Too Lazy to Switch Down…
“I’m too sexy to switch down, too lazy to go oh three oh, too sexy to switch down, so lazy it hurts!”
Hi there Atariscners, this is an article of a *very* niche interest to a few people with very specific hardware. I hope I can make this sort of entertaining to more general readers on the way.
After a long time away, I’ve got a CT60 Falcon working again. This story was told here, over many words, a short while ago. You’ve all had enough of me going on about it.
I’ve been playing with it, of course. Trying to test and stretch the boundaries of what is possible. Maybe finding out something we weren’t expecting? And having lots of fun on the way of course!
For today’s textual excursion into the realms of the unfeasible, I’m looking at some selected Falcon 030 productions, which managed to run with the 68060 without (too much) complaining. It really is too much of a hassle to operate the 030/060 toggle switch on the back in this sweaty summer weather. That’s my excuse, anyway.
Firstly a few words about the methodology of my ‘scientific’ (ha harr!) experiments. The reference hardware is a revision 1 CT60, running at 75 MHz, with a 20 MHz bus boost. The screen is an unusually tolerant commodity VGA flatscreen. The only concession to try to steer clear of bother, is that I’m clean booting (CTRL-Boot) for the purest possible desktop and nothing pre-loaded. It’s one of those fortunate machines that doesn’t panic without NVDI.
This is the actual starting point!
There will be screenshots, not borrowed third party images, but actual authentic, delivered by wobblycam pictures, taken of the actual screen, with selected software running. It does not get any more real than this!
That’s it!
There will be a selection of games and demos, more about them shortly. However, it is worth mentioning that, for the most part, I’m looking at productions made after 1999. The thinking being that more coders were aware of some kind of accelerator add-on being more common by then, so had moved away from a modus of very tight coding to the base hardware. I’m thinking of DSP wizards and their timing escapades and strange custom hacked (and constantly switching) screen modes in particular.
So no, there won’t be any reports of spectacular crashes from attempting to start up the likes of Sono’ and Lost Blubb. I’m not brave enough to try that.
Well, alright, there was one old school Falcon demo that I did attempt to run, as a starting point.
‘Gloop Demo’ by The Misfits. An actual one-hit wonder on the Falcon. No trace of that crew afterwards and not too much before. This started and managed to run until the first textured 3-D object hove into view, then it froze. The cheerful soundtrack carried on in an upbeat fashion, unconnected to the seizures going on in the visual department.
The next two you would expect to work, as these were already accelerator friendly, having been released at the legendary Error in Line 2001 party.
‘Don’t Break the Oath’, by the Dead Hackers Society (DHS) one of the big three releases from Error in Line 2001, which I remember was adapted to run on CT60 very early on by Evil?
'Don't Break the Oath - Voxelly yours!
At the same time, I tried ‘Wait’ v1.2 by T.O.Y.S. This also ran without issues under conditions of ‘060. It also features in my ‘keeper’ folder on my Centurbo 2 Falcon as well. So it looks like it is accelerator aware generally.
A rough contemporary, ‘Beams’, was a partial success. It ran but with heavy artifacting on some 3-D objects in the cityscape in particular. The good folks of tSCc were very proud of the fact it ran well on base hardware, so ‘060 compatibility was not consciously sought after, or expected to be fair.
Staying with DHS for the moment, I tried a brace of 4Ktro’s they made back in the nineties.
The 1997 Quast party winner ‘4ever’ ran. It was very very quick. To be fair I noticed the same frantic turbo mode behaviour with the Centurbo 2, and even noticeable to some extent when my original Falcon had a Nemesis (50% faster) booster.
‘Dream 4Mention’ ran, unlike its bigger brother 'Dream Dimension'. This matched its bigger brother, effect for effect, but losing the soundtrack and fancy textures in the restricted 4k universe. This was sprung on a surprised and caffeine befuddled Alternative Party in 1998. I know, because I was there,
The best realised 4Ktro of that batch was ‘4Orce’, from Quast 98, which ran through nicely, with soundtrack. However, it did not exit at the end. That is but a minor niggle.
Why are all these screenshots blue?
We’re heading over to various editions of the Sillyventure party next.
French maestros, Dune, had a strong presence at various editions of Sillyventure, with some memorable productions. So how did these get on?
‘Tere Ra’i’ got so far then strode off into a darkened screen whilst the music played on. However we had much more success with the splendid ‘Electric Nights’ epic. This ran completely and is a testament to the demo makers artistry, whether you watch it on stock or enhanced Falcon.
This demo was - Electrifying!
‘Bird to Be Alive’ was stated as already being ‘060 compatible, but it needed more than the 4 MB of ST Ram that I had. So nothing doing for me to confirm that. I’ll take Thadoss at his word that this one works.
I also had a look at a couple of Mystic Bytes Falcon 030 productions from those parties. ‘Decode’ from 2016 ran sweetly, their other notable post 2010 release for 030, ‘Lockup’ from 2018, declined to even try and exited straight to desktop. It’s a high class production, stretching the technical and aesthetic limits of the base Falcon, so I don’t hold that against it.
Decode demo - Delightful!
(A little extra tip for 060 Falcon fans, if they need it. The Mystic Bytes ‘Fake No Morph’, an actual 060 demo, will run on a CT60 with 4MB ST Ram, if you CTRL-Boot. The readme text states 5 MB ST Ram is needed.)
Moving on, it seems that Dekadence have a firm grip on the serious business of getting their releases to run smoothly for whatever CPU you throw at it. As well as challenging names for their demos.
Their recent amusing Sommarhack 2025 release, ‘Kusipaa Kaljanpollijat’ ran on 060 without questioning my sanity, or making the hardware break into a sweat.
I didn't drink your beer!
As does the ‘Ath/0’ demo plucked from Sillyventure 2018. Evil even mentioned the smoothness of running this under ‘060 in a comment on Demozoo.org, which I just found today for the first time. Ah well.
In a bit of a hole here?
Finally I’m looking at some games, which never even occurred to me to attempt to try before.
We had immediate success with Thadoss’s accomplished ‘Racer 2’, which worked straight out of the box, or the disk, if you prefer. This follows the pattern of the later demos from Dune being happy to work with the 060, if this was available. That looks great whatever it runs on and is a credit to his skills. It is very smooth on ‘060, offering a similar seamless experience to the much heralded STE only game ‘Faster’.
The fascinating 'The 8 Runes of Aerillon', currently unfinished, may well run on a CT60, but has the caveat of requiring the full 14 MB of ST-Ram. Ah well.
Racer 2 - Really, really, worth having!
Less expected, but a pleasant surprise, was the very early ‘Towers 2’ working fully. An unrelated issue with a non-existent mouse right click was dealt with first, then we were good to go all the way. It’s pretty much the same as on a standard Falcon, drunken pirouetting fighting style with bad guys included, for no extra charge.
I can remember some words - "Please don't stab me!"
I even threw the very ancient and justified first person shooter, ‘Running’ on there, as a wild flight of fancy. Why did you do that! You’ve got 'Bad Mood' to take care of your FPS bloodlust!?
But it worked. I needed every ram-saving technique at booting to get it to run. So pretty much the same as back in the day. It was tightly bound to the ST-RAM in low quantity. On these games, there was no alarming speeding up or dysfunction of any sort for coming into close contact with a much more powerful processor than intended. They ran as if they didn’t care where they were. So I was happy.
No dope, no hope?
I’m not going to even go near 'Gravon', so no, don’t even ask!
Finally, to bring things bang up to date, here's a screen shot of the brand new 'Galactic Panic', the heavily overdue 'Donkey Island' replacement. Which yes, works happily with a CT60 in native mode.
This is not a LucasArts production, not at all!
August Add-on.
Just when you think that I've done enough harm, I only go and add some ST games to this mess!
There is one useful source of several ST games hacked to work respectably on a CT60, namely Klaz's Hideaway, providing 'Fresh versions of old games.' There is a nice version of 'Oids', found there, one of my personal favourites. The screengrab is of 'Gauntlet'.
He hasn't been active for some time, but the legacy of the work that was done, along with the site and downloads remain at Klaz's Hideaway.
Apparently, a CT60 can keep up with the frame rate with loads of stuff onscreen.
Another ST game I tried, on the basis of 'Whattaheck!?" was the widely ported Megadrive game 'Old Towers', brought to the ST by Andy Noble and Retrosouls.
This starts up and runs nicely, no issues at all on the CT60, (Clean booting of course.) I just need to add a joystick to play it. A bit like 'Gauntlet'.
I just need something plugged in to 'press fire' with.
Summing up.
These are a sample of games and demos that were reasonably expected to work under heavy acceleration, with a few extra pleasant surprises I sort of added at the last minute.
I’m going to add that these all worked fine on *my* Falcon and *my* screen. Your mileage may vary, but it could be worth experimenting with different set-ups and screens. RGB mode may yield even more good news than the boring and adult VGA screen that I was using. There are probably some additional things that need the 14MB ST-RAM to co-operate.
As usual, any experimentation is on your own head and at your own risk. The author and Atariscne.org do not assume any responsibility for exploding things or screens suddenly catching fire from ‘trying this at home’.
So the answer to the previously unasked question, “Which Falcon 030 productions can run directly from the CT60?” Could well be “More than you might expect!”
CiH - July/August 2025 for Atariscne.org
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