Name me some great Atari ST games

[zmweasel]

So I've downloaded the Atari ST emu for the PSP, and I'm wondering if anyone in these forums can recommend some ST-exclusive games (other than SunDog, which is amazing for a 20-year-old design), or games that were noticeably better on the ST than the Amiga or PC (Captain Blood is apparently one). He'p me! He'p me!

-- Z.

[Pantechnicon]

Empire is a very good strategy sim. You can get more detailed information about it here

[IntvGene]

Here are some good games that I have in my ST disk directory. Some of them don't work for the PSP emulator yet, but will probably later. I couldn't tell you which ones are better on the Amiga, or which ones came out on the Amiga, but this is better than nothing:

Armour Geddon
Battle Master
Captain Blood
Captive
Bloodwyche
Carrier
Castle Master II
Chicago 90
Drakkhen
Dungeon Master I & II
Epic
Frontier
Killing Cloud
Nitro
Night Shift
Omega
Paradroid 90
Rings of Medusa
Rockstar ate my Hamster
Typhoon Thompson
Xenon II

Of course, there are also tons of great arcade ports like NinjaWarriors, Super Sprint, Badlands, EPROM, Narc, STUN Runner, etc.

I haven't messed around with the Amiga emulator yet, Zach. Which one is better?

[ubikuberalles]

Oids is an excellent ST game and one of my favorites. I haven't tried it on an emulator yet and so I don't know if it'll work.

Starglider is a GREAT game on the ST. The game starts off with a brief music soundtrack which blew me away as I didn't know the ST was capable of that kind of quality sound. Again, I don't know if it'll work on an ST emulator but it's worth checking out.

Another good game on the ST is Joust. IIRC the graphics are a lot like the arcade version. Star Raiders is OK. Not great but fun to play on occasion. I've played the Zork adventure games on my ST a lot and they're fun. However, there's nothing special about the ST version of the games: they play just like the PC versions.

The Suzy B Software CDs are a really good resource for ST games, demos and utilities. A couple of my favorite games from the Suzy B CDs include Daleks and Celestial Caesars. There are literally thousands of programs on those disks. B&C Computervisions might still sell them (I got mine from them during WOA 98) but if they don't I'm sure you can download most of those programs from various sites since the programs are public domain (or shareware at the very least). I don't know of any download sites for those programs and you'll have to Google for the programs. I have a list of the programs on the Suzy B CDs and I can send it to you if you are interested (the list is HUGE! ). PM me if you want the list.

Other games that are worth mentioning:

Arkanoid
Bubble Bobble
Rainbow Islands
BombJack
Space Harrier
Super Sprint
Buggy Boy
Ikari Warriors
Time Bandit
Megaroids
Lemmings
The Pawn
Xenon
Xevious
Jupiter Probe
Hades Nebul

And the list goes on and on but these should get you started.

BTW the pictures for my Empire blog entry (which Pantechnicon mentioned above) aren't working at the moment. Hopefully Joe will get that fixed soon but in the meantime you can see the Atar Age version of the same blog entry.

[RJ]

I can expand a bit on Time Bandits- it's a Gauntlet-type game spanning through different time periods (Old West, space-age, etc) a la TimeSplitters (not the gameplay, just the time-jumping aspect).

[zmweasel]

I haven't messed around with the Amiga emulator yet, Zach. Which one is better?

Right now, the ST emu. The Amiga emu has a cool half-screen-sized pop-up keyboard, but the sound is very glitchy and the framerate is annoyingly to unplayably slow, depending on the game. It's good for slower-paced games with point-and-click interfaces, but not so good for action games or keyboard-heavy interfaces. I hope the author can figure out how to tap into the GPU, as the SNES-emu guys have done.

Thanks for the game recommendations, all. I'm gonna check 'em out today!

-- Z.

[Lasermouse]

Sorry, a bit late on this reply, but here's a quick list of titles to check out, all great in my opinion, though some of these might be so obscure now, they won't even have .rom images available:

Rick Dangerous
Baal - Cool Psygnosis Platformer
Cloud Kingdoms
Defender II - Jeff Minter's first attempt
Xenon II: Megablast
Manhunt New York
Manhunt San Francisco


Many other fantastic games too. I have to do a retrospective on this one day soon! The ST is probably the most underrated gaming computer of all time, Power without the price, indeed!

- MP