Any Atari ST love?

[louisg]

Hey, I was thinking of buying an NTSC Atari STE for music work, but also would want to check out games on it too. Are there any Atari ST owners in the house who can share their experiences? Is everything on a standard FAT readable floppy? Is it as much of a PAL/NTSC nightmare as the Commodore systems? And, what are some games that really shine on the system?

[Marc]

The only question I can answer there is the gaming one, and to be honest it was piss-poor in comparison to the Amiga for about 99% of the games I personally had on both.

[Estebang]

Being an American, I never owned either system, but the consensus seems to be that the Atari ST was just an inferior Amiga.

[Marc]

Being an American, I never owned either system, but the consensus seems to be that the Atari ST was just an inferior Amiga.

Less displayaboe colours, smaller palette, and a sound chip from the Spectrum pretty much sums it up. It was about £100 cheaper than the Amiga for a while so gained a foothold, once the Amiga dropped to the same price... Game over.

It had Midi port as I remember though, and was the choice for musicians.

[eckart]

Had both systems, but love the atari st much more.

Some games that comes in mind are:
bubble ghost
xenon
typhoon
goldrunner
thrust
gauntlet
leathernecks
wizball
last ninja
rampage
adams family
arcanoid
impact
beyond the ice pallace
barbarian
super sprint
metrocross

[BobbyNewmarkiii]

Sidewinder II is an awesome shmup for the ST. Varied enemies, decent power-ups. My first shooter

Only got to level 3 back in the day, but then, I was only about 10 years old.

It also had a weird mechanic where you could pause the scrolling (vertical) if you held back on the stick at the bottom of the screen. Not sure if that was a bug or intentional. Oh yeah, and no continues. Old skool

[louisg]

Wow, is SideWinder II a sequel to the Arcadia game? I *loved* that when I was a little kid. Sure, the first level is the hardest thing in the game and the rest is a total cruise 'em up, but back then, I didn't care

I'd probably be mostly interested in 3d games on it since the 2d support isn't so hot on that thing. Xenon and Wizball are pretty damn tempting though- I can't get the C64 Wizball to work in NTSC and I loved Xenon on the Ami (and don't see myself getting a way of loading games onto Amiga disks in the near future).

[Aguraki]

had many atari stf 520/1040 ste until I made the mistake of getting an amiga 1200 when it was already a way too late shot from commodore and I didn't really play on it.
But atari oh man had a good number on years with it and had access to about all the games due to being highly into pirate scene.

I'd probably be mostly interested in 3d games on it since the 2d support isn't so hot on that thing

not sure what u mean,sure there were some 3d but it really didnt aged well.
some 3d games I remember:
stunt car racer
epic(space battles)
darkside
battlezone
mach 3
meh thats really old now not easy.

Wizball

make sure you try wizkid its sequel which is one of the best game I've ever played.
try also time bandit,unique atmosphere poor graphics due to very early game on the support.

shooters u got all the usual suspects...xenon 1 and 2,x-out,dragon spirit...sorry can't remember now.

If you want to try the games there is the emulator way:
SainT
Steem Engine

and for the amiga
WinuAE

all very easy to use and you can find all roms easily on the net.

back in the days some of my favourites where dungeon master and his sequel chaos strikes back,,all the adventures games like maupiti island,manoir de mortevielle,Time Travelers: The Menace(Future Wars Adventures in Time),another world,midnight resistance,metrocross,north&south,maniac mansion,indy and the last crusade,pang,rainbow island(played it sooooo much)etc...

still have some amiga floppy and probably some atari stuffs(I actually have an atari joystick on my shelves)

sorry for the messy post I would need to think longer about it to make it clearer

edit:speedball 2

[Herr Schatten]

Pretty much any decent game on the Atari ST is equally good or better on the Amiga.

You should definitely get Oids, a fantastic Thrust/Gravitar-type game, and Bolo, an awesome little Arkanoid/Breakout clone. Both are ST exclusives, if I remember correctly.

If you don't have access to an Amiga, most of the stuff from the Bitmap Brothers is pretty good on the ST (Speedball II, Cadaver, Gods, The Chaos Engine).

[Marc]

Pretty much any decent game on the Atari ST is equally good or better on the Amiga.

You should definitely get Oids, a fantastic Thrust/Gravitar-type game, and Bolo, an awesome little Arkanoid/Breakout clone. Both are ST exclusives, if I remember correctly.

If you don't have access to an Amiga, most of the stuff from the Bitmap Brothers is pretty good on the ST (Speedball II, Cadaver, Gods, The Chaos Engine).

But looks and sounds like shit in comparison. As Herr Schatten said, bar about a dozen ST-only exclusives, there's really no reason to bother.
I just remembered why it took off so well. When I was a teen, you could get an ST withabout 30 games for around a hundred quid less than the Amiga by itself. There were some pretty good games in there too - Xenon, Buggy Boy, Thundercats, StarRay, StarGlider and Arknoid spring instantly to mind.

Then the Amiga dropped in price.

[louisg]

Pretty much any decent game on the Atari ST is equally good or better on the Amiga.

You should definitely get Oids, a fantastic Thrust/Gravitar-type game, and Bolo, an awesome little Arkanoid/Breakout clone. Both are ST exclusives, if I remember correctly.

If you don't have access to an Amiga, most of the stuff from the Bitmap Brothers is pretty good on the ST (Speedball II, Cadaver, Gods, The Chaos Engine).

But looks and sounds like shit in comparison. As Herr Schatten said, bar about a dozen ST-only exclusives, there's really no reason to bother.
I just remembered why it took off so well. When I was a teen, you could get an ST withabout 30 games for around a hundred quid less than the Amiga by itself. There were some pretty good games in there too - Xenon, Buggy Boy, Thundercats, StarRay, StarGlider and Arknoid spring instantly to mind.

Then the Amiga dropped in price.

Buggy Boy! That's one of my favorite racing games. If it's anything like the Amiga one, I'm sold. Though I guess I should test these on emu first to make sure they'll work on a NA model. The games on this thing really would be a perk, not the main reason I'd be looking for one. It's a shame that Chaos Engine has no music.

So is Dogs of War any good? And Stunt Car Racer is a really excellent game-- I was into the C64 version for a while, until my tape save died It sounds like a system that's worthwhile if you don't have easy access to Amiga games. I've got a couple A500s but no way of transferring data!

[Marc]

To be fair, I think Stunt Car may have been slightly faster than the Amiga, albeit with a slightly smaller screen. A classic either way.

[Drum]

make sure you try wizkid its sequel which is one of the best game I've ever played.

It really is such a great game.

[louisg]

Oh it looks like there's Sentinel for this thing too. It does seem like it has a decent enough selection.

To be fair, I think Stunt Car may have been slightly faster than the Amiga, albeit with a slightly smaller screen. A classic either way.

Yeah the ST may come out ahead with polygons. I mean, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhTH6h3vEUM

I'm *assuming* that's the stock processor, but maybe it's an upgrade.. wasn't even the STE just 8mhz?

(and let's not forget Vroom!)

[Friendly]

Hey, I was thinking of buying an NTSC Atari STE for music work, but also would want to check out games on it too. Are there any Atari ST owners in the house who can share their experiences? Is everything on a standard FAT readable floppy? Is it as much of a PAL/NTSC nightmare as the Commodore systems? And, what are some games that really shine on the system?

As has been said numerous times already, Atari ST is inferior to Amiga in every regard. I still have a Mega STE in storage somewhere, haven't used it in years. The disks are not FAT formatted. Like Amiga, Atari ST used 3.5" DD floppies and a proprietary file format; the disks are not readable in a PC floppy disk drive. There are literally a handful of games that are better on ST, while thousands of games are better on Amiga. Atari ST has a very crappy sound chip, and the video chip is weak, too (very few colors in hi-res mode, only 4 iirc, only 16 colors in standard resolution).
Unless you used to have one as a kid and want one because you are feeling nostalgic, I strongly advise against getting one. Better do whatever music work you plan to do on a modern computer, with modern RAM and modern storage media.

[ST Dragon]

Being an Amiga fan back in the day, I never really got much into the Atari ST, but I did enjoy Leisure Suit Larry on the ST at a mates house.

Here are some cool videos of the best games on the system:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz8QToVA ... re=related

R-Type II looks quite good too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtF-_lOO ... re=related

Interestingly Even Quake, but its on a beefed up Falcon...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXHkx4k1 ... re=related

[Friendly]

Interestingly Even Quake, but its on a beefed up Falcon...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXHkx4k1 ... re=related

Falcon is a completely unrelated computer (I suppose you know that). It was actually Atari's final computer, like its more successfull competitor Amiga 1200 was Commodore's last computer.
Falcon is pretty cool, but I think there is only very little software for it. The Amiga 1200 did better in this regard, especially since it was continued until 1996 by another company after Commodore folded.

[louisg]

Hey, I was thinking of buying an NTSC Atari STE for music work, but also would want to check out games on it too. Are there any Atari ST owners in the house who can share their experiences? Is everything on a standard FAT readable floppy? Is it as much of a PAL/NTSC nightmare as the Commodore systems? And, what are some games that really shine on the system?

As has been said numerous times already, Atari ST is inferior to Amiga in every regard. I still have a Mega STE in storage somewhere, haven't used it in years. The disks are not FAT formatted. Like Amiga, Atari ST used 3.5" DD floppies and a proprietary file format; the disks are not readable in a PC floppy disk drive. There are literally a handful of games that are better on ST, while thousands of games are better on Amiga. Atari ST has a very crappy sound chip, and the video chip is weak, too (very few colors in hi-res mode, only 4 iirc, only 16 colors in standard resolution).
Unless you used to have one as a kid and want one because you are feeling nostalgic, I strongly advise against getting one. Better do whatever music work you plan to do on a modern computer, with modern RAM and modern storage media.

Ahh yeah. That's too bad; I guess I was misinformed about the FAT support. It'd probably just sit around like my Amiga without an easy way of loading games onto it.

[dcharlie]

As has been said numerous times already, Atari ST is inferior to Amiga in every regard.

this isn't strictly true - 3d games tended to be faster on the Atari ST and, despite the absolute horror show of having a single sided disk first version followed by a dual sided later model, the ST had some tricks up it sleeve that the Amiga couldn't do (ALL Atari ST users could play Dungeon Master, not so on the Amiga )

Whilst the argument is with various extras the Amiga could match the ST in midi, the built in nature of midi to the system was a big thing. Steinberg on ST was a joy to use and i used it extensively during my teens alongside tracker stuff for the Amiga. Samples = Amiga, Midi = ST.

ST had no hardware scrolling aid - this was a massive kick in the nuts for the system as some games suffered horrifically from it yet others (Stargoose) somehow managed to out perform the Amiga.

Anyways, i had both - i like both machines for different reasons. Hand on heart if i had to chose one i'd opt for the Amiga, but the ST wasn't a slouch and if, like me back then, you were heavily into Midi composition the ST took a shit in the Amigas mouth as a stock machine. Anyways, i guess all i wanted to add was despite that i'd take an Amiga over an ST given the choice, the idea that the Amiga is better in every department than the ST is -bollox-.

[Herr Schatten]

ALL Atari ST users could play Dungeon Master, not so on the Amiga

Iirc, that was just because FTL were too lazy to write a simple custom UI system for moving the mouse pointer around and registering clicks, but instead opted for using the standard UIs of the two machines. The standard UI of the Amiga needed more RAM than that of the ST, so Dungeon Master ended up being playable on Amigas with 1MB of RAM only. It had nothing to do with the hardware differences of the machines or with the game itself, just some lazy coding.

[dcharlie]

Iirc, that was just because FTL were too lazy to write a simple custom UI system for moving the mouse pointer around and registering clicks, but instead opted for using the standard UIs of the two machines. The standard UI of the Amiga needed more RAM than that of the ST, so Dungeon Master ended up being playable on Amigas with 1MB of RAM only. It had nothing to do with the hardware differences of the machines or with the game itself, just some lazy coding.

Well, Amiga and St had mouse functions at OS level, rewritting OS level functions -is- a reflection of at least the design of the machine surely? Having to rewrite better mouse operators over the OS level functions really isn't a good reflection of the OS code right?

[Friendly]

Hey, I was thinking of buying an NTSC Atari STE for music work, but also would want to check out games on it too. Are there any Atari ST owners in the house who can share their experiences? Is everything on a standard FAT readable floppy? Is it as much of a PAL/NTSC nightmare as the Commodore systems? And, what are some games that really shine on the system?

As has been said numerous times already, Atari ST is inferior to Amiga in every regard. I still have a Mega STE in storage somewhere, haven't used it in years. The disks are not FAT formatted. Like Amiga, Atari ST used 3.5" DD floppies and a proprietary file format; the disks are not readable in a PC floppy disk drive. There are literally a handful of games that are better on ST, while thousands of games are better on Amiga. Atari ST has a very crappy sound chip, and the video chip is weak, too (very few colors in hi-res mode, only 4 iirc, only 16 colors in standard resolution).
Unless you used to have one as a kid and want one because you are feeling nostalgic, I strongly advise against getting one. Better do whatever music work you plan to do on a modern computer, with modern RAM and modern storage media.

Ahh yeah. That's too bad; I guess I was misinformed about the FAT support. It'd probably just sit around like my Amiga without an easy way of loading games onto it.

Well, there *is* a simple way to transfer files to an Amiga- if you happen to have an Amiga 1200. Then you can buy a PCMCIA-CF card reader transfer set which allows you to transfer files (ADF disk images) to and from your Amiga. There are also 2,5" IDE to Compact Flash adapters which allow you to install a CF card instead of a hard disc drive in the Amiga, which makes booting/loading incredibly fast.

[louisg]

Well, there *is* a simple way to transfer files to an Amiga- if you happen to have an Amiga 1200. Then you can buy a PCMCIA-CF card reader transfer set which allows you to transfer files (ADF disk images) to and from your Amiga. There are also 2,5" IDE to Compact Flash adapters which allow you to install a CF card instead of a hard disc drive in the Amiga, which makes booting/loading incredibly fast.

1200 isn't very common here. It's pretty much A500 or nothing in the states.

Well, Amiga and St had mouse functions at OS level, rewritting OS level functions -is- a reflection of at least the design of the machine surely? Having to rewrite better mouse operators over the OS level functions really isn't a good reflection of the OS code right?

I don't think almost any well-performing game used OS functions, did they? A lot didn't even use AmigaDOS AFAIK. This sounds like an indicator that the game's code sucks to me.

[Stefan_L]

It is really strange how when everytime someone askes about Atari ST then the thread becomes an ST vs Amiga thread, the OP was not even asking about wich was best.

When it comes to NTSC/PAL so do i not recommend NTSC for either ST or Amiga as both computers were pretty much PAL to 95% of the software.

The ST can read/write DOS (720kb) disks, the problem is to actually use your PC to write/read DOS disks as the support for it kind of ended after Win95.
The easiest way is to use one of those memory card devices to transfer files on retro computers, for the ST you can use "Ultrasatan".

Some good shoot'em ups for the Atari ST is "Wings of Death" and "Lethal Xcess", both have STE enhancements but not much though

Some other good games are "Skate Wars" and the underrated platformer "Axel's Magic Hammer", "Switchblade" is a nice little game too.
"Xenomorph" the true Dungoen Master in space.
"Skidz" run around with your bike or skateboard and collect litter... more fun than it sounds and great graphics also.
"Prison" using the sideview adventure style that was popular for ZX spectrum games.
"Seven Gates of Jamabala" another underrated platform game.
"Mean Streets" the first "Tex Murphy" game i think.
"Wipe-out" best Tron-bike style game ever.
"Eye of Horus" a sort of shoot'em up i guess, hard to categorize.
"Barbarian 2" (Palace) nice hack'n slash game, a bit too easy though.

[Friendly]

The ST can read/write DOS (720kb) disks, the problem is to actually use your PC to write/read DOS disks as the support for it kind of ended after Win95.
The easiest way is to use one of those memory card devices to transfer files on retro computers, for the ST you can use "Ultrasatan".

Problem being that Atari games are not in DOS format, and that Ultrasatan is not available anywhere (and it would be around 100 EUR if you could find one).
Those PCMCIA CF adapters for Amiga 1200 on the other hand are cheap (~15 EUR) and readily available.

[Aguraki]

"Axel's Magic Hammer"
"Switchblade"
"Xenomorph" the true Dungoen Master in space.
"Eye of Horus" a sort of shoot'em up i guess, hard to categorize.
"Barbarian 2" (Palace) nice hack'n slash game, a bit too easy though.

+1 on all these games.
barbarian 1 was great for his time too.
this thread made me open my emulator again
I just downloaded roadwars 2000,strategy madmaxian game that I had on pc DOS and the atari version is just so much bearable.

some other honorable games scorlling mines and on the net:
-sundog (spaceship trading game)
-elite
-captain blood (space exporation)
-Rogue (great vesion I played this so much)
-pool ST
-hound of shadows(text adventure with some great graphics pages and superb atmostphear)
-the pawn (text adventure)
-spiderman
-bionic commando(played this a lot)
-tiger road
-the light corridor (awesome,between break out and shufflepuck)
-shufflepuck coffee (great)
-vroom (sick race game for his time)
-Weird Dreams (superb design horrible difficulty)
-Ghouls n Ghosts (great port imo)
-krypton egg (best breaout like ever)
-black tiger
-rodlands (a la nighmare in the dark)
-kick off 1&2
-swiv (shmup)

played all of these back in the days.

[No_not_like_Quake]

Reading VG&CE in the early 90s, I was always intrigued by the war going on between these two systems. In NA, these machines were not super important but I probably would have gone with Amiga. I have heard that there are actually a few games that are superior on the Atari ST. Does anyone here know which?

[Shatterhand]

It is really strange how when everytime someone askes about Atari ST then the thread becomes an ST vs Amiga thread, the OP was not even asking about wich was best.

The first thing I thought when I just read the thread title was:

"No, no love for this thing, it was because of it that we had lots of shovelware on Amiga"

That's the only thing it comes to my mind when people talk about the ST. The only exclusive game I ever heard about it is Oids, everything else seems to be either shitty versions that were better on amiga, or games that were made for the ST and then ported to Amiga in direct-conversions that didn't use all the
Amiga power.

When I was an MSX user, I also suffered the same way with direct ports of Spectrum games. I have ALL THE RIGHT to be pissed, ok?

[ST Dragon]

Interestingly Even Quake, but its on a beefed up Falcon...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXHkx4k1 ... re=related

Falcon is a completely unrelated computer (I suppose you know that). It was actually Atari's final computer, like its more successful competitor Amiga 1200 was Commodore's last computer.
Falcon is pretty cool, but I think there is only very little software for it. The Amiga 1200 did better in this regard, especially since it was continued until 1996 by another company after Commodore folded.

Yeah I actually have some of the 1992 Mags comparing the 2 systems from back in the day. The Atari Falcon actually had a better CPU Motorola 68030, in relation to the 68EC020 the A1200 was using and it even featured a better sound chip than the A1200.

[Friendly]

Interestingly Even Quake, but its on a beefed up Falcon...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXHkx4k1 ... re=related

Falcon is a completely unrelated computer (I suppose you know that). It was actually Atari's final computer, like its more successful competitor Amiga 1200 was Commodore's last computer.
Falcon is pretty cool, but I think there is only very little software for it. The Amiga 1200 did better in this regard, especially since it was continued until 1996 by another company after Commodore folded.

Yeah I actually have some of the 1992 Mags comparing the 2 systems from back in the day. The Atari Falcon actually had a better CPU Motorola 68030, in relation to the 68EC020 the A1200 was using and it even featured a better sound chip than the A1200.

On the other hand if you install a Blizzard 1230-IV in your Amiga 1200, you get 50 MHz and can use up to 64 MB of RAM. This in combination with the above mentioned CF-"HDD" and CF-PCMCIA adapter and a little tool called WHDload that allows you to boot Amiga 500 games from hdd makes Amiga 1200 the most awesome home computer ever.