Billy's Atari ST Collection

I go over my pretty small Atari ST collection
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Intro and outro theme:

The Game Chasers are 2 friends hunting for retro video game in flea markets, garage sales, game stores and people's homes! And they are a bunch chodes

[TheGameChasers]

Yes. I know I look tired. Please let me know how much so here in this thread.

[nixeldev]

Have you cleaned your disk drive heads? With such a high rate of failure on good condition disks it could possibly be your machine just needs its drive cleaning.

[gearsofgames]

Nice seeing you doing ST videos, keep it up :). BTW some auto booting ST disks will come up blank when you open them like that. You need to reset the computer after you inserted the disk to get the game to boot...

[justinwrenn]

Billy i am a huge fan of your channel and the game chasers for many years. thanks for all you guys do!!

[Robertkopp]

You can copy ST disks with any normal pc disk drive. Btw it's not the disk, that fails. It is just the magnetic charge. Rewrite them and have fun. You should watch Tony's video, it's super easy.

[wicket]

Awww. You're sporting the box of games I gave you!
Love ya, Bill!

[electricadventures]

Nice to see you have found some more original titles, sad that not many of them work. A factor of how well they were recorded and how they have been stored since - time is up for a lot of magnetic media I'm afraid as more people will discover.
Like you I really like to play games on the original hardware and hopefully of games I have a physical copy of as it makes the experience more real.
You may have to get a Gotek drive for one of your STs to keep enjoying the system.
My ST was my main computer system, it was my PC, I wrote my first book on it and published a magazine and of course played lots of games: Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Elite, Dungeon Master and others.
Plus of course I loved to write my own games for it too :)
Thanks for the shout out, Billy, you have inspired me I will have to do a video on my physical games collection as well now - and play some games of course, great video on a great system.

[Akspee]

Love these extra videos, keep em coming. Thanks.

[PastoKage]

Where is the "Atari ST Song" from that Game Chaser episode?

[SwitchCorner]

I liked hearing you talk about gaming with your family. I think that's what really makes it special when you have that connection when you spoke about falcon and TV football. For me it was Speedball 2 on the mega drive or should I say genesis now I live in the USA and also Alex The Kid. Loved both and for that same reason, it was a family moment and one of my favorite memories.

[ThisIsPete]

Some great games in this collection. If you liked Starglider, you should definitely check out the sequel. They switched to full filled polygonal graphics in that one, and it was seriously impressive for the time. The team behind it subsequently went on to develop the original Star Fox.

Along the same lines, you should also take a look at the Mercenary series by Novagen and Paul Woakes; I don't know how big it was in the States, but it was huge over here in the UK, since Woakes was a British developer. They are some of the earliest examples of freeform "open world" gameplay out there; the first one uses vector graphics and the second two use filled polygons. They're amazing games that still play great today.

Re: stuff like the Gremlins disk coming up as empty, try auto-booting the disk instead. Turn the ST off completely, insert the disk, turn it on and see if it boots. Some disks are copy-protected in such a way that they won't open from the GEM desktop like you tried here. Generally speaking if you don't get a window saying "Data on the disk in drive A is damaged" and instead just get a blank window like this, the disk itself is actually OK.

The ST range also has some compatibility issues with certain combinations of hardware. Off the top of my head, the variables are:

- How much RAM your ST has: most stuff will work with the 512k "520 ST" models, which were cheaper and more widespread, but some have enhancements for the 1MB "1040 ST" range. A few games will *only* work on a 1040 ST because they require the extra memory.

- Whether or not you are using a single- or double-sided disk drive: the internal drive you have there is double-sided; the external SF354 drive is single-sided and some older games will only load on that, so if you don't have one that might be worth investing in. Note that the similar-looking SF314 drive is double-sided and thus is effectively the same as the internal ST drive.

- Which model of ST you have: ST, STF, STFM or STE. The STE was the latest model and has enhanced capabilities over its earlier brethren, but has a lot of compatibility problems with older games and applications.

- Which version of TOS (the operating system) your ST is running. Some games will only work correctly on earlier versions. There's supposedly a way to boot later systems into an earlier version of TOS but I'm yet to get it working on my own systems.

I have two STs at home -- a 520ST with external SF314 and SF354 disk drives, and a 1040STE with an internal disk drive. Between them both I can get most stuff running; my disks seem to have mostly survived, as 3.5" disks are a lot more sturdy than the older 5.25" floppies! I would like to get a 1040STFM at some point for a 1MB non-STE system for maximum compatibility, but tracking one down is proving difficult!

The SD card solution you mention is also really good and a tempting option... but there's something I love about hearing the whirr of a disk drive! It brings back so many memories!

[AlphaOmegaSin]

Ocean has some really neat licensed titles on there

[PixelGameSquad]

Good stuff Billy. Enjoyed this video very much so 🤘

[EricHostile]

Tremendous video man, I really appreciate you showing your ST stuff!! More please!

[Wheels]

It's great to see a video game collection of something different. Thank you. Take care.

[SwedishEmpire]

Actually, i think its the discdrive in the Atari thats needs a cleanup, ive had a ST myself some years ago and after i cleaned it up my games worked just fine.

[ThisIsPete]

So happy to see this video as I know I've requested some ST stuff in the past :) Thanks, Billy. The ST was such a huge part of my childhood and, like you, I get the nostalgia tingles whenever I see that green desktop.

[tobiasschenkel]

0:04 Your Move
Creep

Used to do stuff like that on my highscores too! :D

[salvoembers]

Awesome vid Billy. Keep up the good work.

[geekseyes]

One of the best computers we had around the house when I was a little kid, along with the commodore 64, and an Amiga but I'm too young to remember what model.