Top 10 Atari ST Exclusives

Super Stario Land

When it comes to clones of other people’s games it doesn’t come more blatant than this, in fact it’s pretty surprising that Nintendo didn’t sue them. I can only assume that it came so late in the Atari ST’s life (1995) and had such a limited release that it flew under the radar.

I think everyone knows what Super Mario Bros. is all about and I shouldn’t really need to explain how it plays. The team at Top Byte who created this game have admitted in interviews that they were a big fan of Super Mario Bros. on the NES and went out to copy it as closely as possible. They even mapped the game out on graph paper to help them! They did a great job too as it looks and plays great. My only real complaint is that there’s no in-game music, which is a great shame.

It’s also worth mentioning that Super Stario Land received an equally excellent sequel too in the form of Stario’s Christmas. So if you like this one then you can also go and try out the seasonally themed offering too!

The Intruder

The first thing that caught my eye about this impressive shoot ‘em up was that it was designed by the one and only Michel Ancel, who would go on to create Rayman! The Atari ST was hugely popular in France so it was a great breeding ground for games over the years.

Ubisoft’s horizontally scrolling shoot ‘em up The Intruder is pretty standard in most regards. Fly along, shoot the enemies, dodge the hazards and collect the power-ups. But it’s the way it does everything that will impress you most. The graphics are beautiful with nicely designed sprites, smooth parallax scrolling (unusual for the ST) and lovely presentation. While there is only music on the title screen the in game sound effects are certainly very effective and much better than many similar games.

It almost seems strange that a game like The Intruder, a title by a talented team with a big-name publisher behind it, remained an Atari ST exclusive and I would be willing to bet that it’s also one of the lesser known titles on this list too, even though it really shouldn’t be!

Whitewater Madness

This is a game with a really interesting story behind it. The programming team were original hired by Atari to create games for the Sega Genesis. But after the deal fell through for Atari to distribute the 16-bit console in North America, the Sunnyvale based company set them to work on creating a game for their new Atari STe computer instead.

Whitewater Madness bares some similarities to the Atari arcade game Toobin’ and was also announced, although never released, for the Atari 7800 too. But rather than you leisurely floating down the river in a rubber tube you are piloting an armoured speedboat shooting both aquatic and land based enemies as you collect all the energy cells required to warp to the next level. This was the very first commercial STe only game released and features some impressive graphics and sound.

The coding team behind Whitewater Madness would go on to create some of the best games on the Atari Lynx such as STUN Runner, Road Blasters, A.P.B and Toki. The limited release of this game now makes it very rare and hard to find in its original form.

Zero 5

Caspian Software’s Zero 5 is without doubt the most interesting game in this list, not just because it’s a genuine Atari ST exclusive but also because it’s by far one of the most technically impressive games ever released for the classic 16-bit computer.

So what is Zero 5 then I hear you ask? Well it’s a 3D space shooter that was clearly inspired by the Star Raiders games and will only run on 1 megabyte STe machines or the Atari Falcon. It’s a mission based affair where you must follow the objectives in order to progress. There are levels that take place in deep space as well as over a planet surface and it will require real skill if you are going to progress. The solid polygons look incredible and move really smoothly while the digitised sound is a joy to behold. It’s very hard to actually fault this game in any way at all!

While there is also a game called Zero 5 for the Atari Jaguar, which shares the same programming team, it’s actually a sequel to this title despite using the same name. That’s well worth checking out too and I preciously covered it in my Top 10 Atari Jaguar exclusives list.

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