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The ST-urday ST-orehouse

I figured a list would make more sense in the long-run than referring everyone back to the first blog in the series every time. This is a list of games covered in my ST-urday series. Links are here in the text area, while the game appraisals can be read below.

Pre-ST-urday Atari ST articles:

ST-urday:

  1. Bubble Bobble
  2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
  3. Dragon's Breath (Dragon Lord)
  4. Federation Quest 1: BSS Jane Seymour
  5. Prophecy 1: The Viking Child
  6. Cadaver
  7. Demo Derby Alpha: ST Action #9
  8. Gobliins 2: The Prince Buffoon
  9. Mega Lo Mania (Tyrants: Fight Through Time)
  10. Shufflepuck Café
  11. Ishar: Legend of the Fortress
  12. Kid Gloves
  13. Shadoworlds
  14. Demo Derby Beta: ST Action #29 & ST Format #14
  15. Boston Bomb Club
  16. Wizkid: The Story of Wizball II
  17. North & South
  18. Xenon & Xenon 2: Megablast
  19. Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus
  20. Black Lamp
  21. Demo Derby Gamma: Blackjack Edition (ST Action #21 & ST Format #21)
  22. Drakkhen
  23. Seconds Out
  24. HeroQuest
  25. Rod Land
  26. Night Shift
  27. A Classic Capcom ChriSTmas

List items

  • The first real-time dungeon RPG. Monsters won't just sit there and let you consider your next move, so you have to keep clicking to eliminate them quickly. Full of dangerous tunnels, the most hazardous being carpal tunnel syndrome.

  • A sci-fi take on the Dungeon Master formula, with procedurally generated dungeons. You could theoretically play this for thousands of hours, except you'd blast through everything with enough high-tech gear and experience.

  • An egg with delusions of grandeur decides to push its luck with dragons and pitfalls. I'd make a yolk joke but the game's beaten me to all of them already.

  • The best horizontal shoot 'em up ever made, probably. At least of all the ones that don't have awesome heavy metal soundtracks. Color the town red with an old man and his balls.

  • The legendary space trading game from 1984. It got an improved remake for the Atari ST. I mean, technically speaking, it got another improved remake at the end of last year, so maybe the ST version isn't quite the hottest thing any more.

  • See Billy and Jimmy Lee as you've never seen them before in the Atari ST version: as creepy, unblinking mannequin grotesqueries. Don't do Arcade conversions drunk, kids.

  • At least the Atari ST version of Double Dragon II wasn't the hot mess its predecessor was. The game itself is still on the sketchy side though. Good music.

  • Warhammer 40k for babies. Despite that ringing endorsement, it's a great board game adaptation that simplifies the complex wargaming rules of its Games Workshop ancestor to something an Atari ST (or myself, aged 10) could handle.

  • Speed Buggy, or Buggy Boy, is a Taito published Arcade checkpoint racer that is more fun than it ought to be, due in part to random log jumps, colored flags, going up on two wheels and some very simple graphics that still look sharp when converted to a 16-bit computer.

  • Taito's Chase HQ, however, isn't quite as good-looking when converted for home systems. At least the ST version kept the sound clip of the radio lady, which I feel is probably the most important part.

  • Another Dungeon Master clone, this time based on a beloved children's TV show here in the UK. It has the most tenuous of links, but it still made for a trip down memory lane (into the woods (full of thuggish Keebler elves)).

  • I began ST-urday with this satisfactory port of everyone's favorite bubble 'em up. Well, unless you're partial to Bubble Ghost. Or Bust-a-Move. Or Buster Bros. Is it just because bubbles are easier to draw or something?

  • The Atari ST T2 licensed game fared about as well as all the other T2 licensed games. Still, a new Terminator movie means I had to find a way to honor the franchise one way or another, though maybe "honor" isn't the word I should be using.

  • As with dogs, a dragon's breath is marginally worse than its bite. Embarrassingly, I didn't really figure out this lizard-raising strategy game until I played it for this feature.

  • Fixing starships in this odd little first-person strategy game. Is not named for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.

  • Boy, you gotta wonder where they came up with the ideas for the mechanics in this game.

  • The eerily prophetically-named Cadaver pits Karadoc and his dwarven wits against a dungeon filled with traps and monsters. Can you escape this deathtrap, with your heart so full and your eyes so metric?

  • Dang Martians coming over here, stealing our water and agitating our wildlife. A perplexing two-player competitive platformer.

  • Barely controllable bounce-a-thon from the guys behind Interphase. It has personality, I'll give it that.

  • The mad professor makes his way through his laboratories filled with abominations of science in a futile bid to prove he isn't insane. Nice try, but it says so right in the title.

  • A Gremlin Graphics side-scrolling shooter/platformer with a bunch of robotic bugs and troll power-ups.

  • In a fantasy world operated by Looney Tunes logic, two dangerously unqualified goblins attempt a daring hostage rescue. They might just get beaten and tossed around by chickens, toads and old men first.

  • A slightly more comical take on the burgeoning "god sim" genre which had been divinely manifested into being by Populous a short time before it. That's Sensible Software for you; they're usually anything but.

  • In much the same manner as the game's air hockey pucks, this competitive bar game sim bounced from one computer to the next, from the earliest Apple Mac to the Atari ST and Amiga to the Nintendo Famicom, even. It can be enjoyed today, sort of, via Shufflepuck Cantina Deluxe on Steam.

  • Incomprehensibility in a French fantasy forest. Were one patient enough to figure out how the game actually works they might find an interesting RPG in here somewhere.

  • An unusual and often unpleasant platformer that stuck with me because of its cruelty and penchant for surprises. There's a reason Dark Souls is so memorable, and it's not the story.

  • Isometric sci-fi squad-based RPG released a few years before the first X-COM. Atmospheric (and novel, at the time) lighting effects, bizarre anime artstyle.

  • Or rather its ST equivalent, Myth: History in the Making. A version of this game that never saw a final release. Probably for the best, because it's obtuse as heck.

  • The unstoppable and indefatigable Rick Dangerous on another daring adventure through some of the most sinister level design ever put to pixels.

  • Watch a half-naked woman die horribly over and over in this female-empowering single-screen platformer.

  • I'd apologize to the Bostonian Giant Bomb fanclub chapter for co-opting some pretty sweet name synergy they could've used, but who is still in that thing? Eric Pope?

  • I love this stupid, unfair, nonsense game. Perfect Endurance Run bait. I didn't cover it in the LP, but it literally culminates with trying to get a high score on an Asteroids cabinet.

  • Sir, your journey from this mortal coil shall be hastened by the hand of Dixie!

  • Inert gas. Two words that, separately, describe me perfectly. They don't apply this shoot 'em up though, with its shapeshifting tech and intense difficulty. If I ever made it to level 2 without cheating it was a banner day.

  • Named for the hip-hop techno track it features, Megablast was well within The Bitmap Brothers' hip phase. That box art looks like it came right out of a gritty realistic reboot of ToeJam and Earl.

  • The horror hostess with the most... dress had her own series of adventure games back in the day. Yet, she always seems to play the damsel in distress in her own games. Tough break, but I guess you can't do much in a gown that tight besides quip about boners.

  • Open-world, procedurally-generated, exploration-based platformer made in 1988 before any of those double-barreled adjectives were really a big thing yet. It's actually a lot like a proto-Rogue Legacy, now I think about it.

  • We all thought Strider was cool over here in Europe, we'll admit it. What's not to like about anime and laser guns?

  • Gather food and avoid unfriendly wildlife (who, in their defense, aren't exactly thrilled about being food). Can you eat penguins? Wouldn't they be too rubbery?

  • This is what Europe thinks America is. Or part of it, anyway.

  • Hercules conquers the world of the Ancient Greeks in this good-looking but languid action game from Bitmap Brothers. Kooky theme track.

  • A game that's as easy to spell as it is to play. Fight enormous dragon lords, save the world. Maybe start on something smaller first, though. Like a goldfish, or a bush.

  • The Atari ST had its own Punch-Out!! K-kinda!

  • Set off every trap while searching for treasure with the clumsiest heroes since Shadowgate (who breaks their own neck falling over in the dark, anyway?).

  • Cute but deadly. Hey, just like it says on my OKCupid profile. Not getting a whole lot of hits these days...

  • Work a giant, terrifying, inexplicable production machine every night to build Star Wars toys. I think the only inaccuracy here is that the machine isn't in China.

  • It's missing a "rior", but you're still Chinese dudes cutting up hundreds of other Chinese dudes. Only, you know, more Capcom-y.

  • It's a shame that the supposedly "final fight" of Street Fighter 2010 escalated into a full Inter Planet War two years later. It's been a rough decade on all of us.

  • The Mega Twins are pretty tough, but they're no match for the Ultra Quintuplets. It's a numbers game, really.

  • The killer balloons of the Buster Bros. universe aren't sentient, and feel no pain when you take their lives. All you're doing is saving countless lives in various geographical locations. Make no mistake: this is a Pang of conscience.

  • Neither the SNES nor the Atari ST/Amiga box art for this game properly conveys just how anime it all is. It's so anime Top Gun that the pilots don't get nosebleeds from the g-forces or altitude, but because their wingmen paid them a compliment. It's so anime Top Gun that its love theme is "Take My Breath Kawaii". It's so anime Top Gun that its beach volleyball scenes have to be imported from YesAsia or J-List separately.
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