aoakley.com
Whilst a university student in the early 1990s, I wrote several Atari ST games which were published on cover discs of various magazines including Atari ST User and Atari ST Review. These weren't boxed big-name games, they were bedroom coder affairs which today would be considered "casual" games, or at least they would if they weren't already considered "retro".
I have now granted all my Atari ST software into the public domain. There is no need to contact me, you may use them in any way you see fit without any further permission, but you're welcome to email me: andrew@aoakley.com . Whilst I do still occasionally receive shareware registrations from the old postal address, I am unable to post registered disk versions of the games in return; the registered versions are available to download here including all the exclusive extras like level editors, level randomisers etc. Registration monies will be returned together with a print-out of this page.
These are all zipped .st files. They were programmed in STOS.
The files were taken from my original master floppy disks (except Ballpark, for which my originals were unreadable, instead I present an image found circulating on various retro scene websites, which as far as I can tell is a pefect copy of Budgie UK disk 85). These files have been tested using the Hatari emulator and will almost certainly work with both a real Atari ST and almost any emulator out there. I recommend using TOS 1.04 but they should work with any 1.x TOS ROM. Enable 1MB memory if not enabled by default, as at least one of these games gives you extra sound samples if you have the headroom.
If you have an actual Atari ST, the you can write .st files to a floppy disk using FloImg under MS-Windows or the dd command under Linux/Mac.
Released as licenceware through Budgie UK. Made a few quid every month for a few years.
The game played like a cross between Marble Madness and Pac-Man. You could only change direction when you reached a set of arrows. There were also filter arrows which would send the monsters one way but the player another; collecting keys changed these arrows and allowed you to kill the monsters by forcing them down a hole. A nice mix of arcade gameplay and puzzle; despite this not being my biggest earner nor the one most people remember me for, I think this one has the best design of my Atari ST games.
A puzzle game. This is the original version, which I sold to Atari ST User magazine, who had it on their cover disc in 1991. I got paid quite well for it, as I recall. The object was to turn all 9x9 tiles the same colour, using three 3x3 templates. Starts easy, gets hard quickly, but after a while you can figure out a method no matter how complex the board is. I also released a charity fundraising version which had a level randomiser.
Square Off. First version of this, I sold to Goodmans disc library in 1990. Second version I sold to Atari ST Review for their cover disc in 1991, with an offer of sending people a level editor if they registered it for a fiver. I still occasionally get shareware registration fees for this twenty years later, for five quid I'd send people a level editor. I think the last few registrations I had to return the cheques uncashed as for many years all my ST stuff was sat in my parents' attic. Then finally there was the Budgie UK version ("Rosetta Stoned Re-mix", pictured) in 1992 which included an entirely new set of 50 levels plus the level editor. Former school friend Malcolm spent a solid weekend with the level editor creating the new levels for the remix, I ran out of time for the publishing deadline; I think I was due back at college and had some coursework to do.
This game earned me well over a thousand pounds in shareware registrations, which was a lot for student in the early 90s, and especially for something I'd have knocked up for a laugh anyway. It seemed that offering a level editor was a real draw to encourage people to pay for the game. Five pounds also seemed to be a nice price point.
I intend to make my other Atari ST software available on this page, as my spare time permits. I think this comprises of a quiz construction kit, a disc magazine construction kit and a results system for village marathons.
I have no further plans to write any more Atari ST software. I may consider a re-write of Flipped for a mobile or casual PC platform, but unfortunately I don't have much spare time. I now manage software developers and the software development lifecycle as my day-job. I also occasionally do some hobby programming in Perl, PHP and Bash, notably under Ubuntu Linux.
Some source code disks still survive, I may put these online at some point.
If you would like to be notified when significant new content is added to this page, just email me: andrew@aoakley.com
