If they made an Atari ST Mini, which games would you want it to have?

[Megalomaniac]

Sorry if this thread has been done before, but the A500 Mini launched earlier this year with 25 inbuilt games. Mostly Amiga originals and/or considered best on the Amiga - Team 17, Gremlin and The Bitmap Brothers were big contributors. Pretty much every genre covered, though more action than serious. No licenses or arcade conversions, and nothing featuring any real people (probably to stop them being dated at first glance). If someone did the same with the ST, which games would you suggest? Up to you how closely you stick to those guidelines, but they all make sense. My list to start it -

 

Blood Money (as its probably better on the ST)

Captain Blood

Crazy Cars III (surprised this wasn't on the Amiga one, as the Lotus games weren't possibles, and it did have Titus the Fox by the same company)

Defender of the Crown (see Blood Money)

Dungeon Master (obviously)

F29 Retaliator

Flood

Future Wars

Gauntlet (Atari arcade conversions feel right, though there'd be licensing issues)

GODS (though I'm not a huge fan)

Llamatron

Megalomania

MIDI Maze

Midwinter

Obsession (the A500 Mini actually includes a couple of AGA games, so a couple of STe ones don't seem out of place)

Oids

Populous

Starglider

Sundog

Super Sprint (see Gauntlet)

Team (though being honest I don't like it that much)

Vroom!

Wings of Death

Wizkid

Wrath of the Demon (looks better than it plays though)

 

And it'd need MIDI capabilities, obviously, its not an ST without those...

Edited November 3, 2022 by Megalomaniac

[MasterMotorola]

I would love to see Another World (Out of this World) on the MiniST.  Another wish list item would be an SD card reader where the floppy drive is so it looks like you are actually putting mini diskettes in the machine.

[+cjherr]

MIDI Maze

Rick Dangerous

Stunt Car Racer

Time Bandit. 

[Megalomaniac]

I ignored Another World and Stunt Car Racer because they're both on the A500 Mini - I should have said that. I didn't consider The Sentinel (an 8-bit original I think?), Speedball II, Chaos Engine or Zool for that reason either (the last would be great to show the difference between ST and STe capabilities, though Wings of Death does that to an extent). Great games though, Stunt Car Racer is probably marginally better on the ST, and Another World was such a milestone, and developed across both systems I think (though it was used to advertise the A500 here in the UK, so in my head it's an Amiga game first and foremost, unusually for a French game).

 

Time Bandit is a good shout, maybe the very first ST game people loved? I'm one of those who sees the Rick Dangerous games as annoying memory tests, but I guess they (and Rick himself) are iconic enough to consider.

 

The 'real' feel of a disk drive would be a great thing to capture too. Being able to plug in real disk drives would be a nice extra, though running cracks of every commercial game and standard disk-images of PD games would be achievable too.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Megalomaniac

[+DarkLord]

Personally, I wouldn't be thinking about the Amiga or any of its' games at all if I

was considering an ---> Atari ST Mini <---  ... Just sayin'...  

 

 

[ataricrypt]

What’s an Amiga? 🥸

[anzac]

2 hours ago, ataricrypt said:

What’s an Amiga? 🥸

Friend in Spanish and Portuguese

Edited November 4, 2022 by anzac

[Keops]

- Nebulus
- Metrocross
- Xenon 1
 

[Megalomaniac]

Fair enough DarkLord, but I'd say that games which were noticeably better on another system would be a poor choice for a device like this. Enough great games came out for the ST first (or simultaneously or very close) to really show off the system's strengths.

 

Nebulus (or Tower Toppler in the US - they didn't like oblique non-descriptive game titles back then....) is one of those love-it-or-hate-it games, but probably a good choice. Certainly typical of British game design of the day, and although it's a C64 original there is noticeable technical improvement on the 16-bit versions

[+DarkLord]

Honestly, I personally don't care what games are like on other systems.

 

I for one would not be investing in a ST Mini, so that I could compare it's

games to games on other systems.

 

But I do totally agree that we would want the best ST games possible, from

each genre on the ST Mini.

 

100% total agreement there.  

 

[ojanhk]

I would add to the list Barbarian (both versions), and most importantly : Bubble Bobbles. 

[MrTrust]

All the Tengen and Cinemaware stuff.  Dungeon Master, Captain Blood, Get Dexter, Starglider.

[Megalomaniac]

Get Dexter is one of the best isometric arcade adventures, one of the few to get a 16-bit release, and much more colourful than on the Amstrad, so that's a good shout. It's that rarest of things, an isometric arcade adventure that not only didn't originate on the Spectrum, it wasn't even released for it.... A shame there was little like it in the 16-bit era. I love it that the then-unknown guy on the box of Palace Barbarian became Wolf in the UK Gladiators - imagine showing your kids the game and then the show, and see if they make the link...

Edited November 4, 2022 by Megalomaniac

[bfollowell]

5 hours ago, DarkLord said:

Honestly, I personally don't care what games are like on other systems.

 

I for one would not be investing in a ST Mini, so that I could compare it's

games to games on other systems.

 

But I do totally agree that we would want the best ST games possible, from

each genre on the ST Mini.

 

100% total agreement there.  

 

 

I agree, and I wouldn't let what games are available on other mini systems influence what I wanted on the ST. Not everyone that might but an ST mini would even be interested in an Amiga mini, me for example.

 

[oky2000]

Lotus II would have to be on it, surprised it isn't on the A500mini but then I've never looked into it, because for the ST, Amiga, Archimedes it really is the only console quality racer that pushes each limit to the max technically. The ST version is not far off the £50 Megadrive cartridge back in the day.

 

If it was a real thing and had to appeal to the mass with a mix of slick coded action games and games you can sit down and work your way through long term. Nothing that looks like it was written in GFA Basic and the graphics done by a ZX81 gamer.

 

Lotus II

Another World but also Future Wars too.

Xenon II is another, for the ST it's absolutely fine and a nice blaster that looks a lot more colourful and has console style parallax scrolling.

Gauntlet II for non-juddery scrolling, unless the STmini had a 16mhz Mega STE mode in which case the nicer looking Gauntlet 1 on games adapted website.

Road Runner was a fun game I liked on the ST

If a mouse is included you've got to have Marble Madness really

Nebulus is a good game but the difficulty right from level 1 is set too high (time limit is too tight on every version)

Domarks F1 is a lot of fun, unlike Vroom the car doesn't handle like a 1960s Vauxhall etc

Defender of the Crown if only one Cinemaware game goes on there

Star Raiders is a good choice

Leander

Dungeon Master

The Pawn (because it's iconic in the UK after Fred Harris review it and the 520STM in 1986)

Sly Spy is surprisingly good.

Continental Circus

International Karate (not IK+)

Little Computer People

Leaderboard

Monkey Island (whichever is the best, not a fan of point n click games myself)

Cruise for a Corpse

 

Can't think of more right now, still getting back into ST games at the moment.

 

edit: Emlyn Hughes looks to have OK scrolling and you need a good footy game in there too

Edited November 5, 2022 by oky2000
soccer

[Megalomaniac]

There are Gremlin games on the A500 Mini so I assume clearing it with Lotus was the issue - there've been legal issues with the name, remember Lotus Racing versus Team Lotus in F1 a decade ago? Agreed that its a classic, marginally better than the first one, but I'd probably only want one Outrun-style racer and I think Crazy Cars III has a bit more about it. Continental Circus is one I've never played, I did see the coin-op just once (a cafe near my gran's house) but I couldn't try it because of the aftermath of a little cycling mishap. Maybe one I should play just to put a full stop on that. I'm not keen on Xenon II, but a lot of people are so that's a good idea. Leander isn't a bad shout, quite impressive stuff.

[roots.genoa]

8 hours ago, oky2000 said:

International Karate (not IK+)

What's wrong with IK+? 🤨 It's awesome on the ST, especially if you press F9.

[oky2000]

1 hour ago, roots.genoa said:

What's wrong with IK+? 🤨 It's awesome on the ST, especially if you press F9.

lol I was making a distinction only but seeing as you asked 1 background only on IK+ and I prefer the graphics of the fighters on the Andromeda Software port of the original myself. YMMV  

[oky2000]

3 hours ago, Megalomaniac said:

There are Gremlin games on the A500 Mini so I assume clearing it with Lotus was the issue - there've been legal issues with the name, remember Lotus Racing versus Team Lotus in F1 a decade ago? Agreed that its a classic, marginally better than the first one, but I'd probably only want one Outrun-style racer and I think Crazy Cars III has a bit more about it. Continental Circus is one I've never played, I did see the coin-op just once (a cafe near my gran's house) but I couldn't try it because of the aftermath of a little cycling mishap. Maybe one I should play just to put a full stop on that. I'm not keen on Xenon II, but a lot of people are so that's a good idea. Leander isn't a bad shout, quite impressive stuff.

Framerate on Crazy Cars III is inferior and the gambling is annoying and the weird Daytona USA style rear wheel steering type handling is not fun. YMMV

[Ppyo]

Bard's Tale

[Atari8guy]

Microprose Golf over Leaderboard

[+davidcalgary29]

Phantasie III

[+DarkLord]

@ Ppyo and @ davidcalgary29: The Bards Tale and Phantasie III.

 

Big RPG fan here - I like the way you guys think...  

 

[+Stephen]

6 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Phantasie III

I need to check this out.  I believe it was Phantasie II I spent the most time with on my 8-bit machine, but I never did actually beat the game.  I don't think I have it in me to start a new game now.

[Megalomaniac]

Some good ideas here, I'd think of MicroProse Golf as the ST's definitive golf sim, with the Leaderboard games more a respectable holdover from the 8-bit era. IK+ is a better 16-bit game than International Karate in my book, despite the better graphics in the first one. Can't really comment on Bard's Tale or the Phantasie series, but maybe one RPG isn't enough, as they're games people sank so much time into BITD. Crazy Cars III is one I completed originally, got a lot of mileage out of it personally.