The Atari 8-bit conversion of Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress was developed and published by Sierra On-line in 1983, coming out not long after the original Apple II version.
Continue reading Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress, Atari 8-bit
Released in 1983 by Sierra On-Line, Ultima on the Atari 8-bit is more archaic and frustrating than the original Apple II version. And it looks pretty awful too, with a real lack of colour – especially in towns where the game is in monochrome unless you play on a machine (and monitor) that supports “artifacting“. In artifacting mode the dungeon and town graphics look similar to Apple II graphics, but they don’t really take advantage of the Atari‘s superior graphics capabilities.
M.U.L.E. (meaning: Multiple-Use Labour Elements) is a classic business-based strategy game that mixes turn-based and real-time gameplay, and supply-and-demand economics, with multiplayer competition for up to four players. It was designed by the late Danielle Bunten Berry of Ozark Softscape and first published for Atari 8-bit computers by Electronic Arts in North America in 1983. Later, Ariolasoft published the game in Europe, and Bullet Proof Software published the game in Japan. M.U.L.E. was also converted to a number of other systems and has become something of a cult hit since its original release.
Jeff Minter‘s Matrix: Gridrunner 2 was unfortunately re-titled and marketed as “Attack of the Mutant Camels” for the Atari 8-bit North American market, which causes considerable confusion about this game even now. I’m sticking with the original titles, to avoid confusion, for the HESWare re-titled versions of Matrix.
Jeff Minter‘s early grass-cutting maze game, Hover Bovver, was first released by Llamasoft in 1983 for both Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit systems. Both versions are fairly pointless points-scoring exercises with gameplay and maze layouts that don’t really make much sense.
Jeff Minter‘s affinity for Atari 8-bit computers meant that it was inevitable that the machine would get a version of his game, Gridrunner. Which it did in 1983.
The Atari 8-bit version of Attack of the Mutant Camels came out simultaneously with the Commodore 64 version, in 1983, and is pretty much the same game, but with a few graphical tweaks.
Jeff Minter‘s 1982 Atari 8-bit game, Turboflex, is an interesting but frustrating bouncing ball game where the aim is for you to deliberately bounce a ball into a target inside a box by dropping flippers onto it – diagonal posts that spin the ball in different directions, depending on its position when hit by the ball. The target, depending on your game settings, moves, reverses or does other tricks, so as not to get hit/caught by you.
The Atari 8-bit version of Bruce Carver‘s classic Beach Head came out simultaneously with the Commodore 64 version, so both are considered “the originals”, although this version was co-coded by Kevin Homer so technically could be considered a conversion.
I was hoping that the Atari 8-bit version of Rogue might be better than the other 8-bit versions (or at least a balance between the awful C64 version and the half-decent Amstrad version), but I was hoping for too much – especially as it’s another Mastertronic “special” (ie. a good example of a publisher not giving a sh*t about what they released).
