Laurent Kermel portfolio

BOLD

Atari ST - 1989/1992 - released to the public in 2004

System requirements:

Bold is an ATARI ST game and it only works with 1 Megabytes of RAM. Bold seems to be working fine on emulators. My advise is to use TOS 1.02 or beyond as the game will be a bit slower when running with TOS 1.00 It works also fine on STE, especially when the Blitter is on.

Known bugs:

The end sequence is broken and the source code I have is corrupted :(
But I still have a few floppy disks to look through, so there is still hope...
Sadly people have had problems installing the game on a Hard Drive because some files are actually hidden, so I advise everyone to directly play from the floppy disk.

1.Introduction

BOLD was initially created around 1989. I've always loved shooters and BOLD was really inspired by Capcom's Side Arms and TV series such as Transformers, but also Bitmap Brothers's Xenon series. I sadly never published or released any of my games, I always gave them away to my friends. When Emulators appeared, I realized that some of them deserved a second life. The version available now is the most recent, from 1990. In 2004, I decided to fix a few bugs and to release it. You will notice the spaceship on the game title screen and in the shop, it is still the one from the original and old version.
This game is the result of many months of work. Bold may by reproduced and you can give copies away to your friends, provided the content remains the same.

2. Game story

A space station orbiting around Mars suddenly lost contact with the Earth and an emergency mission sent back disturbing images. The station has been invaded by a gigantic and unknown alien life form, dissolving and taking control of everything on its path. As an elite fighter, BOLD, you are sent there and your mission is ti find the alien core and to destroy the threat.

3. Mission Breakdown

The space station is divided into 5 areas:

Landing zone
You start there and most of your enemies will be maintenance robots being controlled by the alien life form. Your squad release more weaponry in this area as it is an open space.

Engine center
First steps in the station. You must go through this area before the fearsome aliens capture more energy spheres...

Gardens
The station was a research center and was supposed to analyze life behavior in space. The alien entity controls this area and scanner data revealed mutated and frightening life forms in there.

Unknown zone ... and beyond
Nobody really knows what you will encounter there...

4. Controls

BOLD is controlled with the mouse, the left button fires your weapons and the right button switches fighting modes:

The humanoid robot, or GOLEM, has a strong armor but is much too large in some situations. It can also pull more energy to the weapons.

Jet fighter, or WASP, has a weaker armor but can get through dense enemy forces because of its small size. Your weapons are also weaker in this form.

Don't hesitate to switch from one form to the other during combat !
Finally BOLD also has a powerful but limited weapon. The THUNDER-BOMB can be used by pressing 'space bar'. They are symbolized by small thunder-icons located on the right hand side of your status bar, you start with a stock of three. Finally you start the game with five lives and a full energy bar.

5. Shops

Shops are located at the end of each level. During combat, you will gain credits (money) by destroying enemies. This money can be later spent in these shops - You can also sell weapons there.
Weapons can be attached to your ship at 3 different points:

A attach themself behind your ship.
B is a main weapons.
C is in front of your ship.

Keep in mind that only one weapon can be attached to each location, some of them can be purchased several times for enhancement. They are called "types" and some weapons, like the ORB-LASER, have 4 types which means they can be upgraded 4 times !
On the shop screen, move the mouse to select any icon. Left mouse button will buy an item, right mouse bouton will sell it. space bar will exit. Here is the list of items available from the shop: