Alternate Reality - The City

Alternate Reality: The City is a first-person role-playing game with a science fiction premise. You are one of many humans kidnapped from Earth by aliens and deposited in the medieval-styled City of Xebec's Demise . As you step through the floating gate, a slot-machine panel of rotating numbers freezes, determining your starting attributes: Stamina, Charm, Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Skill, Hit Points, and Wealth . The game features a vast 64x64 grid city with no loading screens between areas . You must explore shops, taverns, inns, banks, smithies, healers, and 12 guilds while managing hunger, thirst, weather conditions, and morality . Encounters can be resolved through combat, bribery, or trickery. The game famously has no main quest—only survival and character building for future, unreleased installments .

Atari ST

Released in 1986 by Datasoft, ported by Jim Ratcliff and Richard Mirsky with graphics by Philip Price and Steve Hofmann . The ST version received a score of 3 out of 5 stars from Dragon magazine and 8/10 from Atari ST User magazine . Atari ST User called it an outstanding role-playing game that pushes the ST to its limits . Multiple revisions were released, with version 3.0 improving graphics to match other 16-bit ports . However, many fans consider this port inferior to the original 8-bit Atari version, criticizing the bland atmosphere, inferior music implementation, and missing visual details that made the original immersive . The ST version features faster load times and reduced disk swapping compared to 8-bit systems, but lacks the soul that defined the original . A controversial port of an ambitious, unfinished masterpiece .