Thorsten Günther

Early Microprose games often seem to offer multiple player action: Chopper Rescue, MIG Alley Ace and Floyd of the Jungle springing to mind.

Highway Duel is another one, and it features the chopper from Nadral

There already are several titles that make sensible or even clever use of the keypad (Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, Alien vs. Predator, Iron Soldier 1 & 2, Cyber- & Battlemorph, Battlesphere). I still wonder though why Atari mapped 4 and 6 to the shoulder buttons on the ProController when titles already used 7 and 9 for side views (Cybermorph) or even strafing (AvP). Even DOOM would play better on the ProController if 4, 5 and 6 were mapped to X, Y and Z respectively.

What about Nick Harlow? http://sales1632.myzen.co.uk/acatalog/

Regarding the CD-i: there's not "the" CD-i controller, there are quite a few, e.g. a Gravis built four-button one (considering that the CD-i only supports two buttons, they are wired somewhat awkwardly: the left one as a simultaneous press of both buttons, the right one as button II and both remaining ones as button I) and a larger three-button joypad (the third button again wired as a simultaneous I/II press) built by Logitech (later the shape was re-used by TecnoPlus for their six-button SNES and Mega Drive controllers), both intended for gaming, and a number of both IR and wired controllers for other uses (e.g. educational software, CD/VCD use, etc.) which of course suck for gaming. It's a common misconception that the CD-i was a game console while in reality it was a pre-DVD attempt of introducing a versatile digital home entertainment device (there was a vast number of movies in CD-i and VCD format, many CD-i titles were educational rather than recreational). This considered, it is a much better game console than your average DVD player (Nuon players being the exception of that rule):

And regarding MP3s: no, not by a wide margin. the only Atari computer capable of MP3 playback is the Falcon030, and juste barely. Relying on a CPU alone, no computer prior to the Intel Pentium generation will playback MP3s with the bit rates that are standard today. Atari 8-Bit computers are only capable of playing chip tunes and coarse sound samples (without any other compression than their bit rate and resolution), cf. Castle Wolfenstein.

The ST keyboard has cheap and mushy feel (the Cherry-built Mega ST keyboard was much better), but at least it is full-sized, durable and had the standard layout and all the special characters the respective language required, e.g. AZERTY keyboards in France, QWERTZ keyboards with umlaut keys in the right places here in Germany, etc. - all of which were a big deal at that time and only found in "professional", i.e. IBM and various CP/M, keyboards before the ST appeared. BTW: "Geiz ist geil!" was a claim used many decades later by SATURN, an electronics retailer, the Atari claim here in Germany was "Wir machen Spitzentechnologie preiswert." (literally: "We make cutting-edge technology priceworthy.") - which was very true considering the original price tag of less than 3,000 DM for a 520ST system including mouse, SF354 floppy disk and SM124 monitor or the price tag for the 520STM package of less than 1,000 DM with SF354 and mouse (ca. 1987), which was directly aimed at the Commodore 64 (which cost around 900 DM with a 1541 at this time) and accompanied by a matching ad campaign - of course Atari didn't tell their customers that 512KB of RAM and the single-sided SF354 were overstocks that needed to be sold off in favour of the 1040STF(M).

Although I am not a programmer, it seems to me that you are correct - the Jaguar was not good at throwing around textured polygons, but it is sufficiently fast for shaded ones (as was not only shown in Zero 5, but also in the Iron Soldier and *morph games as welll as in Battlesphere and I-War). So instead of publishing low-fps games from the mediocre Hover Strike to outright crap like "Supercross 3D", why did Atari not admit to this drawback and aim for the likes of S.T.U.N. Runner and Cybersled. I especially wish World Tour Racing would have a "no textures" option (not just for removing the road texture - getting rid of all of them could have improved the frame rate even more).

+1, with Team Tap support!

AFAIK, schools here were (are?) pretty free to choose their computers, and I bet in the ST's heyday years (i.e. 1986-1989), many German schools had STs, regarding the easy availability of Pascal/Modula-2 compilers for it, as these were preferred languages among teachers for obvious reasons (heck, they were even in universities and the industry, even German built 19" rack versions exist). Sadly, mine went for the Schneider CPC6128 (a re-badged and AFAIK German-built Amstrad CPC6128) with green monitors, for which each of us had to buy a disk to save the Turbo Pascal 2.0 source codes he/she wrote - each costing DM 9.00 (our teacher got a 10% discount on the usual price tag of these disks). Do I have to mention that CP/M Turbo Pascal 2.0 was the only software my school had for these machines?

@Heaven: if you don't find the 1050 PSU, you may try this one - granted, it's amperage seems a little low, but I've already successfully used one with a 1050, which also has an original PSU with a higher amperage.

Maplin L53BR and N56DL will both do the job - when I purchased a bunch of them for ABBUC members, they cost half as much though.

I sold this a long time ago (though I really like the style of the cartoon FMV graphics and the music, the gameplay sucks terribly - so i prefer watching it on Youtube), IIRC it was the first time ever I shipped a Jaguar game to the Republic of South Africa.

I am not a big racer fan, but I played WTR on the eJagFest and RR4 (PS1) on the last ABBUC RENO convention - while I have to admit WTR is a better racer than Checkered Flag, it falls very, very short in comparison to RR4 or - FWIW - to Domark's F1 on the 16 bit consoles and computers. I would really have preferred less detail in favour of higher framerate and the "sense of speed" good racers are supposed to provide.

And what good would such a bug report be as the owner will not get a bug fixed digital image from you anyway? Paying international shipping costs twice more for the same game does not seem very attractive. Instead, I described the bug to someone I considered capable of fixing it, a friend sent him a dump of the cart and I recently received a bug fixed image.

I do. Not in terms of gameplay, but beta testing. Venture crashes on PAL/SECAM machines - thankfully I recently received a fixed image I can now burn to my original cart.

I have one SCART cable for the Dreamcast that does not have all the pins in the SCART plug (some of the ground pins are missing, but R, G and B are present), and have also had one (IIRC third party) where - among several others - the R, G and B pins were missing (obviously composite only). I would say if the required pins are present, you can be 99% sure it has RGB connection - if you want to make sure, just open the SCART plug (remove the nut and use a tool or your fingernails to pull and unlock the plastic connectors between upper and lower half) and take a look inside.

I wonder why you didn't just ask the seller, i,e. me. Yes, this was a legit version I purchased on ebay.com.au some years back (and thus, as already correctly stated, the HES version). I have a copy in better shape now. Still looking for a CIB one...

You took the safe route with this one, methinks. The 20M2 models may also display a fine picture without the sync stripper (I know my 20M4E does, and that is just the high-res version of the 20M2), but other models might have problems (ghosting has been reported), and this cable may last longer than your monitor. Cool Novelties' cables seem solid, I have purchased some (e.g. an ST AV cable for projector use, as many projectors have RCA jacks but no SCART - those do of course not work properly on models without TV output, but as all my STs are STfms or STEs, I have no problem with that).

No idea, but I did own a TT030 w/ TKR Crazy Dots with HC expansion and never had any issue similar to yours. Had it running on a NEC Multisync 3D first and, when the NEC died, on a SONY Multiscan 15sf II, and both displayed 768*576/32K in about 66 Hz refresh rate (a self-generated video mode using NVDI's excellent video mode generator). Did you have a look at the default video mode the ST boots into (was it NVDI.INF where this is saved? Sorry, it's too long since I used it)?