Incredibly, it was 7 years ago that I first featured a game by Titus called Prehistorik (go on, click that link). Unlike most games programmed in STOS, I found this cute, playable, and instantly very addictive. So I figured I should map this beautiful platformer right away and there are many more web pages of mapped Atari ST games here. Check 'em out!
Okay, it's been superb playing this game again and I still appreciate its simplicity; each level is pretty much the same albeit with different graphics and a few extra baddies. That's no bad thing, I hate it when developers attempt to bulk up a game with extra stages that often end up overbearingly bloated and unnecessary. So, it's great to see Titus sticking to their guns with lots of mindless animal bashing and yes, I have not changed my opinion of Prehistorik whatsoever.
I've tried to map everything correctly with all the items shown properly. This includes each of the caves and the secret rooms - I've added directional arrows to help navigate properly. Prehistorik has been an absolute blast and I hope you enjoy these maps as much as I've enjoyed making them? Let me know in the comments below if anyone's here?
Here are a few sneaky thumbnails of what to expect and you can download the hi-res images by clicking here.
Level one is very easy to play and features lots of caves with a few hidden screens.
Perhaps it's now I should warn of spoilers? Nah, download the maps and enjoy it for yourself!
Things are getting tough with new monsters (I really like those crafty snowmen throwing snowballs)
Actually, the snowmen are very tricky and this level has some formidable screens. The boss is rubbish...
We're in the woods for the penultimate level and guess what? It's a brilliant level!!
Well, except for those squirrels who throw their nuts with such annoying accuracy. Ooer!
The final level is a belter, and really enjoyable with great gameplay. I genuinely loved it!!
After all your hard work you return home to the family. Hey, check out my wife!
I thought it might be nice to leave 2019 with a selection of previously featured games that you may have missed. So before welcoming in the new year, here's a bloated list of games which I think are true Christmas Crackers - and for a variety of different reasons. So, should be played by all ST Nutters!! :-)
We begin by taking gaming seriously. Yep, let's tax the old brain cells with four amazing games:
Yopaz is a familiar thinker running in GEM. But don't let that put you off because it plays really well and even supports the STe for some seriously cool ambient sounds.
Next is Unheart which has a C64 visual feel and some think it's a Boulderdash clone when they see screenshots - which it isn't. Instead, it's a mind-bogglingly brilliant puzzler!
Thirdly, it should be instantly obvious what BeGEMed is all about? Never have I played something so captivating with beautiful aesthetics. One seriously addictive puzzler!
Finally, the brilliant and originally titled Sokoban. This unassuming game is cunningly difficult and easily expandable. It will always get a thumbs-up from me!
Two extra games
Now that's four games you should take time out to play. But wait, that's not all... Here are two more little-known games which I think deserve a lot of attention and for different reasons...
Alpha Waves. Wow, this is something captivating and it blew me away when I first saw it. Imagine yourself trapped inside a box and the only way to escape is by bouncing your spacecraft on springy platforms. It's weird yet works so perfectly. A milestone in 3D game that will offer hours of surreal and alternate fun. Download this right now!!
Okay, let's switch now to burning rubber and head straight onto the asphalt! The Atari ST is certainly blessed with lots of ace racers and driving games but few seem to remember Power Up? Okay, it's hardly original and slower than we'd like but it's fun, especially on the STe because it can make use of the DMA and Blitter. Faster Atari computers are supported for smoother framerates. It's not perfect but I still love this game!
Fancy a little more?
Platformers are next and those who know me will be aware of my addiction to the genre. The Atari ST has many: Stario, Rainbow Islands, Gods, Ghosts & Goblins... But here are a few others I wanted to share:
Prehistorik was written in STOS and is so much fun. It's a lightweight platformer but one with incredible mechanics and is GREAT fun. It should be played by all. Oh yeah!
Magic Boy is next and I said BOY not POCKETS!! This is another Christmas Cracker which plays as good as it looks and with STe support. No lame Amiga port here.
Next is a fella with a Big Nose who walks along boring landscapes - which should have been far better. But, you know what, this plays brilliantly and is so addictive.
Finally, we end with a Thug but he's a nice thug and another hidden GEM in the ST world.
Yes, there is always more!
Okay, it's time to end this little compilation, but there are plenty more games within our archives - so use the *search* function because you never know what's lurking! Also, don't forget to download AtariCrypt Magazine. Yes, it's free... well... donationware for the honest among you. Go on, grab yourself a copy.
Finally, thank you for visiting my website for another year. It's great reading the comments; your messages of support are always appreciated. Once again, I cannot leave without paying homage to our dear supporters, so this article continues over on Buy Me A Ko-Fi as a special treat to those amazing guys!
All the very beST for 2020 and above all ... Stay Atari!!
When AtariCrypt was a little baby, I came upon a scrolling platformer called The Curse Of Bolda, which is a fun game I really enjoyed playing. However, I was new to Hatari and figured I was doing something wrong because it seemed sluggish, so I whacked it up to the dizzy heights of 16Mhz and everything was perfect.
Shortly afterwards, I heard from the developer who seemed chuffed that people were still playing his old games, and (eventually) I got around to playing his other game called Kev's World. This is a flick-screen platformer I really enjoyed, probably because STOS coped better without trying to scroll the screen?!
I've since been talking to Ben, who has found the original [registered] disks of The Curse Of Bolda, which are now available from AtariMania. However, I couldn't leave it there: I had to ask a few questions for our interview section. My sincere gratitude to Ben for hunting down the disks and answering my questions.
Ben Pritchard - The Interview
Hello Ben, please introduce yourself.
Well, first of all, my STory can't be told without that of my best mate Paul; he introduced me to the Atari ST and was my "sparring partner" in making games. We started out making text adventures at first - me on an Amstrad CPC at the time, and him using ST Basic - around 1988/89. Then he got his hands on the Shoot 'em up Construction Kit, which sold me on making the jump to the Atari. And then - just by sheer chance - I ended up getting the Discovery pack, through which we discovered STOS and start the voyage of discovery/development/geeky one-upmanship that ultimately led to Kev's World, the Curse of Bolda and indeed what I'm up to right now...
Which Atari ST were you using?
I started out with the 520STFM that came in the Discovery pack, then upgraded to the 1040STE Music Maker pack a couple of years later. I never had any hard drives or memory upgrades. Having attempted to solder adaptors into place, in a failed attempt to boost my 520 up to a 1meg, kind of put me off. And being in my teens, at the time, I didn't have the money for much else.
Although technically inferior, I personally thought Kev's World was a cracking platformer.
Tell us a little about your two games.
Both Kev's and Curse are very special to me - Curse because it was the first game I had actually released (despite it actually being the sequel to Kev's!), and because it had the 8-way scrolling and all the stuff I had originally wanted in Kev's but couldn't get working at the time. But I had a very special moment with Kev's - a few weeks after releasing it, I got a letter from a chap in Scotland (this is about 1995, before broadband and home internet/email became a thing) saying how much he enjoyed the game and asking for a hint on getting past the boss. That really struck a chord - someone was so into something I had made that they had taken the time to write to me and let me know...
What's so special about Kevin?
Kev was kind of an evolving design... Originally he was a spaceman - believe it or not - for another game which I was working on called "Galanium". Then his space helmet was replaced by the face and red baseball cap for another game called "AstroKid" (again, abandoned). Finally, he got made over into the black t-shirt, blue jeans and big white trainers you see it in the games. As for the name - well, I was an unashamed metaller back in those days, and the trendy guys - who wore baseball caps and big white trainers were known as "Kev"s - so there it was: he was called Kev because he is a Kev!
Kev's World is only a demo and I'm desperate to play the full release.
Did either game live up to your expectations?
Both games blew me away - again, Curse by virtue of being first, and Kev's due to that letter I mentioned before. Plus the fact they made a few hundred quid between them - given that I had just started at university when I released Curse, extra cash was an amazing bonus. But the big thing was that both games got reviewed in both ST Format and Atari ST user - I never saw that one coming!
What happened to game no.3??
"Odyssey Island" was the working title of the third Kev game, and it was going to be bigger than Curse, with more complicated puzzle elements, impromptu boss battles, other characters to interact with, and a weapon system based on earth/air/fire/water elements, that also fed into the puzzle system. But by this time, it was 1995, and not only was I deep into my university course, but I had also been very ill, and everything seemed to be heading towards the PC and 3D, so it just stalled in the end.
The Curse Of Bolda is perfect using a 16Mhz computer to give STOS that little extra help!
Why STOS?
Because it came with the Discovery pack, and was better than SEUCK - or indeed anything Paul or I had used until then. Of course, we started using extensions - Curse owes its very existence to The Missing Link, and towards the end, we also learned how to use little assembly language snippets to improve performance, but STOS was the backbone of what we did.
What was it like working with Floppyshop?
Floppyshop and their "floppyware" scheme was a great experience - Steve (Delaney) was great to work with and full of enthusiasm, despite some teething issues with corrupted disks! He gave both games a great write-up in the catalogues - if memory serves, he said that Curse was "better than a lot of the £25 off-the-shelf titles" of the time! Looking back, licenceware worked well for both titles.
The Curse Of Bolda is a massive game to tax your brain and reactions.
Why so little love for the Atari STe?
The STE version of Curse does actually use the DAC to play samples (hence why the STFM version is music only). As for the scrolling, we did not really understand enough about the guts of the STe to be able to do much (we were working largely in STOS and its extensions. Looking back, maybe we depended on that too heavily).
Secondly, from what we could tell of the market by looking at other games released, magazine coverage etc., it felt like the vast majority of ST owners had STFMs, so we coded to accommodate the widest possible base. Heck, Kev's World was cut down for half-meg STs - although we did do a 1meg version with extra sound effects!
Would you upgrade either game with more STe support?
I must admit - much to my shame - that since Odyssey Island stalled in '95, I haven't really thought about developing for the ST/STE. "Real life" got in the way too much - first university, then getting a job and a flat, and various other life events. In fact, I pretty much dropped out of game writing altogether from then right through to 2005 due to lack of time, money, hardware etc...
The Curse Of Bolda is cruel. Flipping a switch caused a fire and the platforms evaporated!
What are your favourite Atari ST games?
Back in the day, I was a huge platformer fan (as my own games may indicate!) - I loved Turrican 1 & 2, Rainbow Islands will always have a special place in my heart, titles like Ozone and Prehistorik that showed just what was possible with STOS... but my all-time number one has to be "The Killing Gameshow" by Psygnosis - now if ever there was a title that deserved an STE version it was that, for the music alone!
What are you and Ledasoft doing today?
These days, I am usually playing "being a Dad"! To be honest, I'm really not into playing games as I don't have the time to dedicate to the mainstream mega-titles, and the "indie" scene is just so full of shovelware it takes too long to even look for something to play! To be honest, these days I prefer to spend my time making games than playing them... which brings us neatly onto:
LedaSoft has undergone two major re-inventions since the ST days - the first was back in 2010 when we resurrected the "Leda" name as "Leda Entertainment" in an attempt to break into the mobile game market. We released about a dozen games over five or so years, but it really didn't work out.
More recently, we have changed direction again - this time we have kept the Leda Entertainment name, but changed what we are all about. Over our time in mobile, we met a lot of people trying to get into the games industry but always stuck behind the "lack of experience/no published titles" wall. So we changed direction - Leda is still firstly about us enjoying making games, but instead of hoping to make money, we have teamed up with a number of these talented artists and audio designers in the hope that the game we make and release together will help at least one of them on their way to their dream job!
The game we are working on is called "Bullion - The Curse of the Cutthroat Cattle" - it's a local multiplayer brawler based around a crew of pirate bulls. There are currently eight in the team, including Paul and myself, so Leda has grown a bit since the ST days! If you want to check out Bullion, go to www.bulliongame.com
So the plan for the future is to keep making games and, hopefully, help some people kick-start their career - ultimately to have fun! That said, I must admit that it's tempting to crack out the Atari STe once Bullion is done, just to see what I can still do - and I also have a half-finished PC remake of Curse somewhere I might finish up...
Rub your eyes in disbelief because I've managed to find a decent STOS game! That's right, and it was released in 1991 by one of my favourite companies, Titus. Okay, I know they released a couple of dodgy games, but there's something about them that I like. Plus, they released some corkers, like this platformer!
Prehistorik is nothing less than the cutest dino-platformer using cartoon-like visuals. We're taken back to a time when dinosaurs roamed the lush countryside. We play the part of a plucky young caveman wielding a big club. Imagine something like BAMM-BAMM from The Flintstones, but older - with a beard! Add the psychotic desire to club cute prehistoric animals, and you have the perfect entertainment for any game!
Fancy a selection of screenshots? Of course, you do scroll on down...
Running leap onto a vicious dinosaur. Well, okay, hardly vicious, and he is easy to knock out, too!
Inside each cave are lots of things to nosh on.
Those angry yellow dudes are quick on the draw!
Clubbing animals is fun!
The object is to explore the lands, looking for food to feed your family. This means we have a typical platformer to run & leap our way through a 16-bit Jurassic Park. Along the way are a variety of pitfalls and exciting places to discover: caves are always interesting, as they offer goodies to consume along the way. But watch yourself because these caves aren't dark and creepy at all, plus something cute and fluffy might be inside!
Each level has unique dinos roaming, and some are huge, thus requiring several hits from your trusty club. The end of each area features a massive boss to defeat. Sadly, these are intensely difficult without a cheat for extra lives. That's about the gist of it, really: collect food, club animals to death, and find the exit.
The joystick controls are simple and perform well. I love the freedom to move during the jumps, and clubbing your prey is great fun and perfectly timed, so you never feel too close or stuck in a tight corner. Considering this is STOS, I'm impressed with the responsiveness, which makes exploring a bunch of fun.
This is possibly the best STOS game I've played. Let's celebrate that fact with some screenshots...
Did I mention there are secret hidden levels to find?
This guru dude appears now and then. Club him hard for a reward!
The boss levels are kinda lame, and this one is the worst imho.
Seven big tips
Explore everything. Look in every cave to collect all the goodies.
See a guru-looking dude? Club him and steal whatever he's carrying.
I found it best to enable auto-fire for a more frantic bashing experience!
Cave critters only emerge when you're on the same level.
Something doesn't look quite right? Maybe there's a secret level?
90s games are way too tough with never enough lives. Use a trainer!
The bonuses are pretty lame and never last too long, but if you're lucky, you will find the odd gem (usually via the Guru), like an extra life and bigger jumps. But the others suck simply because they don't last long enough!!
Watch out when near a cave entrance, you never know what might emerge from the darkness!!
Crazylegs Crane's uncle has made an appearance!
Prehistorik is full of basic puzzles. How are we going to cross this lava?
Aesthetics
The visuals are pretty and cartoony: the backgrounds are well-drawn, and each dino sprite is absolutely gorgeous. It's the characters that I love the most because they are funny and feature their own personality and silly expressions - especially when knocked unconscious. I almost feel bad clubbing them. Almost.
Music can be played throughout and reminds me of Where Time Stood Still. It's got that lovely chip feel with a style that complements the gameplay. Very nice and never overwhelming, but if you so desire, you can play without music. Pressing F2/F3 alternates between music and sound effects, but music wins for me.
It looks and sounds great, so what's my opinion? You'd better carry on scrolling to read that...
A platformer without ... platforms? Avoid the fish, always good advice!
Oh no, these are tough animals to kill and require multiple hits. Club 'em quick!
Check out that snowman. The artwork is always stunning.
The CryptO'pinion?
Prehistorik doesn't break the mould, and some might turn their nose up at that. However, stop right there because this might be a no-frills affair, but don't let that put you off. Prehistorik is really good, stuffed with hilarious moments, and extremely playable. The only thing I didn't like was the pointless timer.
It's almost like a Jurassic version of Grand Theft Auto, as clubbing animals is very satisfying. Not only that, but it's the best STOS game I've ever played. Yep, this game is cute, violent, and addictive! Hey, make sure you're wearing animal skins before deciding whether to download either the floppy or hard disk version!
