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Magnum 4 is a 1990 Ocean game compilation released for the Atari ST. We excitedly purchased this pack in 1990 from an import shop here in California, but as we did mostly in the late 80’s and 90’s got rid of the box and instructions.
A few weeks back, I was able to purchase the full boxed version pack again from Paul Nuriman or Nurix from the intellivisionaries podcast when he was selling it at the VFC So Cal show.
The games in the self described GIANT Multi-Disk Pack are
Batman The Caped Crusader, After Burner, Operation Wolf and Double Dragon.
After Burner, the Sega super scaler arcade cabinet port was actually released in 1988 by Activision. You will find that many of these budget compilations include games from other companies than the one who put together this pack. Sometimes, and maybe even this time, the non-publisher games are of dubious quality.
Batman the Caped Crusader from 1988, is not to be confused with Batman the Movie, the side scrolling, platform action and first person driving game that drove 1 million Amiga sales in 1989, but actually a pre-cursor to that title which is both a comic book style adventure and a action game
Double Dragon also NOT an Ocean title, but a 1988 Taito released Technos designed arcade conversion from Melbourne House / Virgin
Lastly, we have the game I have probably already played the most in this pack. Operation Wolf, a Taito licensed arcade port developed by Ocean France and released in the UK, like the rest of the games in this pack, in 1988.
Let’s get started with after burner/
After Burner was originally released in 1988 by Activisoon / Mediagenic and was developed by Argonaut, yes that Argonaut, the developer of Star Glider on the ST and Amiga and of course the Super FX chip and Star Fox on the SNES. It’s a port of the 1987 mega hit Sega Arcade cabinet and not one that I am very fond of unfortunately.
The ST was actually the lead 16-bit computer platform for the UK release that the ONE Magazine gave 63% saying “All that’s left is a run of the mill 3D shoot’em up and most of the shooting is done for you” referring to the fact that your main guns auto fire with the button being used to fire your missiles when you are “locked on”. Atarimania visitors have rated it a very similar 6.5/10
I find Afterburner to be a decent gaming experience and probably in 1988, when 16 bit gaming was just beginning to get a foot-hold, it might have impressed a few people. The controls leave a lot to be desired as you can use a joystick or mouse, but neither seem to play well enough to make you feel like you are in control. In both modes you guna are auto fired, and your lock-on missiles are fired with button one. With the joystick you press the spacebar to speed up and with the mouse you press button 2. The mouse mode would have been so much more playable simply making you fire your guns with button one and lock on missiles with button 2/ It was a lost opportunity and the game really feels like nothing more than a slide show you watch and not really play.
Batman The Caped Crusader, a Special FX developed title, was originally released in 1988. Special FX, also responsible for coding for some great ST titles like Hudson Hawk and Midnight Resistance, created this game as an adventure split into two distinct chapters that could be loaded and played separately.
One quest involves the Penguin the other the Joker. The game-play is more than simple action with both many complicated joystick commands for action beat-em up fun and a full utility screen for adventure-like inventory and puzzle solving, accessed by pulling down and pressing the fire button
As with Afterburner and as was very typical of the early ST years, the Atari was the lead platform and The One Magazine was quite impressed, giving it 84% on both the ST and Amiga, and to paraphrase their review, “It’s frustratingly difficult, but precisely as it should be in a game like this. Atarimania user though rate it closer to Afterburger at 6.8/10
Hmm, this one is odd. The instructions give little idea exactly what you are trying to do, and that is usually OK if the controls and input are simple enough to get done easily. The fighting is simplistic, but animated well, and the adventure elements seem to be picking up and using objects but no instructions I found gve example of which icons to what in you inventory, and figuring out controls while watching Batman get more and more angry is not really the type of adventuring that I like.
Double Dragon is a 1988 Binary Design coded, Virgin distributed Taito / Technos arcade port that received 5th place on the Atari ST Format most violent games list. The fun of the arcade version was two players at once battling gangs of thugs in a scrolling environment that includes objects to pick up and use in the fight. At first glance it seems that the ST version is every bit as good as the arcade because the box and instructions describe all of these various elements.
Reviews were not so great though, with The One Giving the ST version 55%, 4 points lower than the 4 color PC CGAS version, calling the ST version sloppy with messy small sprites. Atarimania users seem to like it more with a 7.9/10 and I actually had a pretty fun time with it and will give it more playtime in the future. As will it will be in contention with the other Atari systems in a future proving ground episode.
I disagree with these reviews playing it today. I never played this much on any other system, because these types of scrolling fighters were not my cup of java back then, so the single button of the ST version doesn’t bother me at all. It’s fun, well optimized and the controls are easy to understand. It;s get repetitive pretty fast but if you are having fun with the repetition, then it’s a winner for me and one of the better beat’ems up I’ve played on the ST,
Operation Wolf, the 1988 Taito Coin-Op conversion, code by Ocean France, responsible for hidden ST gems Beach Volley, Ivanhoe and Toki, is probably the game in this pack I have played the most on the ST. This was the one that got the most disk usage as I recall when we had this in the early 90’s and one that we would bring to our buddy Brandon (Rest in peace, good friend) and play on his 520 ST a lot.
While I find it slower and not quite as optimized as follow up. Operation Thunderbolt, contemporary reviews were very good, with the One giving it 89% on bothe the ST and Amiga calling it a “Perfect Conversion”. Atarimania users the collective feel it is a little more ordinary, rating it 7.4/10. I think it certainly deserves to be an 8 at least.
Looking at it now it’s hard to stress just how amazing this was when it came out. To us, it WAS the arcade machine. Yes there is some slow down, but it is far superior to any similar game on an 8-bit computer or console that time. This is a real highlight of the ST’s library.
One note. If you can find it, play the Atari Legend one disk floppy version instead of the 8bitchip hard drive version. It has better cheats and doesn’t crash my Atari ST or my emulator.
The Magnum pack as a whole is a very nice collection of the better, but not the best Atari ST licensed games from 1988. Ocean did a good job of collecting 4 distinct game types in one collection. I did not find any reviews for the collection in my review database or on the internet. Afterburner remains the weakest game of the bunch and while I want to give Batman another chance and my joystick is ready to tackle a few rounds of Double Dragon, I find Operation Wolf to still be my favorite of the bunch.
Thanks for watching, have fun playing your favorite licensed titles on the system of your choice, in the vertical blank.
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