The Atari STe is throughly impressive...is there a list?

[eightbit]

I have been the proud owner of a 4160STe (a rebadged 520STe with the 4MB upgrade) for a few months now. I have always been an Amiga guy and gave the 520STfm a try back when it was new....but was not impressed primarily because of the sound. Still it was a nice machine, but the Amiga won me over due to the excellent music and sound effects. But now that I have been playing with the STe and trying some demos that are STe specific...WOW. This is what the ST should have been right from the get go. The sound quality and graphics are pretty amazing.

 

That said, I would like to investigate STe exclusive game titles. I know they must be limited in numbers as the STe came late, but does anyone have or know of a list of specific game titles that take advantage of the STe's enhancements?

[ataricrypt]

I love using Sirius for great quality playback of Mods. There are lots of different options but here's some: https://ataricrypt.blogspot.com/2016/02/players.html

 

There are more STe/enhanced games than ppl sometimes realise. https://ataricrypt.blogspot.com/search/label/Atari%20STe

 

But check out Atari Mania for a complete list. Hope this gets you started ok?

[jefffulton]

Always check Atari Crypt and AtariLegend for the latest STE games and ports. 
Check out Obsession Pinball first. It is actually the best STE game. 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Well, the sad fact is that STE is not much supported by SW, game programmers. Even years after it's release most of games just don't use it's enhanced features - like HW scroll support, DMA audio ... Even 2 years older blitter (from 1987) is barely supported.  The reason may be lower sales of STE than expected, lazyness of programmers and Atari documentation makers.  

It's possible that number of STE supported SW, games, updates/improvements done after 1995 is bigger than what was done in commercial era.

[ataricrypt]

14 hours ago, jefffulton said:

Always check Atari Crypt and AtariLegend for the latest STE games and ports. 
Check out Obsession Pinball first. It is actually the best STE game. 

 

Too kind!!

Obsession is incredible. But not my personal face STe game... hmm, I scrolled through 3 web pages and I couldn't come to a conclussion which was best. Checked out AL/AM and was still no wiser. It's a tough one. But, Death Chase probably gets my vote! There's no hardware scrolling and the gfx are so tiny...but... I love it. So much fun!

[+DarkLord]

Don't forget Stardust! 

 

[jefffulton]

I like Stardust A LOT too. The STE version of Wolf#d isn't too shabby either. 

[English Invader]

Sleepwalker is a great game but you're probably already familiar with that from the Amiga (one thing about the ST disk version is that it's on 4 disks and requires a disk change for the continue screen every time you lose your 3 lives so play the hard disk version if you can).

 

R0x and Giana Sisters STe should also be on your hit list.

 

But try not to confine yourself to games that turn the ST into an Amiga.  We love the ST from day one here and, if you give it a chance, you'll find that the ST has plenty to offer outside of the STe designation.  If all you can see is how the ST can be like an Amiga, you'll probably be happier with an Amiga.

[doctor_x]

Ive never heard an amiga user say that... Pretty cool! Thanks for sharing!

[Lynxpro]

On 5/3/2020 at 6:05 AM, ataricrypt said:

 

Too kind!!

Obsession is incredible. But not my personal face STe game... hmm, I scrolled through 3 web pages and I couldn't come to a conclussion which was best. Checked out AL/AM and was still no wiser. It's a tough one. But, Death Chase probably gets my vote! There's no hardware scrolling and the gfx are so tiny...but... I love it. So much fun!

 

It may not be STe or Falcon enhanced but for ST pinball games, my favorite still is STARBALL! The sound on it was impressive even when rockin' the stock YM2149...

[ataricrypt]

On 5/14/2020 at 6:25 PM, Lynxpro said:

 

It may not be STe or Falcon enhanced but for ST pinball games, my favorite still is STARBALL! The sound on it was impressive even when rockin' the stock YM2149...

That's a fantastic game I love too - and with enhancements fwiw.

[Megalomaniac]

Sleepwalker was pretty much the only STe only game by a really big multiformat company - I've always assumed they did that as it needed to be ready for an all-format release for Comic Relief, and converting Amiga to STe must have been quicker than Amiga to ST. It feels like it was underexploited, as second-version systems so often were (look at the Amstrad Plus, or the Amiga 1200, or the 128K Spectrum - none really got enough games that fully used them). Obsession, Stardust, Sleepwalker, and beyond that we're struggling. When you look at something like Cannon Fodder, it feels like the STe could have handled it, whereas on the ST the scrolling makes it virtually unplayable.

[+DarkLord]

This is from another thread, although I can't find it at the moment so I'll just

post the list I saved.

 

There's more than is realized, I think...

 

  Games using STE enhancements :

Abrevs. :
ADMA - audio DMA
EPAL - extended palette (4096 col.)
HWS - hardware scrolling
BLIT - blitter (not strictly STE feature)
AJ - analogue joysticks

****************

Alien Busters IV - ADMA
Alien Thing - ADMA, EPAL
Alien Thing - Expert Edition - ADMA, EPAL
Alien Thing - The Directors Cut (Demo) - ADMA, EPAL
Ancient Art of War in the Skies, The - EPAL
Another World - ADMA
Asteroidia  -  Should use blitter but I don't see it, and scrolling is pathetic.
Astro Panic 94 - ADMA, BLIT, EPAL

B Squad (Demo) - EPAL, BLIT
Battletris - ADMA
Battletris+ - ADMA
Beastlord  - EPAL

Cannon Fodder II (preview) - EPAL-only title pic. Pih.
Captive - EPAL (sticker on the box claims it uses the STe's extended palette but apparently doesn't)
Carlos - ADMA
Chambers of Shaolin - ADMA
Chaos Engine - HWS
Chronicles of Omega, The - HWS, ADMA
Chu Chu Rocket  - ADMA, BLIT, AJ
CoCoCoPo -ADMA
Creatures - ADMA

Destruction Imminent - ADMA, BLIT, EPAL
Diamond Ice - ADMA, EPAL
Dragon's Lair - EPAL
Dragon's Lair II - EPAL
Dragon's Lair III - EPAL
Dragon's Lair Escape from the Singe's Castle - EPAL

Elvira the Arcade Game - BLIT
Esprit - ADMA  (Strange that later games - Oxyd, are not STE enhanced)

Final Fight - EPAL
Fire and Ice  -  EPAL
First Samurai - EPAL, intro only
Frantick   - EPAL - only title

Ghost Battle - BLIT
GodPey  - BLIT

Heartland - ADMA, EPAL

International Rugby Challenge - EPAL

James Pond - EPAL
James Pond II (Robocod) - EPAL (1c only)

Leavin' Teramis  - EPAL, intro only
Lethal Xcess  - ADMA, BLIT

Magic Boy -  ADMA
Magic Fly - EPAL - only title pic.

Nicky Boom - ADMA
Nicky 2 - ADMA
No Limit 2 - ADMA, EPAL

Oh No! Not More Radioactive Mineshafts - BLIT, EPAL

Operation Garfield - EPAL, ADMA, BLIT

Pooz - ADMA
Pouif Ouf - ADMA, BLIT
Power Up plus  - ADMA, BLIT - despite it, scrolling is awful

Robocop 3 - ADMA, EPAL
Rock 'n' Roll Clams - ADMA, EPAL, BLIT

Sheer Agony - EPAL
Space Ace - EPAL
Space Ace II - EPAL
Starball  - ADMA
Superfly - ADMA

Ultimate Arena, The - ADMA, EPAL, BLIT

Vaxine - ADMA, EPAL
Winglord - ADMA, EPAL, BLIT
Wings of Death - ADMA, BLIT
Wrath of the Demon - EPAL

Zool  - HWS, BLIT

****************

STE only :

Alien Blast
Dynabusters+   - I guess that  + means for STE
H Mec
H Mec 2
Manga Puzzle

Obsession
Pacman OE   - OE= On STE
Revenge of Mutant Camels STE v. - surprise !
Roger - ADMA, EPAL, BLIT
Sleepwalker
Square Off  (1995)  + TT, Falcon
Stardust         + Falcon
Street Fighter II (Monochrome, Demo)
Stone Age   + Falcon
Substation    
Team
Tomtar
Utopos
Whitewater Madness
Zero 5

 

Edited September 15, 2022 by DarkLord
Clarification

[Lyverbe2]

On 9/13/2022 at 12:13 PM, DarkLord said:

  Games using STE enhancements :

EPAL - extended palette (4096 col.)

Captive - EPAL

 

 

Captive?  Not really.  See http://captive.atari.org/Main/ReleaseInfo/ReleaseInfo.php where it says "A sticker on the box claims that Captive is "fully enhanced on the STE". Although the STE provides a palette of 4096 colors instead of 512, Captive doesn't make any use of it. The only difference is related to sound which uses the Microwire interface."

[+DarkLord]

20 hours ago, Lyverbe2 said:

 

Captive?  Not really.  See http://captive.atari.org/Main/ReleaseInfo/ReleaseInfo.php where it says "A sticker on the box claims that Captive is "fully enhanced on the STE". Although the STE provides a palette of 4096 colors instead of 512, Captive doesn't make any use of it. The only difference is related to sound which uses the Microwire interface."

 

Thank you for the update. I'll change the entry in that list.

 

 

[Paul Westphal]

Eightbit got an STe!! Whoohoo! Good Job dude - I must have missed that story or forgot

 

 

[Chri O.]

8-bit Needs a new nickname 8 to 32 bit. Nevertheless thank you for finding this super cool Dell SE2722H 27" Full HD (1920 x 1080) 75Hz LED Monitor.  😁

[oky2000]

I bought a 520STM + SF354 disk drive in Spring 1986 for less than the price of a Commodore 128D or 128+1570 disk drive and was happy with it. I already had a C64 and really the ST was due to my interest in pixel art. Some of my early games like Gauntlet 1, Backlash, Dungeon Master and The Pawn really weren't possible on an 8bit with or without custom chips.

 

To be honest I was expecting more from the Amiga but there was a lot of slap dash rubbish and most of the musicians were lazy, taking some teenybop pop music instrument samples and destroying all the atmosphere of a game....like Risky Woods for example. Compared to the fact the Portia/Paula chip offered unlimited artistic freedom it showed what a bunch of morons were working on 99% of the Amiga game soundtracks. The two best sound tracks off hand for me are from Agony (Jeroen Tel) and Beast 1 (David Whittaker) both of which come from the SID scene. There are other good tunes but there are probably 100 C64 game tunes I like. Demo music like Desert Dream by Kefrens, that's a bit more like it. I gave up on the Amiga and got a Megadrive in early 1990 and a SNES once they bundled it with a decent game (SF2) and never looked back as 1989 was probably the golden age for me of Amiga gaming. There were some good games after that but not as many as 1989/1990 crossover point.

 

Dave Needle purposefully sabotaged the Amiga chipset designs he was legally obliged to send to Atari so you can blame him for the ST being pretty much a 16bit Acorn BBC/Amstrad CPC type machine and no better. With no in-house chip design/manufacturing company at his disposal there wasn't much Atari could have done at that sort of price. 

 

The STE would require the lazy and very greedy computer software publishers to specifically write code for the STE additions, it would have been better if in 1989 when the Amiga came down to £399.99 Atari had just found a way to make a cheap midi-module and upgraded the ST to have a 16mhz 68000 with a new motherboard and then allow you to switch back to 8mhz. Some publishers already did MIDI music for PC and ST games and the increase in performance with a 16mhz 68000 is instant and requires no extra coding. The STE suffered the same fate as the Amiga 1200 AGA chipset, hardly anything decent was done with it.

[Megalomaniac]

Would doubling the processor speed have overcome the issues with scrolling though? That's the thing that kills a fair few ST games in comparison with other versions.

[leech]

I always thought the Silmarils games were almost all STe Enhanced.  http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-ishar-trilogy_21803.html

[MrMaddog]

On 9/20/2022 at 8:16 PM, oky2000 said:

The STE would require the lazy and very greedy computer software publishers to specifically write code for the STE additions, it would have been better if in 1989 when the Amiga came down to £399.99 Atari had just found a way to make a cheap midi-module and upgraded the ST to have a 16mhz 68000 with a new motherboard and then allow you to switch back to 8mhz. Some publishers already did MIDI music for PC and ST games and the increase in performance with a 16mhz 68000 is instant and requires no extra coding. The STE suffered the same fate as the Amiga 1200 AGA chipset, hardly anything decent was done with it.

 

I agree with that Atari should had released a plug in MIDI box for FM synth music at least, especially with PC games from Sierra using AdLib & MT32 devices.  At the time I thought MIDI was only for expensive Casio keyboards so I never knew it would have been great for games.

 

Using a 16Mz CPU though would not improve things much.  There were accelerator boards that only gain 10% increase in speed because you need to have a cache for the instructions since the memory speed is still 8Mhz.

 

The Mega STe was the perfect 16Hz for running GEM apps quicker but most games still needed the precise timing of a 8Mhz processor.  That's why by default the Mega STe boots in 8Mhz mode unless the XControl Panel DA is loaded for turning on the extra speed w/ the needed cache.

 

(Except the Mega STe was made for home busniess use and hence more expensive...)

 

[oky2000]

At the time I had my 520STM and Amiga 1000 up until 1992 I had never experienced DOS gaming but once I had I noticed even the most expensive PC gaming setups for 1992 onward were based on Roland  MT-32/LAPC1 etc for music and scratchy soundblaster for sound effects when configuring those DOS games for install. It's only now looking back that I can see the YM chip is perfectly adequate for similar uses when combined with a MIDI module. I think it was 1987 when I went to an ST user group in London/Middlesex UK borders I saw a Karate game on the ST that did support MIDI music but to be honest once my Digi-view hardware arrived and my dream of doing digital Photomontage kind of wiped out everything. I stopped playing games really for maybe a year. I did come back to gaming later though (two friends kept giving me cracked copies of games for ST and Amiga competing with each other to get me to play games on the system they each liked the most). I have no idea though what a 'budget' external MIDI module would sound like but it's a way for all ST owners to get more out of their system. I think the Roland MT-32 cost as much as £300-400.

 

When I say "put a 16mhz 68000" I do mean redesign the system with dual bus clocks etc not just a toggle switch for 8/16mhz CPU clock crystal stuck on the original system bus etc. I guess I should rephrase that as "16mhz ST with a 16/8mhz 68000". I'm sure it's not a simple job but the problem with adding DACs and Blitter to an extended specification was always the amount of effort developers would need to put into such projects for STE only games, and they wouldn't do that unless they had no choice like for Amiga developments. The ST/STE games experience for owners of the STE was probably as frustrating as it was for the purchasers of a shiny new Commodore 128 for £280 in 1985. The Amiga also proved that dual development of game engines for CPU only driven systems and complex multiple custom DMA based designs was a bust, not exactly a massive speed difference in levels 2 and 4 of Batman the Movie for ST and Amiga. Multi-processing DMA cycle juggling code is a completely different beast to CPU only system driven game engine code. Catch-22, the STE cost more but there was no rush for developers to put out something that would make you pay the extra. The Amiga 1000 may have been a complete disaster economically but it did give developers 2 years to think about how to write code for such a complex system.