show-and-tell: i have played atari today
Today's subject: an Atari ST.
I've had several of these laying around at one time or another, but this particular machine is a recent find. It's one of the STE models, which means it has slightly better graphics, slightly better sound, a whopping 4MB of HOT RAM and uh, the ability to use Jaguar controllers. Provided I can ever find one. Finding a hard drive and getting it to work properly was also a tremendous (not to mention expensive) hassle, but I finally got it all working as it should.
Anyway, I've always liked Atari's computers much more than I like their consoles. They have better games, for one thing. The Atari 2600 was milked for far too long and featured games so horrific that they pretty much made the entire country swear off video games for a time. The Lynx had basically 3 halfway-decent games but zero developer support, and the Jaguar was a farce that had one good game and absolutely nothing else.
But the computers? You had the XL/XE, which was not only graphically powerful but had (and continues to get) some seriously awesome games, and the ST, which was a lot of fun despite seriously lagging behind the competition.
Games pictured: OIDS, a fun hybrid of Choplifter and Gravitar (if you have a Mac you can get an enhanced version from here), and Super Stario Land, a Mario clone that is suprisingly accurate and well-done.
I've had several of these laying around at one time or another, but this particular machine is a recent find. It's one of the STE models, which means it has slightly better graphics, slightly better sound, a whopping 4MB of HOT RAM and uh, the ability to use Jaguar controllers. Provided I can ever find one. Finding a hard drive and getting it to work properly was also a tremendous (not to mention expensive) hassle, but I finally got it all working as it should.
Anyway, I've always liked Atari's computers much more than I like their consoles. They have better games, for one thing. The Atari 2600 was milked for far too long and featured games so horrific that they pretty much made the entire country swear off video games for a time. The Lynx had basically 3 halfway-decent games but zero developer support, and the Jaguar was a farce that had one good game and absolutely nothing else.
But the computers? You had the XL/XE, which was not only graphically powerful but had (and continues to get) some seriously awesome games, and the ST, which was a lot of fun despite seriously lagging behind the competition.
Games pictured: OIDS, a fun hybrid of Choplifter and Gravitar (if you have a Mac you can get an enhanced version from here), and Super Stario Land, a Mario clone that is suprisingly accurate and well-done.