1. Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from, how old are you, what's your name etc?
My name is Dave Haylett - I'm 31 and have lived in Leicester in the UK all my life! I currently work as a Management Information developer for a bank which is a career I only started last year. Before that I was a manager in retail.

2. What is your current hardware line up?
I currently run a 3.4ghz PC with 2gig RAM.
I still have my first Atari 400, and my Atari 800XL. They're unceremoniously dumped in a cupboard and I really should take the time to take them out and arrange them properly with the respect they deserve! I still have some C16 8K tapes in an old trainer box too, along with a handful of cassette games that I bought from ebay. I don't want to start a collection but it's nice to have a few slices of history tucked away somewhere.
I also have a Playstation 3, and recently received an Atari Lynx which I won on ebay.

3. When did you get your first ST?
I got my first ST for Christmas back in 1988 - a 520STFM. A year or two prior to this I remember reading a preview in an Atari 8-bit mag about this ground-breaking game called Dungeon Master. There were several screenshots on this two-page spread and, being an RPG fan (I loved the Heroquest/Advanced Heroquest board games), I was besotted with it! I couldn't stop reading the review and absorbing the screenshots! As soon as Santa dropped my ST down the chimney, I was begging for Dungeon Master and as soon as that arrived - I was hooked for life!
Two or three years after that I upgraded to a 2 meg 1040STE - a wonderful machine, but sadly too late to be a rival to the well-established Amiga. Sadly both my STs have gone - one went to a friend and I can't for the life of me remember where the other one went. I really ought to get hold of one again!

4. Were you alone, stranded in a PC/Amiga universe?
Nope, I was with Atari since the age of 5 and didn't regret it for a second!

5. What was the first ST game you played?
Space Harrier - but it was so realistic for my young brain that it scared me a little! Luckily Overlander came bundled with my ST too and I found that game fun to play. I was totally gobsmacked by the quality of the graphics/sound/etc. Ranarama also came with it, although I just couldn't get my head around the spells/power levels. I currently have a STeem memory snapshot of Ranarama which I'm determined to finish.

6. Where did you get your games from in the early days?
Mays in town were good for 8-bit and 16-bit games. There was also a small corner shop called ABC that literally had two walls filled from the floor up to the ceiling with cassettes and discs, and my mouth used to water every time I was lucky enough for my dad to take me there. He and the shop owner would chat for ages while I scanned each game - given a £10 budget and desperately trying to decide whether to take THIS game at £9.99, or those TWO games at £4.99 or those THREE games for £2.99 each. I was in heaven, especially when I first saw the ST being demo'd - it had Arkanoid running, and the shop owner's wife was trying to get used to using the mouse to play. I was fascinated, especially by the amount of pixels and colour on the screen! Also a newsagent down the road used to sell the budget labels - all £2.99 or less, and if I was lucky, dad would let me buy one.

7. What else did you use your ST for?
I spent most of my time programming games, demos and utilities. I was fascinated by all the big megademos and had quite a collection of PD demo discs. I used STOS all the time, and only got into 68000 when it was too late and I moved to the PC scene. I used to program demos (including the Vexirik Megademo), RPG games, shoot-em-ups, and the odd pac-man game (Moneymania 1 and 2, and 3 was only half-finished and sadly the source disc is corrupted). I wrote a few saved-game editors (Speedball 2 and Civilisation were my main two), and was determined to hack Dungeon Master but I could never quite understand how the saved game was laid out. My frustration has recently been laid to rest with the release of Return to Chaos (RTC) - a PC version of Dungeon Master, complete with full editor, and I am working on my own dungeon.

8. Why do you participate in STOT? What's the motivation?
I love playing games, and I love the old games. I think having a friendly tournament gives more purpose to playing the games. It will also make me play games that otherwise I wouldn't normally play and maybe I'll discover something new! I missed season 1 and kicked myself for it, and I am determined to play every round of season 2 (and beyond!)

9. Are you happy with the games selected so far?
As I missed season 1 I can't really comment, although the range of games looks good. I enjoyed Vroom on the ST and enjoyed revisiting it last week for the tournament. I'm not happy with my first score though, and will have a second try soon!

10. What else are you interested in seeing in and/or from STOT?
I think the simplicity of the tournament gives it it's appeal, and all you need is a list of games, a method of scoring, and a website to show how well everyone's doing. If I had to think of something extra then perhaps a simple 'trophy' system where extra points are awarded for accomplishing one specific feat per game (I don't know, maybe like in Xenon 2 from last season you got an extra point for reaching level 2). This would be a little tough to implement maybe.

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?
Dungeon Master, Overlander, Chaos, Ranarama, and (if I'm allowed) I'd take a megademo with me so I could kick back and read all the scrolltexts!

12. What is your favourite game genre?
Role-Playing Games. Whether it be top-down or first-person or even thrid-person. I think with it all starting with Hero Quest, I love the swords and sorcery backdrop. Even the more graphically simple games are appealing to me, as long as there are stats, level-ups, inventories, and the gameplay is good. I am in the middle of writing a remake of Chaos on the PC - it's a project I started when I was between careers and sadly it hasn't been touched for a few months. There's a thread on the Atari Forum somewhere with some screenshots of it.

13. What is your favourite modern game?
I play Battlefield 2 a lot - I enjoy the game itself, but the online ranks and trophies make the game incredibly long-term. If it wasn't for this system, I would only have played it for a few months. I also play Heroes of Might & Magic (I have all five) and Neverwinter Nights 2. I still scan ebay now and then for any games that I may be interested in that are going cheap. I recently got hold of a fantastic adventure called Black Mirror and, after some problems getting it running (apparently the game is famous for it), I have been hooked.

14. Emulators or real hardware?
Emulators. I know they're not the real thing, but I enjoy the ease of use (such as GamebaseST), and keeping my desk tidy by not having all the systems set up! Even though the emulation is 99.9% spot-on, I suppose there's nothing like playing the game on the original machine, with a cheetah 125 joystick in your hand (which doesn't go left properly because you threw it at the wall in frustration)

15. Something else you would like to say?
I love the Atari and am a subscriber to Retro Gamer magazine which I think is a really good read. I have noticed that there is such a focus on retro gaming - with loads of websites out there, and downloadable retro games for Xbox and PS3. Maybe some people are getting tired of the latest high-graphics low-gameplay 'cinema'-style games and yearn for a simple pick-up-and-play classic!