovered or he experiments with probable improvements. He also playtests enhancing performance by utilising the Atari STe hardware. All this coding talk is way over my head but intriguing nonetheless.

So, onto his latest 'project', a horizontally-scrolling shooter for the Atari STe not too dissimilar to Menace, R-Type, etc. Although it's early days, Jon is using the hardware scrolling with the sprites/particle effects handled by the Blitter. There are no DMA sound effects but I cannot complain as he was generous in sending me an early beta lol

I asked Jon for his thoughts and prospects for what might eventually be a new Atari STe game. Although he replied that he had no concrete plans for a full game, he did hint toward several extremely promising short-term goals:

A title screen (we will need a name for this!)
16x16 sprites for a selection of individual enemies
Each sprite will use 10-15 predefined attack moves
A couple of (2-3 minute) stages with increasing difficulty
A "game completion" screen
Multiple DMA sound effects
Chipmusic hopefully by (fingers crossed) Dma_Sc

Having "played" this beta, I must say it's impressive along with the prospect of what's already been achieved in a short time. I really liked the feel of the joystick controls and collision detection is spot-on. Border rasters indicate the remaining CPU time for future development opportunities so demonstrate great potential. Yes, you might say I'm excited!

If like me, you love hearing what other people are doing with their Atari STs then take a look at Jon's Twitter stream. It's amock with weird programming gizmos (that I shall never understand) as he enjoys dismantling many Atari ST games. I can only imagine the dorky entertainment Jon has with his Atari STe and I hope that continues.

Update: Jon has started a source repository for those interested in helping out.

Toogle

Argh, I keep saying Toggle!

Decades after being told the Atari ST had died, here is yet another brand new game thanks to Côté Gamers. It's a puzzler by demo crews Dune (José Martins) and Sector One (François Galea & Denis Huguet). Each screen has a 5x5 board of large square tiles and the challenge is to flip these in order to display the correct pattern. Easy Peasy!

This is done by group-selecting a particular number of tiles and flipping them over until you obtain the desired pattern correctly (which is shown opposite side of the screen). You are able to select these tiles in either a vertical or horizontal line but not diagonally. I know this sounds like a really superficial idea and one that is probably very easy?

Well, wait a minute because you're only allowed X number of moves (indicated on the right) and that means staring at the screen - before making a stupid mistake - as each action must always be the correct one. Yes, Toogle is very demanding but it would be boring if it were easy, right? Are you ready to be tortured and entertained in equal measure?

Visually, this ain't no Enchanted Land. But that's a good thing, right? Okay, let's check it out...

Level 6 is actually one of the easier boards to fix. It's almost like the game is spelling out a word ;-)

Six Juicy Tips

1) Take a gander at the instructions in the title menu for initial guidance.

2) Toogle is very simple, but that doesn't mean you should go rushing in like an idiot.

3) Stop. Look at the screen for what feels like an eternity and think.

4) Mull over each move that you might be thinking about - how will that affect the next move?

5) Take care to note how many moves you're allowed. A cruel but necessary limitation.

6) Basically, you're dead unless you can think like a Vulcan. Or reboot the ST!

Basically, this is a game of learning. Then trial and error. And then more trials and more errors but, it's always entertaining and has that addictive factor you cannot deny. In other words, this game puts you through agony but somehow you keep on coming back for more! Just take your time, think and you'll get the hang of it. Or cry trying (bring a tissue).

On that tearful note, let's take a gander at another funky screenshot...

I was proud of myself for finally completing this one. Only took about 25 attempts!

Aesthetics

Graphics are by Mic of Dune so everything looks very cheerful with colourful, bold visuals. I don't know of many games that have a scroller and jazzy background smoothly whizzing about all over the screen - is this a demo or a game? Either way, Toogle looks downright superb and crammed with 16-bit sex appeal without any distraction.

Music has been composed by Mathieu Stempell, aka DMA-SC, and he's given us two outstanding chiptunes which are both absolutely chip-tastic!! You can listen to either tune, at any time, by pressing the F1/F2 keys. Never ever press F3. Yep, killer tunes once again and my only gripe is wanting more from this incredible musician.

I think this is possibly the best-looking and best-sounding puzzler ever made for the ST? Truly, stunning stuff!!

I got so close to beating this screen. I'll smash it next time!!

The CryptO'pinion?

I'm often sceptical of puzzles, as they demand much of my spare time, but Toogle is as sweet as it is sour using an elegant design that hides its devious soul. There are screens that had me stumped for aeons and remembering that agony is almost unbearable! Level 3 had me stumped for longer than I care to admit but I breezed through others.

So, if you're wondering why I would purchase something so sinister. Think again. Toogle is unique in many respects and a tough brainteaser that entertains by design. I love its style so if puzzlers are your thang, then I highly advise you to head over to Côté Gamers website and grab yourself a boxed copy. Quite simply, this is a fantastic game.

Sigh, I doubt that I'll beat all the puzzles or reach level 99? Hang on, there's an envelope inside the box...

The box is nice and I love the colours. Plus today I finally learned what 'jeu' means... doh!

Hmm, I wonder what sadistic reason Cote Gamers had for sealing this envelope? ;-)

Guys, this is the one time you really must read the flipping manual!!

The disk design is superb but "a 3D printed stress reliever". What's one of those? heh

The Errand Boy

YANASTG

Thanks to AtariMania, I got wind of a new game for the Atari ST, by Dwalin. It was originally released last year for something called MS-DOS, whatever that might be. It's a short conversational adventure ported to DAAD for several home computers, one of which is our lovely Atari ST. The only computer that matters.

The Errand Boy is a graphical-style adventure and prequel to Rudolphine Rur. It's not too dissimilar to what we've seen before with imagery and written text to describe our current location. We are Galdrin who appears to be at odds with Mr Eldrad because he thinks of us as nothing more than an errand boy. In a huff, we leave because that's no way to treat someone who's been in service for a thousand years so he's gonna pay!

(Hang on, how old am I? Erm, am I even human? What's going on?)

We begin in a grungy room located somewhere in New York, near Central Park. The graphics are retro using a digitized style that I really admire. Each room is detailed without large, overbearing paragraphs of text. Although some of its English has grammatical issues, nothing serious and it certainly isn't going to spoil the fun.

The parser interaction is excellent, allowing exploration using the usual commands to look, examine, get, drop, open, etc. Including the usual compass directions to get around. Each command can be shortened: 'L' to look, 'X' to examine. In fact, examining everything is never a bad idea nor is asking for help.

The characters you meet are few but full of... character! The butler appears to have spent his lifetime pottering about the house so quite useless. Dorwinion isn't exactly a nice guy by the looks of it but I liked Shadow's sense of humour. Oh, and there's a nasty cat. I don't like cats because they only use you for food! And then there's the gnome - what a crazy tale he represents and is nothing more than a lunatic. You'll see!

This may well be a short adventure but, it's full of curiosity, investigation and alternative humour. Yes, the story is insane, without any realism, and I loved that. Do not be too quick to dismiss this excellent adventure.

Let's take a much-needed break from the boring text for a screenshot...

In fact, I wish I would listen to my own advice! Make sure you look under every stone.

A bit of background

As I enjoyed the adventure, I messaged Dwalin about it, the story, and how it came about...

"This is really a very short adventure, and that is why I chose it to be my first experience in translation. I am fond of text adventures since the 80s, where I played most of the commercially published adventures in Spain. I also had Gilsoft's PAWS, the program (or parser) that allowed you to create adventures for Spectrum, and I published a first homebrew adventure for that in 1993.

In Spain, fans of this type of game grouped together in various clubs, the most important of which one of them was CAAD, which published a bimonthly fanzine. Over time the clubs evolved into pages and internet forums, and the adventures of text as well, adapting to more modern computers. Contests were held on https://www.caad.es and players and adventure creators shared comments.

In 2005, using another adventure creation engine, Superglús, the evolution of the old PAWS, I published my second adventure: “The Adventures of Rudophine Rur”, and in 2015 using NgPAWS, another evolution of the engine. Rudolphine Rur tells the story of a little forest gnome who must enter the human world in search of his brother kidnapped by evil elves.

With the passage of time, the love for retrocomputing and old computers grew in Spain. I discovered this hobby in 2019. In Spain, the most important company that published text adventures in the 80s and 90s was AD Adventures. This company used as an adventure creation engine a parser called DAAD, also an evolution of the PAWS, but whose main feature was that it could port the games to most of the main systems of the time: Spectrum, Amstrad, MSX, Commodore 64, Amstrad PCW, PC MSDOS, Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.

Andrés Samudio, the director of Adventures AD released in 2014 the DAAD parser for use by the community of adventure creators. Until that moment DAAD had not been available to the general public, since it had been programmed exclusively for AD Adventures (it had a price of about € 12,000 in 1989!). The Spanish community of adventure creators began using DAAD to create cross-platform adventures for retro computers. In my case, I dedicated myself to porting my old Rudolphine Rur adventure to this system, and finally (2020) it was published (https://www.rudolphinerur.com) for most of the existing computers in the late 80s. I even published a small physical print run in cassette or floppy disk for Spectrum, Amstrad, MSX2 and Atari ST.

A year later I also wanted to try another parser, from the early 90s, SINTAC, another evolution of PAWS, which generated adventures for MSDOS. With him, I created a very short adventure, which I set in the same world as Rudolphine Rur: "The errand boy" being a prequel to it. The adventure was published in May 2021 in its PC version. Later I ended up porting it to DAAD so that I could release versions for Spectrum, Amstrad and MSX2.

Until now all my adventures were only available in Spanish. I considered that "The errand boy", being a short adventure, could be a good candidate to be translated into English. My level of English is not very good, and I have mainly used the google translator. So I hope native English people can forgive if they see something "weird". Finally, shortly after finishing the translation, I ended up porting the adventure also to Atari ST and well, that's the one you're playing :-) "

A fascinating read which I hope you all enjoyed? I'm always impressed when a game like this appears on so many different platforms. My thanks to Dwalin for taking time out of his day to talk with me.

Okay, let's take another break from the reading for yet another screenshot...

I think Dorwinion deserves a slap for how he treats poor Galdrin!

The CryptO'pinion

It's always great to see new Atari ST games released. (Yet Another New Atari ST Game, just in case you wondered about the header above). This was a lot of fun to play; I loved its storytelling and really enjoyed playing through to the end. Okay, I wish it was a much bigger adventure, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Atari ST version of Rudolphone Rur will get translated into English, someday very soon.

You can download the ST disk image from Dwalin's website, AtariMania, or by clicking this link.

Make sure you examine everything and leave no stone unturned. Or book.

The descriptions aren't longwinded yet provide all the details you require.

I guess that's one way to get his attention!

My gosh, there is so much information within this one screenshot! No spoilers!!

The style and unique storytelling is quite extraordinary.

Roll through this adventure as you would in real life.

I thought the later stages were a little too ambiguous at times. Maybe it's just me?

A small adventure that's big on content. I loved playing this!!

This last image is Rudolphine Rur running on the Atari ST (Spanish).

I'm hoping for the English version soon!