Venus the Flytrap (Atari ST)
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- Welcome to The Joy of Sticks! Today we are playing Venus the Flytrap, another game I discovered on a cover disk that now we can play in full.
Stay tuned until the end for what are quite possibly some of the best and most accurate magazine reviews we've seen so far on the channel followed by one of the worst! :D
Don't forget to like and subscribe but most importantly comment down below. What did you think of the game?
Intro music by midierror: / midierror
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As ever, a huge thank you to everyone at Atarimania and Atari Legend for their amazing work:
- www.atarimania...
- www.atarilegen...
Recorded at 50fps using a real Atari 1040 STe (4mb, TOS v1.62, PAL), RGB SCART, a Micomsoft X-Sync1 and a Startech PexHDcap capture card.
The late Ben Daglish adapted brillantly the Amiga original soundtrack for the Atari ST. God bless him.
I wrote this! Many years ago now, nice to see it getting some love.. Unusually we were allowed to do a ground up rewrite, rather than a straight port of the Amiga version. Allowed us to tailor things to get the most out of the ST. Ive worked on many games since, but still have fond memories of this one.
You're right all the little extra, almost superfluous, animations of your character, small attention to details, unique elements of game play, even the surprise seemingly unavoidable baddies appear to make Venus the Flytrap a great game. However if my memory is correct, and it's fading, it's a game I played a few times but I don't remember returning to it or playing it to death like some other games. It must have been missing something to captivate me, drawing me back in over and over, not sure what though; strange!
Yes! I love the attention to detail here as it really shows that the developer cared. It’s like all the little unnecessary extra bits in Action Fighter (played on the channel recently) they really add up. But yes, this is a game that’s easy to be done with. I think if the game was a little faster and smoother in its moment to moment shooting and collecting, it would be more compelling.
Had a bad day, this cheered me up, thank you. Bought an original copy in the 90's, seem to remember a section where you could make plants grow and climb up them? Maybe it was a dream! Great intro music. Your work is very much appreciated.
Sorry to hear you had a bad day, Bobby, but I'm glad I helped in a small way. Hope today was better for you, mate.
I didn't see the plant thing, but I could have missed a secret, or may e it happened a later?
The attention to detail on the animations is delightful ^_^
I love stuff like that. It just shows how much the makers care when they take time to do the extra little bits.
It's a very similar game to the likes of Act-Fancer and Oscar, both obscure Data East coin ops game from the late 80s. Gremlins wanted to make something similar to a japanese arcade or console game I guess and I think they nailed it. With proper and more varied level design it could have been a classic.
I have never seen either of those games (unless autocorrect has done a number on you 🤣) so I might have to have a look. If they were trying to capture the feel of a coin op that would mean the 'entering credits' part makes perfect sense.
Definitely feels like they were going for a Gradius feel with the upgrade system, although having limited ammo in a game like this is kind of an insane decision.
This was the first game I had to get in bootleg form :) Finding games for the ST was so difficult in Greece back in the 90s :D I was in love with the graphics
The graphics are incredible. I'm not surprised you saw screenshots of this and coveted it! Cool that you managed to get your hands on it. Did it live up to the expectation?
@@thejoyofsticks Loved it at the time :) of course a back then every game felt great even the mediocre ones, beggars cant be choosers :D
Yes! Learn to love what you have. It's almost Buddhist, isn't it? 🤣
Quite an original game indeed. I totally missed this one back in the days, thanks for the great video.
It's always nice to highlight a new game for people, especially when it has quality like this one. Let me know if you give it a play!
Great to see you back with videos Mr StickHead (or is it just "StickHead"?). Really love your videos and how you present them (and makes such a refreshing change from listening to the constant over-excited non-stop over-the-top nonsensical ramblings of the you tube channels/vloggers my young kids watch! 🤣)
Anyway, I had (still have?) and played this game a few times back in the day... I think it was one of the first "unofficial" copies of a game disk that I had, but similar to Simon-Lee in the comments, I also didn't seem to get hooked or return to it that much. However, looking back at it now I can really appreciate all the things this game did and (as has been mentioned by others here) the great love and care put into it by the devs, great work (Kudos vendomaxo)! Hopefully will return to it someday soon.
I played this first on the ST Action cover disk as well 😊
Mate, those cover disks. So exciting as a kid.
Same! What a great game this is. Need to play it again now............. :)
Yes! A little repetitive, but you can't complain when the overall quality is this high!
Really cool looking game! Wasn't aware of this one!
It’s all part of The Joy of Sticks PSA service! 🫡
I have to agree with you here, a really nice game with some neat touches and also gets a bit repetitive after a while. And just like you; I lack patience and start speed running and taking lost of damage. 😁 Also it's hard to convey the disdain I have for reversing the controls in games! 😆
It's the moths! The moths punish you every time. You think, ok I've got a nice rhythm going, let's up the pace a little, and zzZzip! Here come the moths. I wonder if there's a species called the Hubris Moth?
@@thejoyofsticks Lousy moths!
Me hungry for Part 2 :panic: Not really, this one was so cool and when you time you have time. If not ever there is a great mystery for aliens.
*Taking notes* ...mix the right proportions... of elements... and then assemble well...
Now I will be a master of game development.
I played this on the Amiga a while back. I don't recall being massively impressed by it. Kinda slow. The superior insect shooter is Apidya. I don't know if that got an Atari ST release though.
@JimPerformsDevAlchemy Yes, I was talking to a friend over the weekend and it does so many things right, but the fundamental rhythm of the game is off. The way you crawl forwards, shoot, wait for the pod to appear and turn red, then shoot and then collect, or wait/avoid the question mark before moving to the next enemy to repeat just breaks any flow the game might have and it just becomes a little repetitive and laborious. Having them just drop the power up and cutting out the pod altogether would be much smoother.
I don’t think we got Apidya, unfortunately. I’ll have to have a little search and see what we missed out on.
Great video, Great looking game, like Psygnosis but with gameplay :) Surprised to see this is available now on Steam!
“Like Psygnosis but with gameplay” - put that on the box! 😂 I haven’t seen it on Steam. Is it an updated version?
@@thejoyofsticks [CZcams keeps eating my reply because of Steam link] but it's published by Pixel Games UK and It appears to be the emulated Amiga version. It pops up with Just "Venus the" in my (AUS) Steam store. I am tempted by quite a few of these re-releases but I would like a bit more effort than just uploading an emu and a rom. Still tho' it's a positive to have them not lost to the void.
Yes, I would need more than just an emulated version to buy it too. Nice to see it's being preserved, though! 👍
oof... i was certain that this also came out on the 8-bits. turns out my crumbling brain was thinking of an old "spec-chum" (bleech!) who _had_ a venus flytrap . . . 😬
Haha! An easy mistake to make! 🤣
@@thejoyofsticks
😭
I had the demo of this on the st mags....there were actually 2 demos of it that were out!
What was the other disk? I wasn't entirely sure it was the ST Action disk that I had back in the day.
I also had that other demo. After all these years there's no way I could remember which magazine's cover disk it was on.
This brought back memories of playing the Amiga demo back in the day. I remember thinking the graphics were nice and vibrant. The artist(s) put a lot of detail into the sprites and animation. The overall game experience, though, felt a bit bland and empty. I found the demo too repetitive, so I had no interest in buying the full game. It just didn't grab me and make me want more. It's obviously a decent game, but I still think it lacks the creative flourishes to make it something really special.
Yes! The presentation, sound, graphics and animation are great and the gameplay is well coded and solid, but I think the way the game expects you to take it slow and meticulous really makes it a bit tedious after a while. Instead of blasting through the bugs, you shoot and wait for the pod. Then wait for it to light up red and shoot. Then wait to see if it’s something you want to collect and move on. Not a massive concern, but multiply that by the 100s of enemies on each stage and the staccato rhythm of the action begins to grate.
@@thejoyofsticks Yeah.. the languid gameplay gradually feels like a chore and you inevitably lose interest. It has so much going for it... but lacks the compulsive gameplay found in classic arcade style games from Capcom & Konami etc... You find the same issue with lots of 16-bit action games for home computers. They may have nice graphics and an interesting premise... but the actual gameplay fails to captivate after a short while. 😴
Languid. Chore. These are great words to use. Reading your description of 16bit computer platforms, Shadow of the Beast comes to mind for some reason... 🤔
@@thejoyofsticks I would add the word 'painful' to describe Shadow of the Beast on the Atari ST.😬The Amiga version at least offers really smooth action and a visual feast.😍 But it's certainly a prime example of a potentially great 16-bit computer game falling down drastically in the gameplay department. If only the designers had been able to craft gameplay as well as Konami managed to deliver with the incredibly playable Castlevania series' for 8 & 16-bit consoles. It's a huge shame that British/Euro devs tended to lose their way in the gameplay department, despite offering well crafted concepts and attractive graphics.😢
I miss you sir!
Nice tune or rather arrangment!
I'm sorry, you're talking over THAT TUNE? 😅
🤣 I apologise unreservedly!
8:25 reaction :)
🤣 Who'd have thought the skull and crossbones with the glowing red eyes was a bad thing to touch? Not me, evidently.
Happy fathers day ...never played this ,graphics look good game play seems a bit repetitive as u mentioned but a younger me would have played this to death
Same to you mate! I did get a bit bored after a while, but if the difficulty ramps up a little later on, that would help.
this game has a bug....LOL
It's not a bug, it's a feature!
Spoiler: Don’t pick up the skull and crossbones. 😂
lol A big skull and crossbones with glowing red eyes? What could possibly go wrong? Let’s pick it up! 😂