Atari St Owners!!!!

Please don't take MUCH offense from this, but weren't they the biggest W's in the world!!! I only ever knew one person with an ST, it was total shit compared to the Amiga, well that's my opinion anyway. Anyone else agree with me.
I'm probably going to get slated for this!!

What ever happened to the Atari Jaguar?

[Malc]

The BEST things on the ST are Medway Boys PIRACY compilations in which they managed to get 3-4 games on a single floppy disk with compression routines!

They were clever guys!

The only game I preferred on the ST rather than the Amiga is Navy Seals - it just sounds and plays better, grab an emulator and compare the two.

But you're right, Amiga rules.

[RCK]

You can't say that AtariSt was shit ...

There was of course a little war, and the games were converted for both system.
In general, we can now admit that the Amiga release were better than atarist one.
But not for all games !

I prefer playing to IK+ on AtariST, because the music is really better !
In fact, many of old games have a better chiptune music for me than the amiga version.

Just try Jim Power or Turrican II and listen !
the Original Chris Huelsbeck tune was made on AtariST, and it really rocks ! (amazing Chris's TFMX music format)

Also, each system have its own games that couln't found anywhere else, like GEM on the ST.

If you are interested in AtariST emulation, so visit the best archive of the net dedicated to it:
The Little Green Desktop

from Little Green Desktop
The ST. vs. Amiga war raged fiercely and for years. Infact some could say it still goes on today. But it's probably best to just forget all about it now, keep it as a fond memory of flame wars and scroll texts, insulting pictures and slags in demos. That kinda thing
...
The rivalry that existed and indeed the superb demos that arose because of it! Each trying to outdo the other.

[Fred the Fop]

I used to argue with my Amiga 1000 owning frend Kraig about the merits of my Atari St...really, man, its old old old and waste of time to rehash it...both were great sytems that ave large following...give it a rest:P

[Amiga1992]

Back then I didn't even get into that Commodore vs Atari war (as a matter of fact, I wanted both a C64 and an Atari 65XE, and same goes with the Amiga and AtariST).

Nowadays, I can confirm both machines are awesome. Each one has its strengths. The FM music chip inside the ST was really good for some stuff, like chipmusic, but sorry RCK, Turrican 2's music is better heard on the Amiga's TFMX system (By the way, TFMX was first developed on the Amiga, there was not an ST version afaik, and if there is one, it has to be newer than the Amiga one. MusyX is based on TFMX, so go figure, it is indeed a fabulous music system!).

Of course the ST's Yamaha 2149FM chip PALES when you compare it with the Commodore 64's SID chip. But the ST's forte was not about its FM music, but its MIDI abilities. This is why many musicians used it (and some use it even today). Newer machines got a DSP chip in there, so even better. I think Cubase started on the ST.

The Amiga's forte was digital sound and graphic power. The ST was piss poor graphics wise. For instance, it can't scroll to save its momma, so all games had shitty scrolling. Something even the C64 or speccy could do better.

Anyway, I always am in favour of every machine Except in the 90s, when I really got onto the Nintendo vs. Sega wars (Segaboy I was!). And I was always a 'whatever vs PC' buff. I still am today

PC's SUCK!

[RCK]

Okay, I admit that T2's music are less "good to listen" with the ST format than with the Amiga One.
But I had always prefered ChipTunes one

I think I had to ask to Chris.H on witch platform did he make it first

[Amiga1992]

You just have to check his website. In the References section, you can see that TFMX was created in 1989 for the Amiga, but not for the ST. _Never_ for the ST.

He didn't even do the music for the ST version, it seems, since it is not mentioned there, and that is a list of all his works.

I think he did not port the TFMX editor anywhere. As he says also on his page, the tool was cancelled due to problems with a softco, and never updated again. TFMX's only direct evolution is MusyX, available for Nintendo machines.

I thought you knew all about Hülsbeck?

[Fred the Fop]

..PC's DO suck. Sega DID rule!! And Atari WAS a great comp!

[Amiga1992]

Seems we have agreeing tastes, fred Macs for me too!

[RCK]

Okay, I knew all of this.
I'm sure that the TFMX was not port on the ST, and I know the MusyX format for the N64 and the upcoming NGC

I just wanted to know who did the ST conversion.
and now I know it, it was Jochen Hippel.

For all the Chiptune lovers, the T2's AtariST music is something which wan't be forgotten

All you need to listen to it is : Saint091b / the Automation n°449 disk / and one tos100 file. (all on www.atarist.com)

btw akira, you can ask me all you want on my favourite Amiga musician, who is not Chris.H, but LizardKing !

Have to agree with Zeewolf. ST Owners were fuckwitts.

I seem to remember these same arguments going on 13/14 years ago. How times change

[Fred the Fop]

Shut up tomato head

[Amiga1992]

RCK, common, you aid you knew it all haha got ya mate

Anyway, recommended AtariST tunes? All the stuff done by Excellence in Art. Really GOOD stuff it is.

[Warlock99]

The amiga versions of games were usually without exception better than ST versions except for ports. I remember seeing chuck rock on the amiga and being amazed at the music and the scrolling backdrops compared to the st version.

But, there were actually a few games on the ST that were better, Robocop 2 was graphically superior and The Addams Family had scrolling backdrops unlike the amiga version. Jim power was identical, something you wouldn't think possible on an ST.

It was really strange seeing these games on the amiga, grab an ST emulator and have a look for yourself.

I personally think that most machines usually have something to contribute. Snes (mario's, zelda, final fantasy, pilot wings), megadrive (sonic's), ST (dungeon master, populous, damocles), amiga (too many to mention), zx81(errr..), spectrum (jet set willy, chuckie egg), c64 (commando, ghost n' goblins), atari 2600 (pacman, centipede), etc

Can you tell I used to have an atari st before I was totally and utterly converted to the amiga?

Yeah I can remember games that worked faster on the ST than the Amiga, but that was just crap programming or a lack of understanding of the Amiga hardware rather than the computers fault.

Most early Amiga games were just straight ST ports to the Amiga, with only minor attention paid to what power the Blitter could add to a game.

[Twistin'Ghost]

Yes, like all of that Microdeal shovelware. When I look at the many early ST ports and see how truly lacklustre they were, it reminds me of how truly non-innovative that system was. Their greatest gaming claim to fame was "Dungeon Master" and they haven't shut up about it to this day. Christ, the game wasn't THAT good! It sure as hell wasn't the innovative breakthrough that our "Lemmings" was, to name but one of many groundbreaking events in gaming history that were born on the Amiga.

And the ST had a MIDI port built in. Hardly a big deal, since that's about as cheap a peripheral as you could add to a system. And mainly musicians had the need for it, so why should it be standard equipment?

Then there was that TOS...ugh! The only thing it was superior to was MS-DOS! History's ugliest 16-bit OS. Complete with the limitations of 8+3 uppercase filenames and required extensions. Sheesh! Then there was that silliness with ST this and ST that in program and game names (like the Mac was doing...), which was completely juvenile.

And I for one am glad that my Amiga collection is not made up of 99% compilation disks. That was a fun, but inane diversion from the 80's that encouraged the truncating of games (like killing off intos and title screens) simply to fit more games on a menu disk. Leave it to the ST crowd to embrace this nonsense and run with it throughout the course of the machine's life.

While the ST was infintely superior for gaming to the PC of the day, it was always a poor man's Amiga.

[CodyJarrett]

And as mentioned in the earlier post, Populous was not an ST game - it was an Amiga game first!

[Bloodwych]

Hate to spoil the rivalry and sit on the fence but:

Didn't anyone here have an ST and then UPGRADED to an Amiga?

I bought an ST in 1987, just before they started fitting double sided disk drives in the things. My first three games, on plain black disks that cost a fortune back then (£2 each?), were Super Sprint, Barbarian and Star Wars.

I love these three games - superb playability. The first ever ST game I played was plutos - I thought the graphics were amazing back then but it hasn't aged to well!

In 1989 (I think!) I sold the ST and bought an amiga batman pack after being jealous of a friend. Must admit, I prefer the Amiga but the ST was a good games machine for the 2 years I had it.

Some vector flight sims (eg Falcon) ran better on the ST because of its slightly faster processor. That's about the only thing it had above the Amiga.

Sorry I must take exception to that.

They both had 68000 processors, and the Amiga WAS faster due to the PAD chip set which meant the processor had more time for boring shit while the Paula, Angus and Denise chips worked on the graphics and sound.

The reason Atari games were faster at first were, as I mentioned earlier :

a) they were straight ports from the Atari with no code dedicated to the extra hardware the Amiga had

b) programmer's did not understand how powerful the blitter was, which is what happens when new technology is available.

[Bloodwych]

The ST's 68000 ran at a slightly higher mhz rating than the amigas.

The Motorola 68000 is a 1979 16 bit processor which can be compared in terms of performance to a 80286. On the Amiga its clock frequency has been set to 7.2 Mhz compared to the Atari 520 ST 8 Mhz 68000

What you said about the custom chips is correct, but I only said certain games such as those containing vector graphics were faster. The majority benifited from the amigas custom chips.