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                              DBUG MENU # 171
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system... Atari ST/STe, RGB

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It is quite a long time ago  that I saw the  last compact  disk that  deals with
games on the ST and if I'm right it was a TUMULT menu.  TUMULT vanished from the
screen after a bunch  of quite nice  menus and it  seemed as this part of the cd
making scene died out but  suddenly another band striked  back, featuring a well
known name, DBUG, former running also as AUTOMATION...

Yeah, I can see the eyes of the little cracked games players blinking, hehe.

It took quite  a long time but  finally they're  back with a new menu, namely no
171, and this after a break of about 8 years (gosh...). So I copied the MSA file
to my ST, created  a disk and started the journey back into the times of cracked
games  menus, as  names  like  POMPEY PIRATES, SYNDICATE, PURE ENERGY  or FUZION
ruled... Yawn.

The menu starts  with the usual anti virus boot sectors and finally ends up with
an intro/menu screen, remembering to the old times, with scrollers, overscan and
stuff. Not the thing that impresses us nowadays, but a thing that belongs to any
menu disk at all.



Old school...

Menu 171 features  4 games including  a few docfiles. But after a short survie I
was less impressed since the disk is just stuffed  with 3 PD ranging  in the age
from 1o to 2 years and one cracked one, already 7 years old as well.

The leading  thing on  the disk  is the  football game "TEAM" in the New Seasons
edition from IMPACT SOFTWARE. This game was one of the few commercial  STE games
and one of the last commercial game releases on the ST/STe at all. It was called
to be one of the best  soccer  games  on the Atari machines, using the STE techs
with hardware scrolling  and DMA sound. But since  I never was that impressed by
football games, this one didn't impressed me much.

The next thing on the  disk is "HEARTLAND 2ooo", the patched version of the good
STOSSER SOFTWARE jum'n'run game, featuring  the Dizzy  like hero  and is  nearly
completely free of violence. The TOS CREW did a good job in patching the game to
make it  run on any ST and Falcon. I liked  the game since it is well done for a
PD game.

Ok, we're going on with "HERMAN" and  something popped  up in my mind, "HERMAN"?
Yes, this  is a boulder dash clone and was also released on a compact disk of my
old band, .tnb., but as I remember about 8 or 9 years back. I have to admit that
the game isn't bad, featuring  nice grafix, sound  and good action, but it's far
too old nowadays and  I  think it appeared  on many other compact  disx of other
groups before as well.

The last object is "MINE SWEEPER", this time  in the version  of CREAM, released
back in 1993 as the first real CREAM release ever. It features nice musix by TAO
and well pixeled grafix by A.-t- but  since it is available  from the CREAM page
for download since some years  and it was spreaded  very early, I think the most
people will have it already...



The last feature are a few readme's and tips...

So what else? This  disk is  just an attempt to  collect some stuff  to a series
that wasn't released under the DBUG label so far. The challenge of the old times
to smash  the latest and  as much games as  possible onto one disk are definitly
over. There is no competition anymore and there isn't much to pack anymore since
the game scene on  the ST/STe is nearly dead nowadays. So the sense of such cd's
is a bit doubtful in my eyes, the only sense is surely  to complete some series,
to offer  something for die hard  collectors  and emulation  gamers. Die hard ST
gamers, if  there are still  some of them out there, have discovered those games
already many years back for sure and surely don't have that big interest in them
at all...

_.tSCc.__________________________________________________________moondog_o9/2k2_