Atari ST / STE Gaming Gems: Games That rock Vol 1

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Working on Volume 2 right now.

[@vbarr67]

Nice selection, I discovered a few games there! The graphics of the Obsession pinball are absolutely amazing!

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Couldn't agree more! 48 colors per line on that one.

[@TPau65]

Some very nice choices! Never heard of "Supa Zazai" before. Looks like an interesting shooter! 👌

[@s_t_s4846]

Supa Zazai is a pretty new game, a frantic "one life" shooter. demozoo.org/productions/180943/

[@triton4541]

Bonjour et merci Sven, J'ai toujours mon Atari 520 STE étendu à 1 Mo de ram avec 2 barrettes SIMM de 256 ko.🌹🌺 Cordialement.😋🍀

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Grande Machine ! Nous avons besoin de plus de jeux STE. L'Amioga semble recevoir tous les nouveaux jeux.

[@triton4541]

@@IntoTheVerticalBlank : Merci. 🥰 mais l'Atari 520 STE est apparu en septembre-octobre 1989 en France. 😇L'Amiga 500 est apparu en 1987.😜

[@whiskeysk]

never knew Pole Position existed on the ST O.O

[@TPau65]

afaik it's no official release and only one track? Correct me if I'm wrong.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Yep, but it looks GOOD! =)

[@TPau65]

@@NB-1 oh, I was quite sure the game has more than one track. But hey it's more than 35 years since I played that on my 800XL. 😉

[@Barcrest]

@@TPau65 Pole Position only had one track, Pole Position 2 is the one with multiple tracks

[@Siraj75]

Some of these titles look like homebrew games.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Some are for sure.

[@SylvainThuret]

Im still looking after a top down beige "labyrinth" shooter with a ship. Been looking for this one for years no one seems to know it. The ship looks like the one from Quazar but its more beige. The game is kinda bizarre.

[@Barcrest]

Where did that Powerdrift STE Enhanced version come from? I know @Retroracing was looking at adding blitter support for it over on twitter. If there is already an enhanced version that might be a better starting point.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

So, as I recall this is just the original, but when you play it in Hatari you can see it's using the blitter, so in STE Mode it runs a little better than in ST mode. I know RetroRacing is working on a new version that uses more of the STE resources.

[@Barcrest]

@@IntoTheVerticalBlank Ah, no worries. Thanks for clearing that up. I did spend a bit of time earlier trying to find a specific STE version :).

[@jasonlee7816]

why were they Atari ST games that rocked the hardware?

[@AtariCrypt]

Excellent 👍🏻

[@saturnman9129]

Chaos Engine is a prime example of an ST port that needs upgrading. It was quite poor originally compared to Amiga , snes etc

[@worldofretrogaming2248]

See a lot of good games here. Strange, that Uridium looks almost the same as the c64 version. Btw. Magic Boy looks wrong somehow, there are some colors missing in the background and wrong colors in the menue. However, I think you showed a lot of games that should be played more often because they are worth to be played. Except for Power Drift, man I hate that game (st version) :D

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

I am pretty sure back when i made this is was using a strange combination on cables tp connect my UK STE to the Laptop and also some emulation for games that didn't work. I think I was using Hatari for Magic boy and just now know you need to completely cold boot it every time you play a new game or the colors get messed up. You are right Power Drift is not fun no matter which version =)

[@chosento2988]

PacMan on E .... Wow, I've seen it All now. Fn PacMan on a full blown MDMA roll....fn Awesome 😎

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Right? Awesome, a great little title!

[@salem_ok6732]

Very good, I appreciate the inclusion of more recent STE upgrades, some of them are amazing. Please consider Pacmania STe it's a masterpiece!

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

It's coming in volume 2. Tomorrow

[@carbonara2144]

Never had an ST or any other Atari. Im now looking for one. Vroom looked like good racing game. Im looking forward to play Oids on Atari. Bubble Bobble probably didnt "rock the hardware" much as it was just the same game with 1Mhz C64. Great game anyway.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

I just threw that one in because I like it a lot =) Plus i renamed the series "games that rock" because of this.

[@youuuuuuuuuuutube]

The 1MHz C64 still does many things better than the ST and STE even.

[@Trusteft]

Bubble Bobble, perhaps the best port of an arcade game on the ST. What a fantastic game! Good video. Though...man you suck at R-Type even more than I do. :p

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

I need trainers for all games =)

[@eamonokane2469]

Is it just me or does the music in Supa Zazai sound suspiciously like a Nirvana song called Tourettes?

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

100%

[@taurusretrogaming]

Atari st and of course Amiga was two best machine for playing in 90's

[@Midwinter2]

Some really impressive games here. My favorites: Vroom, Pole Position, Supa Zazai, Asteroidia, Magic Boy, Prince of Persia. Lovely! On the other hand, there are some disappointments: Uridium on the STE is significantly inferior to the C64 version in terms of scrolling and sound. Why didn't they convert Uridium 2 instead? Surely that's a more appropriate game for the STE? Creatures: why the jerky shift-scrolling on the STE? The Amiga version has perfectly smooth scrolling, even with more colours on screen. Surely the STE can match the scrolling at least? Fire and Ice: slow and jerky. Well, it's the ST - but surely there was a way to improve this? Like, make the sprites and play area smaller...? R-Type on the STE: really slow and there's not even that much happening on the screen at this point. Again, why? The STE is supposed to have a blitter and hardware scrolling... Menace: nice smooth scrolling....but why the whopping big panel obscuring the right side of the screen? It's a horizontal shooter! You particularly need to use that part of the screen to see what's coming...!

[@markdillon5494]

I had both ST and Amiga in the late 80's and 90's. There was a clear gap in quality between the machines. Even the STE was behind the Amiga. It might have added a blitter but sound was still poor on STE

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Thanks for subscribing, Mark, I mostly agree with you though, but the STE never got as good a workout as the Amiga. We don't know what it can really do. The ST/STE are still enjoyable all on its own though.

[@jaysmith2858]

The ST performed better than the Amiga when it came to 3D games.

[@michaelsundell5631]

The blitter chip was not as capable as equivalent hardware on the Amiga. It also had other limitations especially when you relied on hardware interrupts to add more than 16 colors to the screen at the same time. Drawing on the screen was also a fairly convoluted and slow process.

[@CFalcon030]

Uridium upgrade is cool and all but Return to Genesis proves it should be doable like that without blitter. Bubble bobble is actually making very bad use of the h/w. It should have been better. Roger and Asteroidia are great but not technical achievements by a longshot. Creatures is poorly coded with the slowdowns and push scrolling. Fire & ice is average. I wouldn't call gianna anything special either since it is simple to do its scrolling with ste h/w scroll. James pond 's only redeeming quality is the stable framerate but it scrolls at 8px intervals. I could go on but you get the point. If you are looking for games that push the hardware you need smooth 1px scrolling for scrolling games, no showdowns and 1vbl update for single screen games. At the very least you need something like the sprites of lxcess or sync scrolling like in enchanted land's intro.

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

Noted. I just love Bubble Bobble. This really isn't "games that push the hardware" It's really, hey there's a bunch of awesome games on the ST/E that none but a few of us talk about. so watch this..=) I have LOADS of more to cover. I started with the ones that I have been playing recently. I will get to them all.

[@s_t_s4846]

Indeed while not bad at all this video is an unbalanced bag of mixed up games. I didn't like it much but I think that as an STe exclusive game SUBSTATION deserved being quoted too. kzbin.info/www/bejne/opKXpJ1uhZaForM

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

@@s_t_s4846 I just put up Vol 2 with more good STE/STE games and Sub Station is in Vol 3.

[@gibs75]

Enchanted lands look the same on stf

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

I think it might be the same except for the color palette, and sound. I do say that I tried as hard as. I could to determine if they are using the STE features before. No one ever fix the scrolling, unfortunately. But it's all very subtle is it there are any changes they are not big.

[@gibs75]

sound ? It sounds like pure YM

[@IntoTheVerticalBlank]

@@gibs75 I just re-listened. It does sound like a nice chip tune.

[@bigfoot5185]

Wings of death atari st is the better version

[@mikewest6569]

For the most part, a bunch of poorly programmed euro trash games.

[@IBelieveInCode]

Eager to see your game programming skills.