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.

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.