Sophélie

Bums and Boobs!

Sophelie was once a goddess of heaven but has since been vanquished and left to roam the lands searching for her body. Why do I hear you cry? Well, some kind soul has turned her into an albatross so she now spends her time flying through worlds looking to find her original appearance. As storylines go, this is silly, to say the least!

This is a horizontally scrolling shooter not too dissimilar to Menace. However, this time we're not killing monsters or aliens but instead some of the weirdest things that you might never have expected; planets, snowmen, wolf heads, giant eyeballs and even trees. The landscapes are lush with colourful and angels will appear to help at regular intervals.

Sounds great, right? Well, let's take a look at some screenshots from the first level...

Yep, giant eyeballs are coming for you and are actually tough to kill too!

Now, this is getting silly! What have the trees ever done to you?

Let's kill the planet? No literally by shooting down the rotating planet Earth!!

Spit, don't shoot!

We begin with the (ugly?) hand of God safely delivering us to each world ready for battle. These worlds are split into several segments with each having its own brand of baddies all too eager to see you dead. Each will swarm onto the screen using its own style of attack pattern and might even shoot at you - the Earth enemies fire mini-planets!

Some of the nasties are far too easy to kill whereas others are quite impossible thanks to the rate at which we can shoot - it's too low. So this makes killing certain enemies quite impossible because they move too quickly in comparison to our fire rate. Dying can be a bit troublesome especially when you materialise too close to an enemy and therefore instantly die once again. A simple invulnerability effect could easily have been utilised for a second or two. Quite unfair!

Angels visit after each of the segments to offer a power-up and these are pretty much essential from the start. Miss them, and the following swarm of enemies is quite impossible to defeat. Also, dying baddies might sometimes throw out an extra power-up, but these fall off the screen before you've had a chance to even think about collecting them. Finally, there is a time limit ticking down to kill each wave of baddies. Which is very peculiar, to say the least.

Let's now take a peep at some screenshots from the second world...

Some of the sprites are freaky... freaky-cool!

I can't make out whether these are balloons or floating severed heads!

Damn snowmen, they all deserve to die!! O_o

Aesthetics?

Visually, this isn't too bad with colourful palettes, funky sprites racing across the screen and smooth parallax scrolling running at a brisk pace. In fact, I love the level of detail that's gone into the sprite's artwork the most: Sophelie's animation is superb and never have I played a game with such a large whacky variety of different enemies.

Sadly, the audio is disappointing with a fuzzy theme tune and near-silent gameplay. Well, apart from the death kill sound effect and a strange background whistle. Overall, it's shocking because the YM is far more capable.

Well, that was a mixed bag alright so let's take a peep at the third world...

These are insanely difficult to kill, if not impossible without losing all your lives!

He's big. He's bad. He's about to be brown bread!!

Hey, a power-up appears from a dying beast yet you have no chance of collecting it!

The CryptO'pinion?

On a basic level, this isn't a terrible shoot 'em up. The levels are colourful, the baddies look great zipping across the screen and the action is constant. Also, I like how angels regularly appear with a gift to improve your chances of winning. However, this is also one of the most boring games I've ever booted up. The graphics might change but the gameplay is bland and very repetitive so becomes tiresome. And then there's the audio... Or lack of... Ugh, terrible!

It's an understatement to say that there are better Atari ST shooters. Sophélie looks nice, sounds awful and doesn't bring anything new to the table but there are boobies so perhaps it's worth playing? Nah, I'll leave it thanks.

If you're curious then grab the floppy disk via Stonish or Old Games Finder. Enjoy...

Oh no, another grisly death beautifully laid out. Interesting artwork!

TRS-80 emulator

Let's go back to the days of Starsky & Hutch and Asteroids!

Most people might think it's stupid to emulate a retro computer using a retro computer? Thankfully, not me as I've found something rather incredible called 2nd Life. It's a TRS-80 Model III emulator by Sander Berents and is something I stumbled on purely by chance. So, I figured I should give it a good playtesting.

I've never used a TRS-80 and I imagine few made it outside the US? Anyhow, Tandy and RadioShack released the first model in 1977, it was a hit for those wealthy enough to have lots of spare cash burning a hole in their pockets. Back then, I would have been six and too young to care about something like this :-)

Let's begin with a screenshot of the credits. Oh yeah, it's screenshot time...

It's sadly impressive that something this good wasn't released earlier in the ST's life.

What's a RadioShack?

Like you, I love my Atari ST, even when it pretends to be something else - a Sinclair, Commodore, or even a peculiar clunk of hardware by RadioShack (I used to love the Tandy stores). Anyhow, a TRS-80 emulator sounded far too tempting not to try! I read the docs and hit the web to learn how to operate this ancient beast.

First things first, read the docs and look at the FAQ text file to understand which options to enable/disable for the best performance and compatibility settings. You will also find two more disk images with compiled and BASIC games but you'll be best with a 16MHz computer to enjoy something close to native speeds.

2nd Life requires ST High resolution and is very easy to use. Along the bottom of the screen, are four floppy disk drive icons - click to highlight Drive 0 and use that as the TRS operating system boot drive. The second drive icon can be used for anything like games or other images that you may have downloaded.

Lots of features and is versatile. Plus it can play many different games too which matters more...

One of the first things I booted up was Donkey Kong. Okay, it looks terrible but plays well.

Old but not that much different

Using the TRS-80's DOS commands feels a little quirky but is fairly easy to learn. For example, DIR will display the directory of a disk and it can be expanded with extra options and filters, as you'll see in the video:

DIR 0 - will produce the contents of Drive 0

DIR 1 - will produce the contents of Drive 1. Easy, right?

DIR 1,/BAS - this displays the same list but filters for BAS files.
CAT 1 - this provides an alternative way to load programs!

We're gonna get a little more complex now but it's worth it to watch the dancing alien:

BASIC RUN "DANCING/BAS,1"

The command looks worse than it actually is. Breaking it down, it simply instructs the computer to load up the BASIC program. Then that will load/run the file "DANCING/BAS" which is stored on Drive 1. Easy!

This is starting to be fun so I went searching for a game like Menace or R-Type. Ahem, screenshot time...

Sea Dragon is a terrible mess of ZX81 blockiness but it is a brilliant shoot 'em up!

Get to the games already!

Ultimately, we're here to play some TRS-80 games and I gotta tip my hat to this old piece of 70s kit. There are some great games in its library and there's a good reason I chose Sea Dragon as the video thumbnail. Like any old computer, there's a wealth of vintage games from the era: Pacman, Invaders, Frogger, etc. I'm a geek, so I enjoyed the thrill of playing with something that's almost as old as me. No rude comments, please!

Performance-wise, the humble 8MHZ Atari ST will successfully emulate and run everything you throw at it. It will struggle with the games as it's simply not fast enough. Personally, my Mega STe is the essential, minimum requirement and produces near-perfect speeds, generally speaking. So, 8MHz will be fine but 16MHz will get you gaming. Hardly a shock and just the same as with other emulators we have within our library...

Don't forget to read the docs as README.TXT is there for a reason... Okay, I'll nag no more! 

Yes, this really is Frogger. Hopper has awful collision detection but is a pretty good game.

Games! Give me games!

One of the best games is Sea Dragon, which is a fantastic scramble through watery canyons. Sadly, I wasn't impressed with Penetrator I struggled with jerky graphics and twitchy controls. It was a shock to see a chunky version of Donkey Kong with huge black and white blocks but the gameplay is superb and that's what matters. However, the blocks worked great for Armored Patrol and the wealth of PacMan games!

There are a few games bundled with 2nd Life and sooner or later you will want more. Thankfully, there are some great websites with disk images stuffed full of games and I managed to find racers, lots of different Space Invaders, Zork, and even Temple of Apshai - which is nothing at all like the Atari ST version. Its "turn-based" element caught me off-guard, in a nice way. But boy, is it slow - even on a real TRS-80. Yikes!

Most (all?) disk images found on the internet won't be compatible with the Atari ST. Thankfully, Sander has a utility to convert these for 2nd Life and it works a treat from what I've seen so far. Hence, how I got to play Hamburger Sam, Berserk, erm Robot Attack and the sluggish Temple of Apshai.

He might not be yellow but he's on the TRS-80 as Gobbler!

The CryptO'pinion?

I initially expected the TRS-80 to be nothing more than a cumbersome piece of ancient hardware that I wouldn't particularly enjoy. I couldn't be more wrong, this machine appears to have more power and versatility than I would ever imagine. It's a great computer and it's no wonder those plucky Americans snapped it up!

2nd Life is an equally fantastic piece of software! I'm impressed with how well it runs in terms of speed, ease of use, and compatibility. The inclusion of a utility to convert disk images into a format that 2nd Life can recognise is wonderful. That opens up the possibility of playing everything there is. Techies can go further: font editor, keyboard alteration, linking computers, and even tinkering with a disassembler debugger...

The TRS-80 is great and it's impressive to see the Atari ST flip back in time so easily and reliably. I have really enjoyed using 2nd Life and I'd love to hear what hardware you guys are using to run this software.

GitHub has the download which includes the source code for those uber-geeks amongst us :-)

- MORE SCREENSHOTS -

Look what I found and it's quite different to the Atari ST game. Quick, kill the Ant Man!!

This is Astro and it's a BASIC game. No, I mean it's written in BASIC and it's good.

Hamburger Sam, based on BurgerTime but felt more like Mr Wimpy to me. Love it.

This is Speedway and it's kinda like an early Spy Hunter or Major Motion. Hmm...

Runner demands quick control action - you'll regret not reading the FAQ text file!

I only ever played Penetrator on the ZX Spectrum... and this isn't as good!

Hang on, is that Berserk? No, it's Robot Attack and completely different. Honest.

Limit Zero is absolutely superb and something you should play!!

ScarfMan? Okay, it's getting silly now...

Lunar Lander is a cracking conversion but too slow for an 8MHz ST to handle.