35 Monochrome Games for the Atari ST

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Sven Dännart

2 жыл бұрын

A selection of 35 interesting and remarkable Games for the Atari ST in Monochrome.

Пікірлер: 42

@hundgirridchannel 2 жыл бұрын

So many games can be played in hi-res on the ST. Good job!

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

Yes I was really surprised how many games can be played in hi-res. Some of them are really nice to play and are using the possibilities of monochrome very good.

@supershogun9317 2 жыл бұрын

There are a lot of things to do with this mode, and Atari monochrome monitors was the best ones at this time.

@Wasabim 2 жыл бұрын

Great video. Back in time, I remember playing Bolo and Balleburg in monochrome.

@BokBarber 2 жыл бұрын

That Skulldiggery game somehow has a very cursed look to it.

@PaulYoung99s 2 жыл бұрын

Since I have LCD monitors on all my other legacy computers, I was delighted to inherit an ATARI STe with an original Atari SM124 hi-res CRT monochrome monitor, just a few weeks ago. The SM124 is attractively compact, unlike most colour CRTs which tend to be bulky and need a large desktop area. At first I was very disappointed to discover that the monitor could only run software written specifically for it. Most games are low/med res colour only, so don't run on it. To run them I could plug the Atari's composite output into one of my LCD's, but a lot of the games are just versions of games I already have on my Spectrums or other legacy MS-DOS/Windows machines anyway. Compared with my other computers, the uniqueness of the Atari is that it runs GEM, some powerful "serious" applications in "paper white" hi-res, and has a CRT monitor. Finding out that there are actually quite a few compatible monochrome games most of which I don't have on my other platforms already, is an added bonus, and this video is a great help in deciding which ones to have. Thank you :-)

@mwaawm 2 жыл бұрын

Bolo is awesome!

@philsan69 2 жыл бұрын

Very useful, thanks!

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

Great to hear, thank you!

@PeteyHoudini 2 жыл бұрын

This was cool!!! Thanks!

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

Great to hear you liked it!

@Trusteft 2 жыл бұрын

I knew most of these would work, but I am quite surprised about Boston Bomb Club. One of those I played a lot which isn't in this video or the list in the end, Silent Service. I loved this game. I was disappointed Silent Service II did not support high res. Even though at the time I was not using the SM124.

@1960ARC 2 жыл бұрын

I played flight simulator 2 lots of times. I still have the disks,a slightly damaged box and the large instruction book. Enjoyed the vid thanks

@AtariLegend 2 жыл бұрын

Great video. I never knew Crystal Castles was playable in mono. One of my favorites.

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

Me too :D Played it a lot but always in color.

@laurentdocquir7081 2 жыл бұрын

Great video. I was not aware that so many games were compatible with the hi-res.

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

Thank you. I also was surprised when I realised how many games are existing playable in monochrome.

@atari-staffroom 2 жыл бұрын

Great video. It always blows my mind that ballerburg got a playstation port.

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

thanks. I had no idea about Ballerburg, nice news :D

@cathrynm 2 жыл бұрын

I would have thought more 68000 B/W Macintosh games would have made their way to the ST. Guess market was limited (at least here in the USA it was tiny)

@goognamgoognw6637 2 жыл бұрын

Apple was ferociously jealous of the Atari ST using the GEM graphics from the same company that developped the macintosh mouse interface. They probably also were protective of games.

@BokBarber 2 жыл бұрын

Okay I gotta be honest, coming in as someone with little ST experience, trading lower res color graphics for higher res monochrome didn't help most of these games. I feel like maybe this mode would help with vector emulation and wireframes (asteroids clone or a first person space shooter), but when its trying to render shades the dithering is very muddy and distracting. I assume it looked better on a CRT but even so, the dithering here is extremely heavy. I feel like this was mostly meant for productivity software, and the conversions on these games were lower effort. That's not meant as a bash on the ST or these games, its just how it goes whenever any computer offers a feature that only captures a fraction of the customer base.

@fkorta Жыл бұрын

On ST for low res and high res two different monitors were required. Games in high res were targeted for people who had only high res monitor.

@eto6197 Жыл бұрын

No, they did look exactly like that in the SM124. The SM124 does not have a mask like a color CRT has. So everything was 100% crisp and clear - and in case of these adapted color games, usually it looked like crap, exactly like seen here. Most of these games were developed for color and were slightly enhanced with a routine that dithers the graphics. In the background they use exactly the same graphics, and dithering was just simple patterns. That's why they look so rubbish. But honestly, I was happy that a few of them existed, so I did not always have to hook up the TV, when I wanted to play a game. I guess there would have been a much bigger potential for great games, but probably there was no huge market for real monochrome games outside of Public Domain/Shareware releases. The best real monochrome games I know were Bolo and Oxyd.

@junglejon74 2 жыл бұрын

perfect timing, just got my cable to use hires today! :)

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

Great, I hope this video inspired you to play some of them. I really enjoyed quite some of them.

@1960ARC 2 жыл бұрын

Hope you don't mind my asking, but what are you plugging it into? As I still have my rather yellowish 1040STE.

@junglejon74 2 жыл бұрын

@@1960ARC I'm now using my wife's old Technika TV. Cheap ish 22 inch but great picture on the atari st hires.

@whiskeysk 2 жыл бұрын

Silent Service by Microprose

@DbugII 2 жыл бұрын

Question: Was that on a STe or STF? I did not remember Flight Simulator to be that fast back in the days, I played in color, on a 520 ST, so possibly the rendering is faster in monochrome, or maybe it uses the blitter?

@svendaennart 2 жыл бұрын

I played most of the games with hatari emulator, some with Steem and a few with WinSTon. Most often, It was in STE Mode with Blitter activated.

@goognamgoognw6637 2 жыл бұрын

I played STF FS2 on both SM124 mono and SM125 color. The speed was identical. I don't think FS took advantage of STE blitter.

@eto6197 Жыл бұрын

The STe was no faster than the STF and the Blitter was not used for vector graphics. There are unfortunately only few games that really took advantage of the Blitter (Leathel Xcess would be one).

@DbugII Жыл бұрын

That's assuming they did not use the AES/VDI to draw the polygons, I'm pretty sure the POLYFILL command is using the blitter internally if it's available.

@DennisBornet 2 жыл бұрын

Hey you forgot *SPACOLA* oO ^^

@puretastecroatia 2 жыл бұрын

Bratacas is missing i think

@s_m_d2667 2 жыл бұрын

Mouse Trap, Brattacas, etc... missing

@IsaacKuo 2 жыл бұрын

Interesting how almost all of the games are inferior experiences to the color versions or equivalents, and then there's 8 Ball. 8 Ball (and really this type of game in general) really takes advantage of the increased resolution.

@goognamgoognw6637 2 жыл бұрын

Flight simulator felt better in mono too in a way.

@CFalcon030 2 жыл бұрын

The Lucasfilm games don't look very nice for some reason.

@benpopovich90 2 жыл бұрын

They dithered color graphics to monochrome. They did same on PC with HGC. Those ports also look terrible. The original color graphics are dithered down programatically to a specific colorspace and resolution. This avoids having to make different graphics for all the different platforms and resolutions. But, it also makes games look crappier on non-native resolutions.

@goognamgoognw6637 2 жыл бұрын

@@benpopovich90 I think nothing needed to be done to port as far as the screen shifter memory from 320x200 16 colors to 640*400 2 colors. 4 pixels in 2 colors = 4 bits instead of 1 pixel in 16 = 4 bits. So it automatically created 16 possible tiles. I wonder if there was a game specifically drawn for mono.