Ahem!
It’s been a while since I’ve been on here in any meaningful capacity. A massively overdue catching up session is about to land.
Some ‘real life’, or more accurately’, family’ issues have stolen my focus in a big way, and continue to do so. Some of you will already know what happened and are kindly bearing with me.
Still, quite a lot has taken place in the world of the fuji symbol computers and consoles over the past weeks and months. None of it being reflected in the pages of Atariscne.org - It might be time to redress that failure, so here I go again. There is quite a lot to cover.
This is mostly from a games and demos perspective. There have been other exciting developments in the world of utilities and especially hardware, but those topics will need to be addressed elsewhere.
Cannon Fodder, the STE reworking gathers pace.
Firstly, we turn to the quietly ongoing project to rework the 1993 Sensible Software release, ‘Cannon Fodder’. This is a top-down military themed action game, best known on the Amiga and widely disliked on the Atari ST for its lack of proper virtual screen scrolling.
The Retro Blitter Team are responsible for bringing this to the STE and closer to the original Amiga experience at the same time. You may hear more of that name in at least one later entry. This has been blitterised for the missing smooth scrolling. Sampled sound effects are present. More goodness will no doubt follow.
In the meantime, you can check the latest progress on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PLTnf71yUk - Which should also give you a link to download the latest version.
Cavey Taxi, a quiet release.
You might remember my breathless announcement of a brand new, entirely Atari STE from the ground up game, Cavey Taxi, a few months ago.
This was being made by GridLeader Retro, sometimes known as ‘Chicane’ in some forums. It features elements of ‘Thrust’ and ‘Oids’, focusing on the transportation aspect, and entirely made with the Atari STE hardware features in mind.
It has had a sort of release. There is an announcement from the author below.
The rather large flaw in that plan is, that I’ve got no intention or interest in opening an account for Twitter/X. I have never been interested, even since the start of Twitter, so for those of us Elon haters, the download is basically inaccessible.
I hope this turns up in a more accessible and less right-wing location to get hold of that STE scrolling goodness soon?
Jaguar Racer or is there a ‘Need for Speed’?
Something for the console fans and Jaguar plastic fume breathers especially.
Firstly, a new racing game with the imaginative title of ‘Jag Racer’ was announced on the Atariage forum on the 5th July. ‘Budfolk’ created this, possibly with some AI tools to help.
At some point in the middle of this already impressive effort, he took on a port of the 3DO version of ‘Need for Speed’. This seems to be a proof of concept, with impressive speed for texture mapped graphics on the Jaguar, if not quite a full game there. It is unclear what the next steps are going to be here. It is unlikely that ‘Need for Speed’ can be released for the Jag in any meaningful way due to the associated intellectual property aggravation that would certainly follow.
Maybe this work gets fed back into ‘Jag Racer’ to make one of the all-time great games for the Jaguar?
The link to follow the story from start to finish is here - https://forums.atariage.com/topic/391334-jagracer/
Lasers and Men gets a rework.
A game which I’ve personally enjoyed in those early, glory days of the Falcon 030 is up next.
‘Of Lasers and Men’ was an early attempt at redefining Castle Wolfenstein and possible Doom on a stock Falcon 030. This was made by Arnaud Linz. I followed its story from the very first pre-preview version, right through to the final shareware release.
I’ve enjoyed this game, but found that the 3D updates got slower and slower as newer versions appeared. Hardware acceleration helped, at least to some extent. I found the best access was via a hefty Falcon Centurbo 2 accelerator, not the most commonly available hardware.
I guess I’m not the only fan of this game, as Omikronman has take on a rework of the original game, creating a 3.0 version of it.
In his own words - “I am busy working on Arnaud Linz's "Des Lasers et des Hommes" (Of Lasers and Men) for the ATARI Falcon030 made in 1993/1994. I fitted an fps counter on the lower left of the HUD, fixed a sound bug in the original sound tracker and improved the overall fps by average 15 % in moving scenes, doubled the fps close to a wall and improved the playability by using a gfx cache in mostly static scenes which helps especially when you just point on a foe and fire the laser.”
Work with this is ongoing, with more updates in the pipeline. A major issue has been getting an Hatari perfect adaption to play nicely with original hardware, but this may now have been sorted?
The whole tale, with downloadable files, can be found on Atari Forum - https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=46309&hilit=lasers+men
Command and Conquer, all the thrills of 1995-era Windows on an Atari!
This is one of the better known recent arrivals on the Atari ST and associated hardware.
‘IndyJo’ has only gone and ported the 1995-fantastic real time strategy game Command and Conquer, originally released by Westwood Studios, into a sixteen colour ST-friendly screen. This game, after Doom and the like, was probably one of the reasons for the massive rush to MS-DOS and Windows boxes in the mid-nineties.
It has been ported so it can run on a 4MB ST. To get any meaningful value from playing it, beefier hardware is recommended, so say Falcon or TT or one of the newfangled ST boosters. It is very happy with the likes of 68060, according to those people who have tried it. There is also a large demand for hard disk real-estate, something just under 300 megabytes, if you insist on the full experience, with video cutscenes. What Maggie Team, c.1995, used to call ‘Multi-Tedia’. Now you can enjoy this on your Atari compatible, as if MS-DOS and Windows never happened?
There is an Atari Forum thread, with ongoing developments, this is very ongoing right now.
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=46258&hilit=command+conquer
Anima capers with Capcom Arcade games coming to the Falcon.
On a Youtube channel. Somewhere. Anima, aka Percy of Light, from a long scene time ago, has been remarkably busy.
Firstly, there has been a porting frenzy of famous Capcom arcade games. Starting with ‘Knights of the Round’, swiftly taking up ‘King of Dragons’, including ‘The Punisher’ and showing off ‘Street Fighter 2’.
For fans of genre’s other than beat-em-ups, there is also a port of ‘Snow Bros’ (Toaplan games) and ‘DoDonPache’ for those of you wondering what shooty mayhem goodness is coming after ‘Cho Ren Sha’.
These do run on ‘060 level hardware. The intention being to bring these as close as possible to a stock Falcon. ‘Snow Bros’ has been tested on real Falcon 030 hardware.
Yes, on real hardware!
The Youtube channel? Here it is! https://www.youtube.com/@AnimaInCorpore
There is an Atari Forum thread, where you can download the latest available versions -
https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=46238&sid=5859606a777e06c458252ee512656325
Whilst we are on topic, in the background, lurks an Atari Falcon port of a Sharp X68000 sound engine.
“F030MXDRV is a native Atari Falcon port/recreation of MXDRV 2.06+17, the X68000's canonical MDX/PDX music driver. The Falcon 68030 runs the MXDRV-compatible driver and timing, the Falcon DSP56001 emulates the X68000's Yamaha YM2151 (OPM), and the Falcon crossbar/codec receives the stereo result.”
This has implications for future Sharp X68000 ports, possibly earlier releases too? (Cho Ran She calling?)
Another day, another Github - https://github.com/AnimaInCorpore/F030MXDRV
Some Hot Summer Demoparty action!
We’re moving on to the ‘big two’ summer demo parties for the Atari scene. I’m surprised nothing much has been said as yet on here since they took place. I wasn’t helping matters, by not being at Sillyventure Summer Edition and therefore not writing my usual massive travelog style report. I’m looking to put that one right with the forthcoming winter edition, usual issues and possible end of civilisation notwithstanding.
Still, here’s a quick look at Sommerhack 2026.
I’m going to let Demozoo do the heavy lifting for descriptions release-wise - https://demozoo.org/parties/5417/
In a decent field of releases, I can’t go very far without mentioning the current seminal summer Dead Hackers blockbuster demo, ‘He'e Nalu Uhane’ for a memory fat Atari STE. This seems to be the grandchild of ‘Sea of Colour’, another brilliant STE demo from Sommarhack 2015, impersonating a Falcon demo.
Good efforts were made by the likes of Ephidrena and New Beat, but Dead Hackers just had to take that top spot.
There was a notable special category, with the 33 second ’Short Demo’ competition. Several of those entries would be worth an expanded remix.
We turn, rather inevitably, to the Sillyventure 2026 SE party.
A great time was had by all who could make it there. Unfortunately, this did not include this author. Someone, or several someone’s, decided to make international travel that bit more difficult on multiple fronts this year. So I reluctantly declined. This was before the other *thing* that happened in June, so it is fair to day the demo party gods were against me.
As before, here’s the Demozoo page to get to the good stuff within - https://demozoo.org/parties/5464/
The overall levels of releases were comfortably ahead of the previous SV2025 Summer Edition. We didn’t get another Dune/Thadoss stunner, but we did get a creditable showing from another famous long established French group, Hemoroids, with their ‘Tribute to AD’. A demo, or music disk, or both of these.
Paradox was on Atari STE form with a great 96k release, Spice Boys scrolled for a long time with lots of colours. Retro HQ continue on their quest to break down the Carebears Classic ‘Cuddly Demos’ into a selection of 4K intro screens. Is a 64k remix of the entire Cuddly Demos to follow?
A fair spread of releases on anything up to and including an Atari Portfolio rounded off a decent summer party in Poland.
Norwegian Heavy Metal for the Falcon!
Dead Hackers Society followed up their Sommerhack triumph with a suitably noisy Falcon release at the Black Valley Party in Norway.
‘Surt’, a Black Metal themed demo, was well-received into first place in the old school category. It’s not system breaking, but has a great atmosphere and a perfect sound track.
You can find it here - https://demozoo.org/productions/394163/
The impossible dream, Duke Nukem on the ST!?
When I first caught sight of this, my first thought was “What witchcraft is this NOW?” After all, we have had brave attempts at a ‘Doom’ revival on ST hardware, technically accessible as a slideshow on a stock system, sort of coming into its own as more upgrades are applied.
It turns out, this is not about THAT Duke Nukem (3d from 1996.)
But it is something like THIS Duke Nukem 1, from 1991.
Neil Rackett has undertaken a port of that MS-DOS favourite under the Freenukum engine. Maybe one day, an Atari freak, with delusions of A.I boosted grandeur will attempt the 3D release. With a ‘Make and drink a cup of tea between frame updates’ recreation?
His Github can be found here - https://github.com/neilrackett/atarist-freenukum
Just one last thing to finish with..
Not an Atari release, but you may be flabbergasted to find out that someone has ported the legendary FTL game ‘Oids’ to the Spectrum Next.
Yes, that Oids, the thrust and rotating dream from our childhood. It’s not Atari, but it is Atari-adjacent.
Those of us with ZX Spectrum Next’s that have done nothing but posed prettily in their packaging, may at last have an excuse to get them connected up. (Looks in the mirror guiltily!)
This story can be found on Indie Retro News -
https://www.indieretronews.com/2026/08/oids-pc-brilliant-thrust-like-game.html
Conclusion
And that is quite enough catching-up to do. I hope others are regaining motivation as the long hot summer must draw to a close sometime. (Please?)
I’m looking forward to regaining some sense of normality with my ‘new’ normal, to resume being the productive member of the Atariscne.org team that I was.
CiH - August 2026.
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