Atari A to Z: Final Legacy

One of my favourite things about early computer games is the sheer creativity a lot of developers showed within the technological limitations of the time.

Today we look at 1984’s Final Legacy, a rather ambitious action-strategy naval combat game in which you command a formidable warship in an attempt to destroy the totally-not-Russian missile bases pointed threateningly at your cities. Rather than a dry, abstract affair, Final Legacy brings us a cool bit of very visual interactive speculative fiction about how warfare might work in the year 2051.

Initially unfolding from an overview map, you’ll use an electric beam to destroy enemy missile silos, lasers to shoot down incoming missiles and torpedos to destroy enemy ships. It’s a ton of fun.

Don’t forget you can now follow Atari A to Z on its own dedicated site — and watch out this Thursday for a brand new Atari-related video series to complement this one!

4 thoughts on “Atari A to Z: Final Legacy”

  1. I’d never seen this one before until I happened onto a cartridge recently but I didn’t go much past the title screen… Big mistake! This video is a great introduction because the instructions didn’t help me much. 😉

    1. There’s an Atari ST version as well, I discovered recently, but I actually think the 8-bit version is better. The ST version was developed by Paradox Software, who were notoriously terrible most of the time; the port isn’t too bad, but it just doesn’t quite “feel” right. And it doesn’t have the laser sound this one does!

      1. ST ports just seemed ‘wrong’ a lot of times… They usually looked great but the sound let them down a lot. I had to look up ST Encounter! after your last great video and it just isn’t the same and the sound is a big part of that.

        Never thought I’d be having fond memories of computer audio from 30 years ago… but I did recently get the 8bit soundtrack to Ballblazer as my ringtone. 😉

        1. Yeah, the ST’s sound chip suffered a lot from being that off-the-shelf Yamaha PSG chip rather than the 8-bit’s lovely POKEY goodness. Just going from four full sound channels to three plus one noise made a big difference.

          This isn’t to say there weren’t people who could make the ST’s sound chip really sing, but it was a lot more difficult for them to create a “distinctive” sound than in the 8-bit era. Most of the time, you’d hear a lot of the same sound effects, created through established techniques.

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