Classic Computer Magazine Archive ANTIC VOL. 7, NO. 1 / MAY 1988


ST New Products

byGREGG PEARLMAN, Antic Assistant Editor


MICHTRON QUINTS
The Juggler ($49.95) is a switching program that lets you keep seven GEM applications in memory at the same time and access them via the "switchboard," making it easier to move from one to the other. The Juggler recognizes .PRG, TOS and .TTP files.

Create pictures and complex animations with GFA Artist ($79.95), save them in a special run-only file that allows up to 20,000 frames per film, then show them off to your friends. You can incorporate text into your pictures in a custom font (or one of the four provided ones), employ color cycling, even define your own fill pattern from part of your picture. With the Film Merger, you can merge into a single file several film files.

The Low-Res Static mode lets you use over 1,000 colors onscreen at once, and the Function Selection box integrates both low and medium resolution into one screen, combined with multiple palettes. The program is compatible with DEGAS and NEOchrome formats, and it requires 1Mb of RAM, TOS in ROM and a color monitor.


Master CAD ($249.95) lets you create complete, exact 2-D and 3-D graphics and project 2-D designs onto 3-D images without having to waste time building data matrices or fighting with inadequate user interfaces. You can move, copy, rotate and flip any object horizontally or vertically, change their proportions and textures, and export or import them to and from other objects. You can observe objects from various viewpoints, external or internal, transparent or solid, or observe the objects in orthogonal, perspective, audiometric and oblique projections from any angle as well as spin them around any axis. Master CAD uses the screen as a "window" into a workspace with about 2,300 miles in each positive or negative access direction.

PreSchool KidProgs ($39.95) stimulates the development of young children with KIDGRID+, a drawing program with 192 trances that can be filled with one of 12 colors, KIDKEYS, which lets children choose one of 20 songs or create their own on the three-octave keyboard, and KIDBLOCKS, a multi-sided block puzzle to be unscrambled. PreSchool KidProgs requires a color monitor.


Microdeal's Slaygon ($39.95) is the most sophisticated military robot ever created. Controlled from within by one highly trained specialist (you), Slaygon possesses the strength of 100 men, the armor and weapons of a small tank--and your brain--as you attempt to destroy the Cybordynamics Laboratory before the finalization of a toxic virus designed to annoy all human life. You must circumvent security robots through five miles of hallways and 500 rooms, but you'll be aided by a cloaking device, short-range scanner and energy shields.

Michtron, 576 S. Telegraph, Pontiac, MI 48053. (313) 334-5700.

MEGADRIVE
Supra's MegaDrive ST hard disk connects to the ST's internal DMA port, leaving the external DMA port free for additional expansion. The MegaDrive allows full autobooting from the hard drive and comes with formatting software that lets you partition the hard disk into as many as 12 logical partitions. Power for the hard disk comes from the computer's own power supply.

20Mb: $649; 40Mb: $1,049. Supra Corp.,1133 Commercial Way, Albany, OR 97321. (503) 967-9075.

DARK CASTLE
In Dark Castle, you must connive and survive your way through 14 danger zones in your quest to vanquish the Black Knight. Dark Castle, a former Macintosh hit, features colorful animation and fascinating sound as you encounter trick after trick, test after test, trap after trap.

$44.95. Three-sixty Pacific, Inc., 2105 S. Bascom, Campbell, CA 95008. (408) 879-9144.

TRANSPUTER PRINTER
CSS Laboratories' transputer-based laser printer incorporates Inmos Ltd.'s 15 million instructions per second (MIPS) T800 chip, which supports true parallel processing. It also incorporates a math coprocessor and 4K of memory directly into the microprocessor chip itself.

The printer can produce five to 20 pages per minute and can be upgraded to any laser printer engine for speeds of up to 50 pages per minute. AII you have to do is buy the faster engine and an inexpensive "personality module." CSS expects to support up to 200 pages per minute by the third quarter of 1988.

$2,990. CSS Laboratories, 1641 McGaw Avenue, Irvine, CA 92714. (714) 852-8161.

THREE FROM DATASOFT
You're Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius, and you want to defect to the United States with your state-of-the-art sub, the Red October. In Hunt for Red October ($49.95), based on the best-selling novel by Tom Clancy, your objective is to rendezvous with the U.S. Navy and fake a radiation leak, thus providing a reason to evacuate the 113-man crew. Then the Navy will smuggle the sub into a U.S. port. (You can't sail openly into U.S. water. Under maritime law, the Soviets would simply reclaim the vessel.)


In BattleDroidz ($34.95) you control one of three "droidz" in combat on a faraway planet. BattleDroidz includes 3-D scrolling action and 37 different landscapes to explore.


As the Global Commander ($39.95), your word shapes the world. Your job is to coordinate the satellite network orbiting Earth and act as the planet's chief negotiator. Your domain includes 16 United Nuclear Nations and a network of satellites which monitor the airwaves for information regarding each nation's status.

Intellicreations (Datasoft), 19808 Nordhoff Place, Chatsworth. CA 91311. (818) 886-5922.