Who received an Atari ST Discovery Pack as a kid/teen?

[Clint Thompson]

Would like to hear stories about anyone who received one of these ST Discovery Pack computers as a kid or teen while growing up? What were your impressions with the ST and did you like/love it? Was it exciting or boring? Did you ultimately want something else? Hook it up to a TV or did you get a monitor alongside it as well?

 

Please share any stories... as a side note, I now notice the 520 was also released in an STe variant. Was that limited to UK or also here in the US?

[galax]

I saved up money from my paper round to get the £299 Explorer Pack in 1989 which wasn't really much of a 'pack' to be honest: it came with "Ranarama, a tutorial program, and some desk accessories" and I think ST Basic as well. Well at least Ranarama was fun.

 

My friend's parents got him the Super Pack a month or two earlier which was £399: Arkanoid II - Revenge of Doh, Beyond the Ice Palace, Black Lamp, Buggy Boy, Chopper X, Eddie Edwards Super Ski, Ikari Warriors, Marble Madness, Organiser, Quadralien, Ranarama, Return to Genesis, Road Wars, Seconds Out, Starquake, Summer Olympiad, Test Drive, Thrust, Thundercats, Wizball, Xenon, and Zynaps. Some decent games in there, although I probably got more mileage by spending the extra on Stunt Car Racer, Kick Off, a bunch of ST Magazines, and a bunch of blank disks for compact menus. A few of the games weren't well copy protected too; I definitely took a copy of Summer Olympiad.

 

 

The Discovery Pack was a bit later than these two I think. As far as I can find out it had Space Harrier, Bomb Jack, Out Run, and Carrier Command. It looks like a subset of the Power Pack that was around at the same time; maybe those two replaced the Explorer & Super packs.

 

Neither of us had a monitor, although my family TV had an RGB input which I eventually hooked the ST up to, for a much better picture but not as crisp as a monitor. I did get an SM124 monitor and Star LC24-10 printer a few months later which were both awesome.

 

I'm pretty sure the STE was released in the US as well, I was still in the UK at that time though. The 1040 STE just had more RAM than the 520, and some were sold with 2 or 4 MB pre-installed by some dealers.

[ataricrypt]

Sounds like it was the Super Pack that I got, darn that was a good Christmas. Thank you Atari ST, such a humungous improvement over my old 8-bit computer! A brilliant time

[Lost Dragon]

I can still clearly remember the 45 min drive my folks to to "The Computer shop" in Barnstaple, North Devon, just for me to spend over £400 a 16 Bit micro, having finished Lords Of Chaos on the C64 and knowing i badly wanted into 16 Bit gaming.

I could of gone for the Amiga (and these days actually wish i had, sorry but ST sound and scrolling were bloody awful looking back at it)...but plumped for the 520STFM Discovery pack (look at all those games) and picked up Microprose M1 Tank Platoon and the Beau Jolly pack (Bloodwych, Lombard RAC Rally, TV Sports: Football and Xenon 2: Megablast ).

Few months later i was shocked to read in Zero magazine Atari were phasing out the STFM, the STE was to replace it, i thought OMG, the STFM will become useless, everyone will start coding for STE only before long.....

Did not take long for those fears to subside....and be replaced by..OMG, games are PC/Amiga/Console only..no ST version or ST version T.B.A..comments appearing in reviews.

[STuck]

I begged, wheedled and whined until my mother finally relented and bought me an STFM for Christmas, as my Commodore +/4 just wasn't cutting it any more.

 

I had to wait a month until I could get my grubby mitts on it, but at least I had the manual which I must have read from cover to cover ten times before I could unbox the machine.

 

The games I remember it coming with were Space Harrier, Outrun, Xenon, Gauntlet II, Nebulous and Super Hang On, which I used to play on an old portable colour TV.

 

Later on, I do remember being a little jealous of the Amiga owners, particularly with respect to the sound, and also the game Eye Of the Beholder, which was everything I ever wanted in a game.

 

A friend of mine used to have a lot more money than I did, and used to get all the cool toys, and finally upgraded to an STe. The only difference I could functionally see is that bit wouldn't run a lot of the games.

 

After several awesome years, Atari announced they were abandoning us (that's how it felt to me at the time), so I bought a 486 and played a lot of Doom.

[Dal_1978]

Ahhhhh yes - I also had the Discovery Pack as my first ST for Christmas when I was about 12 I think. It wasn't new, Dad got it second hand through the local paper, but it had never been used and still smelled like a new machine.

I remember going through all the books that came with it and trying everything out.

 

I burned a lot of time playing Carrier Command. I traded up to an STE a year or so later. That machine turned out a lot of coursework during my final years at school. I can still hear the Epson LX-100 screeching away as it pulled through the fanfold paper, preying the damn thing didn't jam up into a screwed up papery mess.

Edited April 23, 2016 by Dal_1978