Starglider II on Falcon

[Trusteft]

I got my first ST back in early 1987. When friends had DOS machinese and Spectrum and 464CPC, I had the wonderful 520STf. I spent a fortune to upgrade the RAM to 1MB...Then in 1991 IIRC, I got my Mega STE to replace it, which I kept till 1994. I wish I still had it. It's quite interesting to see how much better Starglider plays on a faster computer.  One thing that the ST never had was speed in 3D. Playing racing games or flight sims at single or barely double digit framerates was the norm

[stellarpioneer]

Thanks for posting: it's nice to see it again after so many years. :-)

[redfoxbennaton]

Is this the 80's?

[trophy242]

First of all, this game is smooth enough on plain ST/8 MHz. On Amiga (7.14 MHz? Yes?), probably, it's a little bit slower, but I don't think that human eye is able to catch such a subtle difference. It's great on both platforms. This video, as I understand, is to present the compatibility of Falcon 030, which is just a great piece of hardware and I'm glad to have one, together with my ST and STE machines :)

[ballebanan]

@trophy242

Yeah, had both computers (A500 and 520STFM) and frankly, never noticed any difference in game play on vector games myself.

[CFalcon030]

@r8qt7 sorry, I will have to delete your comment soon.

[SurebrecUK]

I used to have this game, I got it off a friend without any instructions, I could never figure out wtf I was supposed to do

[VectorOmega]

I wonder one would go about programming a game for Atari Falcon?

Or an AGA enhanced Amiga or Amiga One?

PS. What game on next gen you'd like to see on Atari Falcon or Amiga One (with latest version of MorphOS)?

[deepblue69uk]

Some of those commenting are such moaning so and sos. So what if the sounds are comparitively dire. Star Glider II is a very old game and demonstrates how lazy so many coders were when it came to making or porting games to the ST/Falcon. Unfortunately it still goes on now when you have console games being ported to the PC.

[geetee74]

Ohhhh i remember this! Flying about in the Icarus looking for a pilots chair, fighting pirates, bouncing off the atmosphere on re-entry, charging up over power lines, chasing down a joy riding scientist in his emma 2 (m r 2) trying to build a neutron bomb(I think)............... brilliant.

Somebody buy the rights and commission a re-make pronto!!

[eightninchpianist]

This was a cool game , but on the ST the frame rate often became so sluggish it was almost unplayable.

[MOSTechnology]

Jesus! Those sound FX are dire! Really annoying. So glad I had this on the Amiga back in the day.

[trophy242]

I love this musax which is played in the intro to this game. But this is not from Starglider II. This comes from Speedball part I, which gave me a lot of fun back in time, too. I would also like to say, that framerate in Starglider II was superb on plain Atari ST. Atari ST was very good in all kind of vector graphics based games, especially simulators, as for the standards of late 80s and early 90s.

[Foebane72]

This is FALCON?? The sound SUCKS! Where's the DSP-enhanced sound samples??

[CFalcon030]

In the falcon games maybe? This is an ST game played on falcon.

[Foebane72]

You mean the swirling coloured text at the beginning was on the ST?

Another thing, why show ST games on a far superior platform if there's no major improvements, except speed and frame rate? It's like putting an Amiga 500 game on an A1200.

[CFalcon030]

Yes pure YM sound! On your second question, exactly because that's what I wanted to show. How ST games are played on the falcon. And yes framerate does make a huge difference.

[nunogirao]

You really dont know the game. You have tunnels (enter through the domes), and amaze yourself with... well, just try to reach space, and you unveal a solar system of 6 planets (if I recall) and a lot of moons.

[jci10]

@nunogirao This game was way ahead in all other games when in came out. Sort of like SOTB in 3D. The complexity, the physics and sound (on the Amiga not ST) was mind-blowing. "WE'RE ON A MISSION FROM GOD". Hilarious! Even with the cheat, I still don't know the ending to this game. I really wish someone would post a full game (even with cheating if need be).

[mistertricks]

Hey pdlpatria, I remember Voyager, it rocked!

[blade004]

Can't see the point of running the game on an Atari Falcon, since the 3D ran silky smooth on both the Amiga 500 and on an 8mhz Atari STFM

[slug425]

This reminds me of the Bolse mission from Star Fox 64

[ccjuju]

Were you even aware that you could leave the planet's surface when you made this video?

[CFalcon030]

No I don't know the game.. It was the first time I played it...

[P5BDeluxeWiFi]

Jez San went on to make Starwing/fox after this didnt he?

[SilverArse]

I recorded the audio tape music as an MP3 and listen to it today.  You can almost hear Agro's theme in that piece.

[pdipatria]

Has anyone played Voyager, which as far as I can remember looked alike, but had more 'atmosphere' for what I can see from this video?

[stevenkp]

I use to work at Argonaut as a GPU designer; yes we were designing a 3D chip for the Playstation 2 at the time. Sadly Argonaut is no more but it's good to see our games are still going strong. I've always been a fan of the Amiga myself though, sorry...

[mynamesforest]

@stevenkp Birds of Prey was my favourite Argonaut game

[stevenkp]

@mynamesforest Cool. I never played Birds of Prey. In fact I only played Starglider from Argonaut. I was more into the Bitmap Brothers' games if truth be told.

[sfried]

@stevenkp Did you happen to work with the Starfox team as well?

[stevenkp]

@sfried Not really. I joined a new hardware team given the task of designing a 3D chip for the Playstation 2. Sadly we lost the deal with Sony to Toshiba - I think. We then specialized in creating micro processors for the embedded market - of course ARM was already there before us and is now the market leader.

[uggla03]

obviously the amiga had better sound but doesnt it look fantastic

[Oyuminasai]

think so, too.

[saint4God]

Aw snap, I remember how lame I must have been. I was all "WOW! EVEN THE CONTROLS LOOK 3-D!!!". *sigh*

[diePSpolice]

For the time, the pseudo 3D (and see-through) instrumentation was pretty awesome, I think, so I don't think your younger self (or mine ;) ) was lame at all. This game was awesome.

[Xidento]

I agree... but what is the difference between this pseudo 3D and the pseudo 3D of today ? :P

[enigma185]

Amiga version had much better sound!!

[BackDoorKenny]

standard comment on every st game. thanks for sharing

[DrHamster]

Can't see the slightest difference to the ST version. Not even faster apparently. I loved this game. "Yum yum, castrobars!"

[FatherWarhol]

My name is TREM! We need to make a NEUTRON BOMB!