Atari v Commodore

[andym00]

The C64 has indeed a huge software library. I'm not sure how much but wasn't it at least 10 times larger than the A8 library? But the percentage of 'quality' games seems much much lower.

 

I have nearly 100 of old 5.25'' floppies with C64 games at home. 99% of it is filled with this (and pics in 8930,8931,8932,8933,8936) kind of stuff.

 

I wouldn't have guessed 10 times, a ballpark figure I had in my head might be 25% of the c64 titles, given the lifetime of the machine.. But...

 

Gamebase64 lists 20600 games.. Out of curiousity what's the total commercial titles released for A8 ? I see AtariMania lists 8,118 games for A8, but I'm doubtful as to that being commercial games, though I'm open to being enlightened

 

And of course there was proper tat on it.. I mean it was released in 82, the games industry crashed in the next year, a lot of the traditional companies vanished to be replaced by the new upstarts, so fresh tat was imminent, for a while.. One place where the 64 did pay heavily in the tat stakes was later when the the demo scene decided that every man and his dog could wiggle some sprites around the screen and play some ripped music and that it was therefore dead easy to write games, cue more tat, and lots of it.. A lot of greed, driven in a feedback cycle of budget publishers not wanting to pay much and programmers willing to do that awful cheap knock down budget stuff fed the production line of shite that formed a large proportion of what we got.. Of course it wasn't all crap by a long way, but I just wish those budget labels had never existed..

 

The 64 paid very heavily in the tat league for sure, but I think there's some government issue rose-tinted spectacles still being worn over in there in the atari trenches if you think you got off scott-free

[simonl]

you know what I realised?

 

that most of the time (99%) non-coders on a8 side (except Atariski) are arguing against coders esp. game coders on the commie side...

 

if the A8 side would be dead right I am wondering why Tezz, Miker, Fandal, XXL, Candle, Wrathchild, Pete, Analmux, MaPa, Raster etc are not responding in that way these non-coders do?

Possibly because they're as bored by this discussion as I am. Could one of the moderators pin it so it's easier to ignore? I wouldn't bother trying to convince a c64 user of the merits of the atari platform, in the same way as I wouldn't go to my local branch of the church of satan to tell them the good news about jesus - what's the point ?

Simon

[carmel_andrews]

those are the years Atari was excellent, after 84 publishers "forgot" how to do Atari games well though they had been much better in the past.I could say 85-90 are yaers that bdon't matter much to atari people. 82 and 83 c64 wasn't even close to Atari 8. That is my point of these silly comparisons.

 

 

 

 

I guess you haven't played any of the european stuff, especiallity from places like poland, czech republic, etc etc especially from the late 80's onwards, just as good if not better then the pre 1984 atari disk games from the US

 

As for Heaven's last post, i don't see any argument's, who's arguing with who, all i see is an interesting 'well worn' debate even if some people do hit a raw nerve and guess a tintsy bit upset

[andym00]

you know what I realised?

 

that most of the time (99%) non-coders on a8 side (except Atariski) are arguing against coders esp. game coders on the commie side...

 

if the A8 side would be dead right I am wondering why Tezz, Miker, Fandal, XXL, Candle, Wrathchild, Pete, Analmux, MaPa, Raster etc are not responding in that way these non-coders do?

 

The witch-hunters will be coming for you now you heretic

 

Anyway.. I'm out of this thread for the rest of the weekend.. More important things to do, like writing sprite routine Ver.27

[Lazarus]

Gamebase64 lists 20600 games.. Out of curiousity what's the total commercial titles released for A8 ? I see AtariMania lists 8,118 games for A8, but I'm doubtful as to that being commercial games, though I'm open to being enlightened

Should be mentioned that Gamebase64 is far less accurate than AtariMania when it comes to different releases of a game. GB64 usually only keeps the version the Gamebase staff think is "best", or in cases of Congo Bongo or Ikari Warriors when both versions are essentially two different games.

[carmel_andrews]

I think you'll find that a significant portion of the 20000+ games on Gamebase 64 are duplicates of the same game but cracked/hacked by a different crew/group etc...so take out the duplicates and you end up with about 8-10k or around abouts

[TMR]

I think you'll find that a significant portion of the 20000+ games on Gamebase 64 are duplicates of the same game but cracked/hacked by a different crew/group etc...

 

And i think you'll find that they're not actually, Gamebase64 might hold multiple cracks of a single title in a few cases but it's contained in the same archive and database entry when they do. There is some repetition in the database yes (such as Quedex and Mindroll being classed as two entries despite being the English and American versions of the same game) but it's nowhere near the 50% of the database you're implying.

[carmel_andrews]

I think you'll find that a significant portion of the 20000+ games on Gamebase 64 are duplicates of the same game but cracked/hacked by a different crew/group etc...

 

And i think you'll find that they're not actually, Gamebase64 might hold multiple cracks of a single title in a few cases but it's contained in the same archive and database entry when they do. There is some repetition in the database yes (such as Quedex and Mindroll being classed as two entries despite being the English and American versions of the same game) but it's nowhere near the 50% of the database you're implying.

 

 

 

 

 

I suggest you read the Book, Phoenix, fall and rise of videogames, where it states that 'just over' 10K programs (commercial as well as PD) were released for the C64 during it's lifespan

[www.atarimania.com]

I think you'll find that a significant portion of the 20000+ games on Gamebase 64 are duplicates of the same game but cracked/hacked by a different crew/group etc...so take out the duplicates and you end up with about 8-10k or around abouts

The village idiot strikes back...

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[Lazarus]

I suggest you read the Book, Phoenix, fall and rise of videogames, where it states that 'just over' 10K programs (commercial as well as PD) were released for the C64 during it's lifespan

I'd rather believe Gamebase in this case instead of an author of a book which pulls out a number without even mentioning where he got it from. And as TMR already said: The Gamebase does not contain different cracks of the same game. They only keep the version they think is best (which is the major downside of GB64 btw).

[TMR]

I suggest you read the Book, Phoenix, fall and rise of videogames, where it states that 'just over' 10K programs (commercial as well as PD) were released for the C64 during it's lifespan

 

It wouldn't be the first time a book was wrong (ask John Harris what he thinks of the Atari 2600 and it won't tally to what is reported in Steven Levy's "Hackers) but even if it were correct, then your assumption as to why Gamebase doesn't match that total was seriously off base regardless. The bunnies behind the C64Heaven project do archive multiple cracks of the same game and their database already totals 40,000 entries and they're still beavering away with a guestimate of 100,000 being waved around.

 

And whilst i don't claim to have looked at every entry in Gamebase64 because i don't think anyone sane could claim that (even if they were to start with, i doubt that'd be true by the end!) but i have been all the way through most of the shoot 'em up categories and i can vouch for there not being 50% or plus repetition in those parts.

[oky2000]

Ummm - sorry, but you must live overseas cause in the US they play on a dirt infield, not snow colored - and is that Michael Jackson batting on the C64 version? The color choices on the Atari show the advantage of being able to pick colors you want - they might only have 4 or 5 but they are correct. I give oyu this, the crowd looks better on the C64 version.

 

Apart from lower resolution the A8 and C64 version use almost the same 3 colours for the in field but on the C64 there are 3 colours used on the grass area and a horrible single green colour that maybe you get in a diseased swamp on the A8.

 

The players are drawn in the same way on both...just the Atari ones are more blocky and a little stunted. So if they look like MJ to you on the C64 then they must be shorter lego models of MJ on the A8 version!

 

 

The C64 Congo Bongo screens shown earlier are from the recoded disk version...

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

 

It is from the non-cartridge version yes as in Europe we're not big on wasting £30 on games instead of £8 for it, the other is from a cartridge from the USA(and EU too possible) but both are from 1983 as can clearly be seen on the copyright notice anyway so not recoded and both versions were released in 1983 it is just a different format from a different country. Given 95% of Atari A8 users worldwide had disk drives compared to maybe 75% for C64 owners in 1983 there is no reason that they had to release it only on a cart for the A8. Ocean improved Atarisoft's pathetic attempt at Donkey Kong and put it on non-cartridge format...is that somehow not allowed?

 

You couldn't do that version of Congo Bongo on the A8 no way in 1983, not a single game of that time had more than four or five colours per scanline at best and mostly the whole screen...no one had thought of ways round the restrictive colour resolution of the A8. Harball from the same year is proof that going left to right on the screen for useful random placement of unique colours even then in 83 it was becoming apparent A8 multicolor 160x200 was inferior/restrictive.

 

Anyway both games are full price games expected to sell in massive amounts so the time frame is right (1983 when you had half a century of A8 development and 1 year for the C64) and clearly these are large software houses with full price resources thrown at both in a time when the A8 wasn't yet considered a market failure compared to the C64 as in 1983 sales were still picking up after the fall 82 launch.

[oky2000]

This is the c64 Congo Bongo I found at http://www.c64.com/ :

It played pretty bad. They did say there was a better version and to search on the internet.

Also Congo Bongo looked different in my emulator:

 

Emulator colours are pretty much always wrong and LCD technology should have stayed as something for use with slim laptops ONLY because they are horrible, CRT pwns LCD every time...Sony did a 24" widescreen CRT monitor with 1920x1200 and once you have used one of those an LCD will always make you feel a bit ill. If you would like the exact palette values for the 64 as used on a C= 1702 monitor with default settings for VICE let me know and I can post them.

[oky2000]

I know Commodore had the 128, but wasn't the 128k only available in C128 mode?

VDC RAM (16k or 64k, depending on revision) can be used in C64 mode. But the C128 mode isn't much different to the C64 mode anyway, only the memory banking is different. IO registers, CPU, ROM jump table... all the same. Porting a C64 game to C128 is not hard to do.

 

I also know that the 80 column mode was not useful for games because it had no sprites and the fonts could not be reprogrammed.

Actually the VDC is quite flexible. It lacks important features like sprites and multicolor mode, but offers stuff like 512 character fonts (8x2 to 8x16 size), hires bitmap mode with color cells (8x2 to 8x16 size), smooth scrolling, real interlace, copy/fill feature for VDC RAM. Games COULD have been done with it, but the VIC2 was a much better choice for doing a game since it's so much easier there.

 

I'm no expert on the 128 (didn't own one, spent £100 more and got an A1000 2nd hand than a Commodore 128D) but isn't it the case though that when the top and bottom border is being drawn you can activate the 2mhz mode of the 8502? Also isn't the C64s user defined 128 character limit also removed in C128 mode?

 

There are differences between them and it could make more of a difference in the hands of an expert than just the extra 64k RAM unlike the 130XE which is a 65XE with a few extra DIL ram chips on the board and no other improvements.

[oky2000]

8x faster? possibly more actually. For planar modes you have to load, OR a bit in (or AND it out) and store 8 times, that's 3 operations per bit, 24 operations total (excluding how you get the and/or masks to start with). chunky is a load and store to get a pixel onscreen. potentially it could be up to 20 times faster like-for-like.

 

Finally someone gets what I am talking about!

 

For the rest............I was only talking about screen memory format in terms of displaying frames in Doom style games, planar is nothing but a disadvantage IN THIS CASE when after spending 10000s of cycles calculating what your next frame should look like in 256 colours the Amiga then has to mess about generating this 256 colour screen by manipulating 8 separate bit planes independently as opposed to one single 8bit value to be written somewhere to set the same single pixel.

...

As far as copying data from off-screen buffers to video area, it's not going to be 800% slower. You would update one plane at a time not write to 8 planes for every pixel. Or you can do 32 pixels at a time on each plane:

 

Move.l (a0)+,P1Ofs(a4)

Move.l (a1)+,P2Ofs(a4)

Move.l (a2)+,P3Ofs(a4)

Move.l (a3)+,(a4)+ ;assume one plane is at 0 offset

 

Bit planes were kept for compatability and it was cheaper to expand and clean up the original chipset than redesign it again to add completely alien screen modes like chunky pixel VGA style. AAA and other chipset prototypes do not use bitplanes except for legacy Amiga screen modes and there's a good reason why

 

It's good that they kept backward compatibility. That's the problem in modern graphics cards-- they all have their own methods of accessing the screen and different I/O ports so you are forced to go through some API and thus not being able to take full advantage of the hardware.

 

 

What 'you' do is irrelevant, the Amiga chipset needs to manage 8 bit planes on the A1200/A4000 AGA Amigas, whether you want to change 1 pixel or none or all 320x256 at once makes no odds the Amiga chipset still needs to work with 8 seperate bitplanes for every pixel of a 256 colour screen of any resolution. The simple fact is for the flavour of the month (Doom style FPS games) it made the Amiga look technologically far worse than it was to the novice computer purchaser.

 

I have already stated that planar is not a problem in essence, look at Super Stardust 96 and Lotus Turbo Challenge 3 on PC and you will need a 100mhz Pentium PC to play these games in the same fluid manner as a 14mhz 50% CPU speed crippled 68020 based A1200 Amiga so clearly it is manipulation of the situation of PeeCee marketeers when everyone wanted their own version of Doom. PCs were quick and dirty (everything is done via CPU+software) and chunky pixel modes as standard therefore it was the perfect machine for 256 colour Doom clones. Doing the game in less colours obviously helps on planar systems bet I was talking about doing perfect clones of Doom VGA and Amiga AGA ie technically identical resolution and max colours.

 

*no FAST RAM on A1200 as stock and without it the machine runs at 50% maximum effective CPU speed approx for stuff like Starglider II)

 

It's not what "I" do. There are examples where planar is better even with SAME number of colors. I know some word processors used colors in such a way that they can update the fonts just by writing to one bitplane although the software itself used 4 bitplanes for coloring the side bars and other items. And no, I don't think just for supporting Doom's 256 chunky buffer, all hardware in the world should be modified.

 

And here's another point-- the VGA speed is not much affected by the processor speed. The I/O bus speed runs at it's own pace regardless of the processor speed. On ISA-based VGA cards with 16-bit data bus, the max was about 2MB/second memory -> VGA memory transfer and you don't get any better whether you use 12Mhz or 25Mhz CPU. I have a Pentium 90Mhz with PCI VGA currently and the VGA writes are at 30MB/second and on another system with 1Ghz CPU, the VGA writes are at 32MB/second.

 

Obviously the cream of Amiga games programmers know more than you and they ALL told Commodore not having the 256 colour mode set up as byte per pixel model was a massive mistake...

...

What logic! Amiga games programmers know more than you therefore blah blah blah. You haven't established the cream of programmers know more than me first of all and second of all that's irrelevant to the FACT that there are advantages to the planar mode.

 

They knew it and a few Amiga coding dabblers here know it but you don't get it, Doom came along...the ST/Amiga could never do it, the A1200 especially as it was using 8 bit plane writes to one byte written on PC Doom so end of the road for the ST/Amiga and welcome to PC gaming. By 66mhz Pentiums most PCs had both PCI graphics AND onboard 32bit blitters running at a high clock rate than even the Amiga A1200.

As I already stated above Doom cannot be a reason to modify the hardware and make it backward incompatible or redo the entire hardware. You yourself were talking about 14Mhz CPUs earlier on 286 which implies ISA, but I also mentioned PCI.

 

PS do you read my posts?...Doom came out in 93 this was after IBMs PS/2 and EISA(OK nobody bought those machines) and then there was VESA Local Bus (many fast 486 PCs had this but not guaranteed) and finally PCI graphics with all Pentium motherboards supplied as standard all BEFORE Doom was released. So by the time Doom was released (which is realistically 486 and Pentium only) ISA only graphics cards were dead and for 386 or lower PCs and bargain bucket 486SX machines so I fail to see why word processors in 1 bit colour windows and ISA PC architecture is being mentioned. Why would you want a 16 colour 4 bit plane (for speed reasons) Doom clone on a £400 Amiga in 1993 that looked 4x slower than the original on a £500 486 PC?

 

You don't get it I give up.

YOU don't read or DON'T understand that some stupid game like DOOM is no reason to convert the entire hardware to CHUNKY at more expense and/or less compatibility with existing hardware. I forget, you are the one who has all those commodore machines that are incompatible with each other and prefer the Amigas were the same. Doom (the game) did not spell the doom of Amiga nor it's chipset as you speculate. If someone were targetting the game originally on Amiga chipset, he could have done similar 3D stuff and it would have been harder to port to CHUNKY architecture. As I told you before, get your facts straight.

 

Doom a stupid game? Shows how much you know about how we got to this sorry state of affairs of 95% PC/5% Mac hardware today. Doom was single handedly responsible for making the PC a viable gaming platform overnight AND a more advanced revolutionary looking platform than it's predecessors with blitters and hardware scroll registers for 2D games. Doom did for the PC what Ridge Racer did on launch day for the Playstation console....ie it instantly made every other machine out there obsolete looking and everyone wanted a shiny new Pentium PC...Doom to PC home gaming was what HALO 1/2 is to Xbox1.

 

Personally the game is just OK for me BUT that's neither here nor there this 1 game AND this new style of gaming that looked light years ahead of 2D rubbish in the past was only possible on that one machine thanks to just two things....fast unencumbered CPU AND chunky pixel screenmode.

 

If it was not worth doing like I said why did Commodore blow their last few millions to get a kludge planar<>chunky in the CD32 custom chipset to give it a fighting chance at this new breed of 3D FPS gamestyle the WHOLE WORLD WAS LUSTING AFTER.

 

So yes one game does mean change your hardware or accomodate your machine with 200% faster CPU of the opposition. In either case if you don't look what happens...bankruptcy Why? Because it is not just one game it is a whole new way of playing games a new game style

[Barnacle boy]

This is more the c64 I recall..

mm this is a hot one too..

c64

 

Yep, back in 1983, in the early days of the c64, there were a number of rather primitive-looking titles, no doubt about it.

 

 

Meanwhile, 3-4 years into the its lifespan, the Atari was at its peak, and was enjoying the prestige of awesome games like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

c64 1983 by commodore for their own machine!

The above game doesn't appear on the Atari. Instead, in those golden years you keep harping on about, the Atari showed how a buffalo game should be done!

 

 

 

 

 

I think you'll find that a significant portion of the 20000+ games on Gamebase 64 are duplicates of the same game but cracked/hacked by a different crew/group etc...so take out the duplicates and you end up with about 8-10k or around abouts

I'd like to see you try to find even 10 games in the gb64 database that have multiple entries for different cracks. That should keep you busy for a while.

[TMR]

I'm no expert on the 128 (didn't own one, spent £100 more and got an A1000 2nd hand than a Commodore 128D) but isn't it the case though that when the top and bottom border is being drawn you can activate the 2mhz mode of the 8502?

 

Yes, Andrew Braybrook's later games such as Uridium Plus and Alleykat do that from C64 mode if they detect a C128, enabling 2MHz for the third of the PAL screen where the border is gives a fairly significant speed boost. It has to be in the borders because the VIC-II can't deal with things when the CPU is running that fast and from what i understand just churns out "noise" based on what the CPU is doing; the C128-specific demo Risen From Oblivion uses that to it's advantage.

 

The 80 column screen is unaffected when 2MHz is enabled, so it can be on all the time - it's just nicer to blank the 40 column screen if that's what you're going to do. =-)

 

Also isn't the C64s user defined 128 character limit also removed in C128 mode?

 

If you mean characters in a set, the C64 has 256 definitions rather than 128 as standard.

 

There are differences between them and it could make more of a difference in the hands of an expert than just the extra 64k RAM

 

Yeah, the C128-specific action games are mostly just retreads of existing C64 games with a few bells and whistles; Kikstart 128 adds a load of level files (and there's a levelpacked version for the C64 of that now), Last V8 128 had a third level (inserted before the two we all know, it was in part recycled into level 1 of Red Max if memory serves!) and i believe used 2MHz mode to play the samples at a higher rate... but nothing was designed to really hammer the machine and there's never been a really good action game that runs on VDC.

[Lazarus]

I also know that the 80 column mode was not useful for games because it had no sprites and the fonts could not be reprogrammed.

Actually the VDC is quite flexible. It lacks important features like sprites and multicolor mode, but offers stuff like 512 character fonts (8x2 to 8x16 size), hires bitmap mode with color cells (8x2 to 8x16 size), smooth scrolling, real interlace, copy/fill feature for VDC RAM. Games COULD have been done with it, but the VIC2 was a much better choice for doing a game since it's so much easier there.

I'm no expert on the 128 (didn't own one, spent £100 more and got an A1000 2nd hand than a Commodore 128D) but isn't it the case though that when the top and bottom border is being drawn you can activate the 2mhz mode of the 8502?

Yes, 40 character mode allows 2 MHz in the border and you get a 35% speed gain due to that. If you don't need parts of the 40 characters screen you can even enable it there and gain even more. If you don't need the 40 character display at all you can enable full 2 MHz, so when using 80 characters display you can do full 2 MHz.

 

Also isn't the C64s user defined 128 character limit also removed in C128 mode?

VIC2 has 256 characters per charset, there is no 128 character limit.

[atarian63]

those are the years Atari was excellent, after 84 publishers "forgot" how to do Atari games well though they had been much better in the past.I could say 85-90 are yaers that bdon't matter much to atari people. 82 and 83 c64 wasn't even close to Atari 8. That is my point of these silly comparisons.

Ofcourse. The C64 was just new, the games library was just started and nobody had yet understood it's advantages and many people just ported games over from Atari, TI99 and Apple2. It just takes a bit time until developers understand a machine. That's why later games on any platforms are always the better ones from a technical point of view. The early C64 games are not really C64 games. They are just games from other platforms in disguise.

kind of like the later atari 8bit games Rockford likes to use, they were often just cheap ports and not indicative of the machines capabilities.

[atarian63]

@Congo bongo:

 

You can find both C64 versions and compare them here:

 

http://c64.hardwired.hu/

 

Game could have been better on A8, shame they converted the shitty one....

Thta is also my point, this all is circlular logic... but the examples exist though we all know that the form they are in have LOTS of reasons for being what they are. Time,money,market conditions, year of design and yes hardware, Atari 8bit was stiffled at it's mid point as is obvious from later examples. We could use you C64 guys to step up and complete some of that. I would be happy to Buy! In spite of the bickering a bit, you all seem to be a nice, fun lot!

[TMR]

Ofcourse. The C64 was just new, the games library was just started and nobody had yet understood it's advantages and many people just ported games over from Atari, TI99 and Apple2. It just takes a bit time until developers understand a machine. That's why later games on any platforms are always the better ones from a technical point of view. The early C64 games are not really C64 games. They are just games from other platforms in disguise.

kind of like the later atari 8bit games Rockford likes to use, they were often just cheap ports and not indicative of the machines capabilities.

 

i think the logic a few people are working to is that games at the start of a machine's lifespan have an excuse for being quick and dirty ports, but less so after time...?

[atarian63]

Barnacle whatever..Wow, you are back, thought you were dead. Whoo hoo!

Edited September 26, 2009 by atarian63

[Barnacle boy]

Dead? I might be getting on a bit, but I'm still hanging in there...

 

[Rockford]

...Waste of time example again.

No, its not waste of time... It shows just what was happening after your so much loved period, before 83....

 

In 1990, money moved away from 8bit to 16bit computers...

Bedroom coders made what they could with machine in their spare time...

And you have games like turrican and mayhem on c64, and games like Yogi on A8...

I think A8 programmers (like polish wave of games that was produced at that period) did best they could.

And I don't think they were worse coders than C64 coders...

 

Just that A8 was simply more difficult (in some cases impossible) to develop certain games for...

 

That is why you get games with 16 colors background and >8 sprites in an average bedroom coders C64 game (Authors of "Mayhem" made one of the prettiest games on commodore just so that their mother could play it in spare time...)...

 

And you get 4-5 color background, and few sprites on A8 because thats easy.... that is straightforward process ...

They are not even bad games, I played some of Polish arcade adventures and it was time well spent...

 

...there are some rare occasions in the 83-84 period but mostly by a wide margin Atari wins easily!

So atari wins in 83-84 ... How nice from you to limit comparing to the timeframe that suits your needs

I could not write it better !

[Rockford]

Let's look at Hardball, I believe this game was full price and very expensive on the A8 and made in the USA the home of Atari coders by Accolade.

 

C64 Title shot.

 

C64 in game shot.

 

A8 title shot.

 

A8 identical in game shot.

 

Not very colourful or even the correct colours for a 256 colour palette This clearly shows the limited colour resolution of the A8 160x200 screen mode compared to the superior flexibility of the C64s 16 colours @ 160x200. 3 colours for the grass alone not bad for neon eye cancer inducing 16 colours only eh?

 

The players are extremely blocky on the A8 and smaller and the story doesn't get any better with the animation. The sound is not as good (although both pretty rubbish but the SID sounds don't grate quite as much forcing you to reach for the volume control instantly like the A8 Pokey tune). This is a damning A8 game because Accolade were not cheap ass coders they were one of the best out there and certainly this was meant to be a quality full price title, but the C64 version is better in almost every way. This can not be blamed on the low wages or lack of effort this was a high profile title from a well respected Atari supporting software house.

Damn you mate ! I will have to cancel this game from my list.