I had one more idea for an interesting map. This time I wanted to emphasize the importance of the Bridge to the map. So I thought, I would split the map into two halves, and put the bridge between them, as the only way to get from one side of the map to the other.
This was my prototype:
The prototype was shaped like an H.
I thought that this map had interesting potential, but I also had some concerns. I wanted to make sure that the traffic flow would still work, and that by splitting the map in this way, I didn’t make it likely that random movement would tend to collect everybody in one area of the map, and I wanted the random distribution of characters to not be unevenly distributed between east and west ends of town. I also wanted to ensure that the subway system would be evenly distributed, both in terms of entrances and exits, and that the subway provided useful shortcuts.
As I walked through this map, I quickly decided that a less obvioulsy symmetric map would be more interesting. I re-arranged screens and quickly came up with this:
A masterpiece of design!
The connections between the screens are a bit different from my previous versions. Moving horizontally, the map wraps, shifting up a row if you’re at the east edge, and down if you’re at the west edge. Vertically, the columns wrap around without shifting. The Bridge screen is different, when moving vertically it wraps around back to itself. This serves to keep the Bridge screen isolated, so bridge pieces will be somewhat protected from the helicopter when placed here.
Finally, the extreme corners of the map, the northeast and southwest corner screens, are connected to each other horizontally, creating a second junction between the two halves of the map. This helps provide a route for Clark Kent to walk to the Daily Planet at the end of the game, without being forced to use the Subway system, although this overworld walking route is very long.
The subway exits are again unchanged, and the subways provide several routes for traversing from one side of the map to the other. I arranged the subway system so that each colored subway screen has two exits on the opposite side of the map, and one exit on the same side of the map.
Thus, despite the broken bridge in the center, this map has very nice traffic flow between both halves of the map, many interesting shortcuts, and a challenging layout to learn, without the confusing one-way vertical borders on the Phonebooth and Bridge screens that vexed many beginner players of the original. After playing this map a few times, I think it’s every bit as good as the original, and might even be more fun to play. And aesthetically, I love that the Bridge is now the centerpiece of the map, and truly joins the two halves of Metropolis together.
Here’s the map again, with the wrap routes indicated:
I don’t think there’s much more I can do with the map after this. So I think this is where I will leave the evolution of the map variations.
I would still like to introduce randomized bridge piece starting screens, but to figure that out will require more understanding of the source code than I currently have.
I also think it would be neat to make a super-rom that includes all of the map variations in one file, switchable via the Game Select switch. Again, this is beyond my current capabilities with my very limited understanding of the source code and 6502 asm.
You can download the entire collection of romhacks here:
My research on Superman has lead me to a deep understanding of the map topography, and I have come to regard it as an inspired design. But whenever I hear people talk about Superman, I feel like I must be in the minority. People who like the game tend to agree with me, while people who don’t, don’t.
Often I’ll hear players who do not have the appreciation for the game that I have complain that the map is a weakness in the design. I always rebut this by saying that yes, it’s confusing at first but once you learn it, it’s actually a strength. I can point to all the shortcuts that are made possible by the map topology, its utility in weighting the randomness of the AI movement, and argue that it’s actually beneficial that the map is confusing, because it makes the overworld seem bigger than it really is, and adds to the challenge of the game.
But I think it would be even more convincing to demonstrate alternative maps, and let players experience them and decide for themselves.
It’s fairly likely that I’m the only one in the world who cares about this, and I’m almost certainly the only one who cares about it as much as I do. But what the hey.
I decided to see if I could could learn how to hack the ROM for Superman, and change the map navigation in order to rearrange the map screens. This would be preferable for authenticity, but it might also be limiting, in terms of what’s actually possible.
If that doesn’t work, or if I have ideas for expanding on Superman‘s design that aren’t feasible in a romhack, the other option would be to remake Superman in GameMaker, keeping it as faithful to the Atari version as possible, and experiment with the map that way.
Alternative Maps
The easiest Map design to implement would be to make the vertical and horizontal sequences identical, and to make up/right be “forward” and left/down be “backward”. The subway system could be left unchanged, up to go to the next station, and any other direction to exit back to the overworld, keeping the exit screens the same as in the original. At the end of the list of overworld, we can loop back to the beginning.
The biggest problem with this redesign idea is that there are no overworld shortcuts, other than to take the subway. To get to/from anywhere, it is always a straight line. This is slow, tedious, and to me, it seems like it would be boring. Subway travel helps somewhat to speed up travel, and becomes more important. But a bigger problem is that the gangsters can’t really spread out deep into the map by randomly moving in one of four possible directions. Their possibilities have been halved; they can only go forward or backward to the next screen, and so they will all be found in the first few screens, and rarely if ever would they make it to the end of the map.
But on the plus side, this map is extremely easy to navigate, much harder to get lost in. Gone are the one-way vertical transitions from the Phone Booth and Bridge screens, and the confusion they created. This might make it an ideal variation for a very young player, or for someone who is very inexperienced with Superman.
The other easy to understand map would be a cartesian grid. We have a problem in that 21 overworld screens do not map neatly to a regular grid of equal rows/columns. We can take a 5×4 grid to get 20 of the rooms in, with one room left over. We could truncate the overworld to simply remove this screen, which is the easiest solution. At the end of each row or column, we can either have a hard edge, where you cannot proceed beyond, or we can wrap around to the start of the row or column, or we can increment the row/column and move to the start of the next row or column. I’m not sure how to make a hard edge work, though. The easiest way would be to make these edges refer back to the same room, but doing it this way, Superman would still warp to the other side of the same room, which would be weird. Still, as a proof of concept, it’s quick and easy to do.
The advantage of this map is that it would be still be easier to understand and learn. The disadvantage is that, at least using the first two traversal approaches, you can no longer go through the entire overworld by going in one direction. When the world loops, it will only take you to the beginning of the the current row or column.
The ROM Hack
I looked into it and discovered that the ROM hack path would be much easier than I had anticipated. So much of the work had already been done for me by others.
I searched the web and found decompiled assembly source code for Superman, which had been nicely annotated.
I learned that sometime in the recent past, someone named chunkypixel had released a Visual Studio Code extension called Atari Dev Studio.
This saves me a ton of time. I don’t have to learn how to disassemble the rom myself, and I don’t have to learn 6502 Assembly well enough to be able to make sense of the disassembled code to figure out what’s going on.
So, literally, all I had to do to get started was:
Install Visual Studio Code
Install Atari Dev Studio plugin
Open the decompiled superman.asm
Edit it
Compile it
Test it in Stella
I’m astounded that it’s this easy. The annotated source code is documented well enough that I can tell where I need to make my edits, and what the changes I need to make are. Hats off to the homebrew community for developing these tools and making the information generally available!
First, I did a test compile to make sure that the decompiled assembly that I had was viable. It compiled right away without any problems. I fired up Stella and ran it, and it ran, and seemed to play exactly like Superman. Success!
To make the edits, I read through the source .asm file and tried to understand what I could. Fortunately, the file is reasonably well documented. Without actually knowing 6502 ASM, I can’t say I understand everything I’d like to, but I can see enough that I should be able to make edits by trial and error, and make progress.
From reading through the code, I infer that the stuff after a semi-colon is a comment, so the different comments explaining the Offsets help me to understand that Offsets 4 through 7 have to do with the connections between the different screens in the map. All I should need to do is update them with different addresses, and the map will change! Easy!
In my next update, I’ll present my modded Superman maps and do a little analysis of them.
This morning, my email inbox greeted me with another announcement from Atari, explaining how excited they were that the VCS is “going into pre-production.”
I’m not entirely clear what this means, given that the normal understanding of the term “pre-production” would seemingly cover the entire history of the AtariBox project, given that nothing has gone into production so far.
Some more teaser images showing prototype hardware in various stages of assembly, and some explanation of the design/layout of the motherboard, apparently in response to the reaction to the first announcement where they showed an image of the motherboard, which lead to speculation about whether it was real, or complete, or might have been hastily created by a company that specializes in rapid turnaround in order to give Atari something tangible to show backers while they continue to delay more meaningful steps toward release of a product.
There’s some more information in Atari’s latest Medium article — it is capable of running both Linux and Windows (hardly surprising, given the AtariBox is an AMD x64 system); it will have a fan-based cooling system (to me this is disappointing news, as I would have hoped for a silent running system, but again not terribly surprising, given that most computers these days are fan-cooled); default RAM will be 8GB (2×4) and user upgradeable, some frankly boring talk about plastic injection molds… and they’re still working on the actual software that will run on the system, although they had teased something at E3, it’s not ready to run on this hardware yet. Which is really bizarre — if this AMD x64 system is capable of running Linux and Windows, and if they can tease the front-end that they’ve been working for on some type of computer system, then what’s so different about the AtariBox hardware that Atari can’t run it on the machine they’re designing it for right now? Why couldn’t they all along, every step of the way? Something is not right about their software delivery lifecycle if they can’t create builds that will run on their target hardware.
I guess if there’s one positive thing to take from this announcement, it’s that Atari are apparently stepping up the frequency of their announcements, which may be a good sign that they are actually making progress with bringing their vision closer to reality.
That is, however…
Today The Register is reporting that Rob Wyatt, the architect of the VCS, has quit the project, and claims that he hasn’t been paid in 6 months. It was reported earlier that Wyatt was starting a new project, and after Atari’s previous announcement, rumor boards were awash with speculation about whether Wyatt was still on board with Atari. Atari’s PR deflected questions about it, but it’s clear now that Wyatt is no longer working with Atari on the VCS project.
The Register’s reporting on this project has been very thorough and is to be commended.
Sadly it’s looking more and more like AtariBox has been smoke and mirrors, underfunded wishes, and — let’s be frank — lies, and appears to be increasingly unlikely to launch. And even if it does, there’s no indication that it will be worth buying, due to a lack of first-party exclusive game content.
After being stung recently and repeatedly for their lack of progress on the AtariBox project, Atari released their Big Announcement about the games that will be available on the console.
TL;DR, the announcement is very underwhelming. Atari is packaging a bunch of old classic games for streaming to your AtariBox. They’re not even doing it themselves; they’re partnering with another company.
That’s right, they still have ZERO new exclusive launch titles for this system. You know, the thing that tends to drive people to buy new systems? They still don’t have that.
Let’s be generous, the three word elevator pitch for this is: “Netflix for videogames”. Only, no Netflix Originals, just re-runs of games you’ve played a million times already, and already have access to through a variety of other platforms. If you aren’t lucky enough to have lived through most of the history of video games and have a library devoted to that history, you might find this enticing.
In a way, this is cool. For only about 25 years now, gamers have had to resort to piracy and emulation to play thousands of arcade game titles for free. Now, they can pay $10/mo + $350 for the console for the privilege of doing it guilt-free, albeit restricted to just those titles that are available through Antstream. And that’s something, isn’t it?
No, I know that sound sarcastic, but it really is. For only 25 years or so, the problem of preserving historic videogames has been ignored by the industry that created them, and was left to be solved by dedicated fans who recognized the importance of such an effort. But this was always an ethical quandary, and enthusiasts were forced into a dilemma: literally preserve history before it was too late and games were lost forever, and violate copyright for a bunch of outdated products that companies refused to continue to produce or make available in any format? Well now for just $10/mo our consciences can finally be clear. And our reward for this will be that only the games deemed worthy of preservation for their long-tail commercial potential will be preserved. Shut down the MAME project, everyone, and rejoice: we’ve won.
OK, ok, that’s unavoidably sarcastic, but it’s true. This service creates value by ripping the hard work of emulation preservationists, and by graverobbing what rightfully should have by now been the public domain, to provide games-as-a-service to you, so that you can pay for them forever, without ever owning them. Because in the new economy, ownership is theft. There’s literally no reason you would ever want to own anything anyway, this is a post-scarsity economy, after all.
Antstream itself kickstarted into existence in April of 2019, and, well, isn’t it telling that a physical “not-a-console” gaming system that kickstarted TWO YEARS earlier and STILL doesn’t have any exclusive launch titles lined up, kept silent about this deficiency for all that time, until fed-up backers had a mutiny about it on Reddit, and so had to run out and find something, anything, so they could claim that they will have games, and picks something that only became a thing this year?
It makes you wonder what the hell Atari have been up to for the past two years, apart from rendering the shell they’re putting their components into, and re-releasing the same empty hype announcement every 6 months or so. According to their Kickstarter page, Antstream have been developing their service for four years now, so the Kickstarter is more an effort to do viral marketing for the launch of the service rather than a no-product preorder like Atari’s VCS Indigogo was. Yet, if Atari had planned all along to make use of this service, and had to remain quiet about it all this time, one wonders why they couldn’t have said something around the time that Antsream launched their Kickstarter campaign. Why the need to remain silent for another 6 months?
Still unanswered: Is anyone actually developing any games that will run only on this system, so that there will be a reason to buy it? Any first party game development, at all? (Well, it’s a silent NO, that’s the answer.) Atari 2019 is a brand name only, not a developer of anything substantial. In trying to establish a platform, they’re leveraging the work of others and passing it off as their own. AMD for the hardware. Antstream for the content. Maybe there’s some internal work being done to create the GUI to do configuration management and launch apps, but that’s not exactly exciting, now, is it?
It’s worth mentioning that around the time Antstream announced itself — about a month before, actually — Google announced Stadia, and there’s literally no reason any of the games that you might have access to through Antstream couldn’t also be streamed to your screen through Stadia. Other than, I guess, some exclusive rights deal that would preclude availability on other platforms. But then, Stadia is still in pre-order, too. Sigh.
So for the time being we’re still safe from the future hell of games-as-service, that you can never own, and which will be preserved for all time only to the extent that a company decides to preserve them. Which is to say, any old versions will be superceded by the latest patch, even if earlier releases are historically relevant. And games that aren’t attracting sufficient interest will be dropped unceremoniously, and probably not many people will care, except the small audiences for games who really love those games even though they’re part of a small audience not big enough to be considered commercially viable. But who cares about them, anyway?
Even if Antstream is great — no, especially if their service is great– it’ll be available on all platforms that its client can be ported to, there’s still no compelling answer to the question, why get an AtariBox?
Atari attempts to answer this by assuring us that:
When Atari VCS users log in or subscribe to the Antstream service using their Atari VCS, it will immediately unlock an exclusive and enhanced version of the Antstream app engineered specifically for the Atari VCS. The Atari VCS Edition of the app will house the largest collection of Atari games available anywhere and ready for immediate play. This enhanced collection will be exclusive to the Atari VCS at launch and will not be available on other Antstream platforms without an Atari VCS account.
Re-read that last sentence. You can stream Antstream’s exclusive AtariVCS content to any Antstream-capable platform, provided you have an Atari VCS account. My guess is that you’ll be able to get one of those without buying the AtariBox hardware, if not immediately then eventually. No word on whether that will cost a monthly subscription on top of whatever Antstream will cost.
But this leads me to wonder what’s up with Atari’s earlier announcement that the Atari Vault would be available to VCS owners? I mean, I don’t really wonder, because who cares. The AtariVault is on Steam and I can buy it and play it right now through my Steam account on my PC, and I don’t have to pre-order and then wait 3 years for some outdated low end PC in a pretty case to do it, either.
But lets say I did decide to wonder. Well, is the Atari Vault still going to be part of the picture, or did they just shitcan it and replace it with a subscription-based streaming service?
Oh, and there’s a picture of their motherboard. Suck on that, haters! I bet everyone who doubted that AMD Ryzen board could have an Atari Fuji logo custom silkscreened onto its PCB are all eating crow now!
Well, it’s something, anyway. Not enough. But at least it’s something.
Update from the Register… It’s sad that this is the reality but it’s about exactly what I expected, and have been warning the public about since the crowdfunding campaign pitch.
Don’t give these people money until they have a product. Promises and hype are nothing. Shame on the people who continue to abuse the Atari name for continuing to string gullible fans along with so little evidence of any actual work happening toward delivering on the vision they pitched over 2 years ago.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Collectorvision’s Phoenix console is shipping in October, and was announced after Atari first announced the AtariBox concept. The Phoenix not only plays ColecoVision games through a cartridge slot, it also has an FPGA core to play Atari 2600 cartridges as well. It’s not trying to be a next-gen console or a brand reboot for a dead company, but it exists, it works, it plays classic games with incredible fidelity to the original hardware, and I’ve touched one.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of an old computer system being hacked in such a way that its program doesn’t use any RAM. Several years ago, I saw a talk by someone who had done something similar on the Commodore 64. They eschewed storing any data in RAM by using the CPU registers and directly accessing other hardware components such as the controller ports, and were able to make a working program that used no RAM at all.
It’s truly amazing what can be done under such constraints.
I think, in appreciating the accomplishment of projects like this, it’s easier to understand my relative “disappointment” in learning that Champ Games had used a 32-bit, 70MHz ARM CPU in their Galaga cartridge to augment the VCS system, rather than figured out some way to get the game to run on stock (or minimally extended, as some later contemporary releases for the VCS were) hardware.
I regret that it sounded as though I thought that the game itself was disappointing — far from it, it’s amazing, easily one of the best ports of an arcade game to the platform that’s ever been produced. And the technical accomplishment of getting the ARM CPU to mesh with the much slower Atari hardware is likewise amazing, in a different way. But knowing what’s possible to do with zero RAM, for a moment I thought that just maybe someone had figured out a way to squeeze all that performance and graphics into a standard Atari cartridge.
But really, there’s no reason to judge one of these projects as superior to the other. They should both be appreciated. One accomplishes something through extreme minimalism, and is beautiful in that way. The other accomplishes something through an extraordinary joining of old and new technology, and is beautiful in its own right.
Atari announced updated designs for their joystick and gamepad peripherals for the AtariBox (now called the Atari VCS) today. Allegedly, these are about to go into production soon, but are still subject to change and are not final.
I have to admit, I do like the design of the joystick, and wouldn’t mind owning one if they ever do get manufactured, assuming they will work with generic PC systems and aren’t tied exclusively to the AtariBox console.
One neat thing about the joystick that they revealed is that the stick will rotate, enabling play of paddle type Atari games. This answers a long standing question I’d had about whether/how the new system might support paddle games. I don’t know that this will feel as good as the old-school paddled did in their day, but it’s good that they’re at least supporting them. As well, it means that spinning stick arcade games, like the Ikari Warriors series of top-down run-n-gun games, might be decent to play with a stick like this.
The joystick will also have rumble and LED lighting features. Wireless, it will be powered by lithium ion battery, with a life of about 15 hours per charge. No word on how easily replaced the battery pack will be, or if replacement batteries will be available. I wouldn’t count on it, although of course it should be possible to hack them and replace with any third party battery of the correct spec, which is what I imagine owners will have to do once these things are a few years old and no longer can hold a charge.
The gamepad, I’m less interested in, as it seems less special, not different enough from an XBox gamepad to be worth buying. Since Xbox gamepads are already very good, the AtariBox gamepad would need to outshine it in some way to be worth my attention. I haven’t seen any indication that it might.
If these start shipping, and the initial reviews are good, I’d order a pair, but I’m still wary enough about the reputation for the current company using Atari trademark that I don’t want to go in on a preorder.
Yeah, they’re still at it. After about a year of relative silence from the VCS project, the other day they made a Big Announcement, which is that they are delaying the project to late 2019.
Surprise! No, not really. Everyone pretty much called this before they finished their initial round of crowdfunding.
But, so as to be able to spin this delay as a positive thing, they are changing the hardware specs to a more powerful system. Still not world beating hardware by any means, not that it ever needed to be. And more is always better, I guess. But I don’t think the actual hardware is all that relevant to this product. Really, it’s just taking a commodity small form factor AMD64 architecture system, and putting it in a nice looking case that evokes the classic, original Atari VCS. Basically, Atari can place an order with AMD to produce the boards and chips, and install them in custom designed cases that they can pay an injection mold company to manufacture, and pay someone else to assemble them.
Atari’s real job is to focus on the software, the operating system, user environment, and the games. Especially the games. And their announcement was, again, suspiciously silent on these topics.
We know the OS will be a linux distribution, with some kind of customized desktop environment designed to provide a good user experience as a game console.
We know that they will include some emulator(s) to enable playing of classic Atari-era games. We know that there are already dozens of platforms that already do this, so while it’s nice, and to be expected, it doesn’t seem to me that this is a compelling reason for anyone to buy an Atari VCS. Atari Classics have been repackaged and resold on every platform for decades, since the NES and Game Boy. While keeping these games around and still available is great, if you already have them on an older system, Atari have to do something extra-special to make them compelling to consumers to make them want to buy them again, like online leaderboards, social media integration, video streaming integration, something. And we’ve heard nothing about it for about two years since they made their crowdfunding goal.
We know that Atari wants to provide modern reinterpretations of classic Atari games. Apart from Tempest 4K, we haven’t heard anything. And Tempest 4K is already out, and has been for about a year now, on the PlayStation 4 and other platforms. Non-exclusive updated classics will not move units. Why would anyone spend $300 on yet another console when they can just buy the game for a console they already own?
We also know they’re supposed to be shipping modern reinterpretations of the classic Atari CX40 joystick, a modern-looking gamepad with Atari aesthetics, and (one would hope, but I have yet to see anything about this) some kind of paddle controller, but there’s been no mention of these either.
So, another year has gone by, and Atari just announces that they’re revising the hardware specs, before they even got the original hardware specs out the door. And we still have no idea what’s going to run on this system, beyond vague “It will run Linux” and barely anything, really next to nothing, about the actual games. Which is the whole reason anyone buys a game console, to play the games.
This is sad, and exactly what I expected from the beginning.
I would have really enjoyed a resurgent Atari with new games based on classic IPs, too.
The Atari VCS was not known for its audio capabilities, yet it had a distinctive sound all its own, thanks to the chip known as the TIA, or Television Interface Adaptor. The sounds it was capable of making were pretty primitive, and mostly harsh. Buzzes, rumbles, and static dominate its sound palette, adequate for crudely simulating the sound of explosions, gunshots, running machinery, and things like wind and crashing waves. It was capable of making some bleeps and pew-pew laser sounds, too.
The majority of the games released for the Atari 2600 did not have proper background music. BGM didn’t come into its own until Nintendo released the NES in the US, about 8 years later. Most games were so limited in their ROM size that they simply could not include proper background music, although many games included at least a short looping audio background, or introductory music. Later cartridges sometimes overcame these limitations by including additional sound chips, such as the POKEY sound chip.
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
Perhaps the best audio of any Atari 2600 game, and certainly the best at the time of its release. Pitfall II contained a full soundtrack, with dynamic changes to the background music, which changed in response to in-game events such as finding a treasure or touching an enemy. This was a true innovation and seemed years ahead of its time.
Mountain King
Music is a key mechanic in this early platform adventure game. During the search for the Flame Spirit — a mostly-invisible, flickering entity that you must find in order to appease the Skull Spirit who guards the Crown that is the object of your quest — a musical score plays, and its volume is a key to finding the Flame Spirit. The song gets louder as you get closer to it.
Later, when you obtain the crown, a chiptune arrangement of Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King plays, which creates tension and excitement as you now have to race to the top of the mountain with the Crown.
Moon Patrol
Moon Patrol featured a full background music track, one of the earliest games to do so.
Blueprint
Has a background music track.
Journey: Escape
Contained a musical interlude between levels that was based on the bass line from the band’s hit single, Don’t Stop Believing.
Crystal Castles
Features musical interludes between levels and during certain game events. The musical pieces are digital arrangements of classical music pieces.
Dig Dug
Another game which had one of the earliest background music tracks. The music responds to the events in-game, in a few ways: if you stop moving, the music will sortof pause and play a somewhat annoying tone that is intended to get you to move again; if you die, the music interrupts and plays a death music; when the level is down to the last enemy, the music speeds up. The Atari 2600 port does a reasonably good job of re-creating the music on the Atari’s much more limited audio hardware.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Adapted the theme music by John Williams from the movie.
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
The title screen features a tune adapted from the movie theme.
Popeye
The song Popeye the Sailor Man is played when you grab the spinach power-up, and signifies the length of time that the power-up is in effect, giving you the strength to beat Bluto.
Gyruss
JS Bach’s Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor made this arcade tunnel shooter especially memorable. The Atari 2600 port adapts this music for the more-limited console hardware, but does a surprisingly good job with it, considering these limitations.
Ms. Pac-Man
A musical introduction kicks off the game.
California Games
An adaptation of the Kingsmen’s Louie, Louie is featured on the title screen and throughout the game.
Frogger
Frogger uses 3 or 4 different tunes for its background music, and they are catchy.
Pressure Cooker
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
If you avoid getting hit for a length of time, the Star Wars theme music plays, signifying that the Force is with you, and that you are temporarily invulnerable.
Stargate
Stargate uses audio for cues to alert the player of off-screen actions. When a Lander (enemy) captures a human, a “yelping” sound is heard to alert the player that they are in need of rescue. The player can use the radar scope at the top of the screen to spot the Lander who has a human, and fly to their location to attempt the rescue. If the player is nearby the Stargate and flies into it, they will be teleported to the location of a human in danger, if there is one.
Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
ST:SOS plays a few notes that will be familiar to viewers of the TV series.
Yar’s Revenge
Yar’s Revenge doesn’t feature a background music track, but does have a throbbing, pulsating hum, and a great explosion sound effect, both of which contribute significantly to the mood.
