Portal To Xenithor

Another STosser!

Portal To Xenithor is a flick-screen platformer currently under development by Michael Keenleyside. The adventure begins with us having survived a crash landing on a monster-infested moon colony. Our job is to kill the nasties and search for a replacement spaceship before piloting through to a victorious escape.

It's early days, but the storyline and map designs are taking shape. End-of-level cutscenes are planned to be used as the adventure unfolds. The visual style is dark and moody and soon to be enhanced by eerie music. Michael is about six months into the project and considering the possibility of a different engine for other parts of the game. These will use the hardware scrolling and DMA Audio of the Atari STe.

Michael is nuts about STOS Game Creator and wishes to pay homage to Francois Lionet so development will be done using this and Missing Link/Maestro. The estimated requirements are a 4MB Atari ST with support for hard disk installation. Personally, I'm reminded of Stryx and Baal and can't wait to see it completed!

Update: Michael has started a STOS Coders group with Francois Lionet

Zaptastic

Crazy gaming time!

When I first loaded Zaptastic, I immediately assumed a cheap Robotron ripoff but it's actually based on an old Jeff Minter game called Ancipital. Lee Burrows not only coded this conversion but did all the graphics and sounds. It runs on both models of ST but is intended for the Atari STe as it uses the Blitter for the sprites and DMA effects. Sadly, I couldn't get it to work on my STFM without getting two nasty bombs popping up!

We're in control of a Dolph Lundgren dude with spiky hair and shades who must frantically clear 64 rooms infested by an array of nasties. He gets around using the screen's four sides and can escape the hoard by leaping across to the opposite side - but be careful because your shield won't last forever! Firing is constant and in the direction last used but can be temporally frozen by holding down the fire button <cough> Llamatron.

Visually, things are amateur but it works great with lots of silly sprites filling the screen. The audio is insane thanks to the DMA coprocessor pushing out funky samples to keep everything loud and exciting. Overall, this is one incredibly addictive and psychedelic shoot 'em up and I loved every zany minute of it!!

Zaptastic can be downloaded at ST Format (disk #81)