Earlier today English Amiga Board forum member meynaf, announced that the much-loved Atari ST game "Oids" had finally come to the Amiga. The latest in a string of ST titles he'd converted over to Commodore's machine, this release came completely out of the blue.

Oids was originally released for the the ST by FTL Games way back in 1987. An Apple Macintosh version followed, but for whatever reason this failed to receive an Amiga conversion.

The game is similar to the Firebird classic "Thrust", where you have to navigate your craft across a number of landscapes, avoiding the scenery, artillery installations, and battling with gravity itself.

Although little has been revealed detailing just how the game was converted over to the Amiga, meynaf does explain that it wasn't easy;

...I've just made another game port from the Atari ST. 

It was hard to find my way; this one had TOS calls scattered everywhere and even GEM calls (trap #2), in addition to a very messy keyboard handling code, file i/o storing 16-bit handles where it should have not, and a fearsome protection scheme which i am not even sure to have fully removed. But here it is. 

As I never played that one on the ST (and have no PC to run an emulator), it would be good if someone with a great knowledge of the game could test this version, to see if everything behaves as it should. I'm not too confident with that one, many bugs are probably lurking in here, ready to explode in your face - so beware. Only thing i can say is that it seems to work for me". 

"I don't think I'll make any more game ports, at least for some time. I now prefer writing my own game from scratch"

Watch this space!