Beats of Rage Falcon 030..

By Thadoss of Dune

Dateline: - December 2012, Gdansk and we're at Sillyventure 2012, where Felice says, "There's a couple of games for the Falcon and one of them is rather good!" He was proven correct, as the 'rather good' game turned out to be a thrill ride of hard core beat-em-up action, the titular 'Beats of Rage'.

At the time of the party, I had no awareness of it being a port, and thrilled to the bold and bright console game graphics, seemingly lifted from a high end Sega game and implausibly sliding around smoothly on a standard Falcon 030 screen. A slightly cooler and later look finds out a bit about the long back story of the original Beats of Rage. This does not detract in any way from what Thadoss has undertaken, as I'll explain later.

The long and glorious history.

Beats of Rage or BOR originated as a freeware game on the DOS PeeCee, inspired by Sega's classic 'Streets of Rage' game. The outfit responsible was the possibly aptly named Senile Team. They have been active mostly as a Sega Dreamcast developer, and are currently working on a successor to Beats of Rage, 'Age of the Beast'. BOR was one of the great underground success stories, this has been due to its ease of portability. Apart from the obvious candidates at the time, such as the Dreamcast and PSX 2, it has also made it to Linux and Windowze flavoured PeeCees, Game Park consoles, and even Nintendo Wii and PlayStation Portable.

Now it seems that it is the Falcon 030's turn.

Just another port, or a bit more to it than that?

Of course, with the difference in hardware performance, there's more to a Falcon port than a simple recompiling of the original source code.

Thadoss has hard coded this in 68030 assembler and worked really hard to get this to fit within the confines of a 4 megabyte standard Falcon 030. His method of making the huge sprites work is detailed somewhere on Atari forum. It also appears that he has used some of the original game graphics, but has hand drawn other parts. The graphics from BOR have a muddy origin, as these were based on the game 'King of Fighters', whilst Thadoss has used characters from another game called 'Paintown'. Musically, it has borrowed from various people, and plays back through BitMaster's DSP module player.

There is quite a bit of data flying around here. around 20 MB of hard disk space is needed. Indeed due to its hugeness, one of the in-game characters can't be selected if you're running on 4 MB of RAM only!

Thadoss has managed to hit a sweet spot for compatibility across many of the different Falcon configurations. As well as on standard Falcy's, it has been tested on the Falcon CT60, and also verified to work on the Falcon Centurbo 2 (by me.) Surely some useful tips for other software producers for the Falcon?

How does it play?

The plot is very simple, you are the last member of your family killed off by a gang. To avenge them, you set forth to battle through nine levels, with thirteen varieties of enemy, as one of three possible players.

We're presented with some bold and attractive title and splash screens. A jaunty funky tune starts up and we're ready to play.

The hugeness of the in-game sprites is first demonstrated with the larger than life character selections screen. You have three options, the rather feisty Mandy, the very fighty Kula, or the tank-like Max.

Having decided to go with Max, it's time to wade through some serious fighting. Control inputs can come from the keyboard or a handily plugged in joystick. The in-game graphics are as huge as those seen in character selection, Max seems to almost fill the 320 x 240 window as he goes along. A variety of backgrounds scroll past, Hanna Barbera repeating scenery style. These are nicely drawn and keeping with the game. There is even a hint of background parallax scrolling on some levels. Each level has a suitably themed tune to go with it.

On your travels, you encounter a variety of thugs with different abilities and weapons. The motorcycles can be taken out with one firm punch, others will need a lot more attention. I think there are some special moves in there, but so far, I've generally hamfisted my way through the lower levels and that approach has been good enough. A little power meter shows how you're doing, and your opponents, as and when they appear. There are morsels of food to pick up on your travels which replenish energy levels and random money bags, which may have an ulterior purpose, but I've not got that far yet.

Progressing through the levels for the first three or four of them is surprisingly easy. A little bit of ultra violence is strangely invigorating! However, by the time you get to the 'Sleazy Bar', a sheer weight of numbers bears down on you, and due to carelessness earlier on, it's game over and time to enter high score table Valhalla. Overall, the feel of the game can be described as simplistic but satisfying.

Comparing the standard Falcon and Centurbo 2. Responsiveness is good across both platforms, but may play a bit more quickly on the latter of these.

So to the end..

Thadoss may well be looking to further develop the game engine and add in more 'stuff', which could include extra characters and more gameplay. The original BOR engine has proven to be infinitely adaptable, with many custom 'mods' for the game with different styles of graphics created by third parties for it. I'd be very interested, along with the rest of the Falcon scene, to see what he's up to next.

CiH - For Mag! - Oct 2013.

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