Battle Command

If the tanks succeed, then victory follows

Late last year, I planned to feature BattleZone, but couldn't get to grips with it. I found it sluggish with lifeless controls that didn't feel right. I hated it and came away upset by this deduction. However, I still had an urge to jump into a tank and kill something with a big gun! How was I going to scratch this itch...

It could only be Ocean's Battle Command - which I've recently bought. The story goes that two factions are at war, and we control a heavily armoured Mauler who must complete a variety of missions that have us trawling the landscape for enemy tanks. And much more. But let's not kid ourselves! Yup, let's stop right now because this whiffs of a shameless BattleZone ripoff, and it appears proud of it, too?

Before we begin, Battle Command is crammed with cool spinning 3D objects. Like this...

I think this is excellent and shows they went the extra mile without sacrificing gameplay.

Let's take it for a test drive

The controls are superb, so it was easy to control my tank using the mouse for acceleration, turning and firing. It's worth taking the time to arm your tank properly - I had heat-seeking missiles. Inside the game's box is a nifty reference card that details the extras like: the damage display, a detailed map, and the chance to view our tank from outside - this offers cool perspectives, if kinda pointless. But I loved it all nonetheless!

For those seeking a challenge, mission selection ranges from beginner-level tasks to more advanced ones, such as protecting a bridge, accompanying a transport, or even recovering a U-Bomb! Before any mission, the briefing screen provides essential information and weapon options, accompanied by additional 3D animation. Don't let the thought of tough missions fool you, this is a tactical/action game through & through.

Success isn't simply about driving towards the enemy and opening fire. You'll spend much of your time monitoring the radar, identifying potential threats, and deciding which targets to deal with first. You're not only the driver, but the boss man in charge. The wide-open landscapes provide plenty of room to manoeuvre, while the combination of cockpit displays and tactical information helps create the feeling of commanding a genuine battlefield vehicle rather than simply playing another run-and-gun shooter.

You can (should!) take this game seriously, but it's fun roaming the landscapes looking for enemies. The difficulty is challenging throughout the many assorted ranges of different missions, so you're never likely to get bored. And, if you require even more of a challenge, then Battle Command will not disappoint, as it features many strenuous missions to test your nerve. Some of the levels are incredibly challenging!

It's more than just an arcade blaster, so let's celebrate with some more cool 3D...

You wouldn't believe how much swirling 3D there is!

Aesthetics

Battle Command will be remembered for its 3D wizardry, with objects swirling about like some kind of demo. I was hooked from the start, and then seeing our tank dropped into play by an aeroplane clinched it!! The in-game framerate isn't exactly Resolution 101, but it's smooth, and the enemies look great.

One aspect that impressed me was the sheer sense of scale. The engine presents vast stretches of rolling terrain, allowing you to see far into the distance as mountains, structures and enemy units gradually emerge on the horizon. I'm getting giddy, I know, but it's an understatement to say I admire the graphics!

The music in the title is amazing, whilst the game begins to show off its 3D. Sound effects during gameplay are good, but nothing like Starglider. They do their job well enough to break the silence.

Let's take a look at some of these gorgeous graphics. Carry on scrolling...

Screenshots are great, but this looks even better moving in-game!

Another mission begins,  and I admire the beautiful intro.

Don't dawdle and keep your wits about you at all times!

The CryptO'pinion?

I enjoyed BattleZone... oops... Seriously, Battle Command is one of those games that's surprisingly difficult to review because, on the surface, it seems like a straightforward tank shooter. Yet when you start playing, you realise that there is more to this action shoot than you realise: the missions, briefing screens, weaponry, radar systems, and that impressive sense of scale. It's almost like an open-world adventure!

This is a stonker, and I've enjoyed blasting everything in sight. Even the trees feel my wrath! Battle Command is adventurous and full of tactical fun, with elegant controls. A fantastic tank shooter.

Get it downloaded (on a floppy or hard disk), then jump into your tank to kill every enemy!!

There's nothing quite like flaunting your Atari ST collection! :D

This is the reference card I previously mentioned.

Muzzy

Wait, come back!!

Muzzy was featured in ST Format (#58) and is a puzzler by Enigma Software Developments. It caught my eye because I liked the oldskool visuals, plus it's something I've never played before. It should be compatible with both the ST and STe (it crashes on my STFM, but works dandy on the STe. The download).

An intro kicks things off at the start, accompanied by stereo music on the Atari STe. Playing my first game was quite confusing, and I wasn't sure what to do, but I soon learnt the game's crazy personality. The object is always the same: collect every gem before being whisked off to do it again on the next zany screen.

The trusty joystick is used to control Muzzy, which is easy. At first, it feels sensitive, but stick with it because pushing against something, whilst pressing fire, will be the most complex action you will learn. Of course, the difficulty constantly increases, as does the variety of silly mechanics and enemies (who kill you instantly). So fight back by blowing up these pesky critters using bombs. That is always going to be great!

Visually, I doubt Muzzy will blow you away with its tiny sprites and 8-bit style. By ST standards, they suck. But since when have graphics made a game better? (I'm talking to you - Dragon's Lair). The audio is basic, and it's disappointing that the DMA wasn't used for the sound effects, but the YM does an excellent job.

Muzzy is a strange game with many weird levels that make little sense - it's different from what I expected. Attack each screen with a 'trial and error' method to see what solution works. In my video recording, the last screen had me stumped, but it was actually annoyingly obvious - but that's Muzzy for you.

To sum up, I'd say it is infuriatingly good fun!!

ST Globe

By 1999, we will be living on the moon!

In a time long ago, when there were no search engines, we had to read something called a "book". We had other strange things to contend with, too. For example, if we wanted to see a friend, then that would mean leaving the house to meet up - in person - to have a real conversation. Crazy times, right? Well, I've found something cool that takes us back to this prehistoric age (that we'd give our right arm to return to!).

ST Globe was developed by Jean Pierre Cazes, which you can find on the Page 6 website. I thought it was rather amusing (respectfully) but interesting. It definitely put Encyclopædia Britannica to shame... Sadly, my daughter was having none of it and prefers to use Siri or Google. Sheesh, what's up with kids these days?

Grab yourself ST Globe and live in the past.

Capy

Crappy... Capy... Uh, what?

Capy is a spin on Sokoban and was released in 1998 for the Atari Falcon by YesCREW. We are a shiny ball that desires refuge on an 'exit' tile - usually located on the other side of the screen. Initial levels are easy and break you in nicely, but it soon gets tough, so careful thought is required to execute the correct route.

Interestingly, there is an option to create your own "worlds" in an Editor, but read the docs before jumping in at the deep end. This is a cool addition, and I hope somebody picks up the gauntlet and has a bash.

Take a look at these screenshot animations to get a feel of what to expect...

Sokoban in space

The goal is to guide the ball into a black hole exit. That may sound simple, but it's not... Well, it is based on Sokoban, so what did you expect? Anyhow, there are often obstacles in your way, routes that need to be followed correctly, and even the risk of falling into the gaping deep space that stands between you and your exit. So, take a moment to think about how you're going to get to your target as efficiently as possible.

Each screen employs different tiles in various ways. Push tiles are highly versatile, able to be moved almost anywhere and even allowing access to other areas by filling in holes. Be careful not to push them into a useless part of the map, or get yourself trapped. Look out for cracked tiles that disintegrate after one use, thus altering potential routes. Sliders are fun and can transport you across the void easily, and Movable tiles have an arrow pointing in a one-way direction with which to travel. Don't forget to collect the goodies for points.

This game is a tough nut to crack, with each screen requiring logical thought and planning. My first stumbling block was on Level 6, which my old brain struggled with! This was mainly due to the time restriction (which isn't necessary), so it spoils what should be a difficult puzzler, played carefully. I asked Swe [Janez] if that could be removed, and it wasn't long before it was - and Capy got its first upgrade in 20 years!!

Okay, let's check out another animated screenshot from one of my games...

The CryptO'pinion?

I've had a blast playing Capy, but sadly, there just aren't enough levels for me. Thankfully, there is an editor, so perhaps I should pick up that gauntlet and take a stab at creating some of my own? Also, the timer was a problem for me that has been removed, so I can enjoy Capy to its full potential without rushing.

This is an odd spin on the Sokoban genre, but it works well. I'm sure its cunning levels will have you stumped for ages! Capy is fresh and addictive, using a cool style and presentation. The levels are fascinatingly cruel to solve, and I love it. A fantastic Falcon puzzler, and I hope it gets an ST conversion. We need the ST game!!

Capy has humble requirements:

a Falcon with a VGA @ 640x480/16 colours.

My download contains the original and

the newly updated "Crypt" version!

One day I'll get to see this screen for myself. One day...

Galactic Conqueror

STress relief!!

Sometimes I need to keep my life simple and take time to enjoy blowing stuff up. This is Galactic Conqueror, published in 1988 by Titus. This is a personal favourite of mine because it grants stress-busting, wanton violence without any hassle. No life-sucking storyline - shoot everything and enjoy the pointless destruction!

That's as complex as it gets - pick up the joystick to mindlessly destroy everything. It's a wicked mash of Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, Afterburner, and Thunder Blade. Okay, it's not perfect, but it's excellent fun, and that's what matters most. Highly recommended, especially after a "great day" at work (yes, sarcasm!!).

Play this game to blast away the stress from your rat race. A fantastic shooter!!

Download this awesome space shooter now!

Automation

Forget Elvira and Maria Whittaker, this is the sexiest screen your Atari ST will display!! :@)

[ Automation CD151 / Antic Cyber Graphics HiSTory ]

Rumbo

Rick thinks he's Sly!

Rumbo is a flick-screen platformer developed in STOS by Pete Halloran and isn't too dissimilar to Rick Dangerous, with more than its fair share of <cough> similarities. The story is our girl has been kidnapped, so it's time we dressed like Rambo and tool up to begin our valiant rescue mission.

After watching a short, but superb, intro of our girl being kidnapped, the game begins inside the underground in caves - a place that only Rick Dangerous himself would normally explore. Within here are many rooms with a variety of tricks and traps, but many predictable ones, like spikes to leap over. Also, there are some cruel ones, like strange creatures who appear out of thin air without any warning. I hate him!

The first end-of-level boss is a giant bat, but don't fret too much because it just moves up and down. It's lame and probably should have been left out if I'm honest. But Rumbo has come prepared for all these monsters and bosses and is loaded with more than enough ammunition, which is something I appreciate.

When level two begins, it's more of the same, but with different graphics! However, there appears to be a bug that prevented me from completing the final (?) room: hitting a switch did nothing I could see. Thus, I found myself stuck with no way to venture on, which is a huge shame because I was enjoying Rumbo until that moment. I'm now wondering if I've missed something stupidly obvious in the previous rooms?

Graphics are average Joe, but do their job, even if entering a new room draws at the speed of ST Basic. Sound effects are made up of a few samples; they're good, and I especially liked the death howl. Rumbo's tippy-tappy walk reminded this old gamer of Chuckie Egg 2 (ZX Spectrum version). I know I'm being daft, but I loved it, and it broke the near-silence due to the lack of in-game music. Which is a shame?

I have really enjoyed Rumbo, which is balanced and fun to play. Sadly, there's that bug on level two, but maybe it was me? I tried twice, but each time I got stuck. Ignoring that, Rumbo offers platform fans to be an avenging squirrel in a Ricky D world. This is cool, so grab your bandana and download the floppy disk!

This is a fantastic game, and here are some screenshots to tempt you to play it...

Out for a picnic and everything seems great...

Then a giant turns up to ruin everything!!

Rumbo prepares to fight back!

Oh no, spikes to carefully leap over.

Spikes are deadly, and caves love to surprise Rumbo!

Another strange thing appears. I wonder what it might be!

PC Ditto

Ugh, I hate Winblows!!

I thought I'd have a quick play with PC-Ditto, an old emulator by Avant-Garde Systems. Now, please do note that I've never owned a PC in my life, but I remember tinkering with the one (and only) Amstrad PC that our college had in 1987. So, I figured this would be a nostalgic trip down memory lane. Well, maybe!

For anyone interested, AtariCrypt has an emulator section with lots more :)

A stock Atari ST is more than capable of running this emulator. Many DOS programs will also run fine. However, you should forget it for games. I used my own Mega STe, which barely had the horsepower to handle numerous games. So, in my video recording, Hatari is running a 16Mhz to simulate my computer.

The idea of using DOS for gaming or home computing makes me shudder. Terrible idea, but read on...

Serpentine ran very well indeed.

I had little luck with Castle Wolfenstein (a bad copy?)

How did it go with this DOS malarkey?

Surprisingly, I did have some success as you can see in the video which shows me booting DOS 3.3 and then loading a selection of rubbish games. The first is Serpentine, which was definitely the best of the bad bunch, and I enjoyed eating the other slo-mo snakes. I then rebooted to try something called David's Kong. Ugh, this is absolutely laughable so please don't waste your time!

Next up was Bird-Brain which didn't seem to work very well because the keys specified on the main menu didn't work for me. Instead, I suffered rapid beeping sound which was rather annoying!! So yet another reboot was called for so I could try Castle Wolfenstein. Ohh, I had such high hopes for this game but alas it didn't appear to run properly and then oddly got itself caught in a loop?

I then loaded Space Commanders, which slowed my Mega STe down to the speed of a Casio calculator for some insane reason. In the video recording, I could cheat by hitting CMD X to speed up Hatari, but that didn't really help much. No loss anyhow because this is a ludicrously bad shoot 'em up!!

I was now beginning to lose the will to live and only had one game left: Buck Rogers Planet Of Zoom which is one of my favourite ZX Spectrum games. Sadly, it wasn't (umm) playable due to slow speeds but I managed a couple of minutes before PC-Ditto disappointly froze for some reason!

Oh boy, how did the PC win the computer war?

The worst Kong and Invaders I've ever played!!

The CryptO'pinion?

This was fun, and I enjoyed turning my ST into an Intel paperweight. Games will generally require more CPU grunt, but I doubt anyone would abandon the ST's archive for these horrendous DOS equivalents? Of course, not being a hardware product meant performance was always sluggish, even on my 16MHz Mega STe.

PC Ditto did a grand job running DOS and its programs and utilities. However, I wouldn't bother using this for games - unless I had something beefy like a TT or Falcon. This is a good product, depending on your needs. But I'll stick with my Atari ST. So, with that in mind, we are left with one thing to do: del *.*  😇

You can find PC-Ditto on AtariMania or by using Old Games Finder. You will also need the operating system and DOS 3.3 is downloadable from Atari-Forum thanks to Jake/Depression. I found many compatible DOS games on various different of websites - I liked My Abandonware. Enjoy yourself!

Commando

Elite did it again!

I remember trying to conquer this arcade shooter on my ZX Spectrum long before I got an ST. However, no matter how much I loved it, I sucked. It was so difficult. Thankfully, I've improved with age, as I've finally beaten the first stage with its tricky soldiers. It's small victories like this that keep me going!

Unsurprisingly, our conversion has more glam compared to the Speccy. We received an authentic conversion with responsive controls, gorgeous, smooth scrolling, and everything is as spritely as it should be. The one-joystick/button method to control works well compared to the original arcade controls.

Commando is something I love and hate with equal measure, so it's a good job this shooter is infuriatingly addictive. Highly recommended - if you can master its hideous learning curve!!

Download Commando for floppy + hard disk.

Fred

Let's get medieval

Ubi Soft's Sir Fred (aka Fred) was released in 1989 and is a platform beat-em-up. It was programmed by Tuan Do Cao and Philippe Villain, who were inspired by older games I played in my Spectrum days.

Our adventure begins with an intro animation depicting our fearless knight tragically zapped into a midget by an angry dwarf. Shocked by this, he shakes his fists at his foe, but they cannot help themselves and burst out laughing. Adding salt to his wounds is a gnome who completes Fred’s mockery. Brilliant!!

That's the basis of the game: we need to heal our wounds. Wanna see some screenshots...

Now come on, who would have ever expected rude gnomes to be our enemy?

Hang on, these are armed. They might be little, but they're evil little b4s@£@s!

A garden centre platformer?

As a miniature warrior, we first explore the spooky forest to battle those garden gnomes. Other beasts lurk in the woods and castle grounds - skeletons, snakes, headless axemen, and ghosts. Everything wants you dead! So kill them with your arrows - these will even reach the baddies off-screen, which is kinda cool.

Fred is a nimble chap who can walk, leap and roll his way through his quest. However, these controls often got me into trouble: turning around made me feel like Black Lamp was laborious and lethargic. This cumbersome method of turning around spoils the action by hampering our ability to react at that speed.

The graphics are interesting beyond looks, using a multi-layer arrangement. This effect is used to climb steps and bypass obstacles, to represent a 3D feel. At first, this feels odd when too high/low (behind/in front of objects). It's a good idea, but awkward in battles as both parties need to be on the same level.

Energy levels are indicated by three apples, and once they're gone, you're dead as a dodo. These don't last long, but your death produces a hilarious effect as our hero drops his sword in agony. This is just one more brilliant aspect of the visuals. As you can see, there are some cool ideas implemented for Fred.

Enough reading, let's see those graphics! Yes, it's screenshot time...

I love the details and the murky palette, which is perfect for the creepy scenario.

Check out that headless axeman and the gnome's facial details are astounding.

Aesthetics

Jean-Marc Torroella and Jerome Guerry should be forever proud of what they created. This is one of the best-looking games for the Atari ST, with colourful landscapes and stunning attention to detail. The palette is as eerie as it is comical with its superbly animated sprites. Even the rude ones who stick out their tongues!!

The audio is (almost) as good as the visuals, with a crunchy sampled tune on the title screen and intro. Charles Callet did great, but I'm more of a chiptune guy. In-game sound effects are sampled, and I love these. From the firing of arrows and clanging of swords to the silly screams of your enemies. Absolutely superb.

We've just enough time left to see a couple more screenshots. Keep on scrolling...

Those darn gnomes are a pest, even the rude ones lol

Oh no, is that a skeleton or a zombie? Whatever it is, I should run away!

The CryptO'pinion?

Fred is a good game, but it's difficult thanks to the fudgy controls that need to be quicker. Also, more checkpoints were required to prevent restarting from the beginning. Don't get me wrong, this is a good game, but it looks better than it is. Am I right? Let me know in the comments what you guys think.

Grab a sword and boot this up on a floppy disk or on your hard drive.