YMT Play

Let's bleep and bloop the night away!

What better way to end a great Christmas than listening to cool chiptunes using YMT Play by Peter Jørgensen (aka Bionic Nerd). This program features YM music data streaming, like the typical ST-sound playback, using a sound range from 50Hz to 300Hz and with very little CPU usage. The quality is outstanding, and I'm sure you will find its potential interesting and an exciting concept. Go and download YMT from Demozoo.

What is YMT?

"YMT files are like the YM/AY files. Music files where you sampled data from the sound chip register (YM2149/AY8910) in a certain interval, instead of having a dedicate player.

To my knowledge, there has only been YM/AY player that could play tune/score files, that was sampled at 50HZ, but the YMT player can play files up to 300hz (there are some 50hz+ tunes/scores include in the examples)

The advantaged of AY/YM/YMT format, is that to replay these tunes/scores cost very little CPU power. So, if you need a lot power for a eg. a 3D demo, then it could be a wise choice to use it, because it leaves most of the CPU power for 3D calculations and the graphic etc.

The disadvantaged is that it uses a lot of memory, and it is nearly impossible to make a routine that can capture and use the SID sound and Samples etc. It is also why those files need to be hand made, that is the reason why YMT-Player only support pure YM2149 sound."

Annihilator

Homebrew games suck, right?

I was always fascinated by what assortments of goodies I could find within the ST's public domain. I scoured the various PD Libraries trying to find either the next big thing or something obscure that would take me by surprise. Who remembers Goodmans, FaST Club, Democlub, LAPD, and many other libraries?

Amazing times, and the Atari ST is blessed with a gigantic and assorted Shareware/PD library. That includes a fantastic gaming section, and here is one such example: Annihilator by Robert HC Leong. This is a classy shoot 'em up, released in 1991 through the esteemed Budgie UK label (a company I genuinely miss).

The gameplay feels instantly familiar, with lots of baddies swarming about. They're called Insectoids, not Galaxians, no matter what you think! The controls are responsive: moving left/right dodges their attacks, whilst hitting fire will shoot the cannon. Killing aliens is never boring, but remember to look out for power-ups that replenish your ship's shield and increase firepower. There are even end-of-level bosses!

Robert coded in a level skip cheat...

It's easy to activate: just pause the game using the spacebar.

Now hold shift and press keys F1-F10 for the required level.

Annihilator is a tremendous blast back to the early 80s. In fact, it's almost as good as I would expect from a commercial company, with exciting gameplay, smooth-as-silk visuals, and fluent controls. Budgie UK has tons of great games, and this is one of the best in their library. Definitely worthy of a Crash Smash rating!!

Waste no more time and get Robert's game download from the GamerBlitz website.