skeezix
Internal Development
Let me preface by saying that I offer this as my Atari ST game of the week, but by no means do I mean to take an exclusive on that. Further, if you want to offer up your own GotW for any platform (C64, SNES, whatever, including the ST), feel free. In fact, if a few people want to do it we could do a combined thing, or put up a blog here in GP32x, post a weekly GotW cross paltform newsletter, or whatever. Still, I get ahead of myself 
Lastly, if you want to offer comment, suggestions, requests, just let me know
My goal for GotW is to highlight a lesser known but still interesting title (where 'interesting' can mean very good, or interesting to me for some other cryptic reason that I will endeaver to explain.) So I need not delve into the richness that is Lemmings, Dungeon Master or Civilization (play them _now_ my friends!), say, when I can instead strike a deal with … well, let me step you through the many fantastic titles you might have missed week by week shall I?
SWIV
Platform: Atari ST featured, though also popular on Amiga (and to a lesser extent on the C64 and Speccy IIRC)
Play Now: Your emulator of choice for those platforms; OutcaST for GP2x and GP2x Wiz (also known as CaSTaway for the PSP) are verified, since I wrote them
Atari ST ROM: Comes in many options, but I have a Medway Boys crack I must admit is most handy as it lacks any protection annoyances and includes a Trainer option
SWIV is a vertical shooter (a SHMUP for fans of the genre) which is both pretty good and interesting for its technical merits. Developed, I believe, by the same folks who ported Silkworm to the ST from the Arcade, it is in my books the spiritual successor to Xenon 1 (not Xenon 2: Megablast) and Silkworm itself. What it inherited from those titles was the playability of airborn (in this case Helicopter) or ground (Tank) and a two player game where both are in play at once. Designing the levels for a single player who could be either form (chosen at start of the game) must have proven challenging but they did an excellent job — the game is not overly difficult, and is relatively lengthy.
Silkworm itself is a decent port of an excellent Arcade title; in that game (a horizontal SHMUP) the players move right; the chopper can only fire foreward and the jeep can fire any direction but of course has limited movement options.. these limitations added teamwork strategy, but did make the level design a little painful. SWIV is this same sort of approach, though in vertical orientation.
While not the very best shooter on the platform, it garnered excellent reviews at the time for its playability and a few specific features; I admit I encountered it late in the ST game — a few years ago while developing an ST emulator in fact — but I highly recommend it to ST aficionados. It doesn't perform too many nasty hardware tricks if I recall, but does some very interesting things in the actual code. I should not know that except that it brought out some CPU emulation issues .. so I was in the unenviable position of working through their assembly code to debug my simulated CPUs operation and witnessed some of their trickery. While playing the game you will on occasion notice the floppy disk light up, without interupting game play — they were clever with their timing to pre-cache necessary sprites and level data during gameplay to avoid large 'level loading' pauses. They load before needing and unload after needing to free up memory, permitting the player to tromp through enormous levels without delay. They also do some trickery to keep a large number of sprites onscreen and in motion .. the most popular ST models had no hardware sprites so this was always a weak point in the machine, but the SWIV developers pulled it off better than most others.
In summary, SWIV is not a 'bullet hell' type of SHMUP per se, but it certainly was working its way there — you will regularly encounter dozens of enemies on screen at once in formation, or dozens of bullets to be avoided. Its a good looking and fun to play shooter where you can play as a tank or chopper.
Good times. Of course, I am a shooter man .. Sky Shark (Flying Shark) is my poison of choice and the first arcade cabinet I picked up.
jeff
Lastly, if you want to offer comment, suggestions, requests, just let me know My goal for GotW is to highlight a lesser known but still interesting title (where 'interesting' can mean very good, or interesting to me for some other cryptic reason that I will endeaver to explain.) So I need not delve into the richness that is Lemmings, Dungeon Master or Civilization (play them _now_ my friends!), say, when I can instead strike a deal with … well, let me step you through the many fantastic titles you might have missed week by week shall I?
SWIV
Platform: Atari ST featured, though also popular on Amiga (and to a lesser extent on the C64 and Speccy IIRC)
Play Now: Your emulator of choice for those platforms; OutcaST for GP2x and GP2x Wiz (also known as CaSTaway for the PSP) are verified, since I wrote them
Atari ST ROM: Comes in many options, but I have a Medway Boys crack I must admit is most handy as it lacks any protection annoyances and includes a Trainer option
SWIV is a vertical shooter (a SHMUP for fans of the genre) which is both pretty good and interesting for its technical merits. Developed, I believe, by the same folks who ported Silkworm to the ST from the Arcade, it is in my books the spiritual successor to Xenon 1 (not Xenon 2: Megablast) and Silkworm itself. What it inherited from those titles was the playability of airborn (in this case Helicopter) or ground (Tank) and a two player game where both are in play at once. Designing the levels for a single player who could be either form (chosen at start of the game) must have proven challenging but they did an excellent job — the game is not overly difficult, and is relatively lengthy.
Silkworm itself is a decent port of an excellent Arcade title; in that game (a horizontal SHMUP) the players move right; the chopper can only fire foreward and the jeep can fire any direction but of course has limited movement options.. these limitations added teamwork strategy, but did make the level design a little painful. SWIV is this same sort of approach, though in vertical orientation.
While not the very best shooter on the platform, it garnered excellent reviews at the time for its playability and a few specific features; I admit I encountered it late in the ST game — a few years ago while developing an ST emulator in fact — but I highly recommend it to ST aficionados. It doesn't perform too many nasty hardware tricks if I recall, but does some very interesting things in the actual code. I should not know that except that it brought out some CPU emulation issues .. so I was in the unenviable position of working through their assembly code to debug my simulated CPUs operation and witnessed some of their trickery. While playing the game you will on occasion notice the floppy disk light up, without interupting game play — they were clever with their timing to pre-cache necessary sprites and level data during gameplay to avoid large 'level loading' pauses. They load before needing and unload after needing to free up memory, permitting the player to tromp through enormous levels without delay. They also do some trickery to keep a large number of sprites onscreen and in motion .. the most popular ST models had no hardware sprites so this was always a weak point in the machine, but the SWIV developers pulled it off better than most others.
In summary, SWIV is not a 'bullet hell' type of SHMUP per se, but it certainly was working its way there — you will regularly encounter dozens of enemies on screen at once in formation, or dozens of bullets to be avoided. Its a good looking and fun to play shooter where you can play as a tank or chopper.
Good times. Of course, I am a shooter man .. Sky Shark (Flying Shark) is my poison of choice and the first arcade cabinet I picked up.
jeff
