Finally got it to work! God bless that weird-ass Mushca site. See, you can download individual files, and he or she... probably he... went to all the trouble to make Basic games into .xex files, or an executable version with your Atari emulator... I forget where to download that. And so, now that the worst year in human history is almost over, time to dive into one last game for the year: J.D. Casten's probably masterpiece, Rebound. But Biffdrop's probably a close second, if just for the name. All the old Atari-heads out there know, but those who didn't grow up in that era won't understand. Many moons ago, we used to have to type in games from magazines to play in the Basic computing language. Sure, there were cartridges, but the hard way was more fun. Fun and edja-ma-cational. But Rebound has got it all: Activision-esque display list interrupts for vertical ribbons of color, multiple fonts, and using not one, but TWO player/missiles for one avatar. All in the magic of the Basic-machine language hybrid.
The multiple fonts is the real sneaky one. This is something that may have been used in MS-DOS for text-only games in PC clones, but was definitely a part of the programming lexicon for the Atari. See, what Casten did was use six different fonts to cycle through for movement of the bad guys. He used a player/missile for the good guy's avatar for an "easy" way to detect collisions. Some more enterprising programmer might have been able to get away with a text-based avatar to move through the maze... but that just wouldn't have been as fun. Also, you have to take it easy on the poor suckers who spend the three hours re-typing these damn games in, thereby not fulfilling their English homework requirements. Those précises don't write themselves, you know!
I also downloaded Rebound Contest, but ... let's face it, it's just not as fun. But that's how big Casten was: industrial version of Risky Rescue, nightmare version of Biffdrop. Alternate versions of his games! But why take my word for it?
Biffdrop at Atarimania, J.D. Casten in general at Atarimania
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Mushca - Under Construction
Mushca - All Atari 'R' games
Dos... sorry, DOS Gamers link to Atari Emulator
