Atari ST - Gaming Heaven or Hell? Quiz

Answer: Kick Off

One of the great things about "Kick Off" was the variety of ways in which you could score goals. It played beautifully, and you could still happily wile away the hours on it now. The game also incorporated different referees. One of them would brandish a red card with every foul. Another would let every foul go unpunished. This game, and especially "Kick Off 2", clearly ruled the roost until the introduction of "Sensible Soccer".

"Italy 1990" was a truly awful tie in with the World Cup. It was possible to walk it into the net, and against opposition that was slower than your team, you could do this again, and again and again. Yawn!

The aim of "Liverpool FC" was seemingly to hit it about 3 yards wide of the net. Apparently this results in a goal!

"Microprose Soccer" was quite a cute game with an interesting indoor mode. However, in the outdoor mode, if you took the ball to the corner flag and triggered the opposition keeper, nobody could tackle you for the rest of the half. Handy if you want to hold on to that 1-0, but fundamentally flawed. You even got to play Oman!

Answer: Klax

"Klax" was great fun, and extremely challenging. There is at least one drawback that the ST is perhaps responsible for. When you were inundated with tiles on certain levels, there was definitely a problem with lag. I used to have to work out which warps I needed to use in order to avoid these particular levels.

"Night Shift" is an intriguing little puzzle game that I never really got to grips with. You had to ensure that a machine was operating correctly by lighting fires, repairing burst pipes, that sort of thing. The aim was to make a certain number of dolls of the right type and colour, by switching conveyor belts etc. Lots of jumping about, the inevitable falling, and pink storm troopers.

"Puzznic" was, as the name suggests, a puzzle game. You had to shift blocks into the right places so that they would match, and hence, disappear. I remember this being a little awkward with the responsiveness at times, though that could easily have been my dodgy zipstick.

"Yolanda" was based on the twelve labours of Hercules. You'd be given a random labour, and have about four or five screens to get through. You had to jump on lots of ropes, invisible platforms and avoid some obstacles. Infuriating!

Answer: Lemmings

I love the tunes on "Lemmings". The concept was so original at the time that it will undoubtedly always remain a classic. The Atari has to make its mark though. On Taxing Level 3, you are really pushed for time. When you have 100 lemmings on the screen, your bridge builder starts to slow down. Great news though. This can be solved by you hovering over a part of the screen that doesn't have the 100 lemmings it in. This gives you an extra 10 seconds or so!

In "A Rock Star Ate My Hamster", you could choose characters like Crispy Rind (Chrissie Hynde) to be in your band. Your aim was to get to the top of the charts, which almost never happened, as your rock star would invariably be killed in some freak accident.

"Kid Gloves" is a basic platformer that you have a tendency to run out of keys on. You could go to a shop to purchase extra keys. However, when I did this, they took the money and ran. As if it wasn't challenging enough!

"Volfied" is one of those games where you have to draw a line from the edge of the screen, until you clear a certain percentage of the area. The difference this time is that there is a massive creature in the middle that follows you around, as well a plethora of power-ups available.

Answer: Fantasy World Dizzy

The "Dizzy" games were a very popular series. How many games do you get to play as an egg? You think you've got to the end of this game, and then it tells you that you have to collect all fifty coins. Cue the non-hilarity of figuring out which is the one that you've missed.

"Leisure Suit Larry" is one for the adults. Depending on how well you answer the pre-game questions - you need to 'prove' your age - will determine how much you can see of the lady when she takes her top off, whilst you are spying on her through the binoculars.

"Lure of the Temptress" was a popular adventure game. Unfortunately, it featured one major bug. In the blacksmith's was a tinderbox. Sometimes when you loaded the game up it was there, sometimes it wasn't. If it wasn't you had to start again! The game's worth a play for the entertaining jokes in the pub.

"Monkey Island" is one of the all time classics of the point and click genre. Featuring the swashbuckling Guybrush Threepwood, is has spawned many sequels, and continues to give new gamers a barrel of laughs.

Answer: Rainbow Islands

"Rainbow Islands" is one of my all time favourites. Finally defeating the dreaded vampire is probably my favourite success story. But apart from the bosses, the game is such good fun to play! Firing rainbows, killing plastic water guns, and listening to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" at super speed - great fun. And so colourful!

"Rick Dangerous" is a not too thinly disguised play on good old Indiana Jones. You start by getting chased by a boulder, and have to negotiate lots of traps and baddies. It also spawned a similar playing sequel. Good fun and very playable. Wahhhh!

Lots of cute creatures, pink hair and fairies help to make "Rod Land" a really charming game. This time though, you can bring a friend along! You have to kill the baddies by whacking them over your head three times. Only be careful not to hit your friend on the head with one of them! Yep, co-op play where you can kill each other.

I can hear the theme tunes to "Titus the Fox" even now. "Titus" was a decent platform romp, even if the scrolling was a little suspect. One major problem I had was trying to drop down on to a platform that I couldn't see, because it didn't scroll down far enough.

Answer: Cannon Fodder

"Cannon Fodder" involved you taking your little men around, trying to kill other little people, whilst not getting them shot. The Amiga version had a neat little hill where all your dead people were buried once they had died. This was conspicuously missing from the Atari version.

I'm sure "Dragon's Breath" is a deep game once you understand what is going on. You can hatch dragon's eggs, buy ingredients to mix up powerful potions to improve their attributes, and send them to breathe fire on poor civilians.

"Harlequin" was an interesting little platformer where you, strangely enough, play a harlequin. You can even turn into a fish. I like it for the music, which I found quite hypnotic.

"The Chaos Engine" involved you playing a guy like a thug or a brigand, and shooting lots of ugly creatures. It was by the Bitmap Brothers, who were responsible for classics like "Xenon 2", "Gods" and "Magic Pockets".

Answer: Onslaught

Before there was "Streetfighter 2", there was "HKM" or "Human Killing Machine". Opponents included, wait for it, a dog and a circus master. No green Brazilian with the ability to cause electric shocks resides here!

Apparently you can now download "Onslaught" for the iPhone OS and Xbox 360. But as I'm writing a quiz on Atari games, you've probably worked out that I'm behind the times!

"Shadow of the Beast" is the classic, 'play the Amiga version' game. The scrolling on the Atari was painfully slow. As if the game wasn't difficult enough as it is! I found a great clip on YouTube illustrating the difference between all the versions - a recommended watch!

Lord knows what's going on in "Weird Dreams". Man eating roses, killer bees and that was about as far as I got!

Answer: Menace

"Menace" is a standard fare side scrolling shoot-em-up. In the version what I had, you had to hold down the fire button in between levels or it would crash. Or something like that.

"Anarchy" was a side scrolling shooter also by Psygnosis. Apart from shooting lots of things, you had to guard your ten bases at the bottom of the screen. A number of games have used this format including "Starray" and "Blaster".

"P-47" is another side scrolling shoot-em-up. This used to crash randomly in between levels.

"R-Type" is one of the most famous side scrolling shooters of all time. It's had a sequel, and was even worthy of being imported on to the SNES. The pink guardian at the end of the first level must be one of the most recognisable big bosses in computer games of this era.

Answer: Nebulus

"Nebulus" is a genius concept. Hard, but maybe I'm just clumsy. You played a green frog like creature, and used to get knocked off the tower by a pink spinning thing.

"Beyond the Ice Palace" only has three levels. Easy, you'd think? Not a chance! When you hear that you're given nine lives to take on this challenge, it will give you some idea of how often you die. At one point, if you lose one life, you're pretty certain to lose a few more in a flawed bottleneck.

In "Black Lamp", you play a jester that has to go around collecting different coloured lamps to place in a cabinet. All this whilst getting permanently shot at! It was a maze and I just kept getting lost.

"Impossible Mission 2" is one of my favourite games of all time. You go up and down an elevator in eight different towers. In each tower there are a series of rooms in which you need to search all of the objects in order to find numbers and equipment. I could never get the hang of jumping on the springs!

Answer: Supercars 2

After each race in "Supercars", you got given a multiple choice quiz. These took the form of interviews with the likes of reporters, charities, sponsors and driving examiners. They would fine you tons if you gave them the wrong answer. Tell them what they want to hear!

"Drivin' Force" is probably the single least enjoyable game that I've ever played. I found it horrible to look at and horrible to play. You fall off the track when you are clearly on it. Gruesome!

The "Lotus" series was really popular at the time. One of the great things about the third version was RECS. You'd type in any nine letter code and it would create a new track for you.

When you loaded "Nitro" up, it used the same loading picture as was on the front of my Fighting Fantasy "Freedom Fighter" gamebook. I played the Amiga version a few years ago and it was completely different. On that version the screen went left, right, up and down rather than just up and down. However, I found the Amiga game was way too easy. So which version is better?