Top 50 Atari ST Side Scroll Platform Shooters Part 1  numbers 50-41 Coming up next&;#33;  In this series we will explore and count down the top 50 scrolling platform games on the Atari ST that use guns as their primary weapon. Even if a game contains no platforms other than the ground‚ we are still going to consider it for this list. Some of these games might also contain other types of game play on levels and possibly some non-gun fighting  but for the most part we have separated the Ghost and Goblins‚ Gods and other style fantasy magic and non-gun projectile games to a different count down. I created this top 50 by playing as many of these types of games i could find and scoring the‚ on a 0 to 300 scale based on a combination of my reviews‚ the average magazine scores I could find  and the Atari Mania audience Because of this‚ my choices didn’t always come out where I thought they would‚ especially when we reach the final top 10‚ but we’re not even close to that yet. Let the get started…and prepare to be under whelmed‚ you should have seen games 65-51‚ which were mostly just terrible.  These‚ well‚ they are not all badgers to say the least‚ some are good‚ some have decent parts and others had a chance to be good. Better games are coming as we do the countdown‚ so let’s have fun poking at these a little bit and see what fun and quality we can find.  50 Luxor  is a 1988 Software Horizons released Paradox coded relative simple blaster where to must collect P and B icons and watch out for wish granting for a fairy‚ who is far too easy to shoot rather than catch In my scoring system 174.7 / 300  or 58%  – The good simple fun shooting. The Mediocre – Pretty much everything else. The bad the sound and it’s over repetitive # 49 Chicago 30‘s is a 1989 US gold released‚ Topo soft developed multi-stage game where you play an unlicensed  Elliot Ness style character against an army of mob toughsChicago 30’s received a combined 175 / 300 or 58.3%  – The Good – The shooting and the idea. The Mediocre – sounds‚ graphics and game play. The Bad – Without a cheat you last about 5 seconds in this game. #48 Predator‚  a much maligned  early 1987 release By Activision‚ is an early 16 bit movie license  of the Arnie film with the same name. It was coded by the Source‚ a teams who’s P-47 Thunderbolt on the ST  I find to be quite well crafted.  Predator received a combined 181/300 or 60.3%  The good – well crafted graphics and scrolling. The mediocre – The limited ammunition. The bad – the game design – The giant dude is killed by birds used as a way to steal your ammo. Controls are overly complex and  could not get by one of the baddies no matter how hard I tried. #47 Judge Dredd is a 1990 Virgin released Random access developed Contra style shooter that included some puzzle solving‚ but really should not be mentioned in the same breath as Contra. It included two play modes‚ running and shooting and riding a motorcycle‚ both of which leave a lot to be desired.Judge Dredd Received 181/300 Points for a combined 60.33%  – The Good – It’s kind of fun to run around blasting with the  two weapons to choose from. The Mediocre – The level design‚ and the worst thing you can say about a blaster‚ it gets boring really quickly. The bad – The motorcycle is implemented as an afterthought‚ and  the controls  make it difficult to go diagonal up and down no matter which mode you use # 46 Hellraiser is a 1988 release from one of my favorite very early Atari ST game developers‚ Exocet. It contains both action platformer levels and horizontal;fly and shoot levels‚ unfortunately both of which look good‚ but lack the gameplay variety needed to keep players interested for long.Hellraiser’s combined score is 185/300 or 61.67%The Good – Great looking‚ nice sounds‚ the addition of the fly and shoot level and two players can play at the same time. Also‚ Exocet had really nice packaging for all of their ealy ST releases and it set them apart from some of the other budget packaging houses.The mediocre – The levels are ordinary and boring‚ The bad – everything respawns and there are far too many cheap deaths At #45 is Rolling Thunder‚ a very early ST 1986 release from US Gold and Tiertex. This arcade action platform run and run shooter was a good Namco coin op‚ but the conversion to the ST was lacking and needed optimizations. When I used Mega STE Settings in Hatari‚ to play it though‚ it made it onto this list.  Rolling Thunder Mega STE scored 186/300 or 62% This is an interesting one‚ at least to me that is. Rolling Thunder on an 8MHZ Atari ST plays terribly and didn’t make it into the top 50. But I have always wanted to see this game played with Mega STE settings and using  my new rating and the original magazine and Atarimania  scores it squeaked in at #45  – The Good – Kind of like a side scrolling Elevator action‚ Nice shooting and animation. The mediocre – the sounds and poor color palette. The Bad – it’s even slow at double the clock speed. I had high hopes for Robozone‚  robotic animal based blaster‚ released in 1991‚  when I saw that it was by Imageworks and Mirrorsoft as that combination brought Us Xenon 2.But‚ alas it seems that Arc is no Assembly Line when it comes to a development house and this promising title is relegated up here in the clouds with the likes of Chicago 30 at #44‚ when I hoped it would be closer to a top 20 game Robozone Scored 199/300 or 66.3%  – The Good – It scrolls OK with some fun blasting. The mediocre – the limited color palette to try and speed up the game. It didn’t help much. The bad -the sound‚ level and game design‚ pretty much everything needed a few more passes from QA‚ Dev and design to make it worth a purchase #43‚ Under Pressure‚ is a 1991 Eldrigic the cat release by the same dev team‚ Electronic Zoo‚  that took on Shadow of the beast on the ST. In this contest‚ you control a human that’s supposedly trapped in a mech and you are out to save your kidnapped girl.  I could not find any ST reviews and while there were a few positive Amiga reviews‚ they all basically wondered why the main sprite is so huge because even on the Superior A500 gaming hardware the game runs at sluggish pace trying to push out its prettier backgrounds.  Under Pressure received 203/300 points or 68% – The Good – Like many of these games‚ it’s  Fun to run jump  and blast‚ it’s well optimized‚ and it’s the first on this that I would actually like to try again.The mediocre – Well‚ they could have called this game mech jurassic park because while I like the idea of the huge sprite it definitely forced the game to run a little  sluggish in places‚ s so while the dev team was preoccupied with whether or not they could make a huge main graphics that they didn’t stop to think if they should (sorry) The bad – too easy to get stuck and lost in places with or without the cheats because  and the difficulty is set too high‚  As you can tell‚ even in the lower 40’s we are getting to some games that are actually worth a look and Lethal Weapon at 42 is definitely one of them.  This 1992 Ocean release of the licensed film property won’t win any technical awards on the ST‚ but it definitely has something missing in most of the games we’ve seen so far – a little game play Lethal Weapon received 204/300 points or 68%‚ so it’s basically tied with Under Pressure‚ which is a more technically proficient game that lacks some of the added fun of Lethal Weapon.The Good – Pretty much everything in this one is good overall from the graphics to the sounds to the level design. Mediocre – you start over every time you die on a level.   Bad – the push scrolling makes it very difficult to see what is coming up next. If you are going to “push scroll”‚ you need to re-do the levels a bit to compensate for the blind spots They did not. Jeremy Parris would not be happy‚ 41 Hawkeye is a 1989 Thalamus release of an original C64 game in which the player is tasked with running back and forth in caves and other environments collecting items and trying to get the further levels. While the C64 release was hailed as the next Shadow of the beast‚ the ST and Amiga versions show that on the 16 bit machines it took a little bit more to really make a great game. Hawkeye Received 205/300 points or about 68% like Lethal Weapon and Under PressureThis was the game I found myself playing the most in the batch because I really wanted to see level 2‚ but  never was able to figure out how to do it and as we’ll see that’s my main problem with it/.  The good – This game has a lot going for it from the selection of 4 weapons to the simple controls‚ nice graphics and unneeded but welcome parallax scrolling.Mediocre – I’m going to have to say the sounds leave a little to be desired‚but the worst is the bad – the game and level design is basically you running back and forth endlessed shooting and picking up objects by following these eyes in the corner of the screen. It’s just NOT fun after about 5-10 minutes. So‚ that’s 50 – 41. Nothing extremely great‚ but a few that are worth another look and a few that‚ well‚ are not really worth your time‚  unfortunately. There is still time though‚ for you to give me ideas for the next 40‚ while I have already rated and ranked them using the 300 point system‚ I will take your ideas and ratings into account also.  So‚ until next time‚ when we could down dream 40 – 31‚ have fun playing your favorite platform style side scrolling run and run games in the vertical blank.