Author of Faster here. Thanks for the coverage guys! If I was to nitpick, I'd say that the video is running at a lower framerate than 50fps and doesn't reflect the true smoothness of the gameplay :) You can see the original promo video in its full 50FPS glory at ruclips.net/video/T6nQeMhw2Es/видео.html
Spot on about the main reason why more games wasn't developed on the Atari STE's was simple lack STE sales in combination it was just easier to develop for the main mass Atari ST market and plus it would be cost effective to port old titles with a limited STE run against a new game, so a big risk. The STE was in a chicken and egg situation in that it really needed games that took advantage of it's new hardware to push sales and to get developers to use it's enhancements it needed to be a viable market for them (Dave is spot on about they should have done an Amstrad and paid for either exclusive or old game ports). Though its definitely feasible to develop both ST and STE together fairly easy enough, main issue has always been with ST development is getting the normal ST at a decent framerate via pre-shifted graphics and utilisation of the move multiple register where it's much easier using the STE enhanced blitter, video xscroll, word count and line offsets etc making it a match for the Amiga. It would however add a bit of extra time and cost onto development. The pcm sound enhancement however isn't as good as you think (if I remember been 30 years now) a single 8 bit stereo hardware channel at 50hz, compared to Amiga's 4 mono hardware channels at upto ~29khz mixed via hardware. If you want amiga multiple channel music/sounds sample play back then you need to mix it via the cpu before the hardware plays it and will create a performance hit which is what you don't really want in a game (I wrote the real time multichannel playback on Baal ST and why it is used only the title screen and not in game). Sure using it for a car engine sound is probably about the best you can get it and playing a 3 minute pcm music track is a lot of memory. By the way I wrote the game Dave "doesn't get on with" for the ST/STE. But if you remember initially zool wasn't released on the ST at first if my memory servers me well is they possibly believed it been slower on the ST would hurt the hype at the time. The STE version pretty much matches the Amiga framerate wise showing what the STE was certainly and definitely doesn't have the Amiga scroll glitch. PC wise given the diversity of the hardware market, developers pretty didn't have much choice but to support the various popular hardware if they wanted to maximise it's market.
Amiga and it’s chip sets suffered same issue .. it’s why both Amiga and ST essentially died by early mid 90s. I’d moved on to PC once Windows 95 released. It sad in many ways, I loved that entire period owning everything from A1000 to Mega STe and everything between .. but the limited unexpandable hardware meant they were both destined to die. I still have, and use, an 1040 STe and Amiga 500 plus.
The new Indy game is a fantastic story, and yes, adventure, Dave! You can dial down the combat and up the adventure/puzzles in the game settings. It’s got wonderful locations and atmosphere. Best Indy game since The Fate of Atlantis! Loads of details to explore, things to read, etc.
Come on guys, don’t comment on the new Indy game without playing it. I love it, gives such a great Indy feel. Voice acting and likeness is amazing. The opening scene where you play the opening scene of Raiders is great!
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is fantastic its definitley up there with Fate of Atlantis and its recommended to both of you. Not sure what Dave is talking about as the game is very adventure centric the action is kinda secondary and does focus more on puzzles and exploration. Machinegames themselves dubbed it as Adventure Action game rather than an Action Adventure Game, its defintley not a Wolfenstein clone.
It was Neil that said that, I just took his word for it! But I'm delighted to hear it, lots of good things being said here any the game so I think I'll get to it eventually. (Dave)
I still have my Atari STFM which i got in 1985. It's been upgraded to 2mb also installed usb ports and a ACSI2STM COMPACT HARD DRIVE EMULATOR plugged in the back to store all my games.
I do like watching some speedruns, or at least the highlights showing why the run is so fast. Like when a new method is found to cut down the time. Another is Quake 3 DeFrag. It's all about player movement and trickjumping. There's a youtube channel called Team Event Horizon that has some of these videos. My jaw often drops when watching them.
Ooh, the thing you mentioned about playing back others' gameplay via a script reminds me of the Quake machinima scene in the mid-late 90s! People would make little movies using custom maps and multiplayer such that one player would be the camera man and others would be actors. The movies would be shared online as scripts along with the custom maps, assets and sound files and you'd replay the script in-game to see the movie. "Blahbalicious" was a popular one for example; these days it can also be watched on RUclips of course.
From what I can gather, "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" on 2600 was released in June 1982. When "Raiders of the Lost Ark," was released in November 1982. ET was released in December. There must to be earlier movie tie in games.
@@ThisWeekinRetro It's one of the few originals I had back then, pre-ordered on "Micromania" way before the game finally got released. I spent so much time on it :)
I got the new Indiana Jones game and it is excellent, and Young Indiana Jones is also excellent when you get to the WWI stuff, have the dvd box set and watch it often.
I think the point about Raiders on the 2600 was that it was the first that was actually based on the plot of the film as a proper tie in rather than just a license of the name. If I remember correctly, the developer, Howard Scott Warshaw was given exclusive early access to the script and story before the film was out. Spielberg was one of the first directors to really embrace this, hence E.T also being developed at the time - same director, same coder. A quick update having googled this, and it's more or less correct - he did work directly with Spielberg, but the film was already out when he started.
The difference between PC developers catering for upgrades vs Amiga and Atari devs being stuck was probably that, for PC upgrades were gradual. If you bought a 386 or 486, you could buy an SB16 or a multimedia kit later, so that "larger market" with older PC could actually upgrade more easily (and incentivized by the new games), while if you had an Amiga 500 or an ST, you couldn't just put a few couple hundred on top of it and move it "up a generation", right?
@@ThisWeekinRetro I have the CPC version (which is also fantastic), but the 16bit ones are a big upgrade imo, it is one game where it is quite fun to go through and see the changes though.
Faster is a great game. The only thing Lotus 2 has on it is that it has hills. This was something the developer of Faster spoke about on Twitter - it was just hurting his head too much so he decided against implementing hills.
@@TheRasteri yes plenty of racers have hills. I was not making a comment about the power of the hardware just that the developer decided against it for a number of reasons.
I owned an Atari 1024fm, and later I bought an Atari 520ste which I upgraded to 4mb. I loved my Atari but my friend had an Amiga 500 and I was jealous (except disk load times which were ridiculous on Amiga)
I remember back in the 90s you could buy a chip that piggy backed onto the the main cpu and doubled it to 14mhz, rather than the default 7mhz .....i just can't remember if that was the Atari st or Amiga 500...........wish i had put them all in a box and kept them. ....what a thicko i was back in the day. Lol
I've looked at game/movie tie-ins before. There are games, such as early Star Trek games, that were earlier. But I don't think they had a license. They got away with it as they were on systems that were used by so few people. Xerox Alto etc so they got away with it. Btw, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings includes Fate Of Atlantis as an unlockable. The Indy/Tomb Raider thing. Personally, I reckon that the Lucas of the time didn't want Indy running around with infinite ammo pistols killing anything that moves.
As far as I know, the STE blitter has a quite good line-drawing feature, but that's the only aspect where it surpasses the Amiga blitter. On the other hand, the Amiga blitter is more robust overall. So, I guess 3D games could benefit from this with a slightly higher CPU clock.
I found a glitch in Fantasy World Dizzy, where by dropping the bread in a certain position and picking it straight back up again, the game still triggers the dialogue of the rat eating the bread and running off and Dizzy still has the stale bread. This may have been patched in a recent reissue off the game.
I watch RMC a lot, but this is the first time I'm getting the podcast. I only knew Neil. Dave, are you Canadian? Or is there another English-speaking region that speaks "aboot?"
Great episode guys. However, you should probably have played the new Indy game before passing judgement. It is fantastic, is nothing like Wolfenstein, and is definitely not an FPS. I have been playing for more than 10 hours and have used the gun only twice.
Ackchuwally... Superman was the first movie game license, also on the 2600. Back in '79 iirc Edit. That will teach me to comment before the end of the video 😬
the Atari 2600 Superman (1979) came out a year after the Movie. (Warner Communications owned DC Comics at the time) it's not an official License of the film - but definetely the first Super-Hero Video Game. a rather boring side-to-side scrolling Action-Adventure, like so many afterwards
Yeah, it actually do capture the sense of wonder, pulp and adventure that they are looking for. While an FPS studio took care of the development, this game is NOT focused on high octane action but puzzles, exploration and bangers story and characters. It is not a Wolfenstein style game at all, more of a Chronicle of Ridick one.
Even the action deemphasizes shooting, its very dangerous thing to do in a base, alerting everyone, and ammo is limited. Most players will rely more on stealth and smacking baddies with random tools and their fists, capturing more of the range of conflict in the movies.
I 2nd that it really is fantastic and exactly what fans of the franchise have been waiting for, it's available on gamepass for Xbox/PC but appreciate that as you concentrate on retro you may not have the latest subscription on modern console
Author of Faster here. Thanks for the coverage guys!
If I was to nitpick, I'd say that the video is running at a lower framerate than 50fps and doesn't reflect the true smoothness of the gameplay :)
You can see the original promo video in its full 50FPS glory at ruclips.net/video/T6nQeMhw2Es/видео.html
Congrats on 10k subs! 🎉 Great show today Neil, Dave, Duncan 😊 Can't wait for the big 2-0-0 😂
Spot on about the main reason why more games wasn't developed on the Atari STE's was simple lack STE sales in combination it was just easier to develop for the main mass Atari ST market and plus it would be cost effective to port old titles with a limited STE run against a new game, so a big risk. The STE was in a chicken and egg situation in that it really needed games that took advantage of it's new hardware to push sales and to get developers to use it's enhancements it needed to be a viable market for them (Dave is spot on about they should have done an Amstrad and paid for either exclusive or old game ports).
Though its definitely feasible to develop both ST and STE together fairly easy enough, main issue has always been with ST development is getting the normal ST at a decent framerate via pre-shifted graphics and utilisation of the move multiple register where it's much easier using the STE enhanced blitter, video xscroll, word count and line offsets etc making it a match for the Amiga. It would however add a bit of extra time and cost onto development.
The pcm sound enhancement however isn't as good as you think (if I remember been 30 years now) a single 8 bit stereo hardware channel at 50hz, compared to Amiga's 4 mono hardware channels at upto ~29khz mixed via hardware. If you want amiga multiple channel music/sounds sample play back then you need to mix it via the cpu before the hardware plays it and will create a performance hit which is what you don't really want in a game (I wrote the real time multichannel playback on Baal ST and why it is used only the title screen and not in game). Sure using it for a car engine sound is probably about the best you can get it and playing a 3 minute pcm music track is a lot of memory.
By the way I wrote the game Dave "doesn't get on with" for the ST/STE. But if you remember initially zool wasn't released on the ST at first if my memory servers me well is they possibly believed it been slower on the ST would hurt the hype at the time. The STE version pretty much matches the Amiga framerate wise showing what the STE was certainly and definitely doesn't have the Amiga scroll glitch.
PC wise given the diversity of the hardware market, developers pretty didn't have much choice but to support the various popular hardware if they wanted to maximise it's market.
Amiga and it’s chip sets suffered same issue .. it’s why both Amiga and ST essentially died by early mid 90s. I’d moved on to PC once Windows 95 released.
It sad in many ways, I loved that entire period owning everything from A1000 to Mega STe and everything between .. but the limited unexpandable hardware meant they were both destined to die.
I still have, and use, an 1040 STe and Amiga 500 plus.
The new Indy game is a fantastic story, and yes, adventure, Dave! You can dial down the combat and up the adventure/puzzles in the game settings. It’s got wonderful locations and atmosphere. Best Indy game since The Fate of Atlantis! Loads of details to explore, things to read, etc.
Can confirm that Faster works just fine on NTSC STEs
4:30 Loving the "reuniting" of game bits. Feels good. ;)
Worked out how to leave a Podcast review ;-) 5 star - TTMAP - Loved the show as always!
We're all a fan of a growler right?
That third story title had me in stiches
"Dave's Housekeeping - News links found below"? ;-)
Come on guys, don’t comment on the new Indy game without playing it.
I love it, gives such a great Indy feel. Voice acting and likeness is amazing.
The opening scene where you play the opening scene of Raiders is great!
Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is fantastic its definitley up there with Fate of Atlantis and its recommended to both of you. Not sure what Dave is talking about as the game is very adventure centric the action is kinda secondary and does focus more on puzzles and exploration. Machinegames themselves dubbed it as Adventure Action game rather than an Action Adventure Game, its defintley not a Wolfenstein clone.
It was Neil that said that, I just took his word for it! But I'm delighted to hear it, lots of good things being said here any the game so I think I'll get to it eventually. (Dave)
The Jaguar thing. I swear that font is on Dyson products. And I swear the concept is for the bin.
Atari 2600 - Superman - 1979 is likely one of the first movie based video games
Star Trek of the same year as well, 1979. But I think Death Race wins in 1976 based on the 1975 film 'Death Race 2000'.
I still have my Atari STFM which i got in 1985. It's been upgraded to 2mb also installed usb ports and a ACSI2STM COMPACT HARD DRIVE EMULATOR plugged in the back to store all my games.
“I’ve never seen Indiana Jones with his leg above his waist” I’m here for this kind of commentary 😂
Really Neil- you've got the BEST job. It looks like you're having fun, and it rubs off on your audience.
I do like watching some speedruns, or at least the highlights showing why the run is so fast. Like when a new method is found to cut down the time. Another is Quake 3 DeFrag. It's all about player movement and trickjumping. There's a youtube channel called Team Event Horizon that has some of these videos. My jaw often drops when watching them.
Ooh, the thing you mentioned about playing back others' gameplay via a script reminds me of the Quake machinima scene in the mid-late 90s! People would make little movies using custom maps and multiplayer such that one player would be the camera man and others would be actors. The movies would be shared online as scripts along with the custom maps, assets and sound files and you'd replay the script in-game to see the movie. "Blahbalicious" was a popular one for example; these days it can also be watched on RUclips of course.
To be fair you can play Star Dust Wars on a stock Amiga1200 but an accelerator makes it much smoother. Surprisingly it's written in AMOS!
From what I can gather, "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" on 2600 was released in June 1982. When "Raiders of the Lost Ark," was released in November 1982. ET was released in December. There must to be earlier movie tie in games.
"Dungeon Master" on the Atari ST, one of my favorite games ever :)
Mine too (Dave) it's the game that made me beg for an ST for Christmas!
@@ThisWeekinRetro It's one of the few originals I had back then, pre-ordered on "Micromania" way before the game finally got released.
I spent so much time on it :)
As above, the new Indy game is Fantastic. It is definitely not an FPS
I have only fired a gun twice I think.
The Atari falcon was awesome
Who else remembers Retsupurae? Still watch the Gaming in the Clinton Years videos even to this day. 🤣
16:20 It's not AY on the ST/STE, it's YM. ;-)
Thank you. :)
I got the new Indiana Jones game and it is excellent, and Young Indiana Jones is also excellent when you get to the WWI stuff, have the dvd box set and watch it often.
I think the point about Raiders on the 2600 was that it was the first that was actually based on the plot of the film as a proper tie in rather than just a license of the name. If I remember correctly, the developer, Howard Scott Warshaw was given exclusive early access to the script and story before the film was out. Spielberg was one of the first directors to really embrace this, hence E.T also being developed at the time - same director, same coder.
A quick update having googled this, and it's more or less correct - he did work directly with Spielberg, but the film was already out when he started.
IBM PC FTW.
Merry Christmas.
54:45 - doesn't that describe 75% of the games on the Amstrad CPC too, though? 😁
every man secretly likes a growler, dave..
I owned an Atari Computer shop back in the day PH Computers 12 Clow St Dandenong Vic Australia. 😊.
The difference between PC developers catering for upgrades vs Amiga and Atari devs being stuck was probably that, for PC upgrades were gradual. If you bought a 386 or 486, you could buy an SB16 or a multimedia kit later, so that "larger market" with older PC could actually upgrade more easily (and incentivized by the new games), while if you had an Amiga 500 or an ST, you couldn't just put a few couple hundred on top of it and move it "up a generation", right?
The original IBM PC's architecture was designed to be modular like that so I agree that's the prime reason.
Lords of Chaos, one of the best games on the ST and Amiga, well worth a play through Dave!
Best game made for the Spectrum I think. The ST and Amiga versions are nearly identical to the Spectrum, with only a few changes. (Dave)
@@ThisWeekinRetrono the best Spectrum game is the original - Chaos!
@@ThisWeekinRetro I have the CPC version (which is also fantastic), but the 16bit ones are a big upgrade imo, it is one game where it is quite fun to go through and see the changes though.
Let's play videos are good, but I remeber Steve Benway's videos back in the day and playing them and laughing so hard some times I was almost ill.
Faster is a great game. The only thing Lotus 2 has on it is that it has hills. This was something the developer of Faster spoke about on Twitter - it was just hurting his head too much so he decided against implementing hills.
vespertino has hills and scenery and runs on an 8-bit platform (Amstrad CPC)
It'll be out any day now! We've been waiting since pinball dreams, it must be soon! (Dave)
@@TheRasteri yes plenty of racers have hills. I was not making a comment about the power of the hardware just that the developer decided against it for a number of reasons.
The reason for many companies on PC to support newer and newer hardware was incentives from the manufacturers of said hardware
I love the Amiga, but I also like the ST as well.
I owned an Atari 1024fm, and later I bought an Atari 520ste which I upgraded to 4mb. I loved my Atari but my friend had an Amiga 500 and I was jealous (except disk load times which were ridiculous on Amiga)
I remember back in the 90s you could buy a chip that piggy backed onto the the main cpu and doubled it to 14mhz, rather than the default 7mhz .....i just can't remember if that was the Atari st or Amiga 500...........wish i had put them all in a box and kept them. ....what a thicko i was back in the day. Lol
I've looked at game/movie tie-ins before. There are games, such as early Star Trek games, that were earlier. But I don't think they had a license. They got away with it as they were on systems that were used by so few people. Xerox Alto etc so they got away with it. Btw, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings includes Fate Of Atlantis as an unlockable. The Indy/Tomb Raider thing. Personally, I reckon that the Lucas of the time didn't want Indy running around with infinite ammo pistols killing anything that moves.
First like 😊
As far as I know, the STE blitter has a quite good line-drawing feature, but that's the only aspect where it surpasses the Amiga blitter. On the other hand, the Amiga blitter is more robust overall. So, I guess 3D games could benefit from this with a slightly higher CPU clock.
I found a glitch in Fantasy World Dizzy, where by dropping the bread in a certain position and picking it straight back up again, the game still triggers the dialogue of the rat eating the bread and running off and Dizzy still has the stale bread.
This may have been patched in a recent reissue off the game.
I watch RMC a lot, but this is the first time I'm getting the podcast. I only knew Neil. Dave, are you Canadian? Or is there another English-speaking region that speaks "aboot?"
I dunno if you're making a joke, but Dave is Scottish
Also Canadians don't say "aboot", we just don't say "abaaht"
Great episode guys. However, you should probably have played the new Indy game before passing judgement. It is fantastic, is nothing like Wolfenstein, and is definitely not an FPS. I have been playing for more than 10 hours and have used the gun only twice.
We recorded at 9am on the day of the game being released and we did make it clear we had not played it.
Starbug just sold for £4,200
Ackchuwally... Superman was the first movie game license, also on the 2600. Back in '79 iirc
Edit. That will teach me to comment before the end of the video 😬
😂
Faster reminds me of Burning Rubber in the CPC+ machines and console
Surely Star wars or Tron was the first film game?
Another missed Indiana Jones game is the Lego game which has the normal Lego gameplay, including lots of fun and humor too.
The Atari 8-bit port of The Living Daylights (Domark/De Re Software) was a fairly poor tie-in
Rosie plays the terible games so we don't have to, and Snokers types in the games so we don't have to. They are both doing a valuable public service.
the Atari 2600 Superman (1979) came out a year after the Movie.
(Warner Communications owned DC Comics at the time)
it's not an official License of the film - but definetely the first Super-Hero Video Game.
a rather boring side-to-side scrolling Action-Adventure, like so many afterwards
Guys please try the new Indie game, think you will like it
Yeah, it actually do capture the sense of wonder, pulp and adventure that they are looking for.
While an FPS studio took care of the development, this game is NOT focused on high octane action but puzzles, exploration and bangers story and characters.
It is not a Wolfenstein style game at all, more of a Chronicle of Ridick one.
Oh and it is available on Gamepass, so forget about the ludicrous Steam price.
Even the action deemphasizes shooting, its very dangerous thing to do in a base, alerting everyone, and ammo is limited. Most players will rely more on stealth and smacking baddies with random tools and their fists, capturing more of the range of conflict in the movies.
It’s coming to PS5 so maybe I will try it then.
I 2nd that it really is fantastic and exactly what fans of the franchise have been waiting for, it's available on gamepass for Xbox/PC but appreciate that as you concentrate on retro you may not have the latest subscription on modern console
The new indy game is brilliant, i really dont know how you get a Wolfenstein vibe from it, after 4 hours of playing i onky fired 2 rounds..🤷
I think it's because of the people that made it - but loads and loads of comments explaining it's not, thanks!
I bet next week's guest has hair
Bold!
Indiana Jones is a dog person. 🐕
what??? right thats it.. i'm boycotting TWIR. lololol
Faster looks impressive for smoothness but it's lacking interesting scenery and road contour. Lotus has hills.
You kids are definitely not afraid of computers.