** 2 pages Maggie / 1411 words **

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Any colour you like as long as it's not just black?

In response to last months letters pages, where a fundamentalist mono fatwa was declared, we are reasserting the value of colour (color?) on the Atari scene, with the following Maggie Page articles. Our early version Centurbo 2 games and demos compatibility report, and the bitingly funny Pie Bill Gates game review both require a fair bit of colour to get the best from them.

So crank up those, ahem, non-mono tellies and monitors, and prepare to enjoy yourselves.

Chris Holland, for the Maggie Team

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Games and demos under the Centurbo 2 thumb!

It is interesting to see Centek/Class 4's major Falcon accelerator, the Centurbo 2 marketed almost exclusively as a professional solution. Sure, it will satisfy the deep hunger of the Power User brigade, but have they thought for a moment of the implications of a better than three times speed increase for a good many Falcon games and demos that were crying out for such a jump in performance?

I glanced down the sizeable software compatibility list posted by Centek, when my thoughts first turned to getting a Centurbo 2 (CT2) My eye caught one entry in particular, yes Running, the one really decent attempt at a Doom genre game on the Falcon, worked with the extra power on offer. Not that my decision to buy a CT2 was exclusively formed by this single consideration!

When I got my CT2, this set me thinking, wondering what other games and demo type software would also run under this very fast accelerator. It seems that the official list is a bit short on information in that area, the only other game listed on there being Pinball Dreams.

For the purposes of my study, I started to look around for those games which made fullest use of the Falcons processing horsepower. These are mainly games based on some sort of 3D graphics engine, Running springing to mind as the most favoured candidate.

This ran, with the small loss of messed-up music in the main menu, but with all sound effects intact. This game is perfectly playable on a stock 16MHz Falcon, but now you can have a permanent high detail mode without suffering a speed drop to Lasers and Men levels!

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Speaking of which, another big gainer from the extra power is that misunderstood Gallic classic, Of Lasers and Men, which could be best described as "sluggish" normally, but runs a lot more convincingly on the 50MHz CT2 beast. Another first person perspective shooter like Running, but darker and more brooding, and able to maintain a genuine atmosphere of suspense and things jumping suddenly on you out of dark corners.

With the addition of the vast extra speed, the frustrating frame-skipping antics which resulted from a stock Falcon running out of breath in a particularly fraught close-quarter punch up, magically melted away, making this a much more rewarding game to play.

Next up was the F-Zero styled racing game Moon Games. This always had provision for heavily CPU accelerated Falcons, and worked like a dream here too! Super-smooth racing fun is your reward for trying this one out.

We tried the Wolfenstein style RPG Towers II, and found this worked too. This is another game that clearly benefits from the extra processing power available, although it wasn't ever too shabby on a stock Falcon.

There are still one or two other games I'm still waiting to try out before the AC#15 copy deadline got the better of me. For example I'll be taking a look at Gravon, a feast of misty Midwinter styled mountainscaped 3D polygonal hovercraft based action. The rather excellent space combat saga, Crown of Creation 3D shall be getting some close scrutiny at Maggie GHQ as well.

Before closing off this section of the article, you may well want to dig out your old copy of Frontier to give that a spin on your newly turbocharged Falcon. An ST game, sure, but sit back and really enjoy the super-smoothness that 50MHz makes possible. To really appreciate the difference, why not run the intro to that game, shocking unsuspecting maiden aunts used to 8MHz STs, with the total lack of frame-skip when it flies past the space station!

Most other games won't really benefit too much from the extra power in terms of what they put on the screen, but I'll mention Spice, the Martin Steen produced Defender clone, which seemed to transform from a playable but fairly sedate entity on a stock Falcon, to something a lot closer to the frantic fury of the original arcade machine when given the CT2 treatment.

Turning to that other arena of computer-based entertainment, I decided to check out some demos to see if any improvements were possible there.

Demos are always a problem area for accelerators, the phrase "Written too close to the hardware" leaps to the lips of those fussy fans of system legal software. Even here, there have been some early successes.

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At the Error in Line coding convention last Easter, there were two releases that were able to run with the CT2 turbo mode flawlessly. These were the Dead Hackers ATS Demo, and the FUN Alive demo. The latter even had extra goodies if it was lucky enough to have the extra power available. The fact that the authors of both demos had Centurbo 2 in their machines is not insignificant!

A lot of demos won't have a hope of working with anything that isn't a stock Falcon. Genuine DSP-based effects are rarer than you might think (as opposed to demos that use DSP audio players), but these are very unlikely to work with CT2 running as anything other than a standard Falcon. So its time to switch back regretfully to 16MHz, if you're wanting to take another look at Tat's 1997 DSP based masterpiece Sonoluminescenz.

To see something else run like a scalded cat with the extra power, why not try out the Dead Hackers Orneta '97 winning 4ktro. Don't forget the maths co-processor, but watch those tunnels fly!

In general, it looks like that a sizeable quantity of entertainment software will be able to make the most of the extra speed on offer from the Centuro 2. As you may appreciate, this isn't anything like a complete list, but I'll be trying out a lot more software in this category shortly, and you'll all be able to see for yourself in the forthcoming Maggie issue 28.

Chris Holland

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Pie Bill Gates

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This unexpected and diverting little game was released at the recent Netherlands Pre-Millennium Party (PMP) by the French team, Sector One.

Very simply, the Phantom Flan-Flinger is roaming the corridors of Microsoft's Redwood GHQ, with the sole dastardly aim of shoving a custard based confectionery into the unsuspecting face of Bill Gates, the all wise leader and great helmsman of reliable crash-proof operating systems. You are that Phantom Flan-Flinger! (Irony mode off.)

Thought you might like the sound of that

Well, in translation, this game mutated into a computer version of one of those fairground attractions, where you hit the head of the nearest Spice Girl that pops up at random out of a hole in the floor. Here, the sledgehammer is replaced by a never-ending stream of custard pies, the head of Bill Gates pops out at random from one of three spots on the screen, or even from more than one hole at a time. You have to battle a time limit to accumulate the highest score possible, with only a deft flick of the mouse wrist to help you.

The pies fly, but you can't keep a Bill Gates down for long, as he willingly comes back more more dairy produce derived punishment after what looks like the quickest clean-up in history. You, are strangely compelled to keep dishing it out to him. This can potentially go on for some weeks after the computer has been disconnected, several dribbling survivors of pie-mania had to be rescued from muttering "Pie Bill, Pie!" absently at blank monitor screens.

Graphics and sound and general presentation for such a simple game, are of a very high standard. Sector One doing themselves credit here. This game is billed as compatible with just about everything from a standard ST upwards, so why not give it a pie, erm, try.

Chris Holland

Flan Rating: 90%