Category Archives: Videos

Atari ST A to Z: Uninvited

Horror games really took off with the advent of the “survival horror” subgenre that Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil introduced in the late ’90s.

That’s not to say that there were no horror games prior to that, however. And one of the most creepy, disturbing and unsettling of them all was Uninvited by Icom Simulations.

Uninvited was one of Icom’s “MacVentures” series of point-and-click games, but it was ported to numerous platforms after it proved popular on its original platform. One of those was Atari ST, so here we are…

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Warriors Wednesday: It’s A Trap… Again – Warriors Orochi #52

You can count on several things in a Warriors game: firstly, that pursuing Lu Bu is usually a bad idea; secondly, that the commander is struggling and that you should assist at once; and thirdly, that “it” is usually a trap.

It’s a trope at this point; if a particular encounter in a Warriors battle feels mysteriously easy, or there don’t seem to be very many enemies around on a suspiciously large map, you can guarantee that something bad is going to happen to your forces at some point. It’s just a matter of when…

And, of course, that’s exactly what happens today, as Cao Pi and friends attempt to seize a strategically advantageous garrison…

Atari A to Z: A-Rogue

Roguelikes are big business today, but they’ve been around for a long time.

Much like many early games, they originated as mainframe affairs that didn’t get home ports until much later, when ambitious programmers decided to see exactly what they could get their micros to do.

A-Rogue is what happened when Robert Jung decided to take the original Rogue and rewrite it in Atari BASIC for 48K Atari home computers. He did a pretty good job considering the limitations he had to work within!

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Atari A to Z Flashback: Warlords

Pong and Breakout were winning formulae for Atari, so it makes perfect sense they would want to try and do everything possible with this style of game over the years.

Warlords was one of the more interesting experiments, adding a healthy dose of theme, four-player competitive (or team-based) action and a couple of interesting additional mechanics.

It’s even reasonably fun by yourself… but get three friends together and you can expect the trash talk to flow freely within moments of starting!

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Final Fantasy Marathon: Vampire Hunter F(F) – Final Fantasy I #7

Last time, the Warriors of Light decided to take a well-earned holiday in the town of Melmond, only to discover it was a right shithole.

It (apparently) wasn’t the fault of the people of Melmond, however; the nasty vampire who had taken up residence in the Cavern of Earth was supposedly to blame, because he was blocking the flow of earth energy from the crystal and making everything rot. And this made all the buildings fall down, supposedly.

Motivated entirely by altruism (well, maybe a bit of greed… treasures are shiny!), the Warriors of Light descend into the Cavern of Earth to try and deal with this undead terror once and for all…

Atari ST A to Z: Tournament Golf

Who’s up for the ruination of a perfectly good walk? Well, you’re in luck, because here comes Elite with their ST conversion of Sega’s Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf.

Tournament Golf, as it was rebranded for its home computer release thanks to the ditching of the license for cost-cutting reasons, is an interesting example of a relatively early golf game trying to incorporate some more complex simulation-style elements into the mix.

Unfortunately, said mix also includes incredibly twitchy arcade-style controls that you need the reflexes of a particularly hyperactive kitten to master, making the whole thing rather more challenging than it needs to be! Still, I had fun…

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Warriors Wednesday: Stoking the Fires of Rebellion – Warriors Orochi #51

Today’s scuffle in the lands of Warriors Orochi sees Xiahou Dun and Xiahou Yuan entering the picture, as Cao Pi does his best to gather the forces required for an effective rebellion.

The two proud warriors, ever loyal to Wei even after they felt its leader had abandoned it, are going to take a bit of convincing, though. And by “convincing”, I mean “poking repeatedly with sharp objects”.

New recruit Zhang He also gets a bit of time to shine. His claw work is beeeeautiful, don’t you know…

Atari A to Z: Zone Ranger

We’ve made it to Z again, folks! And today’s a real stonker of a game that I used to really love playing back in the day. And still do today, in fact.

Zone Ranger was released in 1984 by Activision, back when they still made good games, and was the work of one Dan Thompson. Drawing loose inspiration from Asteroids and Sinistar, two favourite games of Thompson, Zone Ranger tasks you with shooting down a bunch of space junk because… why not?

It’s the quintessential mid-’80s arcade blaster in many ways: easy to learn, hard to master and very, very addictive.

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Atari A to Z Flashback: Atari Soccer

Yes, yes, yes, I know the “A to Z” angle in this series is already questionable and this one following Tempest makes it even more so, but we only just managed to find time to have a two-player match!

Indeed, today’s game is Atari Soccer, an arcade title which can only be played with two or four people simultaneously, so bad luck if you have either no friends or two friends. As a follow-up to Atari Football, it again had a cocktail cabinet form factor and exhausting trackball controls to blister your palms with.

Thankfully, the port in Atari Flashback Classics can be enjoyed with nothing more than a couple of analogue controllers, and even for those who aren’t big soccer fans, the game makes for an entertaining, competitive pastime for a few minutes every so often.

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

Final Fantasy Marathon: Lali-Ho! – Final Fantasy I #6

In this sixth episode of the Final Fantasy Marathon, we take our legitimately gotten gains (courtesy of the Mystic Key) and take a trip to go and visit the dwarves.

Dwarves are another example of an aspect of Final Fantasy that was lifted from Dungeons & Dragons, though few can deny that the Japanese series puts its own unique twist on the dumpy delvers. Their catchphrase of “lali-ho!” (or variations thereof depending on who was on localisation duty at Squaresoft that week) became a recurring feature for a number of installments… and indeed at the time of writing the dwarves have most recently made a comeback in fanservice festival Final Fantasy XIV as part of the Shadowbringers expansion.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I’ve got some Nitro Powder burning a hole in my pocket (quite literally) and I can’t think of anyone better equipped to make good use of it than a dwarf.