SubStation

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The story in short centers in Japan, around an underwater (at 2500m below) base called SubStation, where scientists managed to cooling the lava streams nside the mantle and create steam steam which generates electric power through large underwater turbines. A few years later, contact with SubStation is lot. In panic, the the company owning Substation asked a Marine corp. squad to explore the secrets of the ceased contact with SubStation. Secrets that should remain hidden, deep down at the bottom of the sea, will be now revealed...
You play the role of a Marine and you must enter the base and going through its numerous corridors and rooms, investigating what happened down there. Initially you're armed with a knife and a pistol (press 1 or 2 key to change), but you'll find a lot of extra arsenal (chain gun, machine gun etc) along your way. Movement is actioned with the keyboard's arrow keys to walk/turn around with Insert and Clr Home keys for convenient sidestepping. Control key fires all weapons, the Spacebar opens doors, and punching the TAB key drops a bomb.
The game takes the STE gameplay to another level in all areas. It is the first FPS game ever developed for the STE computer and is awesome because of just that (a Wolfenstein 3D clone). It also features multiplayer gaming using the Atari's MIDI port.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The graphics are a breakthrough for the enhanced ST machine. The game is based on a real-time rendered 3D environment, with 25 frames per second (!) but a small resolution at 320 x 160 pixels. The graphics engine has no texture-mapping but instead it uses Gourand-shading for the walls with a mixture of bitmapped visuals for the rest of the game's features with 16 colors on-screen. Note that the game is enhanced on the Atari Falcon 030, with 256 colors on-screen.
The sound offers a unique DD Audio (Distance and Direction) technique. If you have stereo speakers connected to your monitor you will be able to determine the distance and direction of any in-game sound! Additionally, the game (via the STE enhanced sound chip) offers a variety of sampled sound effects such as screams, footsteps, gunfire, engines, ventilation fans, emergency horns and others, split is three separate sound channels! Also, there's a nice sampled music score at the intro and the game's main menu but no music into the game.