One of the first games I played on the Atari ST is also one of my all time favourites — it’s Elite’s excellent conversion of Tatsumi’s arcade racing game Buggy Boy, also known as Speed Buggy.
Buggy Boy is interesting in that it’s less about driving at high speed and more about negotiating ridiculous amounts of obstacles as efficiently as possible — and scoring points, of course. It still holds up very well today, and the ST version is one of the best ports.
Often, simple ideas are all you need to make a fun game work. Such is the case with Hot Lips, a straightforward but enjoyable maze game for Atari 8-bit.
In Hot Lips, all you have to do is make sure the titular giant mouth eats all the enemies and not you. Easy, right? Perhaps initially, but the longer you play, the tougher it gets!
Sky Diver for Atari 2600 is a conversion of the arcade game of the same name, originally developed by Owen Rubin and brought home by Jim Huether.
In typical Atari 2600 arcade conversion tradition, the home version offers a variety of different ways to play — including challenging modes with moving platforms, as well as a “Chicken” mode where only the first player to land gets the points!
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more.
Arkanoid is such an influential entry in the bat-and-ball genre that many people took to calling brick-breakers “Arkanoid clones” rather than “Breakout clones”.
Like many other arcade games of the period, Arkanoid had numerous ports to various different platforms over the years — but the Atari ST version was one of the finest out there, offering an experience very true to the arcade original, challenge factor and all.
Gauntlet is an all-time classic arcade game — and it got a whole bunch of ports to various different systems over the years following its original release.
The Atari 8-bit version, developed by Gremlin Graphics, is not the best version of Gauntlet you’ll ever play — but it was my first ever experience with the game, and as such will always carry with it certain fond memories.
Check it out in the video below, and don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube for more!
It’s always interesting to explore games that have had a lousy critical reception over the years, because you can look on it as a challenge to “find the good” in what the game is offering.
Such was the case with Sentinel, a light-gun shooter for Atari 2600 that has had a somewhat frosty reception over the years. After a bit of getting used to the twitchy analogue controls in Atari Flashback Classics, however, I actually found this to be a surprisingly enjoyable game.
Today’s game for Atari ST is a public domain title that was put together with a game-making package — specifically, Palace Software’s Shoot ‘Em Up Construction Kit.
It’s not the most original or amazing shoot ’em up you’ll ever see, but it’s a good example of what Shoot ‘Em UP Construction Kit (also known as S.E.U.C.K.) is capable of. Some say the Amiga and Commodore 64 versions of the package are better than the ST version, but Zog here is a perfectly competent shoot ’em up that fits in well in the public domain space — and could have probably gotten away with a commercial release with a touch of spit and polish.
An all-time classic for Atari 8-bit today, from the man who would go on to give us the Civilization series: it’s Sid Meier’s F-15 Strike Eagle!
This was one of the earlier military flight sims out there, and set a lot of conventions in place for future titles in the genre. At the same time, it managed to maintain a healthy degree of arcade-style accessibility, making it a pleasure to play whether you were a true propellerhead or someone just craving a bit of explosive action.
The fact that the Atari 2600 was still alive and kicking at the end of the 1980s is nothing short of astonishing… and the ambition of some developers at the time was admirable.
Secret Quest, a very late release for the platform, was an attempt to provide an action-adventure experience similar to Nintendo’s classic The Legend of Zelda on the 2600. Far from being a straight clone, however, it actually ends up being an interesting and enjoyable game in its own right.
Yep, yep, we’re definitely scraping the barrel a bit for “Y” games on Atari ST now. There are a lot of public domain adaptations of Yahtzee left to go… and not a lot else. So I hope you like dice.
As adaptations of the classic “poker dice” game go, the one we’re looking at today is perfectly competent, particularly when considering it was freely distributed. It would have been nice to see a multiplayer option and perhaps some more fancy bells and whistles, but as a means of enjoying Yahtzee solo on your computer, it does the job perfectly well!
