__ __ ___ ___ _ ___ _____ _ ___
| \/ | __/ __| /_\ / __|_ _/_\ | _ \
| |\/| | _| (_ |/ _ \\__ \ | |/ _ \| /
|_| |_|___\___/_/ \_\___/ |_/_/ \_\_|_\ V1.0
(This is not my Ascii by the way..)
Does this game SEUCK?
See CiH briefly take the ASM Software challenge! Well it is a long wait
between Reservoir Gods releases, and we must do what we can. Certainly that
is what Matthias Arndt of ASM Soft thought, when he decided to release this
little shootemup into a summer stupefied Atari scene.
ASM soft seem to have a little bit of history, mainly on the linux-dad side
of things, and they also seem to do Sun/Java stuff, although this bit of
their website is still under construction. Their coding activities under the
glorious Fuji sign seem to be a fairly recent development, or possibly a
very ancient one when he found an ancient cobwebbed floppy disk left over
from his boyhood, or something?
It is a small download, either as a PeeCee emulator friendly disk-image, or
a faff-free and time-saving zipfile for those of us with original Atari
hardware. Unzipping reveals a small bunch of files, some image and odd
looking data files, and an executable 'rungame.prg' which looks promising.
Getting it going proved to be easier than the confusing instructions seemed
to imply.
"In other cases make sure to "Install Application" with RUNGAME.PRG on the
extension .SCK and leave the file structure intact including the folder
EDITFILE."
CiH translates to:- Drag the file 'megastar.sck' and drop it onto the
'rungame.prg' executable. The program then loads and you are ready to go!
So now you can all go away and play this game for yourself, rather than rely
on this dubious testimony.
The author tended to be cautious about the subject of compatibility.
Certainly a good old bog-standard 1987 vintage STFM was safe, he even had
reports that it was okay on an STe. Some emulators had tried it and found it
worked okay. Well I'm smugly adding to the available data, as Megastar is
quite happy to do its thing on the Falcon as well. Yes, even a CT2 powered
machine was able to handle the awesome power of this game. The only constant
being through the different generations, that the host machine is able to
reproduce a low resolution ST-mode sixteen colour screen, and it has
provision for the old fashioned 9-pin style joysticks. Up to two players can
join in! There isn't really any difference between running on 8 mhz, and 50
mhz, the game loads a lot quicker on the faster system, but that is all.
As for the game itself, the screenhot below gives you a flavour of what it
is like. It looks a lot like the sort of thing that would be done as a
budget label in the later days of the Commodore 64, which might make some
people nostalgic!
The gameplay is adequate, and pitched at a medium-ish difficulty level for
this kind of shootemup. There isn't a lot to tell here, point at the target,
click on the fire button for all you are worth, evade the bad guys. Some of
these can be quite tricky if you aren't paying attention. As a game based on
a construction kit system, it certainly isn't 'Wings of Death', it isn't
even 'Raiden', but as a shootemup, it does work.
The graphics are, by the authors own admission, generally poor, and the
sound is functional and bleepy. Without wanting to disparage the author, I
think this is the sort of release that doesn't usually get a wide
circulation, outside of immediate friends and family. I think that there
might be a little bit of retro-appeal, but this isn't going to be one that
you will spend a long time over beating even the first level.
CiH for Alive! Mag, Oct '02
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