1. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from, how old are you, what's your name etc?

My name is Matthias Arndt. I'm currently 28 years old and working as a software developer for the
Alten group which is working all over Europe in various fields of engineering consulting.
In particular i'm working as a consultant in our local office for ZF in Friedrichshafen, developing
software for automated gears to be used in various cars.

2. What is your current hardware line up?

A lame Acer Notebook :P
As I'm currently in the middle of a house move I hardly have my gear around. I do own a Falcon 030 with 14MB RAM, FPU and Netusbee,
an STE 4MB with TOS 2.06 and Satandisk, a 1040STFM with TOS 1.04, a PSX and 2 Atari 2600 consoles.
As soon as I moved into my new flat, I'll have my Falcon around again as it shares my PC's TFT with ease.

3. When did you get your first ST?

My older brother bought himself a 520STM in early 1987. Naturally it caught my attention, first in games and later in coding.
For two reasons, my brother told me "if you use the computer, at least do something useful with it.", and all other people
were Amiga users. I had no supply of cracks or menus, just a few PD disks I could buy in a store in the next city. They
would cost about 5EUR each.

4. Were you alone, stranded in a PC/Amiga universe?

Yes, but on of my best friends was on PC back then. And we shared a lot of coding experience, including porting stuff to ST
and back to PC, and vice versa.
Naturally I joined the PC mainstream as soon as I could but I came back to Atari rather fast when Pacifist became available.

5. What was the first ST game you played?

Mac-Pan or Breakout, or maybe a 3D labyrinth done in ST-Basic, all run on the SM124.
The first I saw however was Starglider which my brother did borrow and play on the large family TV.

6. Where did you get your games from in the early days?

Either the few cracks my brother had, PD stuff or selfmade. I once had a single contact for games and this was a woman
which worked at my father's office. I got a couple of Sierra adventures from her and played them to death.

7. What else did you use your ST for?

Coding and gaming - both leading to each other: I mainly coded to have new games to play ;)
Actually I still have 3 disk images with ancient games code. I plan to resurrect some with a Paradize quality boost. This may take
time though.

8. Why do you participate in STOT? What's the motivation?

Just for the fun - to have a reason to play a game longer than 1 GAMEOVER.
Scoring is of no interest to me, i know I suck but it is all for the fun. And to show the flag, as I'm jobwise occupied and have
only little time to code on new things.

9. Are you happy with the games selected so far?

Not really, some were of the sort, I didn't bother to play at all.
I did miss one or two interesting ones though, mainly because I had other things in mind (my gf) ;)

10. What else are you interested in seeing in and/or from STOT?

A decent webpage WITHOUT Flash usage ;)

11. Let's imagine you are lost in an island, you, an ST with monitor, a solar power generator and 5 games.
Which ones would they be?

Good question - I'd prefer GFABASIC over 5 games, as I could do some 100s then ;)
Seriously I can't pick, Xenon would probably be within this pack, and Lethal Xcess.

12. What is your favourite game genre?

Shoot'em ups and platformers (if action is involved)

13. What is your favourite modern game?

Modern what? I think the "newest" PC game I bought is "Afrika Korps vs Desert Rats" for 1 EUR in the bargain bin of a store ;)
I'm too deep into ST gaming, most modern stuff has no spirit or is plain boring.
On PC I like the first 5 parts of Tomb Raider, Rick Dangerous in 3D, pretty cool stuff :) On PSX they suck, too many buttons
to be pressed at once on those strange controllers.

14. Emulators or real hardware?

Both! Real hardware for the special effect, emulators if you don't have the real hardware at hand. Like now when I'm just stuck
with my notebook or for platforms which are harder to get your hands on. Or if you run out of storage space.
E.q. i'd love to own both an Atari 800XL and a C64 and and and, but storage space is at premium. So I confine myself to a few
Ataris atm ;) And the STs are likely to get stored away for some time due to lack of spac eon my desks.

15. Something else you would like to say?

Ofcourse:
STay cool, STay Atari /|\