RECOIL

RECOIL (Retro Computer Image Library) is designed as a continuation to FAIL (First Atari Image Library). It lets you open and decode image files formatted in Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II or Macintosh, Atari 8-bit, Portofolio, ST/STE or Falcon, BBC Micro, Commodore 16 or 64, MSX, Oric, PC, SAM Coupe, TRS-80, TRS-80 Color Computer, ZX81, or ZX Spectrum.

The installation procedure doesn't take long and you can choose the components to set up while excluding the rest: a command-line converter for PNG files, Windows thumbnail provider, along with plugins for XnView, 32-bit and 64-bit Imaging, and Paint.NET.

As far as the interface is concerned, RECOIL adopts a standard window with a plain and simple look, where you can open a file, view the image content of all supported file types from the same directory, copy pictures to the Clipboard, enter fullscreen mode, zoom in and out, as well as invert black and white.

You can ask RECOIL to show the current file's path in the title bar, check out file properties in the status bar (e.g. file type, resolution, number of colors), hide the status bar, as well as automatically skip any files on error when exploring multiple images from the specified folder.

Moreover, the application gives you the possibility to load and use Atari 8-bit palette files (ACT or PAL format), as well as to save the images with a popular extension (PNG). Apart from the fact that keyboard shortcuts are supported, there are no other notable options available.

The program worked smoothly in our testing, without triggering the operating system to hang, crash or prompt error messages. As we expected, it left a small footprint on system resources.

Although it doesn't integrate richer options and configuration parameters, RECOIL offers a simple and effective method for opening and decoding less typical image formats, and it can be handled with ease by anyone.