The 20 Greatest Atari ST Games of All-Time 

Full Top 50 Atari ST Games List: 50 - Stardust 49 - Goldrunner 48 - Nebulus 47 - Rainbow Islands 46 - Cadaver 45 - Star Wars 44 - Bubble Bobble 43 - Buggy Boy 42 - Midwinter 41 - Civilization 40 - Fire & Ice 39 - Power Monger 38 - Gods 37 - Blood Money 36 - Lotus 2 35 - Zak McKracken 34 - North & South 33 - Phantasie 32 - Cabal 31 - Lemmings 30 - Time Bandit 29 - Another World 28 - Sundog 27 - Super Sprint 26 - Kick Off 2 25 - Xenon 24 - Llamatron 23 - Hunter 22 - Secret of Monkey Island 21 - Captain Blood 20 - Turrican 2 19 - Frontier: Elite II 18 - IK+ 17 - Midi-Maze 16 - Xenon 2 15 - Falcon 14 - Star Glider 13 - Vroom 12 - Gauntlet II 11 - Populous 10 - Stunt Car Racer 9 - Wings of Death 8 - Micro Prose Grand Prix 7 - Carrier Command 6 - Oids 5 - Rick Dangerous 4 - Defender of the Crown 3 - Sensible Soccer 2 - Speedball 2 1 - Dungeon Master

The Atari ST is the future of computing, and anyone who wants to be on the cutting edge of technology should choose the Atari ST.

Wow! 3:20 That commercial was wild. Pretty sure that would have freaked me the heck out as a kid! Great list as always! You're one of my new favorite channels to binge.

My personal top 5 favorites on the Atari ST, in no particular order: - Dungeon Master - Flight Simulator II - Vroom - Sim City - Mortviele Manor

Glad to see Carrier Command in the top 10. I'd have put it higher as it's one of my favourite games of all time. But happy to see it recognised. Great video btw 👍

Great video . Was glad Carriar Command reached such a high rank. Classic game. I would have aso had Damalcos and Midwinter in my top games .

Many, many, many hours played of Dungeon Master. The UI is burned into my brain permanently.

My AtariST top7 games (as in the only games I replay on emulator from time to time) are : 1985 - Phantasie series (my favorite is the 3rd one, simply for the game engine upgrade alone). 1985 - SunDog: Frozen Legacy. The game will generate new starmap and move those Cryogens around too (well except the one on "Tuie"). It feels fresh all the time 1986 - Starfleet I - The War begins. Very nice turn-based strategy space combat game. Very close (and could easily be ported into) the classic StarTrek universe. 1987 - Dungeon Master. I've played so many games of it, and yet no playthru is exactly the same. You forget stuff then you find it again, heh. 1988 - Carrier Command (of which, ALL remakes have sucked). I have a game that has been going since 2011 where I purposely left the enemy carrier alive and try to win that way. Going well but very hard. 1988 - Ultima V. Of all the ultima games, this is my favorite. I don't even need to finish it to enjoy it either. Just play sink a few hours, stop when tired... Like most on this list too. 1989 - MidWinter. I have played this one less of late, as I feel I've done most of what I wanted to try. I still enjoy a couple hours every now and then. This list is not really in order, as it depends on what I feel like playing at the time (Right now playing Phantasie III - The Wrath of Nikademus). I guess if I had to order it from best to least... Phantasie, SunDog, Ultima V, Dungeon Master, Carrier Command, Starfleet I, MidWinter. But the titles move around every now and then, like MidWinter which really sucked me in HARD back then, I don't replay as much these days. Very different list than the top20 presented here, but I never was much into sports game (except the odd weird one with the cats and 4vs4 - dont remember name). IK and Racing I have played TO DEATH on my Atari800 so didn't buy those again on the ST. Good memories and thanks for the Video !

It's so neat to see all of these computer games and different systems. I never had any of them growing up, all of my gaming was on consoles. That's one of the reasons I enjoy your channel so much. Great video.

Truly dissapointed that Sundog didn't make the cut. I consider it the greatest trading/exploration game to this day, and woiuld have given a well-deserved trifecta-win to FTL Software, who also gave us Oids and Dungeon Master. It was the first game that ever had me phone-in sick to the office several times, so I could stay home and complete a task in the game. I'd go so far as to say if you have an ST with the three FTL titles, you have the three most impressive genre-defining games on the platform. For one developer to demonstrate such a diversity of vision is rare. To pull it off to be the best-in-show with each release, is truly astounding. Regardless, this is one of your best (our best?) compilations to date. If I've said that before here, it's because it has been true each time. (And FTL did get 2 out of their 3 on the board). Still no love for Psygnosis Barbarian though...I so loved that game. It was such eye candy for the time.

@7:52 THANK YOU for including that audio track from Starglider :-)

Great video! Never had an ST, and never really wanted one (I had an Amiga), but in my opinion, the ST was also a Great machine. Thank you for the video 😊

Great video with an interesting selection games.

I’ve never understood why such amazing channel has such low views and subscriptions. That’s not a yes it’s a remark on the RU-vid algorithm. Keep up the great videos don’t ever stop.

Awesome job as always, K!

Dungeon Master crushed the #1 spot! That makes me happy bec ause many other people had their minds blown by just how good it was. Thanks for including my quote Laird, it made my Saturday afternoon!

'blue bird splash one mig'. 😎

Great little machine the ST, I think one of my favourite games was Ranarama. The tune still jingles in my old noggin thinking back to it 🥰

I loved the karate, my first Tetris game was on my ST, so was my first flight simulator. War zone was another one I loved.

I totally loved MIDI-MAZE, clever use of the MIDI interfac. OIDS was Soo smooth to pay it became active.

Want to go back to thise times they just seemed more simple

Great to see this list, it was an opportunity for me to learn more about the ST. Definitely, I enjoyed very much seeing the substantial presence of games built with polygon graphics, specially the incredible Carrier Command! I do agree with you that the ST was the best in this area, surpassing the rival Amiga in it. I missed the presence of Civilization here, though! It's a fundamental game for the system, I feel. And thanks for putting my comment about Wings of Death, my very favorite ST game!

my games I played on atari stf and still remember: prehistoric, another world, north and south, fred, prince of persia, street fighter 2, barbarian 2, hero quest, daleks, giana sisters, goblins 1 and 2, many dizzy games - fantastic was the prettiest, lotus, metal mutant, sensible soccer, silent service, virus, asterix - the one with the hindu guy...

Llamatron 2112 and Jeff Minter sadly missing from the list; one of the greatest games of all time. I was always a Speedball 1 enthusiast; I noticed that that it was equally entertaining as a spectator sport to my friends if it was human versus human. It was on the ST that I was also introduced to the original Braben/Bell Elite which is also one of the greatest of all time. My favourite flight sim was the WWII-based Their Finest Hour. A couple of honourable mentions are Bombuzal and Powermonger, which were both very addicting. And totally agree with the inclusion of Xenon 2.

I enjoyed Bubble Bobble and Dungeon Master on my Atari ST. Lots of hours were spent on those as well as Stunt Car Racer and Populous. Thanks for the video.

Amazing stuff

honestly, it's a very fair selection. none of the true masterpieces is missing.

Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker, Stunt Car Racer, ik Karate, Populous, Geoff Crammond's Grand Prix, Dungeon Master.

I bought my 520 for the Kings Quest games and then discovered Carrier Command and Midwinter.

Dungeon Master - check. Carrier Command - check. Starglider - check. Falcon - check. Stunt Car Racer - check. Oids - check. Not one Mike Singleton game - astonished sob 😢.

Sundog, Airball, all the Sierra games (king's quest, police quest etc) and lets not forget TIME BANDITS!

Such a great selection of games but so many more have a reason to be there ! Rainbow Islands was such an amazing game on the ST!

defender of the crown though. man i loved that game. great vid with much nostalgia

Gauntlet looks great on the ST 👍

Great video, and thanks for showing my comment about Speedball II! What about a "hidden gems" video now? There's more than enough for a top 100! 😂

A nice machine the way I see it. Amiga graphics was a bit smoother one can notice, but very comparable.

Panza Kick Boxing was certainly my favourite fighting game. Although, that might be just because of the great sound (compared to your average ST game). I think a lot of the games in the list aren't really the best games, it's more that they were the most influential or game changing at the time. There were certainly better flight sims than Falcon that came along later (e.g. F29 Retaliator, Fighter Bomber). Zool, Venus The Flytrap and James Pond were great platformers that were released later on in the 16-bit era, but I guess a lot of people had moved onto other systems by then? I would have had Lemmings (better than the PC version, and the sequels were just as good), Sim City (it worked well with the use of GEM for the UI), Lotus 2, Toyota Celica GT Rally (3D rally game and I loved the engine noises), North & South (really fun game, great graphics and sound), Rainbow Islands (arcade fun), Cannon Fodder, Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker (one for the Brits, best snooker game ever?), Pipe Mania (great puzzle game), Robocop 3 (3D FPS and driving with Robocop), Super Cars 2 (best overhead view racing game) and of course, you've got to have Llamatron.

I had an Atari 1040STf and loved it. I bought it with the color monitor because the Amiga 1000 was much more expensive. If the A500 or A1200 had been available at the time I bought the ST, I would have bought one of those. I've heard that since game manufacturers wanted to sell games for both the ST and Amiga, they wrote for the ST and didn't always improve the games to take advantage of the Amiga's greater capabilities.

Perhaps the lack of votes for arcade ports is due to the fact that we can all just play the actual arcade games nowadays?

I am wating for a special controller of atari i ordered. That will be great :D Going to go back to the past...play games and so on. :D

Good video, but although I like some of these games a lot, only one of my all-time favorites (Dungeon Master) made the list. Some of my other top choices would be: JUG, Airball, Time Bandit, Goldrunner, Goldrunner II, Sundog, and Tetra Quest.

Used to play the ST at a friends house, it was really cool. We played Bubble Bobble and TNT mostly. I was pretty good, but I ended up with an Amiga 500 in the end. Some games were very good and exclusive to the ST… but all my friends ended up getting Amigas - miss those amazing days of disk swapping.

The biggest game left off the list I think is Micro League Baseball.

Loved the selection, I really liked Kick off 2 with the broken curved ball from the corner of the penelty box in the world edition. Still think Cybernoid 2 and Terry big adventure could be up there.

Nice. I wish they had made Xenon 2 with an option to turn off FX so one could hear the music uninterrupted.

the Atari ST was a good machine, I had an STfm and an STE mostly used them for Music and drawing pixel ART. I owned most of these games here.

Defender of the Crown was part of the package when I bought my ST

The Bitmap Brothers produced a lot of games for both Atari ST and Amiga. Most notably 'Gods' 'Speedball' and 'Speedball 2' Brutal Delux.

Rick Dangerous had such clean artwork, it legit looks like a modern indie game. Very clever sprite work, looks very high resolution. Then you hear the sound effects and the professional illusion is shattered! PC gaming was a whole different beast, but it's interesting to see classic gaming from another perspective. As much as I am a console guy, retro PCs don't get as much modern recognition. Understandable given their intended purpose wasn't for gaming, but I feel Dangerous Dave , Super Frog and company deserve some time in the spotlight!

Not surprised that Dungeon Master is #1, but I am surprised that Karateka isn't on the list - I guess it's more thought of as an Apple II game, but it never came to the Amiga, so I'd figure that the ST version would be on here. Not even Prince of Persia is on this list?! Isn't the ST version one of the official Broderbund games, while the Amiga was just a port?

Surprising that Civilization didn't make the top 20. Probably was my most played game aongside Sensible Soccer.

No Rainbow Islands, Bubble Bobble, Populous 2, Powermonger, Midwinter or The Secret of Monkey Island. At least the right game was at number one. It's still the only game that made me get a specific system just so I could play that one game.

Rick dangerous has alot of the same looks as the newer Sydney hunter games over at collectorvision games

had an Atari 400, an Atari ST and an Amiga, loved all those machines, still have the 400 48k , and the Amiga, but damn I miss my ST, it died , Spent many a night crawling through Dungeon Master , sinkin my opponents land as fast as I could In Populous ,to drown all the people and wreck their homes, such a great demented game idea. . badly jumping over rhinos in Baal, and many other games. I also loved using GFA Basic on the ST, such a great language , and easy to do fast games on the ST and lets call them apps,. It was what I wish Atari basic was like on the 8bits , ((least we had Action by OSS on the 8 bits ), a great C basic hybrid ) along with STOS, which was just plain fun programming in my opinion. and by the way, great list, all those games were fun to play and still are with STEEM , or a live ST if you can get one. have you played Atari today?

Falcons smooth 3d graphics at 1.5 fps😮

happy to see dungeon master in ther!

Dynamyte Dux and SWIV were among my favorites as a kid Mad Professor Mariarty, James Pond I loved the game at 2:20 but don't remember its name... was it the one where you ram "boss" cars at the end? there was a game with a factory worker in a blue overall that was very high on my list... I can't even find pictures of it anywhere. EDIT: FOUND IT: Night Shift! And it was only has cap that was blue. And I did correctly remembered the music! and then there was this "egg" shaped guy on a tropical island with a very catchy background song... damn, so hard to remember it all. last one: North and South... I wasn't good at it but I loved seeing my older nephews play it.

Very interesting that there was only one platformer. Retro gaming is heavily dominated by platformers, but to me computer games of the era offered so much more than just platforming. That said, I tended to avoid a lot of the deeper games like Dungeon Master and Carrier Command, so I didn't end up voting for either even though they massively impressed me (while watching others play them).

Time Bandits, Sub Logic Flight Sim, Godz, Turrican 2, Captive, Dungeon Master and Chaos strikes back. One title I can't remember was a hero that ran down a path and you had to do special jumps to continue through each scene. Was the game with the balloon that slowly lost air on the ST? I also played Joust a lot on the ST. All of the Infocom games like Trinity, Zork and Enchanter.

12:15 time OIDS, its like the OG Solar JEtman for NES.

I did the full Monaco GP on Microprose Formula one Grand Prix on easy though I must add. It was awesome but went on for too long to be honest.

I watched the video twice, but didn't find Lemmings 😢 I say you edit the video to include it, pls upvote 😋 Great work nonetheless, thanks !

The number 2 game Speedball2: Brutal Deluxe..I rented during a school break for Genesis and rented again. Binged it . Awesome game. How does the ST version compare to the Genesis/MD version?

Rainbow Islands (story of Bubble Bobble 2) was also an awesome arcade port on the ST.

No llove for Llamatron? Free, unless you wanted to pay. And apparently regarded by Eugene Jarvis as the best Robotron 2084 clone out there. I could get to Level 137 before it just stompled me flat.

I think the company that makes the fancy snes console and mega drive own the rights

Carrier Command was amazing for it's time.

Joe blade, moon patrol, time bandit, Xenon 1, gods, super sprint, nebulus

I nominate The Pawn, Airball, Time Bandit, Sundog, Bard's Tale, Silent Service, Roadwar 2000/Europa as honorable mentions. The Pawn blew me away with the pull down graphics on a "scroll." Not to mention the high res graphics. Fun adventure, too, and I think it was the best text adventure on the ST, and I played a ton.

Is there any way to play these games on an ordinary PC?

i think the only top atari ST games to be considered should be ones that don't have slow down effects that aren't present on the amiga versions of the game. GODS is one example.

I didn’t have an ST back in the day but there’s something that’s always missing from these ‘best of’ lists which is Gunship by Microprose. It was developed for ST and released 1986. Didn’t come out on Amiga until 1989. Remember that for your 16-bit wars arguments. Of course I know why it doesn’t get mentioned… it’s because you scallywags didn’t have manuals for your games… and you won’t get off the ground in Gunship without multiple diagrams.

I've only played the Amiga version of Frontier and while I think it's an amazing tech demo, I've always felt that it was a crappy game. For starters, it was full of bugs and almost every one of my sessions with it ended in a crash. There were star systems that would crash the game if you tried to display info on them. Or taking on passengers who would refuse to leave the ship. The realistic physics meant that you needed to use time acceleration to get anywhere without it taking literal days, so you put the engines on maximum, turn on time acceleration and in no time, you're cruising at something like 100,000 KPS. Then you encounter a pirate and the game drops back to real time, but you're still traveling at an insane speed and since it took you (accelerated) hours to reach that speed, it would take you hours to decelerate. So while you can somewhat alter your course, you really can't perform any maneuvers and dogfight like you would in Elite. Fights become nothing more than jousting matches as you and the other ship pass each other. It also makes it incredibly hard to target the other ship. Of course you can lock onto the other ship, but then the autopilot will just crash into it. The realistic motion of the planets also makes it incredibly difficult to fly anywhere manually, so you're pretty much forced to use the autopilot if you don't want to waste a ton of time trying to catch up to your destination. Curiously, the autopilot is able to decelerate your ship back down to maneuvering speed at the drop of a hat. Of course you then have to quickly turn it off, or there's about a 50-75% chance that it will crash you into the planet rather than land on it. Even when I started a fight near the space station at maneuvering speeds, the combat was nowhere near as fun to me as in Elite. It just felt clunky and unfinished. Then there was the little stuff, like having to click individually to repair each unit of hull damage, even if that meant clicking the mouse 100+ times. Or the fact that most of the structures on the planets weren't solid and you could fly right through them. As you could the blocky structures on those big cargo ships (like the one in the intro). That really killed the illusion for me. Don't get me wrong, i loved to load it up, park my ship just a few feet from the station and watch this huge structure rotating under me, but every time I tried to actually PLAY the game the way it was intended, I just came away frustrated and annoyed.

captive

It looked like it was a really good computer, makes me wonder why I basically owned and played consoles.

I'm surpriced the Hunt for Red October wasn't there. (Maybe Ishar too)

Starglider 2!!!!!

How come Oids, Sundog or Time Bandit aren't in the list? All of these were excellent technically, graphically, and in game play.

Glad midimaze made it...

Weird timing I just searched for “best st games”

I think llamatron gotta be in here

I would have a different 20 and this is completely subjective.

Where were Lemmings and Golden Axe??

DOOD!

Monkey Island 😮

Wot, no Midwinter?...

It's always funny seeing how much worse Amiga and ST games look than their Mega Drive and SNES counterparts... despite what the micro-clan says otherwise

If these abominations are the best I am afraid to see the worst

my bro was a programer from day one,didnt care about games., me always bothering him to let me play xenon and falcon