October 26, 2004

One of the more exciting machines I've owned was the Atari 520ST. I moved from an Apple IIe to this new 16-bit graphics machine in late 1986. The ST was fast, with its 8MHz Motorola 68000 CPU, and provided impressive visuals with its then-impressive 512 color palette. The sound wasn't too bad either. It was great fun going down to the local Games 'n' Gadgets and buying new titles for this machine. But, of all the game I ever owned for the Atari ST, my favorite was easily "Time Bandit," published by MichTron and created by Bill Dunlevy and Harry Lafnear.

Time Bandit is basically a "Gauntlet style" (thought it preceeded Gauntlet by two years), top-down perspective shooter where you, the Time Bandit, travel through time among 16 different worlds, all but one of which each have 16 different levels, searching for various artifacts along the way. Unexpected in this type of action-adventure, arcade-style game was the inclusion of the occasional text-based interaction with characters in the game by way of a simple text parser, adding a deeper, problem-solving aspect to the game experience. The variety that the various worlds and levels and character interaction provided was enormous, instilling in the player a sense of vastness to the game world. Time Bandits was truly a departure from other games of the day.

Atari Legend has published an interview with Harry Lafnear who created the graphics for Time Bandit as well as a variety of other games for the Atari and other platforms. Within, the game's co-creator tells the tale of Time Bandit's evolution from its first incarnation on the Tandy TRS-80 Model I, followed by a port to the Tandy CoCo which brought color graphics to the game, and then on to the 8-color, pseudo-PC-compatible Sanyo MBC-55x, arriving at its best incarnation, on the Atari ST, and finally from there its port to the Amiga and PC. The interview also provides a rare glimpse at the interworkings and eventual demise of MichTron, the company behind the game, that many 16-bit gamers of the 80's will remember with fondness.

The Atari Legend also has a details page online, complete with screenshots and trivia. Have a look.

In the 80's I had Time Bandit for both the Amiga and Atari ST, but sold it along with those systems years ago. After getting my hands on a new Amiga 2000 [note the Atari ST Time Bandit manual in the background!] a few years ago, I happily managed to find a copy of the Amiga Time Bandit after months of searching; however, I still prefer the Atari ST version because of several subtle differences. I'm sure one day I will put together an ST system, and largely to reexperience this particular title in its "purest" form.

UPDATE: I have scanned the Time Bandit instruction pamphlet and placed it online as a PDF document, for those interested.

UPDATE: I've searched and searched over the years for screenshots of Time Bandit coded for the unique PC-compatibleish Sanyo MBC-550 computer, with then-impressive 8-color display. Screenshots finally found. (A nice enhancement to the CoCo original!)

October 6, 2004

The Apple Newton , introduced in 1993, was one of the worlds first PDA's and is the device that coined the term "PDA," or, Personal Digital Assistant. And the Newton truly was an assistant. The way in which all data stored on the device was part of the system's "soup," as it was known, and could be accessed intelligently by many different applications made possible a level of integration not even approached by today's handhelds. And despite notoriously bad handwriting recognition early on, the most recent units (NewtonOS 2.x devices) sport recognition unmatched by today's handhelds and which lives on in Apple's Mac OS X as Inkwell.

I've seen a number of pretty nifty things from the Newton world cross the radar in the past weeks and thought I would present them here for those interested. One such item is the Newtendo Entertainment System, a NES emulator for the Newton—great for revisiting those old classics in stunning 16-level greyscale. Another interesting development comes out of the recent World Wide Newton Conference held in Paris this past Sept. 4-5. There, Paul Guyot presented his Einstein Emulator, a system that will eventually allow the NewtonOS to run on top of a Unix operating system. Compelling.

Some older but still most notable efforts out there are also worth mentioning. Kallisys has developed an ATA driver for the Newton, allowing the use of storage other than hard-to-find, non-linear flash memory. There's also a webserver. An MP3 player, too. A variety of ethernet cards are now supported. Even WiFi. And VNC. Another great app to emerge is an iTunes plug-in that allows iTunes music to be synced to the Newton as easily as though it were an iPod (currently the product page is off-line, here's an archive.org link). It seems I could go on and on here, but I will end with a link to a Wired article from a couple of years ago that takes a look at the indefatigable Newton scene.

I never should have let my MessagePad 2000 or eMate 300 go. Arn over at MacRumors and I used to collect Newtons, actually. Our efforts there have sadly waned. I still have a MessagePad 100 and a MessagePad 130, anyway. Lamentably they spend most of their time on the shelf.

October 4, 2004

My wife and I recently carried out one of our standard Friday evening out scenarios: dinner at Big Bowl in Clarendon, VA (right across from the Apple Store) followed by a visit to the adjoining Barnes & Noble bookstore. This night differed from the standard routine in that I discovered one of the finest magazines I have ever seen. Retro Gamer magazine. I saw, on the shelf, issue 6 of Retro Gamer and was spellbound by its vintage computing goodness.

I have expended much effort and funds over recent years in reacquiring many issues of early/mid 80's computing magazines that I enjoyed as a youth. Creative Computing, A+, AmigaWorld, STart - these were where the songs of praise for the various computers I owned or merely lusted after were sung. Somehow over the years my collection vanished and now I have rebuilt it for the most part with the help of eBay. Retro Gamer is a sort of "best of" the old computing article goodness. I hadn't been home 20 minutes before I had subscribed on-line and am now eagerly awaiting the first issue to be delivered to my door. I even ordered as many back-orders as they had in stock (I think only three issues, sadly).

Anyone with any sort of retro computing bent should make it priority one to get to know this new and wonderous source of nostalgic goodness. I pray the magazine sees a long and prosperous life. Go buy one on the newsstand or subscribe on-line today.