First DM?

Post by **PaulH** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:29 am

People defended whatever they happened to own! My Dad bought 'em all! I loved the art progs on the ST, such as Degas Elite. You could load up the graphics from some games and change them! When I was 8, that was cool...

I specifically remember my Dad buying CSB when it was released, and it had a free coin in the box.

Des · Post by **Des** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:52 am

It was the ST for me too. Played CSB for hours with my housemates, and we were hooked on Megalomania too. My first computer was a Speccy, then an Amiga (it was my mate's ST) then a PC. I thought the ST and Amiga were both great machines and never really argued the toss about them, but I was one of those convinced that the Amiga was better than the PC in many ways, especially games in the days of DOS. It wasn't until the advent of DirectX that the PC really became a serious games platform.

Froud · Post by **Froud** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:58 am

Degas Elite was brilliant. Also Deluxe Paint2 which had really excellent animation features. BTW I forgot Carrier Command in my list of games. A true classic. Anyone remember that ?

Froud · Post by **Froud** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:59 am

Oh yeah I had that coin as well Paul. Wish it hadn't got lost. Wonder if any one still has thiers.

Post by **Ameena** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 4:09 am

I, too, have a Gor coin. It's in my room. I also have a "map" thing of CSB...well it's more of a kind of circle thing with a bunch of images in ot like dragons and stuff but I think it's meant to be a kind of representative map...thingy. I'll have another look at it some time soon...

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 10:56 am

I think I still have these goodies (the coin and the "map") somewhere in my attic, where my Amiga copy of CSB still lies. I was also one of those guys saying that the Amiga was far superior than the ST, though, of course, I never even got my hands on an ST (I still haven't until this day). A friend of mine at school had an ST, and we often debated which machine was better, but we kept it rather friendly most of the time. The same thing then happened again when I got my Super NES and the Sega Mega Drive was the new public enemy (I bought a Mega Drive years later on a flea market).

I became involved in gaming at Christmas 1989, when I got a used C64. I spent almost all my free time playing the games that came along with it. I particularly loved Maniac Mansion, but couldn't get very far. So I found out that a certain magazine called Power Play had several hints on how to solve the game. I bought the magazine and loved it (it also happened to be the one with the Starkiller comic that featured Trantor where I have my name from). The magazine made references to Dungeon Master again and again - they gave Xenomorph a good review, but also said it wasn't as good as DM. They featured a special about RPGs and said that no other game has such an atmospheric dungeon as DM. I really was very curious, so I got the game after getting an Amiga for Christmas 1990. And I agree with you Froud, this game still is the best and most enjoyable for me, and probably always will be.

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:34 pm

ST was faster and had better sound, amiga made up with more colors/better graphics for that. but since most games (like DM) were developed for both machines parallel, neither of them could really use its advantage. next to the very atmospheric (

) footsteps and the map in csb, both versions were more or less the same. the ST had no intro/ending, though, since the discs were too small (DD = 720 kb, amiga had HD = 1,44 MB).

Post by **linflas** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:42 pm

HD disks on Amiga ? i don't think there have been any. CSB was on 2 disks : the game disk and the utility disk and i remember seeing an intro for CSB on Atari.

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 1:52 pm

As far as I recall, the Amiga DD disks had a capacity of 880 KB, and both DM and CSB used DD disks. And I think the CSB intro for the ST version was much shorter than the Amiga version.

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 2:52 pm

Yup, Trantor's got this one correct. Standard amiga drives could only read disks of 880Kb. You can get HD (high density) floppy drives for Amiga but they were more expensive and never really took off.

I have such a large collection of DM stuff, but still only one Gor coin from original Amiga CSB. I got another coin recently though with one of the Jap versions.

Suule · Post by **Suule** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 3:59 pm

Froud wrote:Amigas Pfft. No MIDI ports and didn't you have to have a start up disc ?

Arrgggh Leave it, leave it. It was sad then and a bloody sight sadder 20 years on. Whats the matter with me !

A1000 had to. Later amigas didn't.

Froud · Post by **Froud** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 6:52 pm

One real bugbear playing DM on an original 520 ST was the loading times. Took a while to load from scratch but that wasn't a real problem. The annoying part was when using a staircase. Each level had to load from the disc and took quite a long time, about 15 seconds or so as I recall. Irritating if using a staircase to hit monsters then retreat. This ceased to be the case when played on the later 1040 ST.

P.S I wanna gor coin (whiney voice) Im going to rake out every box in the garden shed, just in case it's still lurking there somewhere.

Post by **PaulH** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:14 pm

My lovely Amiga4000... sold it to my ex so I could buy hifi equipment.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:32 pm

Not as bad as some of the staircases on EOTB! Like four disck swaps later!

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:14 pm

"Maps are for wimps"???? I made my own maps by hand using graph paper. We used to call that "hardcore."

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:15 pm

True Beo, I remember playing EOB1 with only a single drive... Those stairs in the Drow levels (7-9) were a real pain! It got a lot better once I had my second external disk drive.

Froud · Post by **Froud** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 8:18 pm

I bought my maps at an Atari show at Alexandra Palace. Which makes me an ultra wimp I guess !

I was desperate for a retort to smug Amiga users !

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:08 pm

We are immune to retorts, protected by our shield of smugness and even able to waft gently above all petty comments at higher smugness levels

Sera · Post by **Sera** » Wed Oct 12, 2005 9:38 pm

or mabye it's beo on the wolfnip again o.O

Sigi · Post by **Sigi** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 2:41 pm

sucinum wrote:ST was faster and had better sound, amiga made up with more colors/better graphics for that. but since most games (like DM) were developed for both machines parallel, neither of them could really use its advantage. next to the very atmospheric ( ) footsteps and the map in csb, both versions were more or less the same. the ST had no intro/ending, though, since the discs were too small (DD = 720 kb, amiga had HD = 1,44 MB).

Faster?? Better sound?????

Both not true -- especially not the statement about the sound. I am not talking about the MIDI port here.

In fact, the Amiga did have an operating system that deserves this name and was way ahead of its time back then. That's the reason why we didn't take the Atari folks even seriously. How we laughed at that funny Falcon OS when is came out -- ridiculous.

The real problem were the PC users and evil evil Microsoft. They wouldn't have a clue what crap OS they were using and some of them were just to silly to be converted. Now that was a real problem.

In a way I'm missing these heated debates from back then. It was frustrating but you had this cozy user community feeling that welded everybody together that much.

Nowadays it has all gone mainstream. I just use Linux and Windows for playing games and see it from a pracmatic viewpoint. Can't be bothered with any more religious wars. The people who really are competent just know and the others I don't care about.

Sigh. I got rambling, but we are off-topic anyway for a while now.

--Sigi

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 4:37 pm

fanatic - i'm outta here

Post by **Sophia** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 8:23 pm

Suule wrote:A1000 had to. Later amigas didn't.

I kind of liked it.

You could do an OS upgrade without having to fiddle around in hardware! (Just like now...

)

Tom Hatfield · Post by **Tom Hatfield** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 8:41 pm

I think "zealot" is the proper term.

Sigi · Post by **Sigi** » Sat Oct 15, 2005 11:30 pm

LOL, actually it still seems pretty natural to me.

--Sigi

Froud · Post by **Froud** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:42 am

The ST was the greatest. We all know it just some are still to admit it.

The Atari 1040 ST ws the computer of choice for top recording artists such as B.B. King, Mick Fleetwood, The Pointer Sisters, Dave Mason, Tangerine Dream, and Jay Ferguson. It produced the number 1 hit Vienna by Ultravox

It is still used today by numerous musicians including Fatboy Slim!

But it is really silly to keep arguing on about it 20 years on. So lets just leave it at that.

Lol Ever the optimist me !

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 9:56 am

I very much doubt your list of ST users especially Vienna by Ultravox. That came out in 1980!

Froud · Post by **Froud** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:15 pm

Hmmm.... That was from memory, could have sworn it was right ! The others are definitely right though.

Also we should all remember. DM was written for the ST. Everyone should be made to chant everyday

"No ST- No DM"

Froud · Post by **Froud** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:41 pm

Twas Midge Ure from Ultravox who was the Atari user. "Answers to Nothing" was produced with it among others.

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 12:42 pm

would be interesting to know when where that dm hype started.

was the ST version /or the amiga version...that made the people go like heck! it is a good game! - could be both!(Gambit, you know sth. about that?) I mean it takes a while, even for a game like dm to get known...and back at that time even more!

So the ST version made it possible that there was one for the AMiGA in the first place ; or it could be that they planned to make other versions while doing the ST one!(took approx. 3 years to develop).

finally , a draw between AMIGA and AtariST!! Strange enough there is a total of 98%!!

Trantor · Post by **Trantor** » Sun Oct 16, 2005 3:02 pm

As far as I remember, DM was a major hit when it came out on the ST. Graphically, technically and gameplay-wise, the game was years ahead of its time, so almost every gaming magazine gave it very good reviews. I have no idea if the Amiga version was planned right from the start or if the decision was made based upon the success of the ST version, though.

Dungeon Master Forum

First DM?

When was your first time playing DM?