¢FATE¢¢Brought to you from the twisted imagination of Oasis Design's very own Daniel Baverstock, 2nd January 1994.¢¢¢ "Where am I?" I look around, noticing the mountains of what appear to be scrap metal, plastic and wires that can be seen through the red dusty atmosphere. Stumbling across the landscape, my eyes stray across a large canyon, filled with yet more scraped waste, much bigger than the others that I have passed. Picking up a small piece of smooth plastic and rubbing away the moss covering reveals a curious symbol, familar somehow! I have seen this symbol before! An inscription lies to the right of the symbol; the small, piercing shafts of red light passing over the slimline grey plastic indicate a five letter word. As I examine the object closer, while sitting on a nearby rock, the words slowly make sense... ATARI!¢¢ Standing up, & walking down toward the canyon, yet more pieces of scrap are found to have the same symbol and word inscribed. No, it can't be!! Not after all the support that people gave to the machine!¢¢ I remember now. It was the late 1980's and software was looking worse for Atari than it had ever done! People had started to forget their Atari 8-Bit Processor micro computers and throw them in cardboard boxes! This can't be the fate of the machine? It was never used to it's full potential; the capabilities never explored!¢¢ They never listened to the users, just produced the same old games; the same old music. Sitting there for what I assumed was the next few hours I thought. What a waste! All that memory, disk storage space disregarded! Sampled music dropped for the odd bleep, blocky graphics used while the 8 colour high definition graphics weren't even explored. Not even when they found they could place colour graphics with graphics 8 on the same screen did they even bother to place this in games. They didn't even explore the fact that graphics mode 8 could have 4 colours on-screen instead of 2.¢¢ Why weren't weopons impressively powerful, accompanied by huge sampled explosions, lazer and machine effects, instead of the flat tyre, firework sounds that were about as inspiring as playing on the Spectrum!¢¢ The Blitter chip never used! Were large end of level monsters ever any scarier than a Care Bear, and so easy to dispose of that you might as well of been issued with a pea shooter, which was about all you got in most of the games.¢¢ For some reason they felt they had to cram everything into 64k. Didn't they know about compression, that you could fit around 300K into 64K, or 600K on one side of a disk.¢¢ The kind of games people liked at the time were staring them in the face! 16-Bit games like Alien Breed, Battle Squadron, Sonic the Hedgehog, Supermario, Lemmings, Xenon 2, Desert Strike, Blood Money, Armour Geddon, Shadow of the Beast, Agony. 8-Bit games that were only ever produced on Commodore 64's, Amstrads, & Spectrums like Turrican, Platoon, Robocop, Forgotten worlds, Barbarian, Batman, Operation Wolf, Street Fighter II, Double Dragon, R-type, Cloud Kingdoms, X-out, Flimbo's Quest, The Untouchables, Chase H.Q, Menace, Vendetta, (by System 3 of 'International Karate' fame!). The lists are endless!! Many thought these were impossible titles to produce on the Atari 8-Bit. If only they had tryed!¢¢ Yet they still wanted to produce one screen clones of Frogger, Bounty Bob, Breakout and many other games. I remember back to a game that was released back in 1985, called Karateka, boasting excellent animation and gameplay, made by the programmer who later went onto make 'Prince of Persia'. Was a game using the same animation ever produced in a further game. As far as I could remember, NO.¢¢ Oh, there was a great Karate game called 'International Karate', or 'World Karate Championships' that had great graphics and gameplay. The company System 3 was also scheduled to bring out 'The Last Ninja', but it never did. Harequin were also set to bring out 'Shadow of the Beast', 'Menace' & others, but never did!¢¢ If only they had, this mightn't have happened. Now I am stuck in this desolate place!! As I walk further, toward the edge of the canyon, I lose my footing. Stuggling to keep my balance, but failing, I go over the edge, disappearing into the darkness.¢¢ BOLT up right in bed, sweating at 3 o'clock in the morning, I realise it was a horrible nightmare. My 130XE & 800XL were still on my desk in one piece! Beside was a copy of Brundles & an Atari ST mouse.¢¢ I thought of my dream. There are still Atari owners & computers out there, waiting for games & utilities.¢¢ Relieved that it was just a dream, I walk toward the window for a breath of fresh air. I notice that the sky is a curious dusty red. This dosn't look to me like my neighbourhood........"¢¢>What Next: Pick up pen.¢ Done¢>What Next: Get paper.¢ Done¢>What Next: Write to software company.¢ ¢ What for?¢ ¢>What Next: Ask them to produce a game.¢ What game?¢¢>What Next: One you've always wanted for your computer.¢ O.K What the Hell!¢ Done.¢>What Next: Buy it.¢¢ I don't understand 'it'.¢¢>What Next: The game, buy the game.¢¢ Oh, right!¢ I haven't any money!¢¢>What Next: I give up!!¢¢ I don't understand 'I give up'.¢
