Alfreds Kistenlager Schiebereien
Alfreds Kistenlager Schiebereien was not the first Soko-ban clone for the Atari ST, but nearly. The authors, Stefan Berlitz and Frank Werninger from Wuppertal, first got the idea when they played Spectrum HoloByte's Soko-Ban on a friend's PC in 1989. Since the game was not available for the ST, they started writing their own version. Then, to their dismay, the German magazine ST Computer published a Sokoban on their PD diskette ST 282 in January 1990. Dismay gave way for a feeling of triumph when it turned out that it was rather badly coded, it took them fifteen minutes just to start this TTP program, or so they tell us.
There does not seem to be an archive of the ST Computer PD disks on the web, but a program that fits the description to the T can be found on Atari Legend. It turned out to be a Unix port, probably from an early version of XSokoban, with ASCII graphics. It is so difficult to get to run because it needs several parameters (TTP stands for TOS Takes Parameters) or it will crash. Less lucky or patient than the two Wuppertalers, I didn't manage to get it to run at all.
So, if Alfreds Kistenlager Schiebereien was not the first Soko-ban clone on the Atari ST, it was the first one developed directly for this platform, the first one with graphics, and the first one that could be played without hassle. Not a bad score, I guess.
The menus of this game are in German, but the disk contains a text
file with short English instructions. The title could be translated
roughly with Alfred pushing crates in the warehouse
. However,
Schieberei is a common word for corrupt machinations, giving
the title a humoristic touch.
