Unreal - Atari ST / STE

Channel:

Hundgirrid Channel

Subscribers:

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Published on February 11, 2024 5:30:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b1y--sia1E

Game:

Unreal (1990)

Duration: 4:35

156 views

10

In this video, Unreal, released in 1991 for the Atari ST by Ubi Soft.
[DISCLAIMER] This game's description contains a heavy rant, proceed with caution.
A dark lord kidnapped your damsel and you, strong barbarian, must go on a journey to free her. The game is divided into 2 main sub-games: a "Space Harrier-like" shoot'em up viewed from behind where you ride a dragon and must collect bonuses while avoiding dangers and a side flip-screen scrolling slow arcade session where you have to kill everything and avoid traps.
Good news, the graphics are awesome, fast, detailed with well animated sprites. Bad news the game is nearly unplayable. The first section is so fast that, even if the game sends you messages about dangers, you haven't the time to read them that you are already hit by something. Just smash the fire button faster than you can and give little movements to the joystick, otherwise you'll travel from a screen border to the other in no time. The second session is a bit slow, with an annoying flip-screen that prevents you from seeing incoming dangers and enemies that rapidly deplete your energy. The sprite collisions are odd; sometimes you're hit by something you avoided. The controls are laggy and unresponsive making the game frustrating. The fantastic music and sound fx present on the Amiga version are gone leaving an awful chiptune and nothing more.
[RANT ALERT]: IMHO my thoughts for this game, like many other late games, can be summarized this way: [Programmers] Hi world, we spent a lot of time making an awesome looking game for Amiga with fantastic music (and meh gameplay I must add). [ST users] You forgot to make the ST/STE version. [Programmers] Oh don't worry in the last 10 minutes we PORTED the game to the ST for you to "enjoy" but we don't have time/money/will to polish it or use the STE hardware, because we focused 99% on the Amiga. [ST users] Nobody buys the game. [Programmers] See the Amiga market is much more profitable than the ST one; we were right not to spend too much resources on it.
Here you'll find intro with (ruined?) music and gameplay.

All footage taken from original hardware machines and upscaled to 1080P.

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