AstroPanic '94

Unexpected little gem

AstroPanic '94 is a shooter by Dan Ackerman and appears to be a remake of the 1986 original by Charles Brannon. It was released in 1994(!), with updates and bonus sounds a year later. The premise is dead simple - shoot the aliens in what feels like a silly mash-up of Space Invaders and Missile Command.

We control a tank that moves left and right along the ground, blasting upwards at a bunch of alien ships. They’re a bit daft, flying around in oddball patterns, so you’ll need to dodge them while banging on the mouse button (you can use the keyboard, but the mouse is miles better). As is real hardware, Hatari would often freeze up and was painfully slow just to load the game - my Atari STe (4MB/TOS 1.62) ran it flawlessly.

AstroPanic '94 is a no-frills shooter, but loads of fun. Perfect for a quick blast and highly recommended!

• Atarimania has all the floppies https://www.atarimania.com/astropanic94
• Dan's other programs are listed on AtariUpToDate https://atariuptodate.de/en/dan-ackerman/
• Including Santa Run, which I love https://ataricrypt.blogspot.com/2024/12/merry-christmas.html
• There are lots more enhanced games for the Atari STe.
• Don't forget to play Charles Brannon's AstroPanic! https://www.atarimania.com/astropanic.html

Operation Garfield

Wolves eat cats

I've been browsing through the Floppyshop archives and stumbled upon a game called Operating Garfield by Dave Brankin. It’s inspired by Operation Wolf, but what caught my eye is that it’s made for the Atari STe. The Blitter handles the 8-way scrolling and sprites, while the audio makes use of the DMA stereo.

So, how’s it different from Operation Wolf? Well, it’s not - it’s a blatant ripoff and another mouse-controlled crosshair shooter. The story, though, is nuts! This time, aliens invade Earth, but they’ve decided to disguise themselves as Garfield - that lazy orange cat from TV. Safe to say, they’ve severely misjudged us!

The action plays out over a scrolling city skyline, with massive Garfield heads firing rockets from the rooftops. Using the mouse, you shoot down both rockets and heads. It’s that simple. While you're frantically blasting away in this pseudo-3D missile command, keep an eye out for smart bombs and ammo caches. There’s also a Defender-style radar at the top-left, but honestly, I found that too small, so almost useless.

Unfortunately, the difficulty is off the scale, so I rarely got to see the later levels. The scrolling could’ve been smoother, especially given the STe hardware. It’s better on a real machine, but nowhere near Asteroidia levels. Worst of all are the T2-style samples - good, but they’ll grate quickly. Gimme chip fx any day!

Operation Garfield isn’t meant to be taken seriously - it offers a few minutes of stress-busting fun. Think of it as a cheap Op. Wolf ripoff with lots of pointless yet satisfying Garfield-killing. Not great, but worth a play.

- DOWNLOAD -

Tomtar

Tom...what?

Tomtar is a shooter released in 1993 for the Atari STe by UTEN (NewCore, XiA, Toxic Twins & Unit 17). A "tomtar" is a gnome, and they breed like bacteria, so they will eventually take over the world unless something is done! We asked the Grim Reaper for help, but there are too many for him to handle, so we needed divine intervention - in the form of a machine gun!! Yep, we all know where this is going so let's lock and load to help the mythical Reaper destroy all the Tomtars in what I can only describe as the craziest 5 minutes of your life.

In the right corner of the screen is an Orch - kill it to advance to the next level. Use the mouse to shoot, but beware because this isn't going to be easy, because these little critters can walk, run, bounce, and fly across the screen. Controls work well with the mouse, but I would have preferred the right button to perform another function like throwing a grenade, this would have been superb... The gameplay becomes frantic and more chaotic the further you progress, but I must admit that it's a shame the spooky backdrop doesn't change.

A stupid game that offers nothing more than a maddening few minutes blasting Tomtars. It's brilliant and highly recommended for a few plays - grab it from Demozoo (who also have a cutdown STFM version).

My high scores are:

78,250 (under emulation)

94,740 (using my own Atari STe).

What are yours? Can you beat me?? Didn't think so...