atari ST - nostalgia ain't what is used to be
I grew up during the Atari years. I started off with Hi-soft Basic, got frustrated with that very quickly and decided to learn 68K assembler. At some point a friend of mine got in contact with a guy who was involved in the Menu Scene.
I started off as Mad in Criminals In Disguise, then later on took the handle Nova and joined what was the second best menu crew that ever graced the ST: The Lemmings. And I don't just say that because I was in it; Pele was absolutely obsessed with doing the best cracks and trainers around, K-Klass was a fantastic artist and I weren't no slouch either.
Unfortunately I joined rather late and by that point the ST scene was already dying off. If we'd joined up earlier we'd have probably given even the almighty Pompey Pirates a run for their money.
Most of what I did has vanished into the sands of time, but some of the stuff I did way back when has survived! Most but not all of The Lemmings menus are available here: pacigame.atarizone.com Get yourself a copy of Steem to play: steem.atari.st I don't say it often but I'm very impressed with Steem; it must have been a monster amount of work.
If you were part of the scene and are feeling nostalgic, join the forums at www.atari-forum.com
Lemmings Menu 1 (re-release)
Woot! a full screen overscan menu. Not many people at the time could do this and there were plenty of wanna-bes. Not that I take credit for the technique; a friend of mine had hacked into a demo to discover the particular detail that was needed, (flipping the video chip briefly to mono resolution) and had put together a working screen on his ST-FM.
Unfortunately when I tried it on my ST-E it didn't work. After a bit of tweaking I got it working and then we found the the ST-E version didn't work on the ST-FM either! If I remember correctly it was a real pig to get it working stably on both machines.
Lemmings Menu 2 (3rd re-release)
Buggered if I know. The smaller scroller suggests it isn't overscan, but the big one does. Answers on a post card please. Otherwise I'll have to feck about disassembling my own code.
Lemmings Menu 31
Just a simple wobbly logo menu for a disk that was running short on space. It was surprising that even this simple effect was beyond a lot of people. This disc featured my one and only crack.
Lemmings Menu 33
A simple but effective 1 pixel vertical disting (word that was used instead of distorting for reasons I don't recall) scroller with 650 count star field. Again there weren't many like it around; most vertically distorting scrollers where in blocks 8 pixels wide (and scrolling at 8 pixels a frame) to avoid having to pay the price of bit shifting.
Lemmings Menu 34
A bog standard intro menu, with top and bottom border overscan. This was what the best of the rest where doing, 8 pixel wide vertical disting, with raster colour lines in the big scroller.
Lemmings Menu 37
Eep. I must have been rushed or short of inspiration for this one.
Lemmings Menu 43
I have absolutely no recollection of this; perhaps Pele knocked it together from my code.
Lemmings Menu 44
The old big sprites. Not as big as my really big sprites though, but they were part of my missing works.
Lemmings Menu 46
Not very exciting, but it was the beginnings of a journey into the 3rd dimension.
