If you are comparing PAL machines then you got the Amiga's screen resolutions wrong they should all have been 256 lines instead of 200 which is why playing American made games often resulted in a thick bar at the bottom of the screen as NTSC was 200 lines. PAL Amiga's could be switched to NTSC through early start up menu if your screen could handle it.
@@TheRetroShack Lots of PAL Amiga games were 320x200 for various reasons. Usually because it was an ST port, or because they wanted to release an NTSC version later, or because they wanted to leave more chip memory access time for the cpu or blitter. Sometimes the bottom of the screen was left blank, or sometimes they filled it with a bit of artwork.
The more flexible graphics hardware on the Amiga makes it kind of difficult to list all the modes it is technically capable of. I seem to remember that the A600 could use the 640x480 4 color non-interlaced 60Hz "productivity" mode, which might be the closest comparatively to the ST''s hires mode. I suppose the A600 technically will support the 1024x1024 4 grayscale A2024 screen mode, too, but as that only works with the hardware in the A2024 monitor, I am not sure it really counts.
What’s bizarre is that with Jay Miner - who is the father of the 2600, 5200, and Atari 8 bits - and the fact that Atari funded development of the Amiga, the Amiga is really an Atari in lineage. Meanwhile with the ST being entirely a Trameil creation, the ST is really a Commodore in lineage and spirit!
Definitely in terms of games. If you look at graphics software on the STE and what it can do, it becomes very apparent that the STE could do a lot more than anyone ever tried to get out of it.
I'm a little late to the party here, and I'm not sure if part 2 has ever appeared, but one game for the Atari which used the enhanced colour palette of the STE was Vaxine. It now goes for silly money on eBay, especially the version in the metal tin, which I used to own (sob!) Anyway, I had a 512 STE from Evesham Micros, upgraded to 1 MB, and I used it for music as well as games (I had a Roland MT-32).
#showdown 25 STE games (some just great ST games): 1. Obsession Pinball 2. Wings of Death 3. Xenon2A (Digital Audio Upgrade) 4. Vroom (ST version) 5. Pole Position 6. Supa Zazai 7. Lethal Xcess 8. Asteroidia 9. R-Type Deluxe 10. Roger 11. Zool 12. Wolfenstein 3D 13. The Chaos Engine 14. Crash Time Plumber 15. Captain Dynamo 16. Pacmania Upgraded version 17. Venus Fly Trap 18. Xenon 2 HD version with stereo sampled sound track in game 19. No Buddies Land 20. Plain old Stunt car racer as is rocks. 21. Formula One Grand Prix 22. GODS 23. R0XZero (one of he few games that really shows off what COULD have been) 24. Substation 25. The new, in progress The New STE Metal Slug Clone
Gee, I never used my ST for games. I got mine when I was going to university for a physics degree. The ST was a better machine for writing and running mathematical models as well as dat acquisition and analysis. plus it a had a neat expansion port that allowed you to read and write data in a single operation which really helped in that respect. The gamers had their Amiga, the eggheads and the musicians had their ST.
That makes me an egg-head I guess! :) I used mine for programming in STOS mainly, and then moved on the AMOS on the Amiga - although I did play my fair share of games too :) :)
Amiga 2000s was used for NASA's data acquisition and analysis. th-cam.com/video/qAPD9HA8Unw/w-d-xo.html A500 has a Zorro-type edge connector that can evolve into Zorro II or PCI bus mastering slots. The Amiga 500/500+ can be upgraded up to Vampire V2 which includes AC68080, hence an Amiga owner doesn't need to upgrade with an A1200 to access XC/MC68060 or AC68080 class CPUs. ACA500plus enables A500 to access A1200's CPU upgrade cards. Atari ST/STE wouldn't be able to match A500's expandability into a Pentium (i.e. 68060 or AC68080) class machine. th-cam.com/video/eNCe1KsLcO4/w-d-xo.html A500 with ACA500 and A1200's 68060 accelerator card. A1200's PowerPC at 266Mhz (A1200's Blizzard PPC) accelerator card also works on it. :P
Yep - that's been pointed out but I've taken the high road on that one :) It's a 16Mhz 68000 so that's just unfair - and it's a desktop machine so surely that's for business use only :) :). Ok, Ok... I forgot that machine existed as a 68000 :)
I'd suggest Apidya, Lionheart, Turrican II, and Enemy: Tempest of Violence as good on the Amiga side. Apidya in particular is easily the best shooter ever released on the machine and could have passed for a decent Japanese arcade release (aside from the crude art in the cutscenes)
Obviously both. =) I never had an Amiga, but I love the machine. The potential of the STE will always intrigue me though as with the 7800, it was always, WHAT if and we are just finding out now some of the answers. The Amiga got all of those answers late in its life, but the 7800, STE, TT, and Falcon never really did. To some extent the Atari 8bit didn't either, but there is a very healthy homebrew community for all of these machines, doing their best.
Oh Baz - that's because the standard ST had the Yamaha version of the Spectrum AY-3-8910 (Yamaha labelled - YM2149F) - :) :) Not many programs used the extra capabilities of the STE unfortunately. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_AY-3-8910
@@TheRetroShack yeah i think the game itself was minor differences, but the sound.. when those tom toms start on the amiga version i remember being amazed that a computer could produce music like that.
As a 520fm owner I would have fervently supported the Atari platform back in the day. Looking back, games had scope for argument, but the demo scene was a bloodbath. Would love to see some recommendations from my Amiga friends for some of the best. Genuinely work from that era that left my jaw on the floor let alone my eyes.
I think the first proper 'damascene' demo I ever saw was the Budbrain Megademo on the Amiga at my friend's house - My head was turned. I think that was the moment I went home and looked at my ST in a different way :). We were never the same after that and divorced soon after :) :)
Amiga demos were quite amazing. Now however I also have an Atari ST and have had time to investigate demos on that side....and there were some pretty amazing ones as well. "Dark Side of the Spoon" and "Cernit" come to mind....but there were many. Seems the demo scene on the ST was just as vibrant. I wish I followed both scenes back in the day ;)
Looking at commercial stuff ther isn't much to show on the STE compared to the Amiga. But in recent years there were some impressive games on the ST(E). Wolfenstein 3D Gianna Sisters STE Lotus Turbo Challenge STE R-Type STE R0x Zero Substation And you should check out the latest version of Scumm VM which makes the following LucasArts games playable: Monkey Island Monkey Island 2 Indy 3 Indy 4 Day of the tentacle. With an STE you also can use the DMA for speech of the talkie versions. But you need an HD for it.
There was a major flood in our town many years ago. That's when I got my Atari 520ST from a skip with a monitor and mouse, but no software. It all worked perfectly. A few years later, my brother got me Cannon Fodder and a ZX81 emulator from the net. I was realy dissapointed with CF on the Atari, (I was used to the Amiga version). There was only one photo on the loading screen and the song was low bit-rate samples. The 81 Emu was/is brilliant.
From my understanding Atari ST and Commodore 64 were Tramiel's attempt to overshadow two far superior machines through his price war. The Amiga and Atari 8bit. Fortunately for Amiga, its hardware was far to good to stay unnoticed through its commercial life while the Atari 8bit line, 30 years later, amazes us with the high quality home-brew games/demos. i.e. The most common comment found at Atari game videos like Yoomp!, Space Harrier, Crownland, Prince of Persia, Stunt car racer etc etc is: "Is that an 8bit Atari, I didn't know Atari could do that????! Atari and Commodore were rivals but that doesn't change the fact that the Atari 8bit and Amiga architectures were innovative and spiritual siblings, creations of the same mind/ team.
I was big into music, so I got the Atari ST. I think many musicians went that way. If you were a graphic designer/artist, then the Amiga was obviously your choice. The games for me was secondary.
I think I got the ST because it was slightly cheaper at the time, and I absolutely loved it (and still do!).. I remember get Spectrum 512 (paint program) and convincing myself that 512 colours were just as good as 4096 HAM mode :) :) :)
The final 68000 Atari was the STE and the final 68000 Amiga was the 600 :) If I could get hold of a Falcon for less that the price of a Unicorn's Horn I'd love to see how it stacks up against the Amiga 1200 68030 I'm refurbishing :) :)
Here is a game: Steel Empire / Cyber Empires. I had that on the Atari ST and it was the best game I owned at the time. I believe there is an Amiga version as well.
Now that was a peculiar machine if I recall! I'll have to do some research on that. Didn't Apple keep it down to a ridiculously slow speed of 2-3Mhz well into the 90's? I'll keep an eye out for one :)
@@TheRetroShack YUP! They actually did to not undermine Macintosh sales. And another fact, the soundchip on the IIGS was sold to Apple by Ensoniq, founded by the great Bob Yannes, the SID chip creator.
On my bench i have now A600 and 1040STF 😎. But my Amiga gets Workbench 3.2. Both machines have oryginal FDD. A600 gets additional PCMCIA/CF and STF ACSI2STM.
Showdown? Between THOSE two machines? It'll be a complete walk in the park for the Amiga. And don't forget, that's an ECS Amiga, the AGA Amiga will absolutely wipe the floor with even the Atari Falcon!
The Motorola 56001 DSP in the Atari Falcon 030. Is more powerful than anything in any stock Amiga AGA, capable machine released by Commodore. People seriously underestimate just how powerful that particular chip was.
@@peterpereira3653 Yes, but what could it actually DO? That seems to be a reason that the Falcon 030 flopped so badly, because while a DSP may be useful for audio, they say it was also possible to use the DSP for graphics manipulation as well. But HOW? That is what is vague about the Atari Falcon 030, a powerful tool, but almost no-one knew how to use it.
My first game purchased for the Atari 1040ST was EA’s Arctic Fox. I loved that game. It was available for the Amiga 1000 as well. Ghouls and Ghosts was also available on both systems. The Domark-programmed translation of the vector Star Wars arcade game was superior on the Atari ST.
You didn't include the interlace modes for the Amiga on that chart? The HORx400 (or x512 PAL). Also, you didn't included the "productivity" modes, although those required a different monitor (kind of like the ST Hires). And there were games that ran in Interlace mode. I got Fighter Duel back in the day because it ran in hires interlace mode.
@@TheRetroShack I'll have to double check that too. Might not have had my eyes on when watching the video. I tend to still be in denial about actually needing my reading glasses... ;-)
Many great software for Atari ST is now released as freeware which makes it possible to build a retro music computer without rely on piracy software (Cubase). Desktop enhancement like NeoDesk and Geneva is freeware. Same with great music DAW like MasterTrack Pro and Cubase Lite. The good thing about Atari ST is the compatibility with PC standards like VGA and FAT.
Always be an Atari man, even from the eight bit days. I ended up with a Mega ST4 complete with the matching 60GB hard drive and an Atari laser printer. Used to love me a spot of desk top publishing. Of course I collected the games extensively too, but they more often as not simply went into a disc caddie and were promptly forgotten about. Would still to this day love me a Falcon just to mess around with. Used to love programming in GFA Basic with its compiler, which would produce stand alone exe files. Ah, happy days.
the ATARI STE appeared in 1989. The Commodore Amiga 1200 in 1992. Also in 1992 ATARI launched the ATARI Falcon030, so this one should be the competitor to the Amiga 1200!
@@TheRetroShack But the Amiga 1200 had a 68EC020 CPU with 14 Mhz and was 32 bit, so the Falcon with a 68030 and 16 Mhz - unfortunately only 16 bit - is closer to the Amiga 1200 than the 1040STE with 68000 and 8 Mhz!
@@TheRetroShack ATARI sold around 14000 Falcons in the EU back then. Falcons are really expensive nowadays and getting one in original shape will be even harder!
The Amiga could fully emulate the ST but the reverse wasn’t possible, it could also emulate the mac very well, both of these were in software and work well. PC task also enabled pc emulation but you really needed a faster Amiga. On this alone the Amiga wins out, I still have a range of Amigas and although dated now still enjoy using it especially with deluxe paint.
Go on and show me the Amiga emulating an Atari to play Carrier Command then, this bringing the ST's superior framerate to the Amiga lol. The ST could emulate the original Mac faster than an original Mac
An integrated MIDI port was a stroke of genius. Why all 16bit computers didn't have one in that era is beyond me. (My Korg M1 was permanently attached).
@@TheRetroShack Ah, the DX21. It was never quite the DX7, was it? People will never understand what teenage keyboard players went through in the 80's. It wasn't all Fairlights and Jupiter-8s.
MIDI connectors weren't standard on other machines as MIDI use was a niche market. Many Atari ST owners were only interested in STs for music production but Macs, PCs and Amigas whilst excelling in their own areas like DTP, business software and desktop video respectively also had a wide audience in other general purpose computing uses. If Macs had MIDI as standard the ST would have sold a LOT less machines into the music industry but it would of only been a small increase in share for Apple with all those connectors sitting idle on most machines.
@@IanPtv not really, ST could do the very same as Mac and even more and faster for much less money. The DTP was actually one of the domains of ST. The ST was actually one of the best if not THE best home computers of the era if we take the price performance ratio and the fact that it could do all tasks great, where others could do only some part of the industry well. The ST was a real jack of all trades.
@@FatNorthernBigot With an Amiga and it's incredible sound chip....you didn't need a Fairlight. You could run a soft synth similar to today's VST synths and use your Amiga as a MIDI sampling keyboard. One of the main reasons I bought the Amiga 1000 when it came out and choose it over the ST.
What happened to the proposed PART 2 of this showdown? I'm an Atarian from day one...2600, 600XL, 800XL, 130XE, 520ST and finally a 1040STe...pepper in an XEGS & 7800 for good measure. Can't wait to see this series of yours continue onwards. IF you're going to compare, then I think it's best to look for games on the ST that utilized the STe's extra hardware. And I don't think there were too many of those.
And there's the issue in a nutshell - there really wasn't a great deal of stuff made that really exploited the STE. However, the next part isn't forgotten and will probably air in January :)
@@TheRetroShack It´s april now. Is it on it´s way or have there been complications ? Saw this video today 6th of april 2023 and i am super curious. Have never seen any Atari stE games. And i am old enough to remember the Amiga / Atari wars back in the day. Really looking forward to this video.
If your an Atarian, the correct machines to have purchased after your Atari 8 bit computers would have been Amiga's. The ST line was designed & run by Commodore people. The Amiga Atari people. The companies largely flip flopped in name.
@@classicarcadeamusementpark4242 I kept using my 1040STe all the way through high school and on into my work career. I even installed STs into an office that I worked in for a couple of years. By the time I moved onto the PC, Atari & Commiedore were LONG GONE!
After my C64 phased out completely I considered A500 or A1000 vs Atari ST or STe. Sadly, never bought either one of them and ended up buying still very fresh 80386 compatible Dx 40mhz and 4 mbs of RAM Wich was pure jackpot, bullseye... Luckier than smarter no doubt
Well, that is not quite right, that the STE was the last 68000 machine by Atari - the Mega STE was: 68000@16MHz. According to your argumentation, you should compare the A600 to the Mega STE then.
Darn it :) You’re right! I better get on the look out for one of those then :) I didn’t recall them coming in at anything other than 8mhz :) Thanks for putting me right! :)
@@TheRetroShack You're welcome ;-) Also the release date of these two machines would be closer: IIRC the MegaSTE came out in 1991 and the A600 in early 1992, whereas the STE already in 1989. That is 3 years prior to the A600 - that is a huge timespan in the computer universe. And just my 2 cents regarding the Atari vs. Amiga battle: The Amiga was just unbeatable, when it comes to gaming (it was meant from the beginning as a gaming console after all), and of course there was also a lot of productivity software, but in my opinion, the Atari 16/32-Bit series were the better alround machines. You could also play good quality games (though mostly a little worse than their Amiga counterpart, especially soundwise), BUT with the SM124 monochrome monitor from 1985 and the years to come, there was nothing comparable, when it comes to the "serious stuff". There were tons of fabulous applications and the picture quality with 72Hertz was absolutely unbeatable - sharp, crystal clear and without any flickering at all. Even today, when I turn on the good old SM124 it still amazes me how good the picture is. And I remember around 1994 or so having seen a text editor (think it was "Becker Text") at my friends place on his A500 with Philips RGB monitor... man I couldn't stand that flickering for a long time... absolutely no comparison to the SM124. In the end, I love both machines, of course, both have their strenghts and flaws, though the Atari, as my first computer, has a special place in my heart ;-)
Starball on the ST is a great pinball game, reminds of Devil Crash on NEC PC engine, it's actually a PD game amazingly! Well worth a play :) Sublogic's Flight Simulator 2 is noticeably better on ST than Amiga, at least it is putting my Amiga 500 Vs. Atari 520STFM(both stock machines).
If you were testing their latest and greatest of the 68000 cpu as you said then shouldn't it have been Amiga 600 vs Atari Mega STe since that was Atari's last 68000 cpu, albeit at 16MHz.
That's a very good point - but I didn't even consider that machine as I didn't realise it was a 68000! My bad. The CPU was switchable from 16Mhz to 8Mhz. Anyhoo - I don't have one of those but that's a good catch. Can I get a out with the fact that it's a desktop form factor and therefore not aimed at the home market? :) :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Heh, no worries, it was a strange rare beast that I very much would like to own at some point, sadly I think I am more likely to find a shovel full of rocking horse manure at this point haha For the testing of games I don't think it would make much difference anyway but if you threw in a smattering of applications such as maybe Povray that might have let the 16MHz shine (if you had one of course ha ha)....
Thing is, there are very few ST exclusives that are truly impressive by the standards of later Amiga games. As you said in the video, for 3D games where the Amiga's custom chips couldn't be used the ST usually provides a smoother experience because of its faster CPU clock, so games like Midwinter, Carrier Command and F29 Retaliator are generally accepted to be better on the ST. I suppose some of the handful of titles that use the STE would hold their own too, so games like Obsession should feature, although I guess the Amiga would counter that with something like Pinball Fantasies. Finally, I don't know if this is cheating or not, but there is a fashion in the ST homebrew scene for re-working and improving classic games to use the STE features or to fix obvious deficiencies. Some good examples of that would be R-Type Deluxe and the recent STE-enhanced release of Lotus Turbo Challenge.
As I recall, it wasn't just the CPU that caused the Amiga problems for 3D stuff, it was the screen layout? The Amiga's screen was laid out with each bit of the screen pixel in a separate area--eg. you'd have all the bit 0s for the pixels in one block of RAM, then the next block would have all the bit 1s, etc. This was fine for 2D stuff, but with 3D it meant it had to do 5 or 6 (depending on screen mode) separate memory writes for every pixel onscreen, or else produce a flat plane 3D image and then go through a CPU-expensive conversion process to bitplane display. I think the later AGA chipset supported a flat screen buffer, but obviously we're talking A600 here which is still ECS.
@@d2factotum Yes, you're absolutely right about the Amiga screen layout - bitplanes. Rendering took less passes on the ST than on the Amiga but despite having vastly different screen drawing routines, they were pretty close when all was said and done :)
Biggest ST fan on the planet here, but when it comes to games, there is no compare. Amiga wins hands down. I still prefer the ST over it any day ;-) Some cool games to check on the Atari STe. Obsession, Stardust (also both on Amiga), Zero-5 (a very cool STe exclusive space shooter). The recent Lotus Turbo Challenge STe (an STe enhanced version done by sceners - I have all details in a vid on my channel), definitely check out the new Lucasarts adventure conversions for the ST and STe (we now have Day of the Tentacle in 16 colors playable on a Mega STe), my all time favorite pacman clone called Crapman, for the ST, 2 player mode and beautiful chiptunes, a nice example of how cool the YM chip can sound, Utopos (an STe only Turbo Raketti clone), Team (an STe exclusive footie game, released when Sensible Soccer was king). Gremlin Graphics slightly enhanced the STe version of ZOOL, but just a little. And there are a few more. Lot's of beautiful stuff in the demo scene, but that is not the point of the vid I guess. Oh and if you want to bore the living shite out of the audience, you can do the obligatory Shadow of the Beast compare! ;-) Anyway, great video, nice to see some ST coverage in the Amiga scene! I will be following this.
Oh, and ofcourse Wolfenstein 3D (amazing conversion on a standard ST) and the STe exclusive Substation, a very nice Wolf/Doom clone by the creators of Obsession...
Thanks for the suggestions! I guess I'm lucky to have had both machines growing up - but I do have a soft spot for the ST even though the Amiga was definitely the more capable machine overall. The STE does close the gap though! :) :)
The Amiga (no matter which one) is the overall more "complete" package. The ST suffer from too many design changes, especially from ST range to STE, which automatically leads to compatibility issues. STE hardware enhancements do not really "harmonize" with the rest of the hardware. Have to admit I'm Atari biased and only had an Amiga 500 (1MB) for some years. Always hated this Kickstart disk fiddling while Atari has it's built in TOS (apart from very early 260ST). Therefore I only used the 500 as a gaming machine and the ST(E) also for more "productive" (well,sort of^^) things. But trying to be objective, comparing the 600 and STE, the Amiga 600 is the better choice, apart from the 10-keyless design! 😉
Thanks, and have to agree. Having owned both an Atari 520STFM and an Amiga 500 in my teenage years, I always felt then that the Amiga had more potential, even if I wasn't the one to exploit it. I still prefer the look of the ST, and as the underdog I'll defend it to the hilt! :) :) :)
I would also agree, if gaming is the only test then it's going to be a bit of a massacre but throw in some other applications and it might bit a different result.. The Amiga was definitely a multimedia power house of its time but the humble ST had a few tricks up its sleeve :)
Wolfenstein 3D as well as Legends of Valour would be two good games to put the STe through its paces, Bolo is a great game for its hi res mode, Lethal Xcess is a great vertical shooter take your pick of 3d games but could perhaps try Interphase or Starglider 2. Seeing as you are looking at the systems as a whole why not compare some productivity applications Calamus / Papyrus....Photochrome ( th-cam.com/video/f2405eD2Ktc/w-d-xo.html ). The ST had some pretty good Mac emulators back in the day.
An interesting concept, but unfortnately seems to be bias toward the Amiga here, the ST has plenty of TOS sensitive games, but I didn't see you adding a TOS switcher for the ST. I think the demoscene was the best comparison of what both systems could acheive. The Amgia already won based on those higher resolutions and deeper colour depths. Still, the STE can often outshine it in the demo department (when it deliberatly does what it does best and ST coders knows Amiga struggles with hehe).
@@TheRetroShack Fair do's. I started with the ST so always kind of favoured it. The last couple of years though it's the Amiga that gets most of my attention. Both great systems in the end :)
The 1200 would run away with it. The STe was developed to bring the Amiga a little more on par with the 500. 1200 vs Falcon would be a little fairer, but the Falcon would have the edge there unless you consider an accelerated 1200.
@@TheTurnipKing IPC difference between 68020 and 68030 is minimal and both machines have gimped memory bus i.e. A1200s 32-bit bus is shared with AGA while Falcon's CPU has a 16-bit bus is shared with VIDEL controller. A1200 CPU's performance is doubled with a 32-bit fast ram.
#Showdown MidiMaze - runs fine multiplayer upon the ST - even original early versions, Amiga - ha. Guantlet II on Atari - great port, how did the Amiga fair upon that?
Informative video, but your timeline picks is as a bitblt to odd address (sic!) as youre comparing machines from different times. Atari continued after the STe (1989) with the Mega STe, TT030 and Falcon030 (1992). Maybe a A500+ vs. STe or a Falcon030 vs. A1200 would have been more on on "even addresses" so to say.
The A1200 (68020) probably wouldn't compare very well to the Falcon (68030) but happy to do it if someone wants to send me a Falcon :) :) :) No-one? Darn... :)
#showdown Amiga Shadow of the Beast Agony Elfmania Jim Power Unreal Wrath of the Demom Leander Mega Typhoon Hybris Battle Squadron Full Contact Fighting Spirit (ECS)
Ive recently found your channel and i really like it. My experience was with the Amiga and i dont think i had access to an Atari at all apart from the "Woody" back in the very early 80s so i cant give any feedback on it. The Amiga 1200 is by far my favourite machine of all time. It had that sense of fun and (almost) immediacy of the consoles but it had the depth of a pc, with strategy games like XCOM (favourite game of all time, probably) and The Settlers amongst others. Is there a concluding part to this? I havent found it, if there is one, after watching this video last night.
I guess most Amiga gems have been mentioned, but I could not see Project X, Ruff 'n' Tumble, Mr Nutz, Virocop, Elfmania, Overdrive, Super Frog, ATR, Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Assassins, Wolfchild, Fire and Ice..or Second Prize that is a really amazing 3D game that could rival all the STs 3D games! :-D
@@TheRetroShack Typical I thought that No Second Prize was AMiga exclusive. But at least it is just as smooth if not better AND the sound and music! Well.. 😁
#showdown As far as I know, Sundog: Frozen Legacy only released on the Atari ST and Apple II. Other than that, Dungeon Master I & it's expansion chaos strikes back; OIDS, Space Pilot, Goldrunner, Tracker, Golden Path, Artic Fox, Starflight.... And of course, Frontier Elite II; one of the few games that was quite happy with accelerators.
Sundog is a top down "zoomaction" game that still feels sort of modern and out of place on the platform (it is; written in an obscure dialect of USCD Pascal). Get in the ship's cockpit 3D wireframe view and try blasting a pirate with your lasers/cannons after picking any cargo up and setting up a warp destination charge. Dungeon Master I was the seminal dungeon crawling game on both platforms. CSB was the same engine with all the maps edited to make a simple sequel. OIDS is a very expansive sidescrolling asteroids/lunar lander, same company as the last two, Faster Than Light (FTL). Space Pilot is a top down space fighter, I barely remember it at this point, to be honest other than it's four way scrolling. Goldrunner had Hubbard music; so it stands out as well as being a fast paced vertical shoot'em'up with the ability to reverse and go down. Not too many games play like it, I'd say. Tracker was another niche 3D wireframe/shaded game, really ahead of it's time, you're trying to blow up a whole computer complex one node at a time. Artic fox is a 3D "FPS" tank game similar to battle zone; rather difficult to play but offers great open-world play for it's era. Starflight is another space adventure game; as is Frontier Elite II (sequel to Elite). Those are a bit more well known though. The mercenary: Escape from Targ and it's sequel also stick out in my memory, as does Resolution 101, you might have to get one of the Automation pirate disk images to get a 2.06 fix for that, also if you're going to include any of the menu intros; please try to include Pompey Pirates #39 to get some of the speech samples if that version of Resolution 101 ends up working. The ST really was a delightful little system to own at the time; I grew up with the 1040STf and as the above might indicate, have some very fond memories with it. Quite a number of these games are very deep, playable for months or years in some cases (trading goods in sundog and elite I/II...) and it's kind of sad that the IP from this era died out with the platform. I myself kept my sundog save disk long after losing my childhood 1040; and was lucky enough to catch a 520STm on ebay for $60 around november 2018. Because you have the 4MB expansion; you should be trying to load a ramdisk driver resident with desktop.inf and the AUTO folder, and try your hand at loading games into the 3MB ramdisk. Very little software dealt with more than 1MB of ram. Desktop publishing like degas elite, artwork tools like neochrome... Some music tools like cubase. Only the MegaST2/4 were ever released with 4MB of ram; the 1040STF/STFm/STe never had a chance to push out a 2MB or 4MB release *but* atari did manufacture the *BADGES* for them. I lived in sunnyvale at the time and dumpsterdived Atari a lot! I have good memories with B&C Computervisions, buying the JRI 4MB upgrade kit and watching my dad solder it in while I sat on his lap and watched. Got an atari robokit later, tried my hand at STOS game creator, and started off with Mark Williams C... And I don't think I ever got a ACSI harddrive for it. Everything I did back then was with the 4MB ramdisk and an external floppy drive. The aftermarket drive you got has some kind of an adapter to take ACSI's 8 bit bus to either a SCSI or IDE drive drive inside. I'm pretty sure this was slightly past the era of MFM drives; but please; please, PLEASE carefully take the bridge board out of the drive chassis and give us a good long look at both sides of the PCB, because it's *RARE* these days to run into something that isn't a megafile off ebay. If it's got socketed chips, send some high res photos to exxo or post them on his forums with the chips removed so the traces below the sockets can be seen... I've wanted to reproduce one of those period-correct interface boards for *ages*. A dump of the drive contents (if it's still working) would be great. The AUTO folder is particularly important; as the atari's very strange about bootsectors and it's own partitioning scheme, and it's a pain in the butt these days to find period-correct configuration intact.
I never owned an ST, but I know it's a perfectly capable machine if handled correctly - but for me, the Amiga was by far and away the better computer. Anyway, games to test: The Chaos Engine, Speedball 2 (All Bitmap Bros games were developed for ST first and converted to the Amiga), Scramble Spirits Batman the Movie Crazy Cars III Cannon Fodder The Spy Who Loved Me I'd also try some 3D flight sims, like the excellent B17 Flying Fortress, and the fantastic Reach for the Skies (an excellent 3D flight Sim by Rowan. Best played with an analogue joystick - you can turn on gouraud shading for more realistic looking aircraft. The manual says you really need an accelerator for that, but I never had any issues with my Amiga 500+ with 1.5Mb Ram, so you should have no issues running on the A600 with it's spec). And of course, you can't go wrong with a bit of head to head networked gaming. Stuntcar Racer, Lotus Turbo Challenge II & III and Knights of the Sky all support null-modem cable hook-ups between both computers. #Showdown
I heard the Amiga can effectively emulate Atari ST. I think we should make this more interesting and see how emulated Atari on the Amiga can run the same games.
@@TheRetroShack Ahh, but it didn't have to emulate at the CPU level. Amiga's also did a great job emulating Macintosh. I don't have any hardware to test it myself, but here is a video th-cam.com/video/dvgu7OM2J94/w-d-xo.html
@@danaeckel5523 well the Mac was a single chip computer, so if you would read the disk for example or construct the video memory, the CPU had to do it all alone and pause all other tasks, thats why Amiga software emulation was faster then actual Mac. Most Amiga fans dont know that ST had even faster software emulation of Mac... ST had up to 20% higher raw computing power then A500, so emulating ST on A500 or A600 is not gonna happen, would be slow. Emulating STE would be utterly impossible since STE has much more powerful hardware then A500, pity it was not utilized back then.
@@TheRetroShack The Atari ST rarely ran faster than the Amiga because even though the ST 68000 was a smidgen faster, the custom chips of the Amiga offloaded so many things the Amiga almost always ran faster. A few exceptions. Just to move the mouse around the screen on the ST took effort.
They were both the last remnants of an era were computers had each their own specific architecture, which means the hardware, and not the operating system, was the target platform, and programs were expected to talk directly and take full advantage of the hardware. I miss that. It's a sad world when you simply can't get any hardware documentation at all for your computer, and programs are forced to talk to extremely bloated, buggy, and closed libraries and drivers.
AMEN! Even the PS5 and XBOX titles today are developed on PC and ported to consoles with little tweaks for each machine. It makes you wonder what the PS5 could do if a developer targeted the metal directly :)
@@TheRetroShack Developers actually still target the metal in consoles (well, not exactly, but they have access to very low level hardware documentation and a much lower level driver compared to PCs). The problem with consoles is the draconian DRM, controlled distribution channels, and closed development process, which make them appliances more than computers. It's a shame because they really have the potential to become the new Amiga (a glimpse of that was seen when Microsoft opened the Live Arcade stuff, which unfortunately was as detached from the metal as possible, but still pretty interesting).
I had high hopes for the Atari when I got my 520ST but I could not get it to work yet. Parallel I bought also two Amigas 500 where one is stock and one is with more ram and switchable Kickstart 1.3 and 3.1. For now I love the stock Amiga 500 but the Atari 520ST looks so great and the keyboard is really making the proper sound's ❤️. The downfall on Atari are the game's what are harder to get. Amiga game: Ghosts n' Goblins #Showdown
The Amiga did have built in MIDI, it just need a port changer. As easy to connect as a joystick and OS tight MIDI, and dirt cheap for the port changer. The Amiga was usually faster despite the ST 68000 being a smidgen faster because the Amiga's custom chips offloaded stuff. The Amiga did excel at everything! Especially MIDI music, the main reason I bought it. Soft synths didn't exist on the ST that could save me thousands of dollars on hardware synths. Especially on a MIDI sampling keyboard back in 1985.
Only that the C-64 & Atari 800 were closer. There wasn't much of a contest between the Amiga & the ST. The Amiga did initially cost twice as much and I bought one at that time, but I think it was actually worth much more than double.
@@TheRetroShack Most Games will not work on the monochrome monitor. Its because of the refresh rates etc and that . Not many games were made for the STE to use on the monochrome monitor - Skull Diggery was one able to play on the High res. Most of the use for high res were for applications like Cubebase, Word processing etc
You know what - I probably would have agreed with you about the A600 before I got to refurbishing this one - actually changed my opinion on it after using it for a bit :)
The shitty A600 was an act of incompetence by an ex IBM engineer (who made the failed PC Jr) went to Commodore after Mehdi Alì took the lead after Thomas Rattigan. Stopping the A500 production when the market wanted no other, it was a stupid idea. Selling another ECS 68k based machine, it was a fail, especially in Germany, where the local Commodore division obtained to take any available A500 and A500Plus instead; UK tried with the famous bundle and it got quite good. Many says that A600 and CDTV killed Commodore's cash flow and took the company to the death.
@@TheRetroShack I think to get an accurate comparison, you'd really have to run the same game on both machines. Frontier: Elite II does look amazing on an Amiga with a powerful accelerator and ton of memory.
Why would you compare the a600 it's just a cheap crappy a500! Atari 1040STE or M probably better... But A500 + FPU and extra RAM smashes them both to dust!
I saw my first Amiga running 'Ports of Call', it got me. I don't think that game was on the ST. Substation was a 3d type first person shooter that was on the ST, never seen it on Amiga. I recall the Amiga world never came to terms with 3d graphics and games of PlayStation, in mid 90s the world left scrolling and 2d games far behind and the Amiga with it.
Never heard of Ports Of Call so will look that up. My first glimpse of an Amiga game was Defender Of The Crown which is a great game I still play today :)
This is so biasd. The Falcon030 should have been the "fair comparison" and not the STe. This was the computer Atari released when the A600 came out. But you will have your Amiga making fans on TH-cam. 😅
Just try to compare the game - SHADOW OF THE BEAST, the amiga version is legendary featuring great music and multilayer smooth scrolling, while ST version is so bad and jerky and simple that it is probably the worst port ever!!
l'Amiga est une très bonne machine. Mais il est dommage que l'Atari ste n'est pas été exploité dès sa sortie. Les développeurs faisaient du stf et juste de la compatibilité avec les ste. Il y a eu que quelques titres à exploiter la machine sur la fin. Obsession par exemple. A savoir si le Ste aurait fait le poids face au 600, j'en sais rien. Mais au moins les possesseurs du ste auraient eu des jeux de meilleurs qualités. Le parc de stf a fait du mal au ste. Quel gâchis.
If you are comparing PAL machines then you got the Amiga's screen resolutions wrong they should all have been 256 lines instead of 200 which is why playing American made games often resulted in a thick bar at the bottom of the screen as NTSC was 200 lines. PAL Amiga's could be switched to NTSC through early start up menu if your screen could handle it.
Sorry - that's a typo. Atari ST 320x200 in PAL and NTSC. Amiga 320x256 in PAL 320x200 in NTSC. Good spot! *pinned*
@@TheRetroShack Lots of PAL Amiga games were 320x200 for various reasons. Usually because it was an ST port, or because they wanted to release an NTSC version later, or because they wanted to leave more chip memory access time for the cpu or blitter. Sometimes the bottom of the screen was left blank, or sometimes they filled it with a bit of artwork.
@@NozomuYume 320x200 was a common denominator to support PAL, NTSC, Atari ST, and PC VGA 13h.
The more flexible graphics hardware on the Amiga makes it kind of difficult to list all the modes it is technically capable of. I seem to remember that the A600 could use the 640x480 4 color non-interlaced 60Hz "productivity" mode, which might be the closest comparatively to the ST''s hires mode.
I suppose the A600 technically will support the 1024x1024 4 grayscale A2024 screen mode, too, but as that only works with the hardware in the A2024 monitor, I am not sure it really counts.
@@Ts6451 i would like to read more about non interlaced mode
What’s bizarre is that with Jay Miner - who is the father of the 2600, 5200, and Atari 8 bits - and the fact that Atari funded development of the Amiga, the Amiga is really an Atari in lineage. Meanwhile with the ST being entirely a Trameil creation, the ST is really a Commodore in lineage and spirit!
The A500+ and A600 can also do 640x400 4 colors non interlaced. It's called productivity mode.
STE still has never been fully exploited to its full extent. It's pretty great kit.
Absolutely agree! Some of the later stuff people are pointing out is incredible!
Atari had already sold to many earlier models for the STEs to be a viable market unfortunately.
Definitely in terms of games. If you look at graphics software on the STE and what it can do, it becomes very apparent that the STE could do a lot more than anyone ever tried to get out of it.
I'm a little late to the party here, and I'm not sure if part 2 has ever appeared, but one game for the Atari which used the enhanced colour palette of the STE was Vaxine. It now goes for silly money on eBay, especially the version in the metal tin, which I used to own (sob!)
Anyway, I had a 512 STE from Evesham Micros, upgraded to 1 MB, and I used it for music as well as games (I had a Roland MT-32).
Oooh I had one of those third coast HD units, had two mfm HDDs fitted but I recall formatting as RLL for more space.
Just got around to getting the thing to boot :) :)
@@TheRetroShack so long ago I'm not sure I can remember.
#showdown 25 STE games (some just great ST games):
1. Obsession Pinball
2. Wings of Death
3. Xenon2A (Digital Audio Upgrade)
4. Vroom (ST version)
5. Pole Position
6. Supa Zazai
7. Lethal Xcess
8. Asteroidia
9. R-Type Deluxe
10. Roger
11. Zool
12. Wolfenstein 3D
13. The Chaos Engine
14. Crash Time Plumber
15. Captain Dynamo
16. Pacmania Upgraded version
17. Venus Fly Trap
18. Xenon 2 HD version with stereo sampled sound track in game
19. No Buddies Land
20. Plain old Stunt car racer as is rocks.
21. Formula One Grand Prix
22. GODS
23. R0XZero (one of he few games that really shows off what COULD have been)
24. Substation
25. The new, in progress The New STE Metal Slug Clone
Lethal Xcess is perfect for the STE since it uses the STe Blitterchip and enhanced sound.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Sounds like a crazy 80's action movie :) :)
@@TheRetroShack I bet it WAS! Or at least the name of a script before it was changed =)
Midi ports and fabulous paper white monochrome monitor with a high res mode.
Coming this weekend - the SM124 Hi Res Monitor :) :)
@@TheRetroShack ❤️❤️❤️❤️
@@TheRetroShack Megaroids looks lush on it if you are struggling for a game with a mono mode.
I made a list of mono games: th-cam.com/play/PLarrSuuxY8lvHP-fhwW1R8mp6ETa0PDB_.html
#showdown - Amiga: Geoff Crammond's F1 GP, Mercenary, Deuteros, Gods, Lotus Turbo Esprit - ST: Dungeon Master, Buggy Boy
Buggy Boy!!! Loved that game! Thanks :)
Gee, I never used my ST for games. I got mine when I was going to university for a physics degree. The ST was a better machine for writing and running mathematical models as well as dat acquisition and analysis. plus it a had a neat expansion port that allowed you to read and write data in a single operation which really helped in that respect. The gamers had their Amiga, the eggheads and the musicians had their ST.
That makes me an egg-head I guess! :) I used mine for programming in STOS mainly, and then moved on the AMOS on the Amiga - although I did play my fair share of games too :) :)
Amiga 2000s was used for NASA's data acquisition and analysis. th-cam.com/video/qAPD9HA8Unw/w-d-xo.html
A500 has a Zorro-type edge connector that can evolve into Zorro II or PCI bus mastering slots.
The Amiga 500/500+ can be upgraded up to Vampire V2 which includes AC68080, hence an Amiga owner doesn't need to upgrade with an A1200 to access XC/MC68060 or AC68080 class CPUs.
ACA500plus enables A500 to access A1200's CPU upgrade cards. Atari ST/STE wouldn't be able to match A500's expandability into a Pentium (i.e. 68060 or AC68080) class machine.
th-cam.com/video/eNCe1KsLcO4/w-d-xo.html
A500 with ACA500 and A1200's 68060 accelerator card. A1200's PowerPC at 266Mhz (A1200's Blizzard PPC) accelerator card also works on it. :P
I think the last Computer of the ST Series was the MegaSTE and not the 1040STE. The MegaSTE is from 1991 and the 1040STE is from 1989.
Yep - that's been pointed out but I've taken the high road on that one :) It's a 16Mhz 68000 so that's just unfair - and it's a desktop machine so surely that's for business use only :) :). Ok, Ok... I forgot that machine existed as a 68000 :)
Does the Atari Falcon get a look or is too removed from the ST.
I'd suggest Apidya, Lionheart, Turrican II, and Enemy: Tempest of Violence as good on the Amiga side. Apidya in particular is easily the best shooter ever released on the machine and could have passed for a decent Japanese arcade release (aside from the crude art in the cutscenes)
Turrican II - the music alone on the Amiga was worth the price of admission :)
I'm so conflicted - I owned both an ST and an Amiga....who do I support?
Chuck in your recommendations for both :)
You would support Motorola 😄
Obviously both. =) I never had an Amiga, but I love the machine. The potential of the STE will always intrigue me though as with the 7800, it was always, WHAT if and we are just finding out now some of the answers. The Amiga got all of those answers late in its life, but the 7800, STE, TT, and Falcon never really did. To some extent the Atari 8bit didn't either, but there is a very healthy homebrew community for all of these machines, doing their best.
ST for 3d games, Amiga for everything else ;)
@@gamecat666 Amiga 500/2000 Kickstart ROM 1.3 supports faster 32 bit CPUs such as 68020/68030 since 1988.
Where is the next episode I want to see the games showdown
On the STE: Obsession and Substation. Not that many STE specific games available... Demos: Sea of Color by DHS
Just watched Sea of Color and wow :) :)
quite surprised by the sound specs of the STe.. how come it never sounds any better than a spectrum?
Oh Baz - that's because the standard ST had the Yamaha version of the Spectrum AY-3-8910 (Yamaha labelled - YM2149F) - :) :) Not many programs used the extra capabilities of the STE unfortunately. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_AY-3-8910
There are a few games that do, but that was up to developers not wanting to make both STE and an ST version of games. Thalion did though.
when i had an ST, the game that made my jaw drop on the Amiga was the music on IK+.. after seeing that i sold my ST for an A500
Absolutely loved that game - it was pretty good on every platform!
@@TheRetroShack yeah i think the game itself was minor differences, but the sound.. when those tom toms start on the amiga version i remember being amazed that a computer could produce music like that.
I had an original 520ST and no, it did not have the TOS in ROM....had to wait for that and fit it later!!!
Wow! Sounds reminiscent of the QL!
As a 520fm owner I would have fervently supported the Atari platform back in the day. Looking back, games had scope for argument, but the demo scene was a bloodbath. Would love to see some recommendations from my Amiga friends for some of the best. Genuinely work from that era that left my jaw on the floor let alone my eyes.
I think the first proper 'damascene' demo I ever saw was the Budbrain Megademo on the Amiga at my friend's house - My head was turned. I think that was the moment I went home and looked at my ST in a different way :). We were never the same after that and divorced soon after :) :)
Amiga demos were quite amazing. Now however I also have an Atari ST and have had time to investigate demos on that side....and there were some pretty amazing ones as well. "Dark Side of the Spoon" and "Cernit" come to mind....but there were many. Seems the demo scene on the ST was just as vibrant. I wish I followed both scenes back in the day ;)
Looking at commercial stuff ther isn't much to show on the STE compared to the Amiga. But in recent years there were some impressive games on the ST(E).
Wolfenstein 3D
Gianna Sisters STE
Lotus Turbo Challenge STE
R-Type STE
R0x Zero
Substation
And you should check out the latest version of Scumm VM which makes the following LucasArts games playable:
Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2
Indy 3
Indy 4
Day of the tentacle.
With an STE you also can use the DMA for speech of the talkie versions. But you need an HD for it.
Thanks for that - SCUMMLite!!!! Monkey Island 2 on an ST??? Amazing :)
There was a major flood in our town many years ago. That's when I got my Atari 520ST from a skip with a monitor and mouse, but no software. It all worked perfectly. A few years later, my brother got me Cannon Fodder and a ZX81 emulator from the net. I was realy dissapointed with CF on the Atari, (I was used to the Amiga version). There was only one photo on the loading screen and the song was low bit-rate samples. The 81 Emu was/is brilliant.
couldnt afford a 16 bit back in the day so i'm just looking forward to the showdown lol (and the st refurb)
Me too Chris! :) :)
The switch installed in the A600 could switch back to kickstart 1.3? Didn't Amiga 600 ship with kickstart 2.0?
From my understanding Atari ST and Commodore 64 were Tramiel's attempt to overshadow two far superior machines through his price war. The Amiga and Atari 8bit. Fortunately for Amiga, its hardware was far to good to stay unnoticed through its commercial life while the Atari 8bit line, 30 years later, amazes us with the high quality home-brew games/demos.
i.e. The most common comment found at Atari game videos like Yoomp!, Space Harrier, Crownland, Prince of Persia, Stunt car racer etc etc is: "Is that an 8bit Atari, I didn't know Atari could do that????!
Atari and Commodore were rivals but that doesn't change the fact that the Atari 8bit and Amiga architectures were innovative and spiritual siblings, creations of the same mind/ team.
Some of the demos on the 800xl are simply jaw-dropping!
Did part 2 happen?
I was big into music, so I got the Atari ST. I think many musicians went that way. If you were a graphic designer/artist, then the Amiga was obviously your choice. The games for me was secondary.
I think I got the ST because it was slightly cheaper at the time, and I absolutely loved it (and still do!).. I remember get Spectrum 512 (paint program) and convincing myself that 512 colours were just as good as 4096 HAM mode :) :) :)
@@TheRetroShack LOL
The final Atari was the STE?
I know the Falcon was not popular, but you may consider a comparison with that too.
The final 68000 Atari was the STE and the final 68000 Amiga was the 600 :) If I could get hold of a Falcon for less that the price of a Unicorn's Horn I'd love to see how it stacks up against the Amiga 1200 68030 I'm refurbishing :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Good points. Also, finding software for it might be a bit of a challenge...
Here is a game: Steel Empire / Cyber Empires. I had that on the Atari ST and it was the best game I owned at the time. I believe there is an Amiga version as well.
Cheers - I'll take a look!
Might consider adding Apple 2GS to the list next time, as this machine was kind of in this space also.
Now that was a peculiar machine if I recall! I'll have to do some research on that. Didn't Apple keep it down to a ridiculously slow speed of 2-3Mhz well into the 90's? I'll keep an eye out for one :)
@@TheRetroShack YUP! They actually did to not undermine Macintosh sales. And another fact, the soundchip on the IIGS was sold to Apple by Ensoniq, founded by the great Bob Yannes, the SID chip creator.
On my bench i have now A600 and 1040STF 😎. But my Amiga gets Workbench 3.2. Both machines have oryginal FDD. A600 gets additional PCMCIA/CF and STF ACSI2STM.
Nice! You can do your comparison along with me :)
Showdown? Between THOSE two machines? It'll be a complete walk in the park for the Amiga. And don't forget, that's an ECS Amiga, the AGA Amiga will absolutely wipe the floor with even the Atari Falcon!
The AGA will wipe the floor with the Falcon? Highly contentious
The Motorola 56001 DSP in the Atari Falcon 030. Is more powerful than anything in any stock Amiga AGA, capable machine released by Commodore. People seriously underestimate just how powerful that particular chip was.
@@peterpereira3653 Yes, but what could it actually DO? That seems to be a reason that the Falcon 030 flopped so badly, because while a DSP may be useful for audio, they say it was also possible to use the DSP for graphics manipulation as well. But HOW? That is what is vague about the Atari Falcon 030, a powerful tool, but almost no-one knew how to use it.
My first game purchased for the Atari 1040ST was EA’s Arctic Fox. I loved that game. It was available for the Amiga 1000 as well. Ghouls and Ghosts was also available on both systems. The Domark-programmed translation of the vector Star Wars arcade game was superior on the Atari ST.
You didn't include the interlace modes for the Amiga on that chart? The HORx400 (or x512 PAL). Also, you didn't included the "productivity" modes, although those required a different monitor (kind of like the ST Hires).
And there were games that ran in Interlace mode. I got Fighter Duel back in the day because it ran in hires interlace mode.
You know I really thought I had included those on the info pane! I'll have to go and check now :) :)
@@TheRetroShack I'll have to double check that too. Might not have had my eyes on when watching the video. I tend to still be in denial about actually needing my reading glasses... ;-)
@@desiv1170 You and me both! :)
Many great software for Atari ST is now released as freeware which makes it possible to build a retro music computer without rely on piracy software (Cubase). Desktop enhancement like NeoDesk and Geneva is freeware. Same with great music DAW like MasterTrack Pro and Cubase Lite. The good thing about Atari ST is the compatibility with PC standards like VGA and FAT.
Always be an Atari man, even from the eight bit days. I ended up with a Mega ST4 complete with the matching 60GB hard drive and an Atari laser printer. Used to love me a spot of desk top publishing. Of course I collected the games extensively too, but they more often as not simply went into a disc caddie and were promptly forgotten about. Would still to this day love me a Falcon just to mess around with. Used to love programming in GFA Basic with its compiler, which would produce stand alone exe files. Ah, happy days.
Odd that I was looking at GFA Basic only yesterday. Nice implementation of Basic it seems!
A 60GB drive?
the ATARI STE appeared in 1989. The Commodore Amiga 1200 in 1992. Also in 1992 ATARI launched the ATARI Falcon030, so this one should be the competitor to the Amiga 1200!
It is :) I’m comparing the STE to the 600 as they were both the last 68000 machines from each company :)
@@TheRetroShack But the Amiga 1200 had a 68EC020 CPU with 14 Mhz and was 32 bit, so the Falcon with a 68030 and 16 Mhz - unfortunately only 16 bit - is closer to the Amiga 1200 than the 1040STE with 68000 and 8 Mhz!
@@Ohlukei Confusing :) :) Getting hold of a Falcon is proving tough anyway :) :) :) It seems they only made about 8 of them :)
@@TheRetroShack ATARI sold around 14000 Falcons in the EU back then. Falcons are really expensive nowadays and getting one in original shape will be even harder!
so whens the showdown this video is nearly a year old lol
Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe and Midnight Resistance have to be on there
Let's see! Speedball 2 did consume many hours of my time!
@@TheRetroShack Plus maybe Carrier Command and Populous..?
The Amiga could fully emulate the ST but the reverse wasn’t possible, it could also emulate the mac very well, both of these were in software and work well. PC task also enabled pc emulation but you really needed a faster Amiga. On this alone the Amiga wins out, I still have a range of Amigas and although dated now still enjoy using it especially with deluxe paint.
Can't even think how many hours I sat drawing in Deluxe Paint. I use Aseprite these days as it gives me the same feeling :) :)
Go on and show me the Amiga emulating an Atari to play Carrier Command then, this bringing the ST's superior framerate to the Amiga lol.
The ST could emulate the original Mac faster than an original Mac
An integrated MIDI port was a stroke of genius. Why all 16bit computers didn't have one in that era is beyond me. (My Korg M1 was permanently attached).
I had a DX21 stuck in mine :) Those were the days - when I dreamed of being a chart-topper :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Ah, the DX21. It was never quite the DX7, was it? People will never understand what teenage keyboard players went through in the 80's. It wasn't all Fairlights and Jupiter-8s.
MIDI connectors weren't standard on other machines as MIDI use was a niche market. Many Atari ST owners were only interested in STs for music production but Macs, PCs and Amigas whilst excelling in their own areas like DTP, business software and desktop video respectively also had a wide audience in other general purpose computing uses. If Macs had MIDI as standard the ST would have sold a LOT less machines into the music industry but it would of only been a small increase in share for Apple with all those connectors sitting idle on most machines.
@@IanPtv not really, ST could do the very same as Mac and even more and faster for much less money. The DTP was actually one of the domains of ST. The ST was actually one of the best if not THE best home computers of the era if we take the price performance ratio and the fact that it could do all tasks great, where others could do only some part of the industry well. The ST was a real jack of all trades.
@@FatNorthernBigot With an Amiga and it's incredible sound chip....you didn't need a Fairlight. You could run a soft synth similar to today's VST synths and use your Amiga as a MIDI sampling keyboard. One of the main reasons I bought the Amiga 1000 when it came out and choose it over the ST.
What happened to the proposed PART 2 of this showdown? I'm an Atarian from day one...2600, 600XL, 800XL, 130XE, 520ST and finally a 1040STe...pepper in an XEGS & 7800 for good measure. Can't wait to see this series of yours continue onwards. IF you're going to compare, then I think it's best to look for games on the ST that utilized the STe's extra hardware. And I don't think there were too many of those.
And there's the issue in a nutshell - there really wasn't a great deal of stuff made that really exploited the STE. However, the next part isn't forgotten and will probably air in January :)
@@TheRetroShack Can't wait my friend....love your channel!
@@TheRetroShack It´s april now. Is it on it´s way or have there been complications ? Saw this video today 6th of april 2023 and i am super curious. Have never seen any Atari stE games. And i am old enough to remember the Amiga / Atari wars back in the day. Really looking forward to this video.
If your an Atarian, the correct machines to have purchased after your Atari 8 bit computers would have been Amiga's.
The ST line was designed & run by Commodore people. The Amiga Atari people. The companies largely flip flopped in name.
@@classicarcadeamusementpark4242 I kept using my 1040STe all the way through high school and on into my work career. I even installed STs into an office that I worked in for a couple of years.
By the time I moved onto the PC, Atari & Commiedore were LONG GONE!
After my C64 phased out completely I considered A500 or A1000 vs Atari ST or STe. Sadly, never bought either one of them and ended up buying still very fresh 80386 compatible Dx 40mhz and 4 mbs of RAM Wich was pure jackpot, bullseye... Luckier than smarter no doubt
Well, that is not quite right, that the STE was the last 68000 machine by Atari - the Mega STE was: 68000@16MHz. According to your argumentation, you should compare the A600 to the Mega STE then.
Darn it :) You’re right! I better get on the look out for one of those then :) I didn’t recall them coming in at anything other than 8mhz :) Thanks for putting me right! :)
@@TheRetroShack You're welcome ;-)
Also the release date of these two machines would be closer: IIRC the MegaSTE came out in 1991 and the A600 in early 1992, whereas the STE already in 1989. That is 3 years prior to the A600 - that is a huge timespan in the computer universe.
And just my 2 cents regarding the Atari vs. Amiga battle: The Amiga was just unbeatable, when it comes to gaming (it was meant from the beginning as a gaming console after all), and of course there was also a lot of productivity software, but in my opinion, the Atari 16/32-Bit series were the better alround machines. You could also play good quality games (though mostly a little worse than their Amiga counterpart, especially soundwise), BUT with the SM124 monochrome monitor from 1985 and the years to come, there was nothing comparable, when it comes to the "serious stuff". There were tons of fabulous applications and the picture quality with 72Hertz was absolutely unbeatable - sharp, crystal clear and without any flickering at all. Even today, when I turn on the good old SM124 it still amazes me how good the picture is.
And I remember around 1994 or so having seen a text editor (think it was "Becker Text") at my friends place on his A500 with Philips RGB monitor... man I couldn't stand that flickering for a long time... absolutely no comparison to the SM124.
In the end, I love both machines, of course, both have their strenghts and flaws, though the Atari, as my first computer, has a special place in my heart ;-)
Starball on the ST is a great pinball game, reminds of Devil Crash on NEC PC engine, it's actually a PD game amazingly! Well worth a play :) Sublogic's Flight Simulator 2 is noticeably better on ST than Amiga, at least it is putting my Amiga 500 Vs. Atari 520STFM(both stock machines).
Wow! I had Devil Crash on the PC Engine and loved it! Going to have to look up Starball!
If you were testing their latest and greatest of the 68000 cpu as you said then shouldn't it have been Amiga 600 vs Atari Mega STe since that was Atari's last 68000 cpu, albeit at 16MHz.
That's a very good point - but I didn't even consider that machine as I didn't realise it was a 68000! My bad. The CPU was switchable from 16Mhz to 8Mhz. Anyhoo - I don't have one of those but that's a good catch. Can I get a out with the fact that it's a desktop form factor and therefore not aimed at the home market? :) :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Heh, no worries, it was a strange rare beast that I very much would like to own at some point, sadly I think I am more likely to find a shovel full of rocking horse manure at this point haha
For the testing of games I don't think it would make much difference anyway but if you threw in a smattering of applications such as maybe Povray that might have let the 16MHz shine (if you had one of course ha ha)....
A500 can support Wicher 508i with 68HC000 @ 50 Mhz. th-cam.com/video/LpiHJJT_px8/w-d-xo.html
Thing is, there are very few ST exclusives that are truly impressive by the standards of later Amiga games. As you said in the video, for 3D games where the Amiga's custom chips couldn't be used the ST usually provides a smoother experience because of its faster CPU clock, so games like Midwinter, Carrier Command and F29 Retaliator are generally accepted to be better on the ST. I suppose some of the handful of titles that use the STE would hold their own too, so games like Obsession should feature, although I guess the Amiga would counter that with something like Pinball Fantasies. Finally, I don't know if this is cheating or not, but there is a fashion in the ST homebrew scene for re-working and improving classic games to use the STE features or to fix obvious deficiencies. Some good examples of that would be R-Type Deluxe and the recent STE-enhanced release of Lotus Turbo Challenge.
Thanks for that - I'll take a look at those STE remakes; very interesting!
As I recall, it wasn't just the CPU that caused the Amiga problems for 3D stuff, it was the screen layout? The Amiga's screen was laid out with each bit of the screen pixel in a separate area--eg. you'd have all the bit 0s for the pixels in one block of RAM, then the next block would have all the bit 1s, etc. This was fine for 2D stuff, but with 3D it meant it had to do 5 or 6 (depending on screen mode) separate memory writes for every pixel onscreen, or else produce a flat plane 3D image and then go through a CPU-expensive conversion process to bitplane display. I think the later AGA chipset supported a flat screen buffer, but obviously we're talking A600 here which is still ECS.
@@d2factotum Yes, you're absolutely right about the Amiga screen layout - bitplanes. Rendering took less passes on the ST than on the Amiga but despite having vastly different screen drawing routines, they were pretty close when all was said and done :)
@@d2factotum Amiga Blitter can be used to speed up C2P e.g. Dread. th-cam.com/video/86nhn7KooQ8/w-d-xo.html
FYI, Amiga's F29 Retaliator was Agnus line/fill draw accelerated.
Compare Obsession and Stardust. You could also compare MOD file sound quality playback. The best MOD player on the STe is Sirius.
Thanks, I'll check it out!
Biggest ST fan on the planet here, but when it comes to games, there is no compare. Amiga wins hands down. I still prefer the ST over it any day ;-)
Some cool games to check on the Atari STe. Obsession, Stardust (also both on Amiga), Zero-5 (a very cool STe exclusive space shooter). The recent Lotus Turbo Challenge STe (an STe enhanced version done by sceners - I have all details in a vid on my channel), definitely check out the new Lucasarts adventure conversions for the ST and STe (we now have Day of the Tentacle in 16 colors playable on a Mega STe), my all time favorite pacman clone called Crapman, for the ST, 2 player mode and beautiful chiptunes, a nice example of how cool the YM chip can sound, Utopos (an STe only Turbo Raketti clone), Team (an STe exclusive footie game, released when Sensible Soccer was king). Gremlin Graphics slightly enhanced the STe version of ZOOL, but just a little. And there are a few more. Lot's of beautiful stuff in the demo scene, but that is not the point of the vid I guess. Oh and if you want to bore the living shite out of the audience, you can do the obligatory Shadow of the Beast compare! ;-)
Anyway, great video, nice to see some ST coverage in the Amiga scene! I will be following this.
Oh, and ofcourse Wolfenstein 3D (amazing conversion on a standard ST) and the STe exclusive Substation, a very nice Wolf/Doom clone by the creators of Obsession...
Thanks for the suggestions! I guess I'm lucky to have had both machines growing up - but I do have a soft spot for the ST even though the Amiga was definitely the more capable machine overall. The STE does close the gap though! :) :)
The Amiga (no matter which one) is the overall more "complete" package. The ST suffer from too many design changes, especially from ST range to STE, which automatically leads to compatibility issues. STE hardware enhancements do not really "harmonize" with the rest of the hardware.
Have to admit I'm Atari biased and only had an Amiga 500 (1MB) for some years. Always hated this Kickstart disk fiddling while Atari has it's built in TOS (apart from very early 260ST). Therefore I only used the 500 as a gaming machine and the ST(E) also for more "productive" (well,sort of^^) things.
But trying to be objective, comparing the 600 and STE, the Amiga 600 is the better choice, apart from the 10-keyless design! 😉
Thanks, and have to agree. Having owned both an Atari 520STFM and an Amiga 500 in my teenage years, I always felt then that the Amiga had more potential, even if I wasn't the one to exploit it. I still prefer the look of the ST, and as the underdog I'll defend it to the hilt! :) :) :)
I would also agree, if gaming is the only test then it's going to be a bit of a massacre but throw in some other applications and it might bit a different result.. The Amiga was definitely a multimedia power house of its time but the humble ST had a few tricks up its sleeve :)
@@thebaldconvict Throw some apps in there :) :)
Pity I can't suggest some games, but I steered clear of the Atari ST at the time. Nice to see it getting some love now though
Thanks Glyn - and thanks for the coffee :) :)
Wolfenstein 3D as well as Legends of Valour would be two good games to put the STe through its paces, Bolo is a great game for its hi res mode, Lethal Xcess is a great vertical shooter take your pick of 3d games but could perhaps try Interphase or Starglider 2. Seeing as you are looking at the systems as a whole why not compare some productivity applications Calamus / Papyrus....Photochrome ( th-cam.com/video/f2405eD2Ktc/w-d-xo.html ). The ST had some pretty good Mac emulators back in the day.
An interesting concept, but unfortnately seems to be bias toward the Amiga here, the ST has plenty of TOS sensitive games, but I didn't see you adding a TOS switcher for the ST. I think the demoscene was the best comparison of what both systems could acheive. The Amgia already won based on those higher resolutions and deeper colour depths. Still, the STE can often outshine it in the demo department (when it deliberatly does what it does best and ST coders knows Amiga struggles with hehe).
Would an A1200 not have been better for a head to head against an STe?
Nope - wasn’t a 86000. The A1200 had a 68020 processor :)
@@TheRetroShack Fair do's. I started with the ST so always kind of favoured it. The last couple of years though it's the Amiga that gets most of my attention. Both great systems in the end :)
The 1200 would run away with it.
The STe was developed to bring the Amiga a little more on par with the 500.
1200 vs Falcon would be a little fairer, but the Falcon would have the edge there unless you consider an accelerated 1200.
@@TheTurnipKing IPC difference between 68020 and 68030 is minimal and both machines have gimped memory bus i.e. A1200s 32-bit bus is shared with AGA while Falcon's CPU has a 16-bit bus is shared with VIDEL controller.
A1200 CPU's performance is doubled with a 32-bit fast ram.
@@valenrn8657 Yeah, not too familiar with the Falcon, just assumed based off the 030 that it should have the performance advantage.
#Showdown MidiMaze - runs fine multiplayer upon the ST - even original early versions, Amiga - ha.
Guantlet II on Atari - great port, how did the Amiga fair upon that?
Gauntlet II on the ST was a masterpiece - going to have a look at the Amiga version right now :)
Informative video, but your timeline picks is as a bitblt to odd address (sic!) as youre comparing machines from different times. Atari continued after the STe (1989) with the Mega STe, TT030 and Falcon030 (1992). Maybe a A500+ vs. STe or a Falcon030 vs. A1200 would have been more on on "even addresses" so to say.
The A1200 (68020) probably wouldn't compare very well to the Falcon (68030) but happy to do it if someone wants to send me a Falcon :) :) :) No-one? Darn... :)
@@TheRetroShack see your problems.. they dont go cheap on ebay either.. :(
#showdown Amiga
Shadow of the Beast
Agony
Elfmania
Jim Power
Unreal
Wrath of the Demom
Leander
Mega Typhoon
Hybris
Battle Squadron
Full Contact
Fighting Spirit (ECS)
In all honesty, how can the ST compete with any of those titles? This should be a bloodbath victory to Amiga!
@@Codetapper Just for display, who cares anymore :-)
Hey, will you make another entry to your site?
@@104d_3rr0r_vince Yes, loads of articles started but a few boring things to finish on many of them and so little free time. At some point yes!
@@Codetapper I will wait :-)
Ive recently found your channel and i really like it.
My experience was with the Amiga and i dont think i had access to an Atari at all apart from the "Woody" back in the very early 80s so i cant give any feedback on it. The Amiga 1200 is by far my favourite machine of all time. It had that sense of fun and (almost) immediacy of the consoles but it had the depth of a pc, with strategy games like XCOM (favourite game of all time, probably) and The Settlers amongst others.
Is there a concluding part to this? I havent found it, if there is one, after watching this video last night.
Don't mention the Falcon 030
… I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it… :)
I guess most Amiga gems have been mentioned, but I could not see Project X, Ruff 'n' Tumble, Mr Nutz, Virocop, Elfmania, Overdrive, Super Frog, ATR, Alien Breed: Tower Assault, Assassins, Wolfchild, Fire and Ice..or Second Prize that is a really amazing 3D game that could rival all the STs 3D games! :-D
Thanks for the suggestions - I'll take a look :)
@@TheRetroShack th-cam.com/video/e4MLugmGSyk/w-d-xo.html
@@TheRetroShack Typical I thought that No Second Prize was AMiga exclusive. But at least it is just as smooth if not better AND the sound and music! Well.. 😁
Don't forget Quake and Doom PC ports with Vampire V2 for A500. :p
#showdown
As far as I know, Sundog: Frozen Legacy only released on the Atari ST and Apple II. Other than that, Dungeon Master I & it's expansion chaos strikes back; OIDS, Space Pilot, Goldrunner, Tracker, Golden Path, Artic Fox, Starflight.... And of course, Frontier Elite II; one of the few games that was quite happy with accelerators.
Sundog is a top down "zoomaction" game that still feels sort of modern and out of place on the platform (it is; written in an obscure dialect of USCD Pascal). Get in the ship's cockpit 3D wireframe view and try blasting a pirate with your lasers/cannons after picking any cargo up and setting up a warp destination charge.
Dungeon Master I was the seminal dungeon crawling game on both platforms. CSB was the same engine with all the maps edited to make a simple sequel.
OIDS is a very expansive sidescrolling asteroids/lunar lander, same company as the last two, Faster Than Light (FTL).
Space Pilot is a top down space fighter, I barely remember it at this point, to be honest other than it's four way scrolling.
Goldrunner had Hubbard music; so it stands out as well as being a fast paced vertical shoot'em'up with the ability to reverse and go down. Not too many games play like it, I'd say. Tracker was another niche 3D wireframe/shaded game, really ahead of it's time, you're trying to blow up a whole computer complex one node at a time.
Artic fox is a 3D "FPS" tank game similar to battle zone; rather difficult to play but offers great open-world play for it's era.
Starflight is another space adventure game; as is Frontier Elite II (sequel to Elite). Those are a bit more well known though.
The mercenary: Escape from Targ and it's sequel also stick out in my memory, as does Resolution 101, you might have to get one of the Automation pirate disk images to get a 2.06 fix for that, also if you're going to include any of the menu intros; please try to include Pompey Pirates #39 to get some of the speech samples if that version of Resolution 101 ends up working.
The ST really was a delightful little system to own at the time; I grew up with the 1040STf and as the above might indicate, have some very fond memories with it. Quite a number of these games are very deep, playable for months or years in some cases (trading goods in sundog and elite I/II...) and it's kind of sad that the IP from this era died out with the platform. I myself kept my sundog save disk long after losing my childhood 1040; and was lucky enough to catch a 520STm on ebay for $60 around november 2018.
Because you have the 4MB expansion; you should be trying to load a ramdisk driver resident with desktop.inf and the AUTO folder, and try your hand at loading games into the 3MB ramdisk. Very little software dealt with more than 1MB of ram. Desktop publishing like degas elite, artwork tools like neochrome... Some music tools like cubase.
Only the MegaST2/4 were ever released with 4MB of ram; the 1040STF/STFm/STe never had a chance to push out a 2MB or 4MB release *but* atari did manufacture the *BADGES* for them. I lived in sunnyvale at the time and dumpsterdived Atari a lot!
I have good memories with B&C Computervisions, buying the JRI 4MB upgrade kit and watching my dad solder it in while I sat on his lap and watched. Got an atari robokit later, tried my hand at STOS game creator, and started off with Mark Williams C... And I don't think I ever got a ACSI harddrive for it. Everything I did back then was with the 4MB ramdisk and an external floppy drive.
The aftermarket drive you got has some kind of an adapter to take ACSI's 8 bit bus to either a SCSI or IDE drive drive inside. I'm pretty sure this was slightly past the era of MFM drives; but please; please, PLEASE carefully take the bridge board out of the drive chassis and give us a good long look at both sides of the PCB, because it's *RARE* these days to run into something that isn't a megafile off ebay. If it's got socketed chips, send some high res photos to exxo or post them on his forums with the chips removed so the traces below the sockets can be seen... I've wanted to reproduce one of those period-correct interface boards for *ages*. A dump of the drive contents (if it's still working) would be great. The AUTO folder is particularly important; as the atari's very strange about bootsectors and it's own partitioning scheme, and it's a pain in the butt these days to find period-correct configuration intact.
Frontier Elite II - Now there's a game!
Thanks for some great suggestions there! Very much appreciate it!
@@TheRetroShack Sure! Good luck with your face-off!
Sundog: Frozen Legacy was a fantastic game on the St one of the main reasons i brought it 👍👍
I never owned an ST, but I know it's a perfectly capable machine if handled correctly - but for me, the Amiga was by far and away the better computer.
Anyway, games to test:
The Chaos Engine, Speedball 2 (All Bitmap Bros games were developed for ST first and converted to the Amiga),
Scramble Spirits
Batman the Movie
Crazy Cars III
Cannon Fodder
The Spy Who Loved Me
I'd also try some 3D flight sims, like the excellent B17 Flying Fortress, and the fantastic Reach for the Skies (an excellent 3D flight Sim by Rowan. Best played with an analogue joystick - you can turn on gouraud shading for more realistic looking aircraft. The manual says you really need an accelerator for that, but I never had any issues with my Amiga 500+ with 1.5Mb Ram, so you should have no issues running on the A600 with it's spec).
And of course, you can't go wrong with a bit of head to head networked gaming. Stuntcar Racer, Lotus Turbo Challenge II & III and Knights of the Sky all support null-modem cable hook-ups between both computers.
#Showdown
Awesome suggestions! Thanks!
@@TheRetroShack You're welcome :) They're all games that were released on both platforms, so you should be able to get a good comparison.
#showdown For Atari ST there is Midi Maze. (Although you need at least 2 better yet 3 computers.) There is also the shareware classic Dalaks.
Never heard of Midi Maze - will look it up! Thanks for the suggestion!
TOS = Tramiel Operating System, according to my time-appropriate PCW articles.
I heard the Amiga can effectively emulate Atari ST. I think we should make this more interesting and see how emulated Atari on the Amiga can run the same games.
It would have to be a fast Amiga :) I can't see a 7.16Mhz (NTSC) chip emulate an 8Mhz version :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Ahh, but it didn't have to emulate at the CPU level. Amiga's also did a great job emulating Macintosh. I don't have any hardware to test it myself, but here is a video th-cam.com/video/dvgu7OM2J94/w-d-xo.html
@@danaeckel5523 I guess so, but it couldn’t have run at the same speed :) I must admit you’ve piqued my interest - some research to do :) :)
@@danaeckel5523 well the Mac was a single chip computer, so if you would read the disk for example or construct the video memory, the CPU had to do it all alone and pause all other tasks, thats why Amiga software emulation was faster then actual Mac. Most Amiga fans dont know that ST had even faster software emulation of Mac... ST had up to 20% higher raw computing power then A500, so emulating ST on A500 or A600 is not gonna happen, would be slow. Emulating STE would be utterly impossible since STE has much more powerful hardware then A500, pity it was not utilized back then.
@@TheRetroShack The Atari ST rarely ran faster than the Amiga because even though the ST 68000 was a smidgen faster, the custom chips of the Amiga offloaded so many things the Amiga almost always ran faster. A few exceptions. Just to move the mouse around the screen on the ST took effort.
They were both the last remnants of an era were computers had each their own specific architecture, which means the hardware, and not the operating system, was the target platform, and programs were expected to talk directly and take full advantage of the hardware. I miss that. It's a sad world when you simply can't get any hardware documentation at all for your computer, and programs are forced to talk to extremely bloated, buggy, and closed libraries and drivers.
AMEN! Even the PS5 and XBOX titles today are developed on PC and ported to consoles with little tweaks for each machine. It makes you wonder what the PS5 could do if a developer targeted the metal directly :)
@@TheRetroShack Developers actually still target the metal in consoles (well, not exactly, but they have access to very low level hardware documentation and a much lower level driver compared to PCs). The problem with consoles is the draconian DRM, controlled distribution channels, and closed development process, which make them appliances more than computers. It's a shame because they really have the potential to become the new Amiga (a glimpse of that was seen when Microsoft opened the Live Arcade stuff, which unfortunately was as detached from the metal as possible, but still pretty interesting).
I had high hopes for the Atari when I got my 520ST but I could not get it to work yet. Parallel I bought also two Amigas 500 where one is stock and one is with more ram and switchable Kickstart 1.3 and 3.1.
For now I love the stock Amiga 500 but the Atari 520ST looks so great and the keyboard is really making the proper sound's ❤️. The downfall on Atari are the game's what are harder to get.
Amiga game: Ghosts n' Goblins
#Showdown
Personally, I agree with you - I think the ST is a nicer looking machine than the Amiga :)
So if the Amiga had a faster CPU, and built in MIDI, GUI built on UNIX it would have excelled in everything.
You've just described a Falcon ;) Mind you, Atari did cripple it to save spending on 2mb ram as the default
Yep - that was the Falcon :).
Amiga had an inbuilt CLI (command line interface), the Atari didn't. I think you had to run an add in program for a CLI on the Atari.
@@alexisread5325 Amiga 2500UX/3000UX has the real AT&T Unix, X Windows, and A2410 TIGA graphics adapter. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS34010
.
The Amiga did have built in MIDI, it just need a port changer. As easy to connect as a joystick and OS tight MIDI, and dirt cheap for the port changer.
The Amiga was usually faster despite the ST 68000 being a smidgen faster because the Amiga's custom chips offloaded stuff.
The Amiga did excel at everything! Especially MIDI music, the main reason I bought it. Soft synths didn't exist on the ST that could save me thousands of dollars on hardware synths. Especially on a MIDI sampling keyboard back in 1985.
I'd compare those two machines to C64 vs Atari 400/800 battle rather than Spectrum. Speccy was unable to compete on anything but price.
Only that the C-64 & Atari 800 were closer. There wasn't much of a contest between the Amiga & the ST. The Amiga did initially cost twice as much and I bought one at that time, but I think it was actually worth much more than double.
The Atari ST is really designed to be used with its high resolution/high refresh rate monochrome monitor
I'm on the lookout for one :)
@@TheRetroShack Most Games will not work on the monochrome monitor. Its because of the refresh rates etc and that . Not many games were made for the STE to use on the monochrome monitor - Skull Diggery was one able to play on the High res. Most of the use for high res were for applications like Cubebase, Word processing etc
The shittiest Amiga versus the best Atari :O
You know what - I probably would have agreed with you about the A600 before I got to refurbishing this one - actually changed my opinion on it after using it for a bit :)
The shitty A600 was an act of incompetence by an ex IBM engineer (who made the failed PC Jr) went to Commodore after Mehdi Alì took the lead after Thomas Rattigan. Stopping the A500 production when the market wanted no other, it was a stupid idea. Selling another ECS 68k based machine, it was a fail, especially in Germany, where the local Commodore division obtained to take any available A500 and A500Plus instead; UK tried with the famous bundle and it got quite good. Many says that A600 and CDTV killed Commodore's cash flow and took the company to the death.
Atari ST 👍 midi
:) Short and sweet!
Frontier: Elite II
#showdown
Thanks - Presuming in the STE corner as it's a 3d game?
@@TheRetroShack I think to get an accurate comparison, you'd really have to run the same game on both machines. Frontier: Elite II does look amazing on an Amiga with a powerful accelerator and ton of memory.
Showdown - Stardust
A600 is pretty sad representation of the Amiga line.
Why would you compare the a600 it's just a cheap crappy a500! Atari 1040STE or M probably better... But A500 + FPU and extra RAM smashes them both to dust!
#showdown MIDWINTER
Good shout :)
Amiga, XJ220.
Actually driven one of those! :) :)
@@TheRetroShack Nice... That's something a lot of people can't say
I saw my first Amiga running 'Ports of Call', it got me. I don't think that game was on the ST. Substation was a 3d type first person shooter that was on the ST, never seen it on Amiga. I recall the Amiga world never came to terms with 3d graphics and games of PlayStation, in mid 90s the world left scrolling and 2d games far behind and the Amiga with it.
Never heard of Ports Of Call so will look that up. My first glimpse of an Amiga game was Defender Of The Crown which is a great game I still play today :)
This is so biasd. The Falcon030 should have been the "fair comparison" and not the STe. This was the computer Atari released when the A600 came out. But you will have your Amiga making fans on TH-cam. 😅
Just try to compare the game - SHADOW OF THE BEAST, the amiga version is legendary featuring great music and multilayer smooth scrolling, while ST version is so bad and jerky and simple that it is probably the worst port ever!!
The ST port is a little clunky isn't it! :)
l'Amiga est une très bonne machine. Mais il est dommage que l'Atari ste n'est pas été exploité dès sa sortie. Les développeurs faisaient du stf et juste de la compatibilité avec les ste. Il y a eu que quelques titres à exploiter la machine sur la fin. Obsession par exemple. A savoir si le Ste aurait fait le poids face au 600, j'en sais rien. Mais au moins les possesseurs du ste auraient eu des jeux de meilleurs qualités.
Le parc de stf a fait du mal au ste. Quel gâchis.
MidWinter. Just so you don’t forget :) #showdown.
Oh, and first.
Why are kids so obsessed with saying first. It is so cringy
For which system? Presuming the Atari as it's a 3d game :)
@@TheRetroShack I’m sure I once read Midwinter was supposed to be better on the ST?
interesting, but uh, i cannot understand your english bro. why talk so fast and talk low when it comes to nouns?
Oh, Jesus. Zzz. Platform wars are fun when you're 7.