Kolmik (Deluxe Edition) review.

Kolmik is the new Atari ST game from Paradize and as you would have guessed it’s another puzzle game which this time has the player create columns and lines of same colour tiles (depending on game mode).

Presentation: The presentation of the game is quite good actually with a lovely Paradize logo displayed and a nice mod being played at the beginning, while the game logo is one of the nicest I’ve seen. The game options screen is very informative and it includes the game type selection, the game rules while the setup screen allows you to select between music and sound effects on/off and the difficulty level.

The Kolmik options screen

Graphics: The game graphics are very reminiscent of the graphics used in the Paradize previous offering Znax with the usual for the group predominance of purrple. They work very well and are easy on the eye and after all this is a puzzle game. The colours do fit very well.

Sound: This is really the strongest part of the game with some lovely tunes from DMA-Sc. There are separate tunes for each game mode, for almost every screen and game mode and though music is in the ear of the beholder I like all of them very much. The sound effects are minimalistic but they do complement the game very well.

The classic Kolmik screen.

Gameplay: There are two game modes, classic kolmik and square frenzy. In the classic mode you get 3 rows of 12 tiles each and you need to drag them left or right so as to make columns of the same colour. You have a limited amount of moves and for each column completed you get an extra move. In the square frenzy mode you have a square of 8×8 tiles and you need to complete one row or column of the same colour. Again you have a limited number of moves which get renewed once you complete a row or column. The game is controlled with the mouse and three methods are used, a drag and drop method where you drag and drop a line left or right, the use of arrows left or right of the tile area and the keypad. Square frenzy only supports drag and drop. I personally prefer using the arrows but the drag and drop method isn’t that bad. It’s not that good either.

My biggest complaint though is that it’s not really addictive. While you get used to the controls I find little point in the game. I can’t really point my finger at one thing I find dull in Kolmik, perhaps it’s its slow nature or the fact that I’ve matched colours on tiles so many other times before but it really didn’t do it for me. I am sure though that others will love it and disagree with me right here in the comment section.

Grades:

Graphics: 3.5/5

Sound: 4.5/5

Gameplay: 2.5/5

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Wiz2600 – an Atari 2600 emulator for the GP2X Wiz

While browsing an archive of available software for the opensource handheld console GP2X Wiz [1] [2], I stumbled upon Wiz2600 [3].

Wiz2600

This is an emulator for the Atari 2600 or Atari VCS console. It enables the user to play Atari 2600 games on the GP2X Wiz handheld.

The emulator is available as opensource [4].

Installation on the GP2X Wiz is very simple. Just put the wiz2600 folder inside your game folder on the SD card or the builtin NAND Flash and leave the ini file there. Place all game rom images into the roms folder and launch the emulator.

First the user sees a configuration menu. Here various options as screen settings, audio and joystick can be  configured. Select the game rom image you want to play and start the emulation. Now the GP2X Wiz will behave like the Atari 2600 and you can play the game. pressing MENU will bring back the configuration menu.

The 2600 functions like RESET and SELECT are mapped to the fire buttons, the directional pad works as the joystick.

From what I tried sofar, the games works. I could play Space Invaders, Jr. Pacman and Mrs Pacman with Wiz2600 well. Only slight problem seems to be the sound. It sounds quite different to what I know from my original Atari 2600jr. The onscreen color scheme also looks a bit off but it does not break the fun.

With Wiz2600 you can easily enjoy Atari 2600 titles on your GP2X Wiz. A musthave for all owners of the GP2X Wiz handheld!

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Links

1. http://dl.openhandhelds.org/cgi-bin/wiz.cgi
2. About the GP2X Wiz handheld at http://www.gp2xwiz.com/
3. Download Wiz2600
4. Wiz2600 homepage

JayMSA – multifeatured disk image handling for Atari ST

Even if you are not deep into emulation, sooner or later you will stumble upon disk images in .MSA or .ST format. Basically those files are similar to ZIP archives or ISO images. they do not only hold files and there directory structure, but the exact layout of tracks on the original floppy disk is preserved.

JayMSA

JayMSA by Jaysoft [1] is free to download and use. The utility runs on all Atari STs and compatibles and fully utilizes the GEM desktop and is multitasking friendly.

With JayMSA one cannot only read disk images and save their contents as .MSA or .ST disk images ready for use with known ST emulators, but it also can write those images back onto disk. It also allows to extract files from a disk image. This feature is particular handy for hard drive users who do not want to run software from a floppy. Basically this saves the need to fully write the disk image onto a floppy disk.

Imaging a disk is simple with JayMSA. Just put the floppy you want to image into your drive, use the “Disk” menu to select the destination drive and click “Compress”. In the next dialogue select the options you want to employ for imaging

. If you are using TOS, the CRC feature seems to be buggy. It crashed for me in the past. But if you disable it, everything will work nicely.

You can select different target formats with MSA and ST being the most reasonable. Disk images in .ST format are not packed by default so I don’t recommend using them. After selecting where you want the fresh disk image to be stored, the program asks for confirmation and begins the imaging process.

JayMSA imaging a disk

When the imaging process has finished, JayMSA will list the contents of the new disk image in its main window. This will work as long as there is a FAT filesystem on the image. Software that loads from raw tracks will most likely only display some garbage here.

In this dialogue files can be selected, viewed with a configured text viewer from within the active disk image and ofcourse, extracted on their own to disk. Handy if you want to copy a single file from an entire disk image to your hard disk. Just click “Extract” in the “File” menu.

JayMSA - extracting files from a disk image

To write a disk image back to disk, select “Open” in the “File” menu to display the contents of your file. Now go to the “Disk” menu and select “Extract” to write the disk image back to a floppy. The process is similar to imaging a disk and ofcourse, JayMSA can write the same disk images back to disk that it created, e.q. you can write .ST files to disk with this.

Pro JayMSA

• compatible with all previous MSA disk imagers
• handles multiple disk image formats including .ST
• has its own MSA file format with LZH compression
• can clean bootsectors if desired (handy for those Ghost virus infested disk boxes)
• shows contents of a disk image and allows to extract individual files
• nice GUI
• as a clean application, it works on all Ataris

Contra JayMSA

• as most other disk imagers, JayMSA cannot image floppy disks with copy protection
• uses “clean” disk access only so may not image everything no retry upon disk errors
• the LZH compressed image formats can only be read and written by JayMSA itself
• CRC option seems not to be compatible with TOS
• window font display is buggy in ST-LOW and ST-MEDIUM if no NVDI is installed

Conclusion

All in all, I like JayMSA a lot and I use it regularly to write .MSA and .ST files to disk – and for the odd disk I need to image. Definitly a valuable tool for your Atari ST!

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Links:

1. JaySoft website