Alpha Waves
Developer(s)	Infogrames
Publisher(s)	Infogrames (International)/Data East (North America)
Designer(s)	Christophe de Dinechin
Release date(s)	1990
Genre(s)	Platform game
Mode(s)	Single player (DOS), two simultaneous players (Atari ST)
Rating(s)	N/A
Platform(s)	Amiga, Atari ST, DOS
System requirements	10Mhz processor, CGA, EGA, VGA, or Monochrome graphics (DOS version)
Input	Keyboard, Joystick

Alpha Waves (also known as Continuum) is an early 3D game that combines labyrinthine exploration with platform gameplay. By most definitions of the genre it could be considered to be the first 3D platform game, released in 1990, 6 years before the genre's seminal classic Mario 64. It was an abstract game with a moody, artistic presentation, curiously named for its supposed ability to stimulate the different emotional centers of the brain with its use of color and music. Image File history File linksMetadata Alpha_Waves_cover. ... A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates computer or video games. ... Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA) is an international holding company headquartered in Lyon, France. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA) is an international holding company headquartered in Lyon, France. ... Data East (データイースト dēta īsuto) was a Japanese video game company, also known as DECO (Data East Corporation, データイースト株式会社 dēta īsuto kabushikigaisha). ... A game designer is a person who designs games. ... MCMXC redirects here; for the Enigma album, see MCMXC a. ... Video games are generally categorized into genres. ... Platform game, or platformer, is a video game genre characterized by jumping to and from suspended platforms. ... In computer games and video games, single-player refers to the variant of a particular game where input from only one player is expected throughout the course of the gaming session. ... The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ... The original Amiga 1000 (1985) with various peripherals The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced home entertainment and productivity machine. ... The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ... ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Platform game, or platformer, is a video game genre characterized by jumping to and from suspended platforms. ... Platform game, or platformer, is a video game genre characterized by jumping to and from suspended platforms. ... Super Mario 64 was one of the first video games released for the Nintendo 64 and was the consoles flagship killer application. ...

It was developed initially for the Atari ST by Christophe de Dinechin, and later ported to the Amiga and DOS. The DOS port was done by Frédérick Raynal, a notable game designer who would go on to develop Alone in the Dark, and Little Big Adventure. He has said that his work on Alpha Waves was a major inspiration for AitD. The PC version was also localized in North America by Data East, and retitled Continuum. Infogrames may have also published their own version in the US under the original title, and it was also released as a part of no less than two Infogrames compilations, on which it retained its original name. The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ... The original Amiga 1000 (1985) with various peripherals The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced home entertainment and productivity machine. ... ‹ The template below has been proposed for deletion. ... Michel Ancel, Frederick Raynal (second from left) and Shigeru Miyamoto are inducted into France’s Order of Arts and Letters on March 13, 2006. ... Alone in the Dark is the title of several works of fiction: Alone in the Dark (1982 film), a 1982 horror movie featuring Jack Palance, Donald Pleasence, and Martin Landau Alone in the Dark (series), a series of computer games which as of 2005 has four titles Alone in the... Little Big Adventure (LBA) is a computer game developed by Adeline first released at the end of 1994. ... Data East (データイースト dÄ“ta Ä«suto) was a Japanese video game company, also known as DECO (Data East Corporation, データイースト株式会社 dÄ“ta Ä«suto kabushikigaisha). ... Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA) is an international holding company headquartered in Lyon, France. ...

Gameplay

Alpha Waves is a simple game. It features two main modes of play: Action and Emotion. The core gameplay in both is the same.

Players guide one of six craft (which are little more than geometric shapes in many cases) onto trampoline-like platforms. On these platforms, the player bounces automatically, higher, with each jump, until he reaches the maximum height possible for that platform (some are stronger than others). Every room in the game is a cube, and the walls contain doorways leading to other rooms. In this way, players have to work their way through the game's rooms, and reach different areas based on different emotions. A cube[1] is a three-dimensional solid object bounded by six square faces, facets or sides, with three meeting at each vertex. ...

In Action Mode, players also work against the clock. Time bonuses are awarded for entering new rooms, and keys can be collected to open new ways. There isn't a particular end to the game, but the goal is simply to last as long and to discover as much as possible before time runs out. Emotion Mode allows players to explore the levels freely, without the time constraints.

Version differences

Alpha Waves was initially released on the Atari ST. This version is notable for allowing two players to compete simultaneously. It lacked music entirely on the Atari 520ST, because of insufficient memory to store the music samples. On Atari 1040ST and later models, the theme song played during the intro. The music was stored on the second side of the floppy disk, since any Atari ST with enough memory also had a dual-sided floppy drive. A promotional version of the program was distributed by a french magazine on single-sided floppy disks, crashing any machine with more than 512K of memory. The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ...

The Amiga port was second. This version added a theme song at the title screen, but nixed the multiplayer aspect. The interface is similar, but the zone select in Emotion has been redone. Beyond this, it is very similar to the original. The original Amiga 1000 (1985) with various peripherals The Amiga is a family of home/personal computers originally developed by Amiga Corporation as an advanced home entertainment and productivity machine. ...

The DOS version was the last one, and contains a number of improvements. This version supported AdLib/SoundBlaster sound cards. Despite the fact that these used the more limited FM synthesis of the Yamaha YM3812, compared to the PCM synthesis of the Amiga, Alpha Waves is one of the rare exceptions where the AdLib sound quality is superior. The soundrack was also expanded to play in-game, and each zone had its own music. Additionally some of the mobiles have been changed, level layouts tweaked, and the camera tilting toned down for easier viewing. The menus and level selection screen have been redone again, and are noticeably enhanced. AdLib, Inc. ... The Sound Blaster family of sound cards was for many years the de facto standard for audio on the IBM PC compatible system platform, before audio has been commoditized. ... Yamaha YM3812 The Yamaha YM3812 also known as the OPL2 (OPL is an acronym for FM Operator Type-L) is a sound chip (i. ...

The DOS version still lacks the two player mode of the ST, and it also lacks a mechanism to regulate speed when played on systems faster than it was intended for (essentially causing it to play in fast forward on newer hardware). However when played on a properly configured system or emulator, this can be considered the superior version for solo play. An emulator reproducing a console games playable atmosphere on a Windows computer. ...

Technology

Screenshot from IBM PC

Alpha-Waves may have been the first video game featuring full-screen, flat-shaded 3D graphics on a microcomputer. Games of the same era like Falcon or Starglider typically displayed 3D graphics on a very reduced portion of the screen. On the Atari ST, Alpha-Waves also featured a simultaneous two-players mode, the screen being split in half vertically. Image File history File links PC_AlphaWaves. ... Image File history File links PC_AlphaWaves. ... The Falcon line of computer games is a series of simulations of the F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter aircraft. ... Starglider 2 was an early 3D space simulator/flight simulator video game released in 1988 by Argonaut Games for the Amiga, Atari ST and ZX Spectrum home computer systems (interesting point of note re the ST version - it could also run on a mono display). ... The Atari 520ST Atari 1040STF with SC1224 color monitor The Atari ST is a home/personal computer that was commercially popular from 1985 to the early 1990s. ...

Alpha-Waves ran on 16-bit microcomputers that did not have hardware floating-point capabilities. For that reason, it performed all perspective and rotation computations using only integer arithmetics. In order to avoid using integer multiplications, which were expensive at the time, it described objects using displacements that were multiples of a base vector. For instance, a square in the Z plane would have been described as "+1X +1Y -1X -1Y". As a result, the vast majority of geometric computations were performed using only additions, not multiplications. This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...

The computation of sine and cosines was similarly done using only integer arithmetic. All angles were represented using not degrees, but 1/256th of a circle. A lookup table contained the value of the sine multiplied by 32767. Multiplying this value by a 16-bit coordinate gave a 32-bit value, and the 16-bit high-half of that result was used. In mathematics, the trigonometric functions are functions of an angle, important when studying triangles and modeling periodic phenomena. ... In computer science, a lookup table is a data structure, usually an array or associative array, used to replace a runtime computation with a simpler lookup operation. ...

Another key to performance was a highly optimized polygon-filling routine, which used a number of tricks, including an assembly version of Duff's device to achieve a very high fill rate, besting the in-house self-modifying routine Infogrames was using at the time. In computer science, Duffs Device is an optimized implementation of a serial copy that uses a technique widely applied in assembly language for loop unwinding. ... In computer science, self-modifying code is code that alters its own instructions, whether or not it is on purpose, while it is executing. ... Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA) is an international holding company headquartered in Lyon, France. ...

The Atari ST and Amiga versions were written in assembly language. The DOS version was written in C.

External links

• Review and download at the Home of the Underdogs
• Continuum at MobyGames
• Atari ST original source code