Jinks

This looks sucky!

Jinks appears as a horizontally scrolling 'Breakout', but is technically one of the worst ST games ever. Rainbow Arts’ port of this game is a disgrace. The incredibly jerky scrolling is enough to make your eyes bleed after just a few minutes of play. It’s that awful, and I feel sorry for anyone who spent their money on it.

Thankfully, Peter Putnik has attempted to improve the code by using the Blitter (as shown in the video). However, all disk images of Jinks contain the same bad data. Therefore, Peter is seeking anyone who can provide an image of the original floppy disks. This will allow him to repair this piece of history for his enhanced version.

Please get in touch if you have the original disks and can help...

• This new Blitter-powered version is downloadable from Atarimania.
• If you want to torture your eyeballs, then download the original at Hang Loose.
• Trusteft has a humorous recording of the original jerky game!!

PP's Enhanced Games

New game updates!

Everyone knows Peter Putnik has adapted hundreds of games for hard disk installation. These include extras, like bug fixes, TOS compatibility, 4MB patching, Mega STe/Falcon support, etc. However, some are also super-charged with cool coding that utilises the Blitter coprocessor and DMA for audio that will blow your mind.

Are you interested in games being better on your Atari STe? You should be!

I thought it would be a nice idea to compile a brief overview of his enhanced games here on AtariCrypt. Oids and Uridium are particularly impressive as they significantly improve on their original versions. I also enjoyed playing my own music during a game of Xenon 2 (you can convert your own music).

There is something here for everyone, and I hope you find this useful. Let me know what you think.

Let's play.

Let's take a look at some of these enhanced games that you can download and play right now...

• Xenon II - updated for the Atari STe and features DMA-streamed music. Turn up the volume!
• Cannon Fodder - enhance this lame port with your own DMA-streamed music.
• Prince of Persia - the DMA hardware is used to replay the game's sound effects.

  

Did you enjoy that? Well, here are three enhanced FTL games that are nicely improved...

• Dungeon Master - far cleaner samples are heard thanks to the DMA hardware.
• Chaos Strikes Back - again, the DMA hardware allows cleaner sample playback!
• Oids - double framerates deliver a smoother experience when rescuing the stickmen.

  

Let's take a peek at three more that aren't exactly favoured well by the average ST gamer...

• Jinks - this jerky game is weird, but at least it now uses the smoother STe scrolling.
• Menace - I cannot thank Peter enough for replacing that horrendous yellow ship!
• Uridium - Blitter-boost that sluggish ship and add DMA-streamed background music while you're at it!

  

Now let's take a little run-around with these three you might never have expected to boot up...

• Giana Sisters - this Zamuel_a enhanced game now comes with optional DMA streamed music!!
• Hard 'n' Heavy - gone is that embarrassing flip-screen, thanks to the Blitter.
• Road Runner - Improved and Blitterized for faster scrolling for this funny game.

  

Okay, let's end in style! Here are two ST classics and a PC classic, too! Ooh, nice...

• Goldrunner - Some might not like this, but I hit the F3 key to disable the fuzzy speech!
• Gauntlet - this sluggish hack 'n slasher gets big improvements, but still needs extra CPU grunt.
• Wolfenstein 3D - Ray's jaw-dropping FPS now has bugs removed with decent save game support.

  

Atari STe games [part one]

Let's get ready to rumble!

I've put together a video recording of 14 Atari STe games. Of course, this isn't complete because there are more games. In the interest of keeping things short and sweet, my video shows a few seconds from each game. With a groovy background tune by Tomchi, which is just gorgeous! I hope you enjoy my humble presentation.

---

Come on, man! Get to the games...

• Bombaman - Everyone loves Bomberman, and this is a Christmas cracker we both loved.
• Escape 2042 - I bought this, and so should you. This is incredible. Frustratingly incredible :)
• Pacman On E's - The little yellow fella pops ecstasy pills for a furious take on the classic!

  

• Alien Blast - Skip by those old bugs to enjoy a tremendous Alien-infested shoot 'em up.
• Death Chase - Quite possibly the best STe game I've ever played. Pure gold, this one!
• Ultimate Arena - Punch like Chuck Norris and kick like Bruce Lee in this beat 'em up.

  

• Pole Position - A near arcade-perfect conversion of one of the best racers ever. It is superb.
• PouifOuf - Those graphics might look familiar, but the gameplay is furiously different - Wow!!
• Top Banana - This game is weird, but it's weirdly good.

  

• Crackman/Dealer - A different twist on the old pill popper and something you will instantly love.
• Whitewater Madness - Ignore the old demos, play the newly discovered full version - an AtariCrypt first!
• Roger - The STe shows us exactly what it's capable of, and Spot shines for a truly superb game.

  

• Jinks - Something my mind cannot fathom, and PP totally destroys that jerky STf original.
• R0X - Zoom through the heavens, scaping giant rocks, all for a massive arcade adrenaline rush!

  

Bottom of the Barrel

Thirteen Ways to Suffer

AtariCrypt was never meant to dwell on the rotten side of the Atari ST, but even the finest computer ever built managed to cough up a few absolute clunkers. Those who have been reading the rubbish I post might remember this page from many moons ago - worth checking out. Anyhow, in the spirit of being silly, I’m dedicating a new page to the games best avoided, unless you relish agony. Naturally, people will disagree with my choices, and that’s perfectly fine. Everyone is entitled to an opinion - even when they are wrong.

You know, I could have included a lot of games when I thought about it: Street Fighter, Highway Patrol II, Afterburner, Red Heat, Rolling Thunder, Top Gun, STUN Runner, Forgotten Worlds, Clever And Smart, Thunder Blade, Crazy Cars 2, Wolfchild, Cannon Fodder, Battlezone, Northstar, Pegasus, Hard Drivin', Frenetic, Paragliding, Uridium, Dragon's Lair, /etc/etc/. Perhaps they will be a Part Three one day?

Remember, I play these games so you don't have to. So, in no particular order...

Sleepwalker - this grates me badly. Think about it: released at a time when commercial gaming companies were leaving the ST, and then one of the biggest took the plunge and produced something truly beautiful for the Atari STe no less. Well, aesthetically speaking. The game itself is a terrible take on a similar concept to Lemmings. It does not work, as it's a stressful experience. Aren't games meant to be fun? Well, this has none. Yep, literally none. [ link ]

Carlos - A platformer that also looks great, but those who have followed AtariCrypt for many years will remember how disappointed I was with it. Some platformers, like Switchblade, don’t need scrolling, and it would be a problem if they did. Others, however, absolutely demand it. Seeing its action stop - as everything scrolls in different directions - is embarrassing. [ link ]

Knightmare - I love dungeon crawling, and my work on AtariCrypt tends to halt as I spend hours exploring their world. Everything like Temple of Apshai, Questron II, and Times of Lore I've thoroughly enjoyed. Knightmare appears to have it all, except gameplay. Talk about a confusing, unbalanced nightmare. It might look good, but just play Dungeon Master. [ link ]

Chuckie Egg II - Hold on a minute! This game was mentioned in the last post, but it’s so bad I’m adding it again. Okay, so AnF's 1984 sequel is something special that holds a dear place in my heart. Like JSW, the freedom to roam is granted, making it perfect for getting out there and exploring until your heart's content. It's brilliant and one of my fave Speccy games. Sadly, the ST version is diabolical. The controls are very wrong and make it completely unplayable. [ link ]

Chopper X - I'm probably going to get slated for this one, right? It seems a lot of people out there enjoy this vertical shooter. Well, I find it quite playable but downright boring compared to others like Flying Shark, SWIV, Xenon, and so on. However, it's that damn repetitive music that adds salt to my wounds (MIDI is just as bad lol). Arghhh, stay away!! [ link ]

Days Of Thunder - As a NASCAR fan, I figured I would love this game. No. Not only does it look unfinished, but it performs like a lame dog struggling to run through slutch. Not an ounce of fun can be found within this dreary, chug-along racer. What an awful game. [ link ]

Out Run - I am sure everyone knew this game would appear sooner or later. Jerky, eye-busting framerates that spoil what might have been. There could be light at the end of the tunnel, as there is an unfinished, upgraded version for the STe that is a zillion times better than the original. If you must play this, then make sure you're booting up the right version! [ link ]

Badlands Pete - This is one of those games that looks the business, and I instantly said to myself, "I need to play that!". Sadly, nobody remembered to playtest it before its release. It's far too frustrating as all NPCs are constantly gunning for you; not only the bad guys, but preachers, women, townsfolk, etc. No thought went into this one. A ginormous shame! [ link ]

The Addams Family - I'm pretty sure this is another that many will disagree with me on? Well, it looks great, and the opening stage plays fine, but there's that dreaded push-scrolling, which does not work well. Sure, it's fine at the start, but those later levels are incredibly tough, so your performance suffers from the lack of real scrolling. It totally ruins the game. [ link ]

Liberator - A basic vertical shooter, but an extremely poor one by ST standards. Especially with regards to the graphics, which look like I drew them on an Amstrad CPC! Yes, it's quite embarrassing to play, and it could/should have been miles better. [ link ]

Marble Madness - Atari ruined an Atari game; how weird is that? Not only is it far behind a certain other computer's version, but it's also riddled with bugs. Avoid. [ link ]

Jinks - Sigh, where do I begin? Imagine something like Breakout that scrolls. A confusing, pointless game with far too much pink to be attractive. Interestingly, PP updated it and replaced the horrendous "scrolling", but that still cannot save this atrocity. Awful. [ link ]

Jungle Hero - This is another that I was unsure about adding. It's gut-wrenchingly bad. So much so that it's actually something you need to experience. At least once. Go on, read my review first about the controls and bugs, then you might enjoy it a little. Maybe. [ link ]

Now that I've got all that tension off my chest, I'd love to know if you guys have any dreaded ST games you hate - and why. What are your nightmare games? Or is it just me being Mr Grumps?

I hope you enjoyed this little tongue-in-cheek feature.

When a game looks this good, it’s bound to be a belter, right?

Another platformer that looks stunning. Gameplay? What gameplay?

It looks 10x better than Dungeon Master, yet it's 100000x worse!

Developed by someone who obviously never played the original. Diabolical.

What do people see in this?

D o   n o t   b o t h e r

Argh, it's Out Run!! Seriously, I hope Pete completes the STe version...

Ohh, this could have been so good, but they forgot to playtest before releasing it!

Fantastic graphics and a great opening stage. Terrible difficulty afterwards.

There are no words. It's worth booting up just to experience this odd game.

A lame port of their own game. Very disappointing.

A cute teddy bear can't save this weird game!

Actually, this game is so ridiculous that you guys need to play it.

Peter Putnik

Here is an interview that I am extremely excited to publish because Peter Putnik is a name paramount with Atari ST gaming mainly because of his hard disk adaptations. This means no more running games from an unreliable floppy disk!

I have been using his warez for a long time, and ST gaming wouldn't be nearly as much fun without his efforts. The adaptations offer us the ability to install games onto our "hard drives" instead of the sluggish and failing floppies.

The experience is therefore far superior and usually comes with a trainer to help bad players (like me). Each game often comes with support for faster Atari computers which is incredible when booting up something like Frontier on my Mega STe. What's even more interesting is his 'Gamex', a method of snapshotting your progress instantaneously - kinda like an old Multiface!

I was surprised to hear about his past with not only the Atari ST but also the ZX Spectrum. Two great computers form my own computing history. I hope you enjoy this interview with the man responsible for hundreds of adaptations and several outstanding Atari STe enhanced upgrades. I don't think there is anybody so active on the Atari ST scene. My sincere gratitude to Peter for taking the time out for a good chat.

- The PP Interview -

 

What is your Atari hiSTory?

My history started in 1987 when I decided to upgrade from a ZX Spectrum to something much stronger and the Atari ST was my first thought. However, the Amiga had just arrived in the shops so I was in dilemma, but not for long, the Atari ST had far better quality of software and the prices were almost equal. Also, the Atari seemed a better platform for some serious activity. I soon upgraded the RAM to 1MB and also added another floppy driver and made an EPROM programmer (a must for anyone dealing with hardware mods).

I already had some experience with ASM programming with the Z80 so I soon started on the Atari ST. 68000 ASM is really nice to work with, especially with a good assembler like Devpac. I wrote utilities for my own needs with help from Atari Profibuch book and created a floppy copier combined with a RAMdisk. Most learnings was via books and magazines, unlike today with easy software availability. Pirates were pretty much active in these days, even during 1988's PCW Show in London. :-) In Eastern Europe, they were the only source for computer software, I must say. I also wrote some articles for Yugoslav computer magazines during these early years.

 

What setup are you using these days?

Currently, I have one Mega ST, one STe and a Mega STe. The truth is, I don't use them much because they are very old and fragile and I've needed to repair them a few times, except the Mega STe which is indeed best built. The extra speed is welcome, even for games, although Mega STe was never intended for gaming. I bought this some 9 years ago, and I've since replaced the hard drive. Now used mostly with UltraSatan - much easier data exchange, less noise...

I mostly use the Atari computers to test and to play but my main tool for adaptations is using Steem Debugger and, without this, development would be much slower and harder. This emulator, equipped with a complete overview of emulated computer status, may see all hardware at any moment and following the program flow (even with history). Steem is a very good emulator, and luckily, a couple years ago they released sources so I was able to do some modifications for my needs. On the real hardware, there are limited possibilities of tracing, especially with some software working in very low RAM. Older computers have too low a resolution with a small screen area but there are some things I can not do with my PC: GAL and EPROM programming - where I still use Atari and old programs.

 

History of your famous game adaptations?

Adapting games started during my Spectrum years actually. However, there was not much to adapt but POKE was popular to exploit the code which decreases a player's life count and the like. I also made a snapshot saving program which was in fact very-very simple and only needed to save the RAM and CPU registers to then restore from where we wanted to play. I did it with faster routines, so loading only took some 2 minutes instead 5. :-) Next step was when I added a floppy interface to the Spectrum and then I wanted to transfer all good games onto floppies. So, basically same thing as the Atari ST with game adapting, except that this was way easier because Spectrum software was singleparted in 99% cases and that means no further loading was required after starting the game. I transferred hundreds of games onto floppies very quickly - one disk could store over 20 games, using compression. Next step was adding hard disk like with Atari ST and I designed my own IDE adapter...

In case of Atari ST games, it was more time consuming, some 60% do not directly access the hardware but instead TOS functions for floppy access. This means it was sometimes simple but other problems might arise, like TOS version incompatibilities, RAM usage, etc. Again, it was easiest with singleparted games, so my first hard disk adaptations were with such games that didn't have any disk access after loading - like Stunt Car Racer and Sentinel. Afterwards, I made adaptations using a RAMdisk for faster loading before the later adaptations, like Formula 1 GP.

 

Incredible results achieved but why did you begin this?

I started all this because I wanted to get rid of unreliable and slow floppies. The real leap was probably the arrival of Flash cards, so we can now have small, silent, fast, cheap storage. I started to deal with them right at beginning - first one was 8MB Smart Media card in 2004. :-) I certainly did not plan, or expect, that it would reach a count of over 1000 adapted games!

 

What are your favourite games?

I first played Flight Simulator II which I bought together with Atari ST. Then I was playing Dungeon Master, Carrier Command, Millennium 2.2, Formula One Grand Prix and not forgetting Potsworth & Co.

 

What other stuff have you created?

My first serious software was MC Tracer, a debugger, for the ZX Spectrum. It could run any software, step by step, and there was a circular buffer feature to store the last 100 executed instructions. What's interesting is that I made almost the same relocating system (it must working at any RAM area) as what is used in TOS executables :-) Also worth a mention is my Spectrum modded ROM - for floppy and hard disk (all available at zx48.8bitchip.info).

For the Atari ST, I first made some floppy utilities and then a hard disk driver, which is still under development. I did some Windows utilities for accessing and transferring data with Atari ST formatted floppies and also hard disks. Soon after the Internet became accessible in our area, I started a website for my Spectrum and Atari ST projects. The site moved couple times during years, I hope that current place will stand for a long time.

Any current hardware projects?

I have many plans but things are moving slowly, especially with hardware. Mostly I would like to finish old projects, like the cartridge port IDE adapter and ACSI port CF adapter. No specific STE projects currently, but the cartridge adapter works better on STE and movies look much better. :-)

 

What's your favourite hardware creation?

My personal favourite ... hmm it could be the IDE hard disk adapter for Sinclair Spectrum because that was good exercise with GAL programming. For the Atari ST it would be the cartridge IDE adapter.

 

As a programmer, who inspires you?

I don't think that I was particularly inspired by a particular programmer but there are certain names I associate with high quality. Games by Costa Panayi, Andy Pennell for Devpac ASM and Geoff Crammond for his good simulations.

What about the Atari ST/e future?

My concern is that real Ataris will not last much long. More and more people will use emulators or clones like Mist. Still, adaptations can make playing a lot easier on both. I think doing STe-improved versions of games seems the right choice now. However, this can be very time consuming, I started Uridium couple years ago and simply disassembling it properly took a couple days. I then had to put it on ice because of a lack of time but, luckily, I was finally able to finish this recently.

Other problems are a lack of sources for better sound effects and corrupt or missing original disks. We need flawless images to work with for so many games, like Son Shu Shi, Jinks and others. Thankfully, we recently got Giana Sisters, the internet is a great thing and we need to work together. :-)

 

Links...

 - I often use Peter's 8BitChip adapted games and all are listed right here!

 - There is an 8BitChip Forum you can join and a YouTube Channel with many adapted games.

 - Have you seen Peter's Atari STe versions of Xenon 2, Cannon Fodder, Dungeon Master, etc??