Were the Atari ST's big for gaming or just the 8 bit line?

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

Once again excuse my ignorance having grown up a Commodore fan and now trying to come to grips with all things Atari. I am getting there having recently acquired an 5200 lol! In regards to the Atari line of computers though, it seems at least to me that most of the "buzz" and conversation as far as gaming on Atari Computers revolves around the 8bit line? Since I loved Amiga gaming back in the day I would of though that 16 bit Atari gaming would of been pretty cool. However I don't hear much about gaming on Atari ST's, was it not a big thing? We're the ST's more for applications or music? Did anyone particularly love or prefer gaming on the ST? Please enlighten me, did I miss anything not gaming on an ST back in the day instead of or in addition to my beloved Amiga? Your opinion and thoughts welcomed as always!

[Rybags]

ST had plenty of games but I don't think the modern-day scene for games is anywhere near as active as the 8-bits.

 

Not sure on exact numbers but it'd be well over 1,500+ for 68000 Asm-based commercial games. IIRC one of the cracker groups got to 520 disk releases (DBug?), and most of those had multiple games per floppy.

[+wood_jl]

I loved (and still love) playing ST games.

 

1) That being said, the Amiga is still a "better" game machine, for obvious hardware-related reasons.

 

2) I assume you're in the U.S.A. (or North America) where the ST was fractional to the Amiga in popularity.

 

Coming off the 8-bits, ST graphics and games were fantastic. Maybe not as fantastic as the Amiga, but fantastic (for the era) nonetheless. For someone who grew up on the Amiga, there's really no compelling reason to bother, however; you've seen and done it all, already.

 

The problem is the false dichotomy that because Amiga games were better, the ST "sucked" when in fact, it was pretty fantastic (once again, for the era) too and at a great price.

 

It seems that much of the [limited] ST use (in America) was for music use, and frequently with a monochrome monitor (to get the 640 x 400) so the color gaming potential was out the window.

 

I really enjoy the ST now, with **all** of the games and software available, including a trove of titles that I never knew existed back when I used one in the old days. The machine just doesn't have the popularity that *anything* Commodore, or the 8-bit Atari has. When I resumed my interest in Atari, naturally I began with the 8-bit and I really did not believe I would be interested in the ST again. How wrong I was, about myself! Stuff like the HxC SD-card floppy emulator make it easy as pie to have a long ST session with lots of fun, and this is a fairly recent development; devices offering similar utility for the Atari8 have been available for eons.

 

Nevertheless, the ST just never was popular here, and still isn't. For those who grew up with one, it's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. For those who grew up with an Amiga, don't bother.

Edited October 26, 2010 by wood_jl

[The_Laird]

The ST was massive as a games machine in the UK and Europe and was ahead of the Amiga for most of its commercial life over here and in Germany too I believe.

 

This was mainly due to it being £100 cheaper than the Amiga and coming with the now legendary Power Pack that game you about 25 free games to start with!

[oky2000]

No the 8bit line wasn't bigger, the A8 boys are just bitter and make much more noise due to the fact the machine was dropped by any developer worth mentioning a couple of years after the C64 landed.

 

In the case of the ST it was cheaper and there were plenty of ST exclusive (ie not on Amiga) games for those early years....Gauntlet 1 being the prime example.

 

And the ST far outsold the millions of versions of Atari 8bit computer models offered from 79 to mid 80s too I would imagine. The ST sales only slowed down the year Atari had to raise the price back from £299 to £399 due to RAM prices increasing. This happened to be the same month Commodore dropped the A500 to £399 from £499. OOPS

[svenski]

Well I'm a confessed Atari 8-bit fanatic and ex Amiga owner but I'm trying to feel the love for the ST.

 

My first job involved working with a Mega ST4, Atari Laser Printer and Calamus DTP package, now I was blown away by that setup but for gaming I don't have any regrets about going down the Amiga route.

 

For a period games were released first on the ST, with Amiga versions following later. OK, you can argue that the Amiga is the better machine but we Atari fans like to support the underdog.

[carmel_andrews]

I think the majority of ST 3rd party software support (both games and app's software) mainly came from europe/UK markets, since the st sort of fizzled out after 2/3 years in the US

 

The ST actually helped the A8 get 3rd party support in europe/uk, that was largely due to tramiel doing a better job of 'internationalizing' atari

[OldAtarian]

The ST-Amiga comparison is a bad one to make because they were completely different machines marketed to completely different users. The Amiga was a multimedia monster before multimedia was even a buzzword so it had really powerful (and expensive) video and sound hardware that wouldn't be rivaled by video and sound cards for the PC for years. I can't really think of any home computer from that era that was as overblown as the Amiga. Yeah, the games were spectacular but who the heck could afford one? JT wisely positioned the ST against the Mac instead so that's where comparisons should be made, not to the Amiga because the Amiga was in a niche of it's own. The ST is a much better machine than the early Macs and the 16-bit PC's of the time for a much lower price. If they had marketed them more aggressively in the US, the whole PC clone industry might have been killed off right there.

[svenski]

The ST-Amiga comparison is a bad one to make because they were completely different machines marketed to completely different users. The Amiga was a multimedia monster before multimedia was even a buzzword so it had really powerful (and expensive) video and sound hardware that wouldn't be rivaled by video and sound cards for the PC for years. I can't really think of any home computer from that era that was as overblown as the Amiga. Yeah, the games were spectacular but who the heck could afford one? JT wisely positioned the ST against the Mac instead so that's where comparisons should be made, not to the Amiga because the Amiga was in a niche of it's own. The ST is a much better machine than the early Macs and the 16-bit PC's of the time for a much lower price. If they had marketed them more aggressively in the US, the whole PC clone industry might have been killed off right there.

 

I'd disagree with them being completely different machines marketed to completely different people. The Amiga, and I'm not talking the high end models, was marketed at least in Europe as a home computer and weren't much more expensive than the ST.

 

The A500, A500+, A600 and A1200 were competing with the ST in the home computer market and, in my opinion, the ST was considered the more business like of the two platforms.

 

I agree that Atari should have done more in the US. I guess the reasons why Atari and Commodore failed are various , and one of them might be that the platforms didn't evolve enough.

 

With an ST or Amiga you could buy a game, insert the disk and off you went. With a PC you would spend three times the price on hardware, the game would come out usually a couple of months later and then you had to study the box in great detail just to make sure it would run.

 

Once Wing Commander came out it was PC all the way

[Jet-X]

Very few ST games really pushed the machine. Instead, Atari and Amiga owners ended up with half-baked games made to port between the machines more easy.

 

I couldn't stand most of the games coming out of Europe (especially arcade ports) that used 1/2 the screen at best, with the rest of the screen used either for scoring or for some rediculous border. There were plenty of good full screen ST games, but my gawd most of the ports of arcade titles just sucked. Amiga ended up with many of these terrible ports as well. As an example, I always remember PacMania being a travesty on the ST (using 1/2 screen) whereas the Amiga used the entire screen for the game.

[The_Laird]

I don't really agree with that. There were some bad ports but then there are for alot of machines of that generation. For every bad one there is a great one like Galaxy Force 2, Gauntlet 2, Cabal, Rainbow Islands or Bubble Bobble.

 

Pacmania might have only used a half screen like the 8-bit versions did but it played really well and had great graphics and sound.

[kool kitty89]

The ST was massive as a games machine in the UK and Europe and was ahead of the Amiga for most of its commercial life over here and in Germany too I believe.

 

This was mainly due to it being £100 cheaper than the Amiga and coming with the now legendary Power Pack that game you about 25 free games to start with!

The price difference was a lot bigger before the Amiga 500 came on the scene.

 

No the 8bit line wasn't bigger, the A8 boys are just bitter and make much more noise due to the fact the machine was dropped by any developer worth mentioning a couple of years after the C64 landed.

That's mainly because Atari screwed up marketing the A8 in Europe and their problems in general in '83/84 that opened the doors for Commodore in the US as well. (from management problems to the unfortunate hold on operations in fall of 1983 to the split in mid '84 it was a mess) But from what I understand Atari Inc had very different issues in Europe and didn't understand the market as well as competition. (CBM apparently learned fast with the VIC-20 and applied that to marketing the C64 as well -granted that was the high end competition against the low-end Speccy in the UK -and things varied a lot in other regions of Europe with C64, Spectrum, CPC, and MSX)

The tape drive speed was brought up before, but everything I can find shows the A8 tapes were 2x the speed of the C64/VIC tapes (using the normal loaders) though less than 1/2 that of the speccy normal loaders. (fast loaders being another story -and something the A8 was limited by the hardware FSK decoding vs software of others -meaning it had a hard limit short of compression or replacing the tape drive or decoder)

The disk drive was no contest obviously (8x faster on the A8 than the C64 normal loader), but that didn't matter in Europe until the 16-bit computers. (fast tape speeds were obviously a big plus for speccy users -something common with CoCo users in the US)

[+wood_jl]

The ST-Amiga comparison is a bad one to make because they were completely different machines marketed to completely different users. The Amiga was a multimedia monster before multimedia was even a buzzword so it had really powerful (and expensive) video and sound hardware that wouldn't be rivaled by video and sound cards for the PC for years. I can't really think of any home computer from that era that was as overblown as the Amiga. Yeah, the games were spectacular but who the heck could afford one? JT wisely positioned the ST against the Mac instead so that's where comparisons should be made, not to the Amiga because the Amiga was in a niche of it's own. The ST is a much better machine than the early Macs and the 16-bit PC's of the time for a much lower price. If they had marketed them more aggressively in the US, the whole PC clone industry might have been killed off right there.

 

I disagree. They were direct competitors. ST had a considerably lower price (hella lower in the very early years) and tremendous bang for the buck. Amiga gave you bells and whistles. The Amiga games had an edge, for the most part. But the games appear comparable; when I see a title on either the ST or Amiga, it appears representative of the 16-bit home computer era to me. Because the Amiga had an edge, it's a popular pastime to pretend it was an entirely different class machine - as CGA and VGA graphics are in an entirely different class. As I said, the games - while better on Amiga - are still similar enough to be recognized as such. Arkanoid on ST or Amiga both look pretty similar, compared to the crappy versions on 8-bit computers. Another way to put it into perspective is to say a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis would mop the floor with either ST or Amiga, graphically. Through that prism of hindsight, they look pretty similar.

 

It's pretty easy to forget - in these modern days of entertainment overload and general affluence - how expensive computer performance was in 1985, and the incredible bang for the buck that the ST championed. Now that either one is $50 used, it's easy to forget. But bang for the buck is what put the ST on the map. "Color Mac for 1/3 the price" is a catchphrase that helps to remember the true strength of the ST.

Edited October 27, 2010 by wood_jl

[atarian1]

I think the reason you hear more about 8-bit gaming is because the 8-bits came first. I know, duh, but the 8-bit games came out first and started to explore the uncharted territory of computer gaming, which featured better graphics and sound, not to mention larger and more sophisticated games that sometimes required keyboard input and disk drives/tapes for saving. There were quite a number of "first game in xxx genre" on the 8-bits. When the ST and other more advanced computers came out, the games were the same concept as the 8-bit games, but featured even better graphics/sound and larger and more sophisticated games due to the jump from 64K to 512K of standard RAM and the disk drive being standard equipment. It gave authors more room to expand their vision which started on the 8-bit platform, so it wasn't as groundbreaking as when it first showed up on the 8-bits. In other words, 16-bit games were super-enhanced versions of the 8-bit games.

[+DarkLord]

I loved (and still love) playing ST games.

 

1) That being said, the Amiga is still a "better" game machine, for obvious hardware-related reasons.

 

2) I assume you're in the U.S.A. (or North America) where the ST was fractional to the Amiga in popularity.

 

Coming off the 8-bits, ST graphics and games were fantastic. Maybe not as fantastic as the Amiga, but fantastic (for the era) nonetheless. For someone who grew up on the Amiga, there's really no compelling reason to bother, however; you've seen and done it all, already.

 

The problem is the false dichotomy that because Amiga games were better, the ST "sucked" when in fact, it was pretty fantastic (once again, for the era) too and at a great price.

 

It seems that much of the [limited] ST use (in America) was for music use, and frequently with a monochrome monitor (to get the 640 x 400) so the color gaming potential was out the window.

 

I really enjoy the ST now, with **all** of the games and software available, including a trove of titles that I never knew existed back when I used one in the old days. The machine just doesn't have the popularity that *anything* Commodore, or the 8-bit Atari has. When I resumed my interest in Atari, naturally I began with the 8-bit and I really did not believe I would be interested in the ST again. How wrong I was, about myself! Stuff like the HxC SD-card floppy emulator make it easy as pie to have a long ST session with lots of fun, and this is a fairly recent development; devices offering similar utility for the Atari8 have been available for eons.

 

Nevertheless, the ST just never was popular here, and still isn't. For those who grew up with one, it's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. For those who grew up with an Amiga, don't bother.

 

Its funny how geography can play such am important part in how something is viewed. I had 2 fairly close

Atari dealers, Software Alternatives in Pikeville, KY, about 20 mins away, and another guy over the state

line in W.Virigina, about an hour, hour and a half away.

 

Software Alternatives had a BBS up, the owner was terrific, helpful, and it made for a large local Atari

presence. Amiga? Never saw one until the 500's came out. PC's? Well, as you know from that era, they

sucked vacuum hard.

 

Games were actually better on the ST *at first*, because it did have the larger base, smaller price, and

did most of what the Amiga did. This of course, turned around as the Amiga's base increased, and the game

developers learned to take advantage of the Amiga's hardware.

 

Like I said, funny how things look different from where a person is standing.

[+DarkLord]

I think the reason you hear more about 8-bit gaming is because the 8-bits came first. I know, duh, but the 8-bit games came out first and started to explore the uncharted territory of computer gaming, which featured better graphics and sound, not to mention larger and more sophisticated games that sometimes required keyboard input and disk drives/tapes for saving. There were quite a number of "first game in xxx genre" on the 8-bits. When the ST and other more advanced computers came out, the games were the same concept as the 8-bit games, but featured even better graphics/sound and larger and more sophisticated games due to the jump from 64K to 512K of standard RAM and the disk drive being standard equipment. It gave authors more room to expand their vision which started on the 8-bit platform, so it wasn't as groundbreaking as when it first showed up on the 8-bits. In other words, 16-bit games were super-enhanced versions of the 8-bit games.

 

Quite a few titles were just enhanced ones, but here was some innovation as well. When Dungeon Master came

out for the ST, and people saw me playing it, they were *dying* to get it on their platform....

[kool kitty89]

The ST-Amiga comparison is a bad one to make because they were completely different machines marketed to completely different users. The Amiga was a multimedia monster before multimedia was even a buzzword so it had really powerful (and expensive) video and sound hardware that wouldn't be rivaled by video and sound cards for the PC for years. I can't really think of any home computer from that era that was as overblown as the Amiga. Yeah, the games were spectacular but who the heck could afford one? JT wisely positioned the ST against the Mac instead so that's where comparisons should be made, not to the Amiga because the Amiga was in a niche of it's own. The ST is a much better machine than the early Macs and the 16-bit PC's of the time for a much lower price. If they had marketed them more aggressively in the US, the whole PC clone industry might have been killed off right there.

 

I disagree. They were direct competitors. ST had a considerably lower price (hella lower in the very early years) and tremendous bang for the buck. Amiga gave you bells and whistles. The Amiga games had an edge, for the most part. But the games appear comparable; when I see a title on either the ST or Amiga, it appears representative of the 16-bit home computer era to me. Because the Amiga had an edge, it's a popular pastime to pretend it was an entirely different class machine - as CGA and VGA graphics are in an entirely different class. As I said, the games - while better on Amiga - are still similar enough to be recognized as such. Arkanoid on ST or Amiga both look pretty similar, compared to the crappy versions on 8-bit computers. Another way to put it into perspective is to say a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis would mop the floor with either ST or Amiga, graphically. Through that prism of hindsight, they look pretty similar.

Yeah, the Amiga and ST were both general purpose computers on the mass market competing in a variety of markets with various trade-offs: both had exceptional value compared to the MAC or PC (or other competition) with the ST being simpler and less expandable but considerably cheaper and both could be used with a normal TV (save for the high-res mono ST mode) and in Europe you'd even have full RGB quality with SCART capable TVs. (not sure if SCART cables were available directly from Atari/CBM though, or just 3rd parties)

The Amiga stayed ahead longer though as the ST started falling behind PCs (with faster CPUs, Adlib, and EGA becoming common and prices falling in the late 80s), but that's only technically true in the US, but didn't compete so well on the mass market in general. (it got a lot of support alongside the PC, but late 80s gaming pushed more and more for PCs -and then you had the amiga actually falling behind in graphics and sound in the early 90s and fully off the shelf low-cost homebrewed PCs becoming possible at the time -and used parts/computer dealers also becoming more significant -especially in tying in with the off the shelf components becoming available to end users)

 

As for the Genesis and SNES (and PC Engine/TG-16), that's not quite true: the Amiga had advantages even over those, especially the Genesis in terms of color and specific cases of blitter flexibility over fixed sprite+tile hardware. (you even have more color possible in some respects than the SNES due to the 15 color per tile/sprite limit of the SNES, but there's trade-offs in either case -SNES might end up with more colors on-screen but have more limits in art design than a pure 32/64 color bitmap display of the Amiga, more so with additional copper tricks -especially useful for skyline BG and parallax stuff -and more color limits if using 3-color sprites or dual playfield mode, the PCE has a more limited master palette like the ST and MD, but double the subpalettes of the SNES with 512 indexed color enteries vs 256 of the SNES and 64 of the MD -organized into 2 sets of 16 15 color+transparent palettes with one set for sprites and one for BG -SNES does that with 2 sets of 8 and MD shares 4 palettes, so the color/tile limit is less of an issue for the PCE due to the sheer number of palettes available -though it's still stuck with 9-bit RGB vs the amiga's 12-bit and SNES's 15-bit)

But in terms of the blitter: you'd avoid flicker/drop-out entirely (and still have a few hardware sprites to use on top of that) and the greater color flexibility (in some respects).

And that's not getting into sound. (though that's more up to personal taste -especially the Genesis's FM or PCE's wave/PSG- but the Amiga's biggest limit there was the 4 hardware channels -short of software mixing-)

And that's not getting into limited RAM+ROM vs more RAM but only disk storage.

 

But saying the Genesis and SNES (or PCE -which has advantages/trade-offs over both of the others) outright crushed the Amiga is not right at all.

 

 

It's pretty easy to forget - in these modern days of entertainment overload and general affluence - how expensive computer performance was in 1985, and the incredible bang for the buck that the ST championed. Now that either one is $50 used, it's easy to forget. But bang for the buck is what put the ST on the map. "Color Mac for 1/3 the price" is a catchphrase that helps to remember the true strength of the ST.

Too bad it didn't work well enough to build a strong long-term niche in the US with the C64 still dominating the lower-end/game market and PC gradually rising from high-end/standard business machine to home computer with good game capabilities and eventually very cost-competitive and flexible home system (with even more flexibility of a broad used market and off the shelf parts). OTOH why neither persisted in Europe against the PC is another matter altogether. (it's complex and I don't fully understand it, but it seems largely up to management issues with Atari and CBM -though in any case, the PC taking over in North America would have had a strong impact on that too)

 

As far as contemporary PCs/clones to the ST and Amiga for bang/buck and general consumer use and game capabilities, the Tandy 1000 is the easy win (PC Jr would have too had IBM not screwed it up -ie had it been more like Tandy's incarnation). Not as powerful as either the ST or Amiga and not as cost effective, but the most capable PC compatible at a reasonable price and the only lower to mid range PC with 16 color graphics and a sound chip (SN76489 being moderately weaker than the ST's YM2149 though it has the PC speaker for added sfx too -not getting into the later DMA audio with the Tandy DAC) It was also out before either of the others and of course had the advantage of PC compatibility (including ISA upgrades and standard peripheral ports) and it was cheaper than the Amiga in some cases. (and I think it might have been more available in many cases than either of the others in the US, not sure on marketing, but it definitely seemed to get a fair amount of advertisements).

It was definitely the only really good option for DOS/PC gaming prior to around 1988 with EGA and Adlib support started becoming common. (though technically speaking, most EGA games -ie those sticking to only the default CGA palette in 320x200 mode- didn't look any better than Tandy-10000 contemporaries -though better than earlier more PCJr specific 160x200 games or ones targeting slower machines in general- but Adlib was a good step above the SN76489 and the Tandy DAC was a bit late and underused but you could use standard ISA sound cards too -rather odd that no PC sound upgrades were really on the market until 1987 and most followed the Adlib card be it high-end or low end stuff from MT32 or IBM Music Feature card to Adlib, Game Blaster, or Sound Master -odd that no simple SN76489/AY8910 based cards hadn't been out by '84 or '85 at least -especially in the form factor of the Sound Master taking advantage of the AY8910's I/O ports for Atari type joystick ports onboard -prior to the poorer IBM analog gameport becoming popular)

 

Software Alternatives had a BBS up, the owner was terrific, helpful, and it made for a large local Atari

presence. Amiga? Never saw one until the 500's came out. PC's? Well, as you know from that era, they

sucked vacuum hard.

The Tandy 1000 was there at least, granted not up to ST level, but the closest and most affordable contemporary (and you were getting PC standard compatibility and upgradability as well) and graphics were up to as good as the best 320x200 EGA games and sound was close to that of the ST -short of added ISA cards. (obviously early 7.16 MHz 8088/8086 T-1000s would have been weak for EGA games intended for fast 286s, and there was the 640x200 16-color mode added to later models, but I don't think any games used it)

The Tandy version of Super C looks identical to the EGA DOS version and not too bad compared to the Amiga port. (albeit that's not really a shining example on the Amiga)

Granted many early (160x200) PCJr/Tandy games look more like A8/C64 games. (though better than CGA PC games -had more games used the composite color artifacts in CGA that might have been a different story though)

Edited October 27, 2010 by kool kitty89

[ApolloBoy]

I couldn't stand most of the games coming out of Europe (especially arcade ports) that used 1/2 the screen at best, with the rest of the screen used either for scoring or for some rediculous border. There were plenty of good full screen ST games, but my gawd most of the ports of arcade titles just sucked. Amiga ended up with many of these terrible ports as well.

That seems to be the case with a lot of European games of that time period too. I can't really stand those either, which is why I've been on the fence about getting either the Amiga or ST. Why is it that a lot of European developers were so fond of this?

[+save2600]

Nevertheless, the ST just never was popular here, and still isn't. For those who grew up with one, it's more fun than a barrel of monkeys. For those who grew up with an Amiga, don't bother.

Perfectly put. I'm so proud of you wood_jl (who normally never has anything nice to say about Amiga)

Edited October 27, 2010 by save2600

[carmel_andrews]

I couldn't stand most of the games coming out of Europe (especially arcade ports) that used 1/2 the screen at best, with the rest of the screen used either for scoring or for some rediculous border. There were plenty of good full screen ST games, but my gawd most of the ports of arcade titles just sucked. Amiga ended up with many of these terrible ports as well.

That seems to be the case with a lot of European games of that time period too. I can't really stand those either, which is why I've been on the fence about getting either the Amiga or ST. Why is it that a lot of European developers were so fond of this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think that mainly related to french and german games and a few spanish games, there were a handful of UK published games that only had 1/2 screen for gameplay but not all of them

[Major Havoc 2049]

The Atari 8-bit computer gaming scene pretty much died down to a trickle by 1986, while still remaining strong for the C-64/128 and Apple II line. The large US publishers and developers of the day like MicroProse, Electronic Arts, Epyx, Activision, Accolade, SSI, Access, Mindscape, Lucasfilm Games, etc., moved their Atari support to the ST line.

 

Looking at MicroProse for example; both the C-64 and Amiga received versions of popular 1987 releases like Pirates!, Gunship and Airborne Ranger. With Atari though, only the ST received versions of those games.

 

As for Atari 8-bit vs. the Atari ST line of computers when it comes to gaming, the ST has a larger selection of games and a larger selection of AAA games (although that is very debatable, depending on what type of games you enjoy). I mean 1985 – 1991 was a great era for computer gaming and saw tons of classics and the ST line was popular enough that there was a ST version of most of the popular computer games from that time period.

 

To me though, it's not really a vs. thing, as both the Atari 8-bit and ST line of computers complement each other really well. For early eighties computer gaming I go with my Atari 8-bit and for mid 80's to early 90's computer gaming I go with my ST. Unlike the Commodore line, which saw a bunch of "bleed over" across the C-64 and Amiga platforms in regards to third party game support, there is more of a clear cut line with the Atari 8-bit and ST.

[Creature XL]

The Atari 8-bit computer gaming scene pretty much died down to a trickle by 1986, while still remaining strong for the C-64/128 and Apple II line. The large US publishers and developers of the day like MicroProse, Electronic Arts, Epyx, Activision, Accolade, SSI, Access, Mindscape, Lucasfilm Games, etc., moved their Atari support to the ST line.

 

Looking at MicroProse for example; both the C-64 and Amiga received versions of popular 1987 releases like Pirates!, Gunship and Airborne Ranger. With Atari though, only the ST received versions of those games.

 

As for Atari 8-bit vs. the Atari ST line of computers when it comes to gaming, the ST has a larger selection of games and a larger selection of AAA games (although that is very debatable, depending on what type of games you enjoy). I mean 1985 – 1991 was a great era for computer gaming and saw tons of classics and the ST line was popular enough that there was a ST version of most of the popular computer games from that time period.

 

To me though, it's not really a vs. thing, as both the Atari 8-bit and ST line of computers complement each other really well. For early eighties computer gaming I go with my Atari 8-bit and for mid 80's to early 90's computer gaming I go with my ST. Unlike the Commodore line, which saw a bunch of "bleed over" across the C-64 and Amiga platforms in regards to third party game support, there is more of a clear cut line with the Atari 8-bit and ST.

 

I hope I do not start a "A8 users are bitter" thinggy, but...

Teh C64 might have had most of teh popular games from 85 - 91, however, those games were targeted fro teh 16-Bit market. And some of the C64 look rather poor, compared to the ST/AMIGA. But I would be more then happy to haev the 8-Bit versions on the A8. THAT is what still drives me to code for the A8. A demo is a nice thing to have/code, but a game which only exist on the C64 (and 16-Bit) is a better thing

 

Of course, the bestest(sic!) to have woul dbe an A8 original game-.

[Jet-X]

I couldn't stand most of the games coming out of Europe (especially arcade ports) that used 1/2 the screen at best, with the rest of the screen used either for scoring or for some rediculous border. There were plenty of good full screen ST games, but my gawd most of the ports of arcade titles just sucked. Amiga ended up with many of these terrible ports as well.

That seems to be the case with a lot of European games of that time period too. I can't really stand those either, which is why I've been on the fence about getting either the Amiga or ST. Why is it that a lot of European developers were so fond of this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I think that mainly related to french and german games and a few spanish games, there were a handful of UK published games that only had 1/2 screen for gameplay but not all of them

 

 

Nope, plenty of UK developed titles too.

 

I'm just throwing some of these up, but this type of display was pretty darn common in many games. Laziness? Inability to push the hardware?

[kool kitty89]

The Atari 8-bit computer gaming scene pretty much died down to a trickle by 1986, while still remaining strong for the C-64/128 and Apple II line. The large US publishers and developers of the day like MicroProse, Electronic Arts, Epyx, Activision, Accolade, SSI, Access, Mindscape, Lucasfilm Games, etc., moved their Atari support to the ST line.

 

Looking at MicroProse for example; both the C-64 and Amiga received versions of popular 1987 releases like Pirates!, Gunship and Airborne Ranger. With Atari though, only the ST received versions of those games.

 

As for Atari 8-bit vs. the Atari ST line of computers when it comes to gaming, the ST has a larger selection of games and a larger selection of AAA games (although that is very debatable, depending on what type of games you enjoy). I mean 1985 – 1991 was a great era for computer gaming and saw tons of classics and the ST line was popular enough that there was a ST version of most of the popular computer games from that time period.

 

To me though, it's not really a vs. thing, as both the Atari 8-bit and ST line of computers complement each other really well. For early eighties computer gaming I go with my Atari 8-bit and for mid 80's to early 90's computer gaming I go with my ST. Unlike the Commodore line, which saw a bunch of "bleed over" across the C-64 and Amiga platforms in regards to third party game support, there is more of a clear cut line with the Atari 8-bit and ST.

 

I hope I do not start a "A8 users are bitter" thinggy, but...

Teh C64 might have had most of teh popular games from 85 - 91, however, those games were targeted fro teh 16-Bit market. And some of the C64 look rather poor, compared to the ST/AMIGA. But I would be more then happy to haev the 8-Bit versions on the A8. THAT is what still drives me to code for the A8. A demo is a nice thing to have/code, but a game which only exist on the C64 (and 16-Bit) is a better thing

 

Of course, the bestest(sic!) to have woul dbe an A8 original game-.

I think the A8 lost any real chance for long-term developer support with what happened from 82-84 in general: in the US you had the screw up with the 1200XL, unfortunate hold on products in '83, and Warner selling/splitting the company up in mid '84, and in Europe they never managed to establish a strong niche in the major 8-bit computer markets. (part of it seems to be not understanding the market well enough, or at least not soon enough from hardware -the 800XL was the first machine that really meshed with the market- to software support -with most competition packing in detailed documentation for programming/development and built-in BASIC as a standard practice -Sincliar was doing it at the beginning of the 80s and CBM caught-on rather quickly -the "appliance computer" thing was the opposite of what was needed) Unlike the US though, they don't think needed more onboard hardware features as such, but more of a focus on low-cost in general and (on top of the standard documentation) they needed to consider media: carts were too expensive and so were disk drives, so tapes were the default media in Europe (and like disks, that meant a higher minimum RAM requirement -so maybe 16k in '80/81, but definitely aiming at 48-64k by '82/83 -the 600XL was apparently seen as a joke in '83/84). One common need would have been general purpose and flexible expansion, but not a la Apple's expensive and bulky internal expansion ports, but a simple general purpose low-cost connector (like PBI or the C64/VIC cart/expansion port), hell, if they went for an even lower-end complementary machine they probably could have removed the cart slot and PIA entirely and made them optional peripherals. (ie an expansion module with PIA and joysick ports -and support keyboard input by default)

That and they could have completely removed the RF shielding from the start as regulations were far more lax in most of Europe (Germany might have been an exception). (so a EU specific low-end design catering to all of that... maybe single-board with all chips soldered/socketed -no cards- and 16 or 48k on the board -expansion via general purpose external port- and streamlined case to match the lack of shielding, probably not the membrane keyboard though, chicklet/dome switch minimum, and probably 2 joysticks max standard...) Hmm, I wonder if a even direct derivative of the 1200XL might have been a good idea (no expansion port aside from the cart slot, but otherwise a fairly good staring point -remove shielding and use a smaller case and cheaper/smaller keyboard), but there was still the software side of things.

[oky2000]

As far as failure of A8 in the UK goes it was mainly down to price/performance. The 800 was about £600 here which in 1982/3 was a lot of money. And the 400 did itself no favours with that keyboard and only 8k/16k

 

The success of the ST in the early days in the UK comes down to it being a nice traditional home computer, sure it wasn't that great on custom chips side BUT 2/3 biggest home computer sellers had no custom chips anyway...only the C64 had it all and at a reasonable price.

 

Thing is in the UK we liked computers for lots of reasons, programming was a big thing as was doing no games type tasks. In 1986 you only had two choices for doing computer graphics with...one was an ST + Neochrome for about 450 bucks, the other was Amiga+Dpaint for about 1200 bucks.

 

And as for games, I wouldn't bother to load up 75% of all ST OR Amiga games today because once cowboys like Ocean and US Gold treated it as a business to fleece us with crap ports of expensive arcade licences rushed out the door it was all over. Stuff like Marble Madness for Amiga and Pawn/Gauntlet 1 on ST were revolutionary at the time. Very few later games came close to showing the same sort of attention to detail/quality programming for me. Shadow of the Beast/Lotus being a little blip in a sea of shit for the Amiga technically.

 

In the USA custom chips were a nice selling point given the C64 and A8 dominance in their respective period....and the ST had none so it didn't sell as well as here in the hobbyist market of the UK. Oh and PC in the home was acceptable for the yanks...but brits wouldn't piss on an 8086 machine in the 80s