Top 10 Atari ST Exclusives

Creepy

The Atari ST game creator S.T.O.S. saw a real explosion in the homebrew scene for the machine. Many of best the games made with it were featured on magazine cover disks or became part of Public Domain libraries. But there were also a select few titles that were so good that they were picked up by commercial software houses, and Richard Sheperd’s brilliant Creepy was one of these.

Released as part of Atlantis Software’s £6.99 budget range the game is an unashamed clone of Ultimate Play The Game’s classic top down ZX Spectrum arcade adventure Atic Atac, which is definitely no bad thing! As many will be aware, Atic Atac remains one of the Spectrum’s highest acclaimed games so to see a slick 16-bit update of the title is a joy to behold. I particularly loved the digitised title screens and pseudo 3D graphics here too.

Can you make your way through the spooky dungeons and escape alive? There only one way to find out, go grab yourself a copy of Creepy for the Atari ST and get adventuring, you certainly won’t regret it!

Rock ‘n’ Roll Clams

This is a wonderfully original and downright zany multi-player platformer for the Atari ST from Caspian Software (who will feature more than once on this list!) that will remind many people of the Taito arcade classic Bubble Bobble.

In Rock ‘n’ Roll Clams you have to bounce your clam around each level collecting the musical notes so you can take Casper Clam and his band from the bottom of the ocean to the top of the charts! Although mentioned a similarity to Bubble Bobble, it’s more in the way the game looks than the way it plays as it’s far from a traditional platformer. As you fall down the screen you have to try and collect all the objects whilst avoiding the enemies and other hazards that get in the way. Your clam will bounce off walls so you have to be careful where you guide him.

Having been released in the twilight of the Atari ST’s lifetime (1994 to be exact), Rock ‘n’ Roll Clams was ignored by many people who had since moved onto consoles, but it’s about time we changed that! Fans of cute and cuddly platform games will certainly want to hunt this one down for a more in-depth analysis.

Alien Thing

Although the Atari ST reigned supreme in the earlier years of its battle against the Commodore Amiga it definitely lost out big time in the latter part of that era and there’s no doubt that Team 17 had a lot to do with that. Still going to this very day, Team 17 refused to support the ST and games like Alien Breed really showed what us Atari owners were missing.

So with that in mind you’ll no doubt be both surprised and happy to see this rather lovely game from Top Byte Software – Alien Thing. For those that have somehow never played Alien Breed, it’s a top down dungeon crawler come shoot ‘em up clearly inspired by both the film Aliens and the Atari arcade classic Gauntlet. Obviously the gameplay of Alien Thing is exactly the same and that’s certainly no bad thing as with its gorgeous graphics and digitised sound it offers a great alternative.

It’s worth noting that there are three different version of this: the original, an expert edition and a director’s cut. Alien Thing is also enhanced when played on STe and Falcon machines. It also requires at least 1 meg of RAM, so owners of standard STs are out of luck!

Star Raiders

Now many of you may be shouting at the screen right now proclaiming that Star Raiders isn’t an Atari ST exclusive as it also appeared on the Atari 2600 and, of course, the original Atari 8-bit game too. But this version is actually very different you see, in fact it’s more of a sequel than anything else and really should have been called Star Raiders 3.

Obviously the basic gameplay is still exactly the same with you exploring the galaxy and taking out enemy forces as you go. Those of you who played the original game with definitely be right at home here. But this Atari ST update of Star Raiders features a completely new map, new interface, different enemy types, upgraded graphics and sound as well as many other more minor features. A combination of both the joystick and mouse is used to control the action.

Interestingly Atari ST Star Raiders wasn’t programmed by original creator Doug Neubauer, but one Rob Zbydel instead who would go onto program two more excellent 3D shooters in the form of Warbirds for the Atari Lynx and Hover Strike for the Atari Jaguar.

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