Atari 400 800 XL XE Demos Database

Hi Monk, just letting you know I've run several times Numen demo on my 130xe - altho I have the plug in 320xe memory upgrade. And it runs superbly.

And yes it's a beautiful demo ??

Thax, no, it can't. I know the version you speak of, and I tested it with my real Atari 800 XL. Turns out, there's no music, and the effects are 'halved' - and that is, those that work. Most do not work.

So it's half-true; you can load -some- of the effects in this demo as single files, but they don't work fully or properly, because they STILL require more than 64 k (small k!) of memory.

However, it could possibly work with 130XE or something.

This would be an excellent demo, if it worked on an unhacked, unmutilated, beautiful, 8-bit stock Atari with 64 k of memory. So much can be done with such a computer, it's a shame these demos always require some unofficial, third-party soldering modifications that most people will never have.

For the record, I don't consider C64's "Prince of Persia" a Commodore 64-game either, for the same reason.

Numen has nice music, absolutely beautiful effects, a very boring '3D' bit between effects, and sadness that comes from the realization that I, like most people, will never see this on a real Atari computer.

@rave
"Neil" was programmed into both the disk and cart versions. Michael Albaugh explains the story behind the name in his interview with Kevin Savetz. He also mentions the cart version had to exclude some of the screens from the disk version, since he only had 16K to work with (and that was the first 16K cart Atari did for the 400/800).

This 16K download cartridge image is very lame. The real program was 32K on a disk, and the naughty remix also used the 32K ver for its seed. As you can imagine the 16K ver shows almost half as much prerecorded data than the better one(s) and this cartridge thinks your name is "NEIL" when no one gives any name in time. Hard to believe this cart was mass produced, more like this is a limited edition maybe for as few as one guy a sales rep named Neil who was too simple or lazy to load the better disk program.

Quite cool little thing considering its age, not going to rock many people's worlds though.