The computer built out of spite. Jack Tramiel, ousted from Commodore, bought Atari and shipped the 16-bit ST in five months – undercutting the Mac, standardising the recording studio with built-in MIDI, and fighting the Amiga for Europe’s bedroom desks. This page is its complete story, from the Jackintosh to the Falcon.
Escape 2042 Breaks Out Again – the homebrew scene’s ST, alive and releasing: a modern prison-break game sneaks onto the platform.
The eternal rival: the Amiga story.
Thirty-six years ago today, Guybrush Threepwood stepped onto Mêlée Island wanting to be a pirate, and adventure games were never the same. Ron Gilbert’s comedy masterpiece — insult sword fighting, an unkillable hero, a villain defeated with root beer — gets the full flagship treatment: the design manifesto that outlawed death, the jokes that outlived the genre, and why it still sets the standard in 2026.
520ST to STE, TOS versions, Gotek and UltraSatan storage, SM124 and SC1224 monitors, a five-check buying checklist and hedged 2026 prices.
Thalion shooters, French adventures, a sandbox pioneer and a dwarf in a haunted castle: ten superb ST games that grew in the famous titles’ shadow.
Calamus on the desk and an SM124 on the invoice: the ST’s professional life in DTP, word processing and small-business computing.
Open borders, sync scrolling and chip tunes that should not exist: how scene coders spent a decade finding the extra machine hidden in the ST.
Two five-pin sockets on every ST rewired music production: Cubase, Notator and the sequencer revolution that started in a beige box.
Two 68000 machines, one playground divided: what each genuinely did better, and why the argument made both of them great.
Archer Maclean’s three-way karate tournament: sixteen moves, a points paddle and the purest competitive design on the machine.
Factor 5’s vast run-and-gun in full on the ST: huge levels, a hundred secrets and Huelsbeck driving the YM chip.
The newborn ST’s windowed space-trading adventure: haul cargo, walk planetside and pay off the uncle’s debt.
FTL’s other founding classic: Thrust-style physics, androids to rescue and a planet editor years ahead of its time.
Jeff Minter’s shareware arena classic: save the dudes, fear the Grunts, and enjoy the purest panic on the ST.
Eric Chahi’s wordless cinematic masterpiece on one of its birth machines: lethal, lyrical and authored to its bones.
The Bitmap Brothers’ cooperative swansong for the ST: six mercenaries, a mad Baron’s England and the machine’s finest two-player blast.
The Bitmap Brothers’ marble-slow, secret-stuffed action adventure: a siege disguised as a platform game, worth meeting on its own terms.
Bomb the Bass on the title screen, Colin in the shop and the Bitmap Brothers’ chrome everywhere: the ST’s defining shooter.
The Bitmap Brothers’ future sport at its peak: a steel ball, a star target and the ST’s greatest two-player game.
Geoff Crammond’s elevated racing classic: jumps, cracked chassis and the finest driving feel on the machine.
Spectrum HoloByte’s stern masterpiece of systems simulation: working radar, lethal SAMs and a manual that is the course.
Realtime Games’ island war before real-time strategy had a name: logistics above, dogfights below, one carrier against another.
Mike Singleton’s snowbound strategy epic: 32 people, one island, and a resistance you assemble person by person.
ERE’s beautiful, baffling space adventure where the gameplay is learning to talk to aliens — Jarre on the soundtrack, Rho on the art.
Argonaut’s seamless space epic on the ST: five planets, one unbroken flight, and 3D fast enough to embarrass the future.
FTL’s real-time masterpiece judged on the machine it was born on: mouse in hand, torch burning down, fourteen floors of invention.
