Syndicate: The Atlantic Accelerator

A screenshot from the game Syndicate showing a world map interface, displaying a green grid map with red-highlighted continents and a focus on the Atlantic region. The top right corner shows the time "12:319:85MC". At the centre, a blue circular icon and a yellow square with a black skull and crossbones symbol are connected by a line, indicating a mission or event. Bottom text reads: "ATLANTIC ACCELERATOR 44001650 UNKNOWN". Buttons labelled "BRIEF" and "MENU" are visible.
The Syndicate World

The Atlantic Accelerator is the final level in the game Syndicate. This game was developed by Bullfrog, and published in 1993 by Electronic Arts, who went on to publish a few more games.

This final level is insane. The mission briefing warns that you are completely outgunned and outmanned, and it finishes with a “good luck” message.

As soon as you enter the map you’re assaulted by enemy syndicates wielding mini guns. You have to pause the game and then frantically select all your agents, put on shields and fight back. It can take more than a few goes to get this right. This video shows how easy it is to be overpowered. Jump forward to about 4:00. Warning, it’s loud!

This video below shows how it’s done. Select all agents and put on shields. Select agent 3, enable panic mode and let him or her take out the nearby enemy with a laser. Mop up the rest with lasers.

An idea I picked up from a comment on that video is using plenty of shields and a flamer (flame thrower). The enemy syndicate stop firing after a certain length of time, which makes mopping them up easy. This worked mostly, but in the end there were two enemies left who refused to stop firing. Cross fire was more effective at reducing the numbers of enemy, however.

Syndicate Plus. The benefits of shields. Make sure you switch before it runs out.
These last two guys kept firing, I got bored. Shields and flamers takes a while.

I finished this game in the mid-nineties. I bought it a good few years ago on GOG and I finished it again, but this was probably my first play through in a decade. Still a great game after all these years.

Play the original Monkey Island

A few months ago, news broke that a new Monkey Island game would be released in 2022!

I have to confess, I never played any of the Monkey Island games. I was aware of them but point and click adventures really aren’t my thing. Many years ago I bought the first Simon the Sorcerer game because I thought it had something to do with Discworld. The graphics and speech in the game were outstanding but after only a short time I got stuck and gave up.

So, what’s this Monkey Island thing about then? How do I play the original “The Secret of Monkey Island”? We live in exciting times and the Internet Archive comes to the rescue!

On this page you’ll find a fully playable copy of the game you can play in your browser. If that’s not enough, there’s also the Ultimate Talkie Version of the game with full speech instead of text.

Playing in the browser is OK for a preview of what it’s like, but the best way to play it is through ScummVM. On both archive.org pages above you’ll find zip files containing “The Secret of Monkey Island”. The talkie version is much bigger, but by today’s standards, quite small still.

Download the game, unzip and point ScummVM at the extracted files and you can play the game on your home computer! As you’re unlikely to finish the game in one sitting, here’s how to save and load the game in ScummVM. Enjoy!

PS. It looks like Simon The Sorcerer is also available in multiple places on archive.org!

Ancient DOS Games – Star Wars: X-Wing

I think this game is the reason I bought a joystick for my PC. I still have that joystick (or maybe it’s the second one I bought) up in the attic but I haven’t used it this century yet and I don’t have a PC with a joystick port/parallel port any more! Remember the joys of calibrating your device so your game was simply playable? You young ‘uns with your Xbox 360 controllers have it easy these days! I never understood why joysticks had to be so fiddly on PC when they just worked on the 8 and 16 bit machines.

This game ran in 320×200 pixels and 256 colours. I do remember when that was and impressive screen resolution. (via)

Hours of fun with Syndicate

Syndicate

  1. Have Macbook. Check.
  2. Have DOSBox. Check.
  3. Have external mouse. Check.
  4. Have Syndicate. Check.

Syndicate is a game I played a lot in the early nineties. I was never any good at games (some things never change!), but this is one of the few games I stuck with and managed to finish. The original game came out in 1993 for DOS and the Amiga. It was on the Amiga that I first came across it but the DOS version is easier to run these days. Luckily both versions are exactly the same.

What do you need? First of all, download the latest version of DOSBox. It’s available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and many other operating systems.

Now look for the game itself. You can download Syndicate in many places so search for it using Google. Some would describe it as abandonware as the game can’t be bought any more but it’s a legal grey area. Bullfrog still own the copyright to the game so if you don’t own a copy downloading it is, strictly speaking, an act of piracy.

Unzip Syndicate in a convenient location and launch DOSBox. The familiar DOS prompt will open, on the Z: drive so mount the Syndicate directory using the command of the same name. If you’ve installed it in /games/Syndicate/ use the following:

mount c /games/Syndicate

Now change to drive C using

c:

You may need to edit synd.bat if it’s there (to set up your sound card) or just run main.exe as I did. The game will launch and probably run a little too quickly. Slow it down with CTRL-F11, and use ALT-Enter to enter fullscreen mode. CTRL-F12 will speed it up again, handy for researching new weapons and mods. 🙂

In fullscreen mode, you’ll swear you’re using an Amiga again! Enjoy what must be one of the best shoot ’em ups, ever!

There’s also an opensource version of Syndicate. It hasn’t been updated since 2007 though. Anyone with game coding experience want to lend a hand?

As a special bonus, here’s the Atlantic Accelerator. It’s the very last level in the original Syndicate. This guy makes it appear really easy but it’s not. This level takes quite a bit of time to master! Just read his video description for all that he went through.

Or better yet, check out this video of American Revolt. Wow, all those enemy syndicate guys descend on you like flies to a …

DOSBox, a x86 emulator with DOS

Ok, it’s not specifically Linux related, as this DOS emulator has been ported to Windows, BeOS, MacOS X as well as Linux, but I’m excited about it because I may be able to play Syndicate again! I couldn’t even get that DOS game to work in Windows 98 AFAIR. I had more luck running it in Dosemu, but without sound support unfortunately.
Dosbox is available on apt-rpm too, which is where I stumbled across it.