Atari ST Indoctrination
 

When I was in my late teens having a lovely A1200, it almost felt like I had to hate the Atari ST by default. I had a couple of friends with ST's and I vaguely remember maybe once having a play.

Now due to having a Mister FPGA I have had a chance to play with the ST, watch some demos and generally have a good look at the machine.

Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong about the ST, what an awesome little machine, when you find a game or demo by someone who really understands the machine then it shines.

Found this out late but thankfully not too late!!

I wouldn't necessarily say "awesome machine", it was more to do with awesome programmers who were able to wring what they could out of it, some of the best 68000 programmers are on the ST scene because that's what they had to be an expert on to get the ST to do anything good.

But my attitude toward the ST has softened over the years

Yeah we're well past the time period where buying an ST would be a bad idea compared to buying an Amiga which gave you more bang for your buck, there is no reason anymore to "hate" it. Now we can just celebrate the machine as being part of the golden years.

100% this! No need for platform battles any more, all the retro machines are worthwhile in their own way - even the ones you or I would never use :agree

There was battle?? :shocked


I feel that was not even close call...



Atari ST was far behind Amiga in hardware. Sure, some games shine on it and there is no reason to hate it, but equally there is no reason to love it either...


Just to be clear - I only emulate ST, never owned one. At some point I went through bunch of Automation disk images.

I'm referring to the 'my computer is better than yours' stuff that we saw across all retro platforms back in the day. Which may have been true in some cases, but is utterly pointless today. Some people still want to argue about specs these days (I used to be one of them TBH), but I'm just not interested any more ;)

Sure, some 1980's/1990's machines were better than others, but it's all ancient history and we should all just appreciate what they represent to us, rather than the specs they have. That's my point, nothing more :D

The best thing in the world was the device that you owned :)

Not true… i had a C16 in 1984. It was utter shite!

I would replace the ‘owned’ with ‘had fun with’ :laughing

I know, all those wrong people who think there was even something close between Amiga and Atari ST. :lol How rude to even think there was a battle... :D

Here is automation list of games with images available for download.

http://steem.atari.st/automation.htm

Pay attention to the one that have[*] in front of them. :D

It is also worth checking D-Bug.

I think the ST is pretty cool and at the time of its release, it was a hell of a machine compared to being stuck with an IBM.

Im thinking about buying one to have a proper look at the system

Or just get MiSTer FPGA, as OP did. ;)

I almost bought an ST for my nephew,
then the Amiga was reduced to match it
and the rest is history :D

Been looking for one for years ---
but I ain't payin' ebay prices :)

Well, you're talking of a time when the 1200 was here. At this time the ST was clearly under the water compared to the A1200 and even compared to the A500. So your mind set was understandable.

However at the beginning of the 16 bits area, it was another story. The ST appeared first and was affordable. It was affordable and it was a quantum leap for graphic and sound! Winter games, one of the first ST titles, was incredible.

But later, the Amiga showed its power and the ST became less attractive. So for me, the sentiment over the ST depends of the time period you look at, it's not something linear.

SuperFuryAnimal: it would be pointless to compare 2 machines released 7 years apart anyway (1985 for the ST, 1992 for the 1200).

I wasn't comparing??

me too, i never had an Atari ST, but from 2014 i start to know it better in emulation, but what a very nice games. I continue to search some exclusive games (commercial or freeware) and always fascinating me so much.
As hardware is surely inferior to Amiga hardware, but in this case are the programmers that make difference and in some games i really not seen difference with the same PC or Amiga games.
Sometimes i found games with sampled audio that i not believe what i listening for.

In the past i had to make a choice: Amiga or Atari ST. In the end i choose Amiga and i was happy of that choice.

Yes, I was also sort of indoctrinated against the Atari ST at the time, while secretly envying their MIDI ports (although I never even worked with music...). I remember the bitter rivalry but since most of my mates who had 16bit computers had Amigas, I very seldomly saw STs doing their stuff. When I first emulated the ST I was a bit underwhelmed and thought that the Amiga was much better. I had overestimated the ST, especially in its sonic abilities. Apparently the ST was to the Amiga what the Atari 800 had been to the Commodore 64: a worthy opponent but never a toppler.

Around 2005 or so I bought a 520STfm before the prices went wild. I like it, it's a proper rival to the Amiga and it does have its charm but it's not on the same level as the Amiga 500 being it in graphics or sounds. The marginally faster CPU made the 3D games run a tad bit more fluidly, though, even if the Amiga's OCS was better for everything else. Even though everyone seems to demonise the GEM OS, I actually think it had some nice features (non-interlaced high-res text mode, for instance).

I don't own an STe but those seem to be pretty much levelled with the Amiga 500, also featuring a palette of 4096 colours and also having a blitter, it also had a PCM capable of reproducing 8bit samples just like the Amiga, and most of them shipped with 1MB RAM from factory. Unfortunately, few games use those extra specs with the majority of games released catering to the 512 colours palette, YM2149F sound chip and non-blitter basic ST instead.

The Atari TT - which used a M68030@32MHz processor, an FPU and all the ameliorations of the STe - was intended to compete with the Amiga 3000, the Apple Macs, the Acorn Archimedes 5000 series and the reigning 386/486 PCs on the big-desktop professional workstation market, although it didn't had much success in that endeavour.

Finally the Atari Falcon - which some people say it's NOT an ST, though (but then the TT also isn't) - is a technically awesome machine, theoretically better than a stock Amiga 1200 at basically everything but was even more shunned by the software companies than the STe. The Atari computer line died afterwards.

i still like to setup Steem every now and then, and play some pre-blitter era games

never had the possibility to real testing whatever Atari 16 bit computer, so i don't know how much close is the emulation

strangely, i still prefer the old Steem than all the others and more recent ones (ie Hatari)

I had the 2 computers and had good time with each other, I had 1st the st but when i saw turrican lotus etc on the amiga, i sold my st and my msx 2 and bought an amiga quickly.