Anarchy

Development

The game stemmed from Wayne Smithson's desire to prove that smooth horizontal scrolling was possible on the ST - hence the working title It Can't Be Done. Compromises were made to achieve the effect, such as the parallax area not being drawn to during gameplay, and the background graphics repeating every 16 blocks. 8 complete copies of the display are stored in memory, with a 2-pixel offset to make the scrolling feel smooth. As each screen used 32K, the total usage to store 8 copies is 256k - half the total available memory in the standard 512k ST.

Commodore 64 Release

A C64 version was planned and was near completion by the development team WJS, but Psygnosis decided to shelf it and only release the Amiga and Atari ST versions.

Awards

• ST Format
  • Issue 01/1991 – #10 Best Shoot-'em-Up Game in 1990 (Atari ST)