Atari ST

Atari ST Specifications

The Atari ST is a line of home computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The ST enjoyed success in gaming due to low cost, fast performance and colorful graphics.

Notable individuals who developed games on the ST include Peter Molyneux, Doug Bell, Jeff Minter, Éric Chahi, Jez San, and David Braben. An early real-time 3D role-playing video game, Dungeon Master, was first developed and released on the ST, and was the best-selling software ever produced for the platform. Simulation games like Falcon and Flight Simulator II made use of the enhanced graphics found in the ST machines, as did many arcade ports. One game, MIDI Maze, uses the MIDI ports to connect up to 16 machines for interactive networked play. Games simultaneously released on the Amiga that had identical graphics and sound were often accused by video game magazines of simply being ST ports. The critically acclaimed game Another World was originally released for ST and Amiga in 1991 with the Polygonal engine developed on the ST and the rotoscoped animations created on the Amiga (the two games are very similar on both systems).

After Jack Tramiel purchased the assets of the Atari, Inc. consumer division to create Atari Corporation, the 520ST was designed in five months by a small team led by Shiraz Shivji. Alongside the Macintosh, Amiga, Apple IIGS, and Acorn Archimedes, the ST is part of a mid-1980s generation of computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, and mouse-controlled graphical user interfaces. "ST" officially stands for "Sixteen/Thirty-two", referring to the Motorola 68000's 16-bit external bus and 32-bit internals.

The ST was sold with either Atari's color monitor or less expensive monochrome monitor. Color graphics modes are available only on the former while the highest-resolution mode requires the monochrome monitor. Some models can display the color modes on a TV. In Germany and some other markets, the ST gained a foothold for CAD and desktop publishing. With built-in MIDI ports, it was popular for music sequencing and as a controller of musical instruments among amateur and professional musicians. The primary competitor of the Atari ST was the Amiga from Commodore.

The 520ST and 1040ST were followed by the Mega series, the STE, and the portable STacy. In the early 1990s, Atari released three final evolutions of the ST with significant technical differences from the original models: TT030 (1990), Mega STE (1991), and Falcon (1992). Atari discontinued the entire ST computer line in 1993, shifting the company's focus to the Jaguar video game console.