𝙼𝚘𝚘𝚗𝚘𝚟𝚎

Your Atari ST hard-disk game collection has a dirty secret. About two hundred adaptations never ask TOS for a file: they bring their own GEMDOS and read the disk sector by sector, like it's 1991 and nobody is watching. Why does that matter? The original hard disks are forty years old and dying. GEMDRIVE replaces them with modern storage: a folder on the SidecarTridge Multi-device's microSD card that the ST sees as drive C:, the same idea as Hatari's GEMDOS drive with a folder on your PC. Files by name, no sectors. So those games sat there sulking. Not anymore. We started all 1,831 hard-disk adaptations on the 8bitchip.info list from a GEMDOS drive. 1,608 run as they are. For 209 more, we rebuilt their start programs to ask for their files by name. Drop a game's ZIP, exactly as you downloaded it, into the page. It tells you whether the game runs as it is, or patches the ZIP in your browser and hands it back. We host no game files. gemdrive.sidecartridge.com

What if, in an alternative universe, Atari had put arcade-level graphics chips in our beloved ST? In ours, in 1989, The Bitmap Brothers released Xenon 2 Megablast and the ST ran it at 16.7 frames a second. In that other universe it runs at 50. We went there and brought it back. Xenon 2 Megablast 50fps is a new app for the SidecarTridge Multi-device. The whole game, not a demo: five levels and their bosses, Crispin's Swop Shop, David Whittaker's music, two players and high scores kept on the cartridge. The Pico in the cartridge runs the game and draws every frame; the ST shows them, plays the sound and reads the joystick. Keep the original's pace, go ×3, or drop back to 17 fps for the untouched 1989 original. Bring your own disks: the Image Works release on two disks. ST, STE, Mega ST and Mega STE, from the Multi-device app store: docs.sidecartridge.com/sidec…