Atari ST VS Amiga - No Second Prize Soundtrack Battle [HD]
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- Bloody hell, we`re once again on the Battlefield...once again there will be no draw at all! Beware ; violence and bloodshed. Today it`s a Soundtrack Battle between two famous 16Bit Homecomputer Systems. The Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga. Now let there be rock (or blood).
No Second Prize (c) 1992 Thalion
Music composed by: Matthias Steinwachs (www.audiotextur...)
Additional Music/SFX in this Video by: Analog ( / analoq ) and Chris Hülsbeck (www.huelsbeck.com) - with kind permission.
Starring the Voice of the one and only A.S.! (with no kind permission! but,well...he rocks too)
Wow - what a flashback! Thanks for the nice comments about the Atari version of the music, for the conversion of which I was responsible. It was a tough feat to achieve given the simplistic nature of the soundchip. At the time I did this project I was still in high school and only did a few contract jobs for music on the Atari, always conversions of other people's music, and quite a few of Matthias' games. I did compose my own music as part of the Atari ST demoscene in the group Delta Force.
You did an awesome work despite the limitations of the Atari music chip!
For what it's worth a few technical details: The Amiga soundchip (Paula) has 4 channels of 8-bit DMA sample playback with fine-grain sample rate control. The Atari ST has a 3 channel square wave sound generator with added noise and primitive 4-bit volume control (Yamaha YM2149 / AY-3-8190). A common trick at the time was to push the period of its envelope generator up into the audible frequency range to create "smooth" triangle / sawtooth wave bass sounds.
The Amiga one is more technically accomplished, but I think I prefer the sound of the ST ... then again I usually do. It's playing an instrument of its own making rather than being a poor copy of some real-life ones.
Oddly I always remembered the music for this game (or at least its demo) being sampled on the ST as well (4-bit style). Must be the digidrums and timer-effect bassline that created that illusion in my mind.
And my god, I forgot just how smooth and fast it was to play...
I had amiga in my childhood and i dont had any friend with the ST, so i knew it only from computer magazines. I am glad i had amiga now, music and sound was always somehow more important to me then graphics and sometimes i loaded games only to listen the music instead of playing. ST games in 80% cases sounnds like it is 8bit system. Chiptunes are nice today in nostalgic way, but back then it was like generation behind amiga capabilities.
I had a few Amiga's and one of my friends had an ST and we both played games on them both and just like you, I'm glad I went the Amiga route as a kid because almost all games were better on the Amiga.
Thanks for your nice comment! Just a few corrections on the music: I did not use digidrums for this piece. It's all programmed using only the noise gen and square wave mixed together, changing parameters every vertical refresh cycle (50Hz on PAL).
Also, the bassline does not use a timer, it's done by abusing the triangle envelope generator at a high frequency setting (see my other comment). The amount of time spent in the replay routines should probably be about the same for both machines.
Thanks Marek :) Still got fond memories of the times.
The problem for Amiga is that a lot of developers always seemed to take the ST soundtrack for games and "spruce it up a bit" without enough attention or thought. At least what I thought at the time.
I do hope you're still plugged in to the ST chiptune scene in some way ... if not, get back into it, some of the more recent compositions will blow your mind. You can't mess with the classics, but people are still composing, and still innovating no less. The sounds you can drag out of that little PSG are alarming.
It's no contest really, the Amiga is using sampled sounds, the ST is using the sound chip. The bottom line though, the ST version is smoother, the music is programmed, so taking up practically no processor time, and at that time having a fast and slick game like that was more important than the music. The ST could sound awesome when it needed to - for instance, the title music in ShadowOfTheBeast, that was awesome and more comparable to the Amiga music.
Yes I'd have to agree with those saying the atari wins here - with one caveat. Clearly the Amiga sounded better at the time, but it hasn't aged well. The atari sounds like classic electro early days computing... Pretty cool actually - it's got a nice feel even now. The Amiga music now sounds like uber Cheesy generic early 90s arcade music - funny that it's superior music actually dates it more now.
The Beast music on the ST was made/replayed with Quartet - This was a notation editor, so not exactly like a soundtracker - but the main thing is that it could replay 4 channel music at 12khz, which is probably a good 50% more than other sampled music on the ST. Quartet seemed to be amazing at looping wind instruments, so the ideal package for Beast's title track.
As for the DMA on the Amiga, well I have no experience with Amigas, but if it's like the STE, then I see your point.
The ST music guy did an amazing job! But on the other hand, a DMA-driven DAC is a DMA-driven DAC...
I seem to remember that it was one of those race games that you played with the mouse, a control method that seems to be out of fashion for the genre now. This and Vroom (an F1 game). Side to side for steering, buttons for accelerate/brake, and your other hand on the keyboard or stick for gearshifts, it all worked very smoothly, precisely and felt natural after a few minutes getting used to the change. Especially for banking the bike...
Yes. But you have to remember that Atari knocked up the ST using almost entirely off the shelf parts after screwing up when dragging their heels over coming up with a deal for the Amiga. Their engineers did an amazing job considering (although I always thought they'd have been better off using a Pokey chip from an Atari 8-bit!) - especially with making it easy for programmers like me to get into. It was waaay easier to get it to do something useful than the Amiga.
Although the St does a great rendition to the music, this pales in comparison to the Amiga Version, but I do love those St drums :)
Amiga wins for the lead guitar sound (reminds me of Edwyn Collins' A Girl Like You) and also the wah-wah effect. ST version has nothing distinctive about it, just another chiptune.
ST version rocks \m/
Mind however that the tunes showcased here show that the Amiga music for NSP was everything the ST music was and more - the composer responsible really put some work into it, tweaking each version for the particular hardware, getting decent samples and working them into the music properly instead of using default instrument libraries, etc. Both of them sound good, and I still rate the ST theme somewhere in my top 50, but I have to hold my hands up and say the Amiga one sounds better...
Even though the amiga used PCM samples it still did not take up processor cycles since it had a dedicated chip just for that task.
Back in the day (late 80's to early 90's) I would connect my ST to a hifi system and record on tape music, be it mods or game music. Then I would take it with me with my not so great walkman copy and use it to listen to music while on the road (bus,train, bike, etc).I had my own little "mp3" player with "dubstep" aka ST music. LOVED IT.
Wish I still had any of my Atari computers. :(
(I also had an Amiga 1200 but unfortunately never bounded with it)
Trusteft - I also had many Atari computers and an Amiga. I also wish I still had mine.
Though it hurts me to defend the Miggy, it does seem they've tried to graphically one-up the ST in the title sequence just a little too much. The Amiga had the custom chips, remember, so it could fit more effects etc into each 1/50th of a second... as well as more colours onscreen at once without tricks. Hence the title programmer's put that multiple-exposure/persistence-of-vision "trail" behind the bike, ultimately lowering the framerate vs the ST.
In-game, they look about equally as smooth.
musically they are the same... I like the music... however I think the sampled amiga soundtrack tries too hard, the ST sounds raw and funky. I guess that the MOD could have been used in the ST like Turrican 2... but they didn't? peace /|\
how lucky i was to grow up with these sounds, amazing times
*Broken* Game Gear? They had basically the same sound chip in all but name and the GG being in sort-of-stereo. And the GG had some pretty kick-ass soundtracks, same way the Gameboy did.
Amiga version of the music would be more suited to a blaxploitation remix of NSP, yet the ST version deffo got the funk :P
If they'd had the time to make a souped up (16 bit, 8 mhz, 4mb-memory-addressing...) successor to the 8-bits custom chipset, they would have had a potential Amiga killer on their hands, not just a close-run rival. But it woulda taken too long, cost too much... and impressive as the 8-bit chip was in context, the ST could make effects that embarrassed the Pokey in software alone and still have plenty of CPU time to spare.
Besides, they had chance to do that with the 5200 and 7800... and blew it.
Yeah, M.Steinwachs is most known on the Amiga for his Lionheart and Ambermoon Music.
ATARI seems a cool 8bit version. Amiga music is SO better, but the Atari version is also lovable
As a kid(mod files aside)I always preferred the music on the Amiga(which I didn't have for a few more years after I got my first Atari ST).The sampled sounds &music were obviously great at the time and still sound good.Still,apart perhaps from Agony,I almost always preferred the ST music,with all its roughness.Soundtrack from games like Exolon &Beyond the Ice Palace for example,always sounded better and more atmospheric on the ST to my ears than Amiga ever did.Cool game,but I preferred RVF Honda
This is the most awesome looking bike game I've ever seen. I wish the next Moto GP game will look like this as a bonus mode or something. That'd be sweeet.
C64 usually sounded better than ST. In fact SID was overkill for C64 and Amiga needed an improved SID alongside with Paula.
And tho I'm no longer entirely sure where I found it, if you get hold of something like the STSound player or a more up-to-date (& therefore more accurate) alt, there's a vast archive of "YM" and "SNDh" files out on the web (individually downloadable or in a one-piece monster compendium RAR) which are basically rips of the actual code fed to the Atari (or Speccy 128k, or Amstrad, or...) synth chip, meaning you can feed one of thousands of very small files to the player and hear a classic tune :)
Wow, you were in Delta Force? I spent many a night back in the day watching demos and playing games on my ST, my best regards to you
They could have just copied the same files in cases where there was also a PC version with MT32 support, too... dang. That would have been so winning. Problem is, there were probably precious few gamers who were also musicians, and used the same machines for both work and play... (sequencers tended to be used with monochrome monitors...)
Ah I see. I completely misunderstood your comment.
The amiga was born a 32 bit system.
we all know, the atari got the faster system but not with the extended graphic/sound like the amiga. both versions look for me awesome! :) thanks for upload
It's one of the ST games I always regret not buying at the time, when I see video snatches of it now it looks so much fun. I had a demo version that I played to death, but it was one track only and time-limited. Have little time for loading up the emulators nowadays.
Weirdly, none of them seem to show off the replay-editor thing it apparently had - much like more modern games like Driver and Gran Turismo. Multiple cameras etc.
If i didn't see that ST-Soundtrack, i would think, it's from the C64...
Now if they only did the PC trick on the ST and allowed the game to use my Roland synth through Midi. That would kick the crap out of the Amiga.
@SarahKreuz78 Yes, but remember (everybody) that there are 6 years of difference between both soundchips. YM in Atari was developed in 1979, the chip in Amiga in 1985. I like both version, although I really don't like guitar samples in computer games. I've done some "metal" music on PC, and no samples can replace real guitars.
Yeah, by processor time, I was talking more about samples on the ST - soundtracker music would take a lot of processor time on the ST so the soundchip was used more. The STE could do a lot better with soundtracker music though, as it had similar hardware to the Amiga.
Thalion were wizards of the 16bit scene!
Thank you very much for the info. :)
A technically impressive game. Both soundtracks are ok to be honest.
true there is no contest here but as for the cpu time amiga has no problem with that. paula works of its own.
They weren't wizards of the 32bit scene to quite the same degree though ;)
I like them both.
I have to admit that even though I'm an Atari guy through-and-through the Amiga music is so much better here...
Hmm, where to start...
There's always Pouet, which is a general multisystem demoscene / chiptune / etc repository.
Some of my favoured artists at the moment which revolve around the ST and other similar pure-ish chip systems are Dubmood, GEMTOS, Zabutom, Misfitchris, GWeM, 505, Facteur, Sodamnloud... some of them have their own websites or even labels (Dubmood & some of the above are together on Data Airlines on Bandcamp)...
And, well, TH-cam itself is a fantastic resource. Do some exploring!
Good lord, what is this, 1992?
hey, this is still a 16 Bit-Homecomputer Battle. So this contest is fair enough...everyone gets in the Ring with all da strength he got. X)
Yeah, the Atari ST gameplay is amazing fast. Beats the shit out of the Amiga Version (though its pretty good on the Commodore as well). Outstanding if you think about it that the Music took processor Time as well on the ST, just as you said.
Well, I wouldn't say "beat the shit out" but yes, little smoother rolling on Atari on gameplay, maybe 1-2 fps. And there was music only in intro so it wasn't slowing down Atari in gameplay.
Why does the Amiga version sound like disco music? The game shoulda gotten an endorcement from Evel Knievel... ;) ST sounds more techno IMHO
*_AMIGA_* every single time. And if you wanted pure 'chip tunes' then that's why you had a C64 and it's quite frankly awesome SID chip. No contest....
SID was ok but the same tunes on the C64 and the ST and the ST ones are invariable cleaner and better while retaining the chip aesthetic (unlike the Amiga that replaces everything with low quality samples that complete change the character of the piece)
I shat my pants at 5:25...
Time has distorted the difference. Most people at the time would have heard these sounds through some small TV or CRT speaker. The actual sound heard for both would have been distorted and of low quality after passing through this speaker.
@Abrimaal hehe,yeah. that`s a good Idea and a strange sounding Remix in the end ^^ But,well...not so good for a clean comparison
You're welcome I'm sure. Happy hunting.
Both versions are awesome. :)
Unfortunately I have long lost any contact. If you have any good sites to recommend I won't say no.
isnt this the composer of lionheart
You could try to remix both of them as I did it to Robocop from C64 and ZX.
Beide Systeme hatten ihre Vorzüge. Der Amiga wurde hauptsächlich zum Spielen genutzt, der Atari ST dagegen bestichte durch seine Midischnittstelle, was ihn zum besten Musikproduktionsgerät seinerzeit machte.
Well.....Both are awesome (16bit*) computers.
The Amiga should have been the next Atari the Atari ST should have been the Amiga (chip names respectfully appreciated) as the ownership hands and designs jumped ships to put it simplistically if that's possibly. Those times were great whatever you had..
(*16bit yep, I know that's an argument too!).
Nice game
midge ure did all the ultravox music on an st . for music capability the st was better but the amiga samples are great.
@Vaserlan I`m only converting the "Spieleveteranen Podcast" to TH-cam.
amiga is spanish, commodore is german, atari asian? i forget.. my alzheimers.. *cough*: i owned an c64, amiga500, amiga4000 wich i upgraded into an 4060 cyberstorm, cybervision64, with 4MB ram and 42MB harddrive, but the only person i know of owning an atari 520 st was a female journalist older than me, she used it for her job successfully. the discussion: i liked the music on those machines, the demo-scene, the games, the fun, the fulfilment, the pleasure, the understanding of how the technology, processors, programing languages, interactivity with other devices work. blah
No, it was merely contemporary rather than ahead of the game. Name another machine that had something like the Paula and didn't cost several times more? Or had anything significantly ahead of the YM (the SID is better, as are certain PC soundboards of the time - but only by degrees, not magnitudes), especially at low cost without needing lots of longwinded, expensive in-house R&D?
A well programmed YM can make some pretty awesome sounds, and I've heard plenty of badly made, horrible miggy tunes
The atari had a shitty sound chip that was obsolete at the time, Amiga sound chip was far superior,even if compared to pc games (see the ridiculous and grotestque differences between pc and Amiga in Indiapolis 500...wow!
I think the only way for the ST to have better music than on Amiga is for the composer to be completely different, and then it has a chance, otherwise it's an unfair comparison tbh.
Check out his link, he did a lot of stuff as well since those days.
COMMODORE AMIGA is the best
ATARI ST is the same thing, but the sound are a little bad
Conclusion for all Games
COMMODORE AMIGA Q=10
ATARI ST Q=8
Yeah to be very honest, I didn't like both soundtracks.
yeah,man :)
why not both. i like the crisp, noisy percussion, choir and lead guitar on the amiga that chika fake funk sound kinda kills me though, bleh. that bassline on the st!
I don't think you really showed the Amiga footage. We know the ST had a slightly higher frame rate, but your footage here is seamless, like the player was racing on exactly the same line when you switched from ST to Amiga.
well then he didn't do anything wrong but it's a bit rich to see all the Amiga fanboys commenting here, gloating about how much better the Amiga was compared to the ST when this video is of the higher fps St version with the Amiga sounds dubbed over the top. It's clearly not the Amiga version being showed because had a nicer, copper sky background... and a noticeably lower frame rate!
It's like, in one of the few areas the ST out does the Amiga (very rare), they use the ST footage and claim the Amiga is better due to sound!
I don't think the footage was the point of this video and the music comparison was, the footage was just to go with the music.
@@tosgem The footage in this video is from the Amiga. Played and recorded by myself. 🕹️🙃
If Atari had released the STE from day one, it would have hammered the Amiga in most departments. In other ways, the ST is a great example to show how much can be done with so little if you are comparing hardware. If you compare the graphics of NSP, the ST is much smoother than the Amiga.
The Atari ST version wins. The Amiga version sounds of its time whilst the Atari ST version still sounds fresh.
The Amiga soundtrack is super irritating with its naff electric guitar samples and then there's the wahwahwah.....cheesiness overload. The STs music sounds so much classier and fits the game much better.
Atari ST music is much better in this case. Melody line is better , low quality samples in Amiga here sound very bad.
That's okay. There are some in the comments here who prefer the chip sound of the ST...so, you are not alone with your opinion. 👍
Just love the blip-ety-blip sound of the Atari ST! It just sounds so much better than the samples. The chipsound of the Atari is legendary!
amiga had the quality, atari had the grit. Atari all the way! helped shape the music of today
Atari made great strides with their ST and where finally in a position to rival Commodore......64, meanwhile the Amiga is ROFLMAO!!!
ST wins easily