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The review of A-Z of Atari ST Games Volume 3 book RetroLaird is trying to delete!


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Apparently because I am dyslexic and make a few errors of my own, I am not deemed worthy of contributing here, or allowed an opinion.

It's funny how some people ride in on their white horses, wielding their swords, castigating people for their fucked up behaviour, but act in much the same way outside of earshot of the baying crowds.

 

I'll see some of you on other threads. Other forums maybe,

 

but... I'm un-following this one for the sake of my own sanity. 

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Edited by Guest
Redacted whole thing. I'm done.
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4 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

VCS didn't also have the longest commercial console lifespan as Kieren claims, if stats for both the NES and Master System are correct.

 

I'm not a historian, but on the charts i have seen online, VCS comes in third.

Possibly 4th. The Gameboy and it’s Variants lasted from the end of the 80’s right up until the early 2000’s. The Master System and Megadrive also continued to enjoy fruitful lives in one iteration or another in South American markets long after the first world had moved on, with occasional new releases made right up until the last few years. The 2600 stopped even being relevant by the arrival of the third generation consoles, particularly in the U.K. where home micros were the dominant gaming platforms right up until the 90’s began, by which time the 2600 was all but forgotten here and Atari were little more than a brand name being passed around like a dose of the clap.

His bitterness over this got cemented by the arrival of the Jaguar, which was laughed off here in the U.K. where the 16-bit Nintendo and Sega rivalry was unmatched and overshadowed the futile efforts of the others and even the ‘ground-breaking’ early CD consoles that were far too expensive and had no good games. That’s why (and you’ll never see him reference it) masses of unsold Jaguar systems backed up with retailers unable to return the unsold stock here in the U.K., and you could readily buy brand new old stock consoles on eBay for pretty much cost price up until about 5 years ago. 

 

I love all retrogaming and like many, have my favourites whilst still appreciating the many varied systems out there from all manufacturers. Even the most casually biased playground argument acknowledges their champion console’s shortcomings whilst still making s case for your manufacturer or console of choice. When doing a journalistic piece though you have to present all angles and have to present the facts if you have any integrity. As influential as their arcade games were and as brief a time the 2600 (and later the ST) were more widely enjoyed by those that could afford them here, from a U.K. perspective, Atari had a relatively small footnote in gaming and system ownership over here and any self-respecting journo would acknowledge that even when just doing a review - certainly if doing some kind of historical referencing. But no, the boy blunder must stick to his intrinsic and self-delusional truths, lest the bubble of reality burst and the revisionist history he creates slaps him in the face when a chorus of English voices shout it down with “Actually, we mostly thought Atari were shit” and he melts into a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Edited by Mr.T
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1 hour ago, Mr.T said:

Possibly 4th. The Gameboy and it’s Variants lasted from the end of the 80’s right up until the early 2000’s. The Master System and Megadrive also continued to enjoy fruitful lives in one iteration or another in South American markets long after the first world had moved on, with occasional new releases made right up until the last few years. The 2600 stopped even being relevant by the arrival of the third generation consoles, particularly in the U.K. where home micros were the dominant gaming platforms right up until the 90’s began, by which time the 2600 was all but forgotten here and Atari were little more than a brand name being passed around like a dose of the clap.

His bitterness over this got cemented by the arrival of the Jaguar, which was laughed off here in the U.K. where the 16-bit Nintendo and Sega rivalry was unmatched and overshadowed the futile efforts of the others and even the ‘ground-breaking’ early CD consoles that were far too expensive and had no good games. That’s why (and you’ll never see him reference it) masses of unsold Jaguar systems backed up with retailers unable to return the unsold stock here in the U.K., and you could readily buy brand new old stock consoles on eBay for pretty much cost price up until about 5 years ago. 

 

I love all retrogaming and like many, have my favourites whilst still appreciating the many varied systems out there from all manufacturers. Even the most casually biased playground argument acknowledges their champion console’s shortcomings whilst still making s case for your manufacturer or console of choice. When doing a journalistic piece though you have to present all angles and have to present the facts if you have any integrity. As influential as their arcade games were and as brief a time the 2600 (and later the ST) were more widely enjoyed by those that could afford them here, from a U.K. perspective, Atari had a relatively small footnote in gaming and system ownership over here and any self-respecting journo would acknowledge that even when just doing a review - certainly if doing some kind of historical referencing. But no, the boy blunder must stick to his intrinsic and self-delusional truths, lest the bubble of reality burst and the revisionist history he creates slaps him in the face when a chorus of English voices shout it down with “Actually, we mostly thought Atari were shit” and he melts into a puddle like the Wicked Witch of the West.

I'd like to see some credible figures to back up the claim in the introduction of his ST A-Z Guides,that for 2 years running, the ST was the UK's best selling computer.

 

Considering despite covering the ST from an historical angle, twice for RetroGamer Magazine and seeming oblivious to the brief, but bitter war between the Sinclair QL and the Atari ST and his XEGS and 7800 articles for the magazine, saw him unaware of the 5200 announcement, then cancellation, followed by the 7800 showing in London and push back in favour of the XEGS and Bob Gleadow's involvement here, his sources seem questionable. 

 

 

When he wrote quest articles online on why the Jaguar failed,it was like reading a Harry Turtledove alternative history piece.

 

The ST still strong in the marketplace, huge Preorders that Atari couldn't fulfill. 

 

The harsh reality was the ST was long dead as a commercial platform,  Atari could only get a handful of units into stores, leaving a lot of dissapointed customers yes, but when your talking say 20 machines in a store which expected 200, your a long way short of the thousands of machines Atari would of needed to sell to be considered a commercially viable platform. 

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Before I say my bit, I appreciate this is an Atari forum and i'm not disparaging the ST for the sake of it, just telling it how it was.

 

I don't think the ST was EVER the best selling home computer at any point it was available.

 

From 1985 to 1987 it was up against the 8bits, and yes the ST sold well, but it was also significantly more expensive than the 8bits, and the likes of the Commodore 64 and Spectrum were still selling, the Spectrum selling as + and +2 by this point I think and were doing well, even the Amstrad CPC464 was selling.  The Amiga wasn't a concern until 1987 when the A500 got released, but I have a hard time believing that the ST was outselling ALL of the 8bit micros in the UK

 

I can still believe the ST outsold the Amiga from 1987 until 1989 when the Amiga Batman Pack was released, and then it was game over, and we know that the Amiga was by then having a serious effect, because later on in 1989, the STe was released, and you don't release a newer machine unless there is a particular reason to do so.

 

That means that Kieren thinks the considerably more expensive ST was outselling everything between 87-89: Spectrum + and +2, C64, Amstrad CPC and whatever consoles were doing anything including the also-rans like the Sam Coupe and GX-4000

 

I deliberately didn't include the Amiga because i'm quite confident the ST was already in larger numbers in the UK at that stage.

 

However, those 8bits were still selling, there must have been enough people buying software, and certainly when you look at the software sales charts back in 87-89, the 8bits were still featured heavily, and must have been the major contributor to RoboCop being #1 for so long, and every major software company like Ocean and US Gold were still supporting them.

 

By the time the Amiga Batman pack arrived and with its reduced £399 price point is when the Amiga started really selling.

 

This is when the 8bits were starting to wane in popularity, and the Amiga pulled away from the ST.

 

I don't want to appear dismissive of the ST, its more dismissive of Kieren's claim.

 

I just can't figure where in those years the ST would ever have been the best selling computer at any point, certainly it could claim "Best selling 16bit computer" from 85-89, but thats not the claim.

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26 minutes ago, Galahad said:

Before I say my bit, I appreciate this is an Atari forum and i'm not disparaging the ST for the sake of it, just telling it how it was.

 

I don't think the ST was EVER the best selling home computer at any point it was available.

No need to qualify what you're saying, I think most sane ST users would agree. Granted, I'm American, so I have no idea what the UK sales were like, but the ST most certainly did not outsell 8-bit systems like the C64. This thread on Lemon Amiga has a sales chart that was compiled by Jeremy Reiner of Ars Technica a number of years back, and you can clearly see on there that the ST wasn't outselling much of anything, and was outsold by the C64 by an order of magnitude throughout its life. I seriously doubt the UK sales charts would appear much different, at least in regards to those two systems.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Galahad said:

Before I say my bit, I appreciate this is an Atari forum and i'm not disparaging the ST for the sake of it, just telling it how it was.

 

[...]

 

I don't want to appear dismissive of the ST, its more dismissive of Kieren's claim.

 

I just can't figure where in those years the ST would ever have been the best selling computer at any point, certainly it could claim "Best selling 16bit computer" from 85-89, but thats not the claim.

 

No worries, I'm an ST guy from bitd and I loved the computer.  It brought me into the 16 bit era when I simply would not have been able get there otherwise.

 

I'd never go around telling people it was the best selling machine.  Then again, I'm not a perpetually lying sack of shit trying to desperately pretend that I'm something that I am not.

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2 hours ago, Sauron said:

No need to qualify what you're saying, I think most sane ST users would agree. Granted, I'm American, so I have no idea what the UK sales were like, but the ST most certainly did not outsell 8-bit systems like the C64. This thread on Lemon Amiga has a sales chart that was compiled by Jeremy Reiner of Ars Technica a number of years back, and you can clearly see on there that the ST wasn't outselling much of anything, and was outsold by the C64 by an order of magnitude throughout its life. I seriously doubt the UK sales charts would appear much different, at least in regards to those two systems.

 

This is true. The biggest problem is that many have found trying to find accurate sales figures for the whole decade citing just the U.K. is near-impossible, with only a few spotty single year reports available in the first few years for a handful of systems, so saying anything for certain would be arrogant to say the least. 

 

However, commenters at the time and as much as it pains me to say, a casual flick through Wikipedia mentions the drastic differences in the fortunes of this country in that decade and the rejection of expensive home computers or entertainment whilst it was new and unemployment was at an all-time high. Ignoring the professional market and purely going off anecdotal information, speak to any kids of working class families of the 80’s and their talk in the schoolyard and you’ll get the picture. Spectrums and Commodore 64’s dominated the decade with a small portion going to the Amstrad CPC464 or BBC Micro, with a small amount having Pong consoles or a 2600 for a short time early on, and one or two lucky kids maybe getting a Master System or NES in the last 2 years of the decade. By the early 90’s when I got to senior school, most still had their Speccy/Commodore/Amstrad and a few moving into Sega or Nintendo, then by the time the 16-bits arrived perhaps 20 or 30 out of my school year of 200 would have had an Amiga, an ST or some random kid with a PC - just because their Dad needed it for business. About a quarter never made it past the home computer and by 93-4, the quarter or so of us who were into it and had bought consoles were either on Megadrive or SNES, perhaps with a Gameboy or Game Gear to go with it. By that point only a few guys still hung onto their Amigas, and the ST was second place even to that. 

 

So as far as that chart goes on LemonAmiga, it’s probably not far different from the UK, you’re right. Ignore the actual figures and the PC and Mac entries and look at the others as relative sales - the C64 and Speccy would have been on par with each other here with miscellaneous computers taking the spot of the Apple sales up to the turn of the decade, with Amiga probably looking a little less over the same time frame and the ST coming in behind that, over the same short time frame. To say that ST was any kind of best seller would be a ludicrous suggestion.

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6 minutes ago, Mr.T said:

This is true. The biggest problem is that many have found trying to find accurate sales figures for the whole decade citing just the U.K. is near-impossible, with only a few spotty single year reports available in the first few years for a handful of systems, so saying anything for certain would be arrogant to say the least. 

 

However, commenters at the time and as much as it pains me to say, a casual flick through Wikipedia mentions the drastic differences in the fortunes of this country in that decade and the rejection of expensive home computers or entertainment whilst it was new and unemployment was at an all-time high. Ignoring the professional market and purely going off anecdotal information, speak to any kids of working class families of the 80’s and their talk in the schoolyard and you’ll get the picture. Spectrums and Commodore 64’s dominated the decade with a small portion going to the Amstrad CPC464 or BBC Micro, with a small amount having Pong consoles or a 2600 for a short time early on, and one or two lucky kids maybe getting a Master System or NES in the last 2 years of the decade. By the early 90’s when I got to senior school, most still had their Speccy/Commodore/Amstrad and a few moving into Sega or Nintendo, then by the time the 16-bits arrived perhaps 20 or 30 out of my school year of 200 would have had an Amiga, an ST or some random kid with a PC - just because their Dad needed it for business. About a quarter never made it past the home computer and by 93-4, the quarter or so of us who were into it and had bought consoles were either on Megadrive or SNES, perhaps with a Gameboy or Game Gear to go with it. By that point only a few guys still hung onto their Amigas, and the ST was second place even to that. 

 

So as far as that chart goes on LemonAmiga, it’s probably not far different from the UK, you’re right. Ignore the actual figures and the PC and Mac entries and look at the others as relative sales - the C64 and Speccy would have been on par with each other here with miscellaneous computers taking the spot of the Apple sales up to the turn of the decade, with Amiga probably looking a little less over the same time frame and the ST coming in behind that, over the same short time frame. To say that ST was any kind of best seller would be a ludicrous suggestion.

Especially when you consider how quick software companies were to drop it around the latter part of 1992.  I know the massive differing configurations for the ST didn't help (especially the single sided floppy owners), but if there was enough machines and enough sales, then supporting it was a no brainer.

 

I just get the impression that Kieren did a little research and came to the conclusion, that of all the systems and brands he could claim to be an "expert" in, being a cheerleader for Atari and the ST and Jaguar, he was least likely to be rumbled.......which obviously, has spectacularly blown up in his face, because theres still plenty of people that owned ST's from back in the day (I used to own one) that still have fond memories of the machines, and they know their shit, which Kieren doesn't.

 

I literally think thats why he plumped for the Atari line of stuff, because its a name with cachet, but the machines it made don't quite match up to the cachet the name suggests.

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50 minutes ago, remowilliams said:

 

No worries, I'm an ST guy from bitd and I loved the computer.  It brought me into the 16 bit era when I simply would not have been able get there otherwise.

 

I'd never go around telling people it was the best selling machine.  Then again, I'm not a perpetually lying sack of shit trying to desperately pretend that I'm something that I am not.

I mention it because I ended up quitting Atari Forum because some people on there take stuff a little too personally.

 

I had asked some questions about TOS, because I had an idea for doing stuff on lower end Amigas and getting more information on TOS was kind of important.

 

Then randomly in this thread, someone (Steven Seagal) responds with a quote of comments I made about Super Sprint some years before that had nothing to do with the point of the thread, where I had discussed that I didn't think it had aged as well as some more modern racers, and which was part of the reason for me not continuing with an ST to Amiga port.

 

And the thread just descended into stupidity and "WTF?" as it was derailed by people incensed that I criticised the game and that no they wouldn't offer any help or advice, and the end result was I felt I had no choice but to leave the forum because some it seems, still think its 1990 in the playground with ST vs Amiga!

 

If I threw a strop everytime someone criticised Shadow of the Beast, i'd be in a permanent strop lol, but those guys unfortunately took a comment I made years earlier, that wasn't even made in the same thread a bit too seriously.

 

I even contributed by cracking a few interpreter based protected ST games weeks before as well that were uncracked on ST, but that was worth precisely zero friendly points because one guy derailed the thread.

 

So I find myself having to apologise in advance for fairly innocuous statements lest someone throws their toys out their prams!

 

C'est la vie!

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Btw, not sure if I'd uploaded this earlier but here is where kieren was pimping his Jag book on jaguar sector 3.

You may notice the plea to do an Amazon review, a slag off of reboot and a pm to send links to some of the ROMs he reviewed that the one guy couldn't find (hint, there's usually a reason you can't find them)

Screenshot_20200411_092058.thumb.jpg.37cfbea72a4dfce613f8c3cd905e1de3.jpgScreenshot_20200411_091908.thumb.jpg.7bf7629eb414d753ac4eaa44584b375d.jpg

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LOL there is a review of Reactris in there?  See my earlier post about his earlier "paragraph" review of it on some website.  I suspect he just re-used that to pad the pages as he is actually scraping the barrel if he is including unfinished, 36~ hour coding competition entries as complete games to review. 

And the ever popular "PM me", yeah because if he did all his dodgy illegal dealings openly (that he accuses everyone else of) it might highlight what a two faced unscrupulous conniving twat he is.  Seen that a few times where someone is looking for a game or ROM that isn't easily found (because it's not supposed to be freely available) and he'll advise the person to PM him.  Would appear that whilst everyone else are horrible pirates, he's some sort of saviour with his back alley dirty mac PM based piracy, because lets face it, why else would it be in a PM?

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1 hour ago, Welshworrier said:

Btw, not sure if I'd uploaded this earlier but here is where kieren was pimping his Jag book on jaguar sector 3.

You may notice the plea to do an Amazon review, a slag off of reboot and a pm to send links to some of the ROMs he reviewed that the one guy couldn't find (hint, there's usually a reason you can't find them)

Screenshot_20200411_092058.thumb.jpg.37cfbea72a4dfce613f8c3cd905e1de3.jpgScreenshot_20200411_091908.thumb.jpg.7bf7629eb414d753ac4eaa44584b375d.jpg

There was no need for him to derail the positive feedback he was getting in that second image grab, was there? He brings up supposed comments and then at the end the other person says they don’t have Twitter so can’t verify it - an opening for the evidence to be presented missed again?

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As far as i am aware,Kieren via his ST articles for RetroGamer Magazine, has never highlighted the fact Atari had to slap an extra £100 onto the price of the STFM, due to a world wide shortage of Dynamic RAM chips and didn't bring it back down to £299 until a good few weeks, possibly months, after Commodore slashed the price of the Amiga by £100.

 

If my memory is correct,for a few months the Amiga and ST were the same price, Atari was banking on (and heavily advertising via double page magazine adverts)  it's Summer Pack  Bundle, with £440 worth of 'free' software.

 

This would of been the period of summer/autumn 1988 and during this same period, the Atari rumour mill was in full swing, talk of the Super ST ( STE) and ST console ( Project Robin), the latter only planned for the USA only.

 

 

In terms of actual sales data, i've seen Atari UK's Peter Walker ESTIMATING the Summer Pack and magazine advertising had pushed the UK ST userbase up to between 130,000 and 140,000..

 

But around same time Nintendo were claiming the NES had sold 40,000 units in the UK and they estimated Sega had sold a similar number of Master Systems and they put the ST at 120,000 units sold.

 

Others suggested around 45,000 per machine.

 

I think what Kieren has done, is taken various headlines, such as the cheaper ST dominating the British games market, Gallup's first ever games software chart (which measured Value, not Volume)  showing ST games sales just behind the well established Sinclair ZX Spectrum. 

 

There was also the EXPECTATION that the ST would do better than the Amiga over the late 1988 and early 1989 period.

 

Atari had apparently spent £600,000 on TV advertising for the VCS, hoping to shift an additional 250,000 machines.

 

Atari also had fantastic UK high street store presence:

 

WH Smiths had dropped the ZX Spectrum and intended to focus on the ST and VCS

 

Dixons were pushing the ST and 65XE

 

Comet pushing the VCS

 

Only Dixons at this time seemed keen to stock and push the Amiga.

 

 

I'm just throwing all the above out there as it highlights how turbulent the UK retail market was, how hard it was to establish actual sales on anything and what approaches UK retailers were taking.

 

None of which i have ever seen Kieren present during his professional writing career, when covering the ST.

 

Nor has he ever mentioned the QL as a UK rival to the ST.

 

That's why so many of us get irate over him being labelled the resident Atari expert by RetroGamer magazine. 

 

His historical accounts of both the Atari console and computer lines,never accurately reflects the true UK position. 

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The 'trade' in the UK back during this period never really helped when it came to revealing actual sales figures for any system TBH, preferring to keep that kind of thing off-limits to the public.

 

From my recollections, the ST may well have been the biggest selling computer in the UK but only for a matter of a few months, certainly not a year. Quite a large number of stores mentioned by other posters above on this thread had the ST on display within their stores; but as another poster said, once the Amiga 500 Batman Pack came out then that was when the big sales push started for the Amiga.

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I’m always immediately suspicious when I see any kind of pally commenting or supportive chat around any of his talk. In those screen caps from JS3, can anyone confirm they are real people he’s even talking to? His exchanges with them seem very typical and ‘leading’, much like his sockpuppet interaction on Twitter. I did a search for Kyle Daniels (a name I think I’ve seen appear to talk to him on Twitter in a similar way) and Dave Beasley on Facebook, and scanned back through the profile pics of a dozen or so and couldn’t find those profile pics linked to any of them. That most likely means they are very distant people (eg. Americans or Australians etc. Though these do still turn up the further down the search list you go), that they are accounts that have me specifically blocked, or they have changed their ID/been deactivated. I know he has sockpuppets on every media platform and these wouldn’t be the first on Facebook if they were, as he used sockpuppets to view profiles hidden to him in the past and was even scheming enough to personally threaten individuals who were openly talking up and promoting coming to our events for the first time and pretending to be associated with us (see attached pic).

 

Whilst I’m on it; PoppyFluoxetine on Twitter is back daily active again and self-referencing pokes made about him on here, stupidly giving himself away again. JoeMilano has also unhidden his tweets again with a dig at Lee Fogarty, cos deflection is now needed. Idiot.

E291E2E5-6293-4431-B5F2-9682EA48C0E2.png

8DD31DDE-3B0C-42A4-8EBF-14FA55619102.jpeg

5F29718E-2A18-4AE8-B6C1-7B870C63734B.jpeg

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15 minutes ago, Mr.T said:

I’m always immediately suspicious when I see any kind of pally commenting or supportive chat around any of his talk. In those screen caps from JS3, can anyone confirm they are real people he’s even talking to? His exchanges with them seem very typical and ‘leading’, much like his sockpuppet interaction on Twitter. I did a search for Kyle Daniels (a name I think I’ve seen appear to talk to him on Twitter in a similar way) and Dave Beasley on Facebook, and scanned back through the profile pics of a dozen or so and couldn’t find those profile pics linked to any of them. That most likely means they are very distant people (eg. Americans or Australians etc. Though these do still turn up the further down the search list you go), that they are accounts that have me specifically blocked, or they have changed their ID/been deactivated. I know he has sockpuppets on every media platform and these wouldn’t be the first on Facebook if they were, as he used sockpuppets to view profiles hidden to him in the past and was even scheming enough to personally threaten individuals who were openly talking up and promoting coming to our events for the first time and pretending to be associated with us (see attached pic).

 

Whilst I’m on it; PoppyFluoxetine on Twitter is back daily active again and self-referencing pokes made about him on here, stupidly giving himself away again. JoeMilano has also unhidden his tweets again with a dig at Lee Fogarty, cos deflection is now needed. Idiot.

E291E2E5-6293-4431-B5F2-9682EA48C0E2.png

8DD31DDE-3B0C-42A4-8EBF-14FA55619102.jpeg

5F29718E-2A18-4AE8-B6C1-7B870C63734B.jpeg

You know it's Kieren due to his inability to differentiate between the meanings of words.
Lee Fogarty claims the police PAID HIM A VISIT.
Somehow that translates into a confirmation of being arrested.
Useless cunt.

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In these uncertain and depressing times, I thought I'd throw you a few more Hawkenisms to brighten your day.

"when you all this the existing features" Kick Off 2 page 63.
Poor lamb, writing is so hard.

"With your bat on the right you now launch your ball towards the formation of bricks on the right."  Krakout page 65.
A favourite of mine.

"anyone no so familiar with the game that didn't originate from the arcade." Jetpac. Page 38
Any thoughts as to what this is all about?

"the many rooms so of the more" Jet Set Willy Page 57

 

"the actual game isn't very good. Graphically it's very good...." Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Page 52
It was very good to see this particular faux pas.
 
"supposed to a film too," Indian Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Page 52
?


"If you don't want to killed doing it!" Impossible Mission. Page 51
And who wouldn't?

"Make their way to pit..." Klax Page 64.
Don't we all?


As painful as this has been, I have determined to check the two pdf files I have of his Atari 2600 and CDi travesties to see if they are similar in any way.
The one thing you can say about him without fear of contradiction is that he's consistent.

 

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@Kieren:You've never been fit to call yourself a writer and it's becoming abundantly clear your no reviewer either.

 

Today's Your Review Vs free to view footage on YT:

 

Indy Heat (Atari ST A to Z Volume 1).

 

 

Your review:line after line of utter want waffle and describing the game as a sequel of sorts ( why not just state it has similar gameplay?) to Super Off-Road.. 

 

Given it's an Arcade conversion,  did you not think it worthy to point out the ST version only has 4 cars, not 5, due to performance issues or was the thought that the 8-bit NES version featured 5 and your beloved ST fell short, too hurtful to you?.

 

 

Your quick enough to bash NES versions of games in your 7800 guide.

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1 hour ago, Landstalker said:

In these uncertain and depressing times, I thought I'd throw you a few more Hawkenisms to brighten your day.

"when you all this the existing features" Kick Off 2 page 63.
Poor lamb, writing is so hard.

"With your bat on the right you now launch your ball towards the formation of bricks on the right."  Krakout page 65.
A favourite of mine.

"anyone no so familiar with the game that didn't originate from the arcade." Jetpac. Page 38
Any thoughts as to what this is all about?

"the many rooms so of the more" Jet Set Willy Page 57

 

"the actual game isn't very good. Graphically it's very good...." Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Page 52
It was very good to see this particular faux pas.
 
"supposed to a film too," Indian Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Page 52
?


"If you don't want to killed doing it!" Impossible Mission. Page 51
And who wouldn't?

"Make their way to pit..." Klax Page 64.
Don't we all?


As painful as this has been, I have determined to check the two pdf files I have of his Atari 2600 and CDi travesties to see if they are similar in any way.
The one thing you can say about him without fear of contradiction is that he's consistent.

 

From what i remember of the CD i sample pages i read through..

 

He gets the background of the FPS game's engine completely wrong.

 

The man's expert CDi knowledge is bloody awful, as i will highlight in a seperate post.

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You could do an entire feature entitled:Kieren knows best, where Kieren is caught trying to tell industry people he knows more than they do.

 

Kieren Vs:

 

Jaza Rignal over Mean Machines not covering the Atari 7800.

 

Digital Foundry over Jaguar Doom.

 

 

Martin Piper over CDi Creature Shock :

 

Kieren claim (Jan 16 2014)

 

The 16-bit CD-i had no problem with Creature Shock..

 

 

Martin Piper coder of CDi Creature Shock :

 

 

Porting to the CDi was painful. The dialect of C understood by the CDi SDK was different to the more modern dialect used in Watcom.
Obviously the CPUs were different, the x86 is little endian and the 68000 CPUs are big endian.
Only the very core logic parts of PC Creature shock could be used. This would be the parts that decided how to parse the level map information to display the next video and also the hit point information for the video so it would know where to shoot. Everything else like video, sound and sprites had to be ported over almost from scratch.
The CDi has very slow main memory compared to the PC and the VRAM is extremely slow from the CPU.
Even with the most optimised assembly language it couldn't do very many sprites using the traditional bitmask and/or method into screen memory. This is where screen memory is first masked with a cut-out logical AND mask and then the sprite data is logically ORed into the memory. A two step operation drawing memory from two places while executing an optimised loop.
So I used a technique called binary sprites, this would use more memory but would not rely on pulling in data from two places, instead the conversion tool produced optimised machine code that loaded and stored the pixels using immediate instructions instead of memory access instructions. This was really fast!
 
The MPEG video used entirely separate genlocked MPEG decoder hardware (multiple revisions as well!) and I couldn't find a consistent way to utilise that hardware acceleration to help with drawing sprites. Shame. But we could draw lots of non-scaled sprites on top using the slow CPU accessible memory in a separate video plane. So that took care of the main FMV parts of the game.
 
The space battle parts however could not be replicated since they used lots of scaled sprites. These were replaced with FMV sequences. Maybe we should have done a vertical or horizontal scrolling shooter without scaled sprites instead.... Hmm... That would have been good.
 
Another issue as the game progressed was that there is a very rare hardware bug with certain old revisions of the MPEG hardware when stopping and starting video streams. Since the game was basically stopping and starting hundreds of video streams we encountered this bug. It was because in order to save space the video stream data was stored without the Philips standard mandated 2 second pause between files. We only found this out after technical guys from Philips brought in a very expensive bit of kit for hardware debugging the bus signals and CPU in the console. The creators of the first MPEG hardware kind of assumed that video stream data would have at least 2 seconds of blank data. But we had hundreds of streams so this would mean wasting a lot of data on the disc. For a while it looked like the game might have to be on three (or more!) discs to contain all the levels. But eventually I faked the two seconds of blank data in software instead of reading it from the disc to save the space. That combined with splicing in software the video streams meant that the video hardware was tricked into operating beyond the mandated standards. It also reduced visible pauses between streams. 

 

 

 

You loose Kieren Hawken.

 

How on earth you see yourself in a position to judge anyone's coding on the Jaguar Kieren is beyond me.

 

You aren't even clued up on how difficult it is getting code running on 16-bit hardware.

Edited by Lost Dragon
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@Landstalker:

 

 

Your in for a real treat with the CDi Guide by Kieren.

 

 

We have All the favourites.

 

The Lemmings review:Has to mention the Lynx version and it has to be described as awesome.

 

 

We have phrases like: strange but strangely enjoyable (Inca being referenced in the Kether review).

 

 

And if you like half a story back stories, this is the book for you.

 

Litil Divil wasn't just moved from the ST to CD machines so it could be better implemented, but because the ST would of been commercially dead by time it was finished (source:The Litil Divil Team themselves,coder and artist)

 

 

 

Atlantis:Last Resort only done to prove CDi could handle a FPS says Kieren,  let's see what games coder said back in 2011:

 

In our spare time, usually friday lunchtimes, we played games. This was considered okay as we were in the Interactive Systems Group of the labs, and understanding what people do in their homes and with what kit was really important. It also fitted with our research work around set-top boxes, digital video recorders, virtual reality user interfaces, artificial intelligence, etc. One of the games we played was of course Doom on the PC, though Philips also bought us each new console as it came out to play with.

I got into creating a few Doom levels with the public domain level editors, and the public specs of these allowed me write a utility to extract Doom graphics out of the WAD files. As a coder interested in putting together and refining game engines, the most frustrating thing is often the rubbish graphics that we can produce. By borrowing the Doom graphics I could make the demo 3D engine look cool too, and this ensured I got some attention from Philips Media. I also wrote a utility to allow me to use the public domain Doom level editors to lay out level designs for my engine, rather than have to write a level design tool. Simple hacked utilities like this meant that I could focus on the tricks I would need to do to get reasonable playable performance (15 - 25 fps) out of the engine, rather than work on graphics, sound or level designers like most game developers have to.

 
 
 
Pauls Demo got the attention of Phillips,but he's not saying he wanted to prove the hardware was capable of handling a FPS. 
 
As he states later in the interview:
 
When we were deciding what to do with my 3D engine
 
 
He hadn't even decided what type of game to build around the engine. 
 
I'm still waiting for Kieren to counter any of the points i have raised on here or on Amazon.co.uk in my reviews,  that my corrections of his facts and triva used in his reviews are themselves wrong.
 
 
Enlighten us all, please..
 
Show your sources.
 
 
Prove our corrections to be wrong.
 
 
 
Basically, stand by your own work, your the one charging for it, we are just proof reading your work for you, for free.

 

 

As i said yesterday, when it reaches the point you don't even update your own old work,with your own new finds, it's shameful. 

 

Your out there slandering the work CyranoJ does for the Jaguar community as little more than lazy ST porting,  yet your own writing is the most lazy and poorly written work going in it's field.

 

Improve your own line of work before you start trying to be an expert on anyone else's.

 

You struggle to write a paragraph in a review that is coherent as Landstalker has shown, yet you think you could write code on the Jaguar that runs as well as CyranoJ's? 

 

 

Get over yourself and up your writing. 

 

Your paying customers deserve much higher standards. 

Edited by Lost Dragon
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More accounts called out and the need for attention once again lasts about 2 days, then switches back to new/old primary troll sockpuppet to continue abuse of female social media gamers (that’s something he is REALLY banging home now on all accounts), use same all-encompassing #retrogaming hashtag to get maximum search potential exposure, throws in a completely unrelated Atari related hashtag for no reason (because must mention Atari else will explode), and has completely see-through cringeworthy ‘pretend argument’ immediate-responsed conversation with himself just like every other attempt to foil those brainless bullies he keeps on about. Oh and takes 1 post out of 1200 posts and claims that 6 weeks worth of arsehole evidence is somehow undone by someone choosing not to post anymore, like that somehow makes any sense.

 

....and he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for you meddling kids.

 

As obvious as a Scooby-Doo villain, he wouldn’t know a bully if one punched him in his face for his lunch money. Maybe if they had, he’d have been less of a twat by the time he left school.

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30 minutes ago, Mr.T said:

he wouldn’t know a bully if one punched him in his face for his lunch money. Maybe if they had, he’d have been less of a twat by the time he left school.

"being made to feel worthless by both them and the pupils/teachers at my school who bullied me on a daily basis."
Unquote: Kieren Hawken. 2020

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