Atari ST Overhead Racing Game Tier List
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- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- Welcome to The Joy of Sticks! Today we are having a look at notable Atari ST overhead perspective racing games and ranking them on a tier list.
Don't forget to like and subscribe but most importantly comment down below. What did you think of the list? Would you put any in a different tier? Is there a game I'm missing?
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As ever, a huge thank you to everyone at Atarimania and Atari Legend for their amazing work:
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Recorded at 50fps using a real Atari 1040 STe (4mb, TOS v1.62, PAL), RGB SCART, a Micomsoft X-Sync1 and a Startech PexHDcap capture card.
You can tell whoever did the Super Sprint conversion was a true fan of the arcade game. A great arcade game and one of the best games on the ST.
Well said! Developers were not always given everything they needed to convert games. Some would get source code and assets, the whole kit and kaboodle, whereas some would just get the arcade to play over and over again in order to learn what was needed. I dread to think what it was like trying to code a conversion without either of those things. I wonder what was the case here?
I don't know how the guys from state of the art did it but funnily enough this is the approach I took when I recreated the ST version of Super Sprint in Python. And the reason was the same: a pure labour of love and in homage to the programmers of this conversion which captures the spirit while using everything available in the ST.❤
I think most of the games they produced were in the upper end of the titles
Bob's corresponding list:
S - Nitro, Supercars 2, Super Sprint
A - Supercars, Jupiter's Masterdrive, Badlands, Indy Heat
B - Super Off Road, Super Grand Prix
C - BMX Simulator
D - Mean Machine
Bob, you’ve placed Super Grand Prix in B. Are you feeling ok?
The bumper car chaos trying to pull into the pits at 9:08 are just so hilarious. (Indy Heat)
Yes! That is one of the funniest and most infuriating parts of the game. Imagine, you are only just in the lead and pull in for a well timed pit to get just the right amount of fuel for your last lap and a back marker that you lapped, crunches you out of the pit and you waste precious seconds turning around to get back in, causing you to lose. XD
We used to play Super Sprint with 2 guys on the joysticks and one huddled over the keyboard, as you say. Fun as hell
Yes! Best way to get some gaming action and destroy your posture for the rest of your life. Highly recommended! 🤣
Hooray! More Joy of Sticks content on the ST!
Cheers, bab! ❤
Always loved this style of game. Super Sprint and Nitro are top tier for me. Nitro has some sneaky copy protection that will allow you to copy it and play theough the 1st level just fine. Level 2 on your copy will be impossible as your fuel will disappear within seconds of starting.
I would love to see an article or video on some of the more sneaky ways people copy protected their games. I remember playing Captain Blood and having no idea that the progressively worsening shaking of my characters hand was due to a copy protection. Devious!
Those Tier List videos are excellent. I remember loving the graphics of BMX Simulator and finding it charming indeed.
Thanks, buddy! More to come soon, hopefully! BMX has some problems, but it has charm, and makes you smile and that should be celebrated.
Excellent video! There is a lot of rose tinted memories for these games, many being multiplayer, you just put up with the jankiness. I listened to so many good metal albums while playing Super Sprint. The sneaky shortcuts, the damn closing doors...
I love it when a good game and a good song get indelibly linked in the memory. So good.
Loved it! And I quite like this Tier List idea - it really provides some great content and we get to see lots of games in one video! So many there I was not aware of on the ST!
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad people like them as they are fun to make, but take a bit more effort to get all the footage ready.
I didn't play all the games on the list but I do agree with ranking of the ones I know. Nitro and Super Sprint are the ones I have the fondest memories of, I think because they both allowed three simultaenous players. Nitro was a bit chaotic, but still great fun with three players I thought.
It didn't occur to me that Nitro might also be a three player. It makes total sense now you say it, as there are three slots on the menu screen! I'd love to give it a go at 3 players. I bet it was absolute carnage.
Super Cars 2 was definitely one of my favorite games ever, playing with your friends got super competivite, some of the ways to earn cash between races were comedy (to my very young mind) like cats against the bomb, it also introduced me and my freinds to economics as each race the values of the weapons would change, if you got super lucky and ringer missles which circle your car were reduced to £100 you could buy as many as you could, next race they may be worth £600 each and you sell them all and you could fully upgrade your car very quickly.
Some very good memorys from the other games but super cars 2 was number 1 :)
I used to play this game with an unlimited money cheat when I was younger (player names 'I walk the hill' and 'Inwards' - shocking that I still remember that) so I never realised the economic aspect. It was Elite and its sequel that would teach me about trading! SC2 was a truly special game, for sure.
Very happy to see a tier video return. SuperCars 2 definitely deserves that S tier spot, I loved everything about that. I mainly played Off Road 2-player so I never noticed that issue, what a shame. I would have loved to hear your views on International Truck Racing and also Works Team Rally, two Zepplin releases written by the same guy (and it shows!).
Super Cars 2 is just the complete package. In many ways its the perfect sequel - taking everything that was good in the original and then improving upon it.
I knew there must be some titles that I missed, aside from the ones I tried but couldn't get to run. Maybe we need an addendum video! :D
I had Indy Heat from the same magazine I expect. Used to buy ST Format and also ST Action with my paper round money. Great fun that game.
Man, those cover disks were amazing. I discovered so many games and so much serious software from them.
Agree with your list. Super Cars 2 is my favourite because we had it back in the day. Have since played Super Sprint and can understand your love for it, very addictive. Also enjoyed Super Off Road with my mates and we even used to have a laugh with BMX Simulator, crashing into each other like a game of tig! Would love to see a completed version of Accelerator because the demo felt pretty good. I reckon it has the potential to be 3rd on your list. Great video, been looking forward to it all day and you didn't let me down! Cheers.
🙌 I knew there would be someone out there getting some fun out of BMX! It just had that feel to it. So glad I didn't D list it. Thanks for the kind words, Bob. Have a tip top week.
Re Nitro.
I seem to remember there's 4 stages of levels, city, country, desert and post apocalyptic city which explains the cover art and loading screens.
Overall one of my favourite games on the ST - spent may hours completing the levels.
Annoyingly it just starts again with higher difficulty when you do!
Ah, I see! It's like the world is crumbling around you as the season progresses? Cool. I definitely need to play some more, it's a cracking game.
Double dragon it's one of those game of when I saw it in present days, thinking "jeez that was that bad ?", but I loved it too back in days
🤣 Yes... it really is THAT terrible and your memory really is THAT rose-tinted! I still bloody love it though.
@@thejoyofsticks I’d much rather play Double Dragon on the ST than the arcade version, it may have looked silly but in the end was more fun I think.
YES! This is the kind of mindless devotion to the ST we need.
Yeah, my favourite genre! I spent thousands of hours playing overhead racing games with my friends on my loved ST. For me, the top 3 is Supercars 2, Nitro and Jupiter’s Masterdrive, but I have to admit that I played SUper Off road a lot too. Have you ever played The Race and Accelerator? Are curious and fun games too. But man, Supercars 2 and Nitro are deffinitively masterpieces.
I have seen the demo of Accelerator here on CZcams, but I don’t think the full game was ever released, was it? The Race is new to me though. Add it to the list of games I missed! I’ll have to film an addendum.
@@thejoyofsticks you're right, Accelerator was never finished, but the demo is really good (a bit fast!). The Race is a lillte simple game, but enjoyable (only for overhead racing fans, not big deal ;)
I'll have to have a look, if only for completion's sake.
I remember the artwork from nitro was also the cover of a Fighting Fantasy book, Freeway Fighter by Ian Livingston
This happened a few times with art for Psygnosis games, didn't it? Appearing on book covers and album covers etc.
Yes in french it was on of those "livre dont vous êtes le heros" this one was "Le combatant de l'autoroute", I got this one, and with combination of the video game, I was like in a post 80's apocalyptic dream 😍
Maybe I should do a 'playthrough' of one of the Fighting Fantasy books on the channel! :D
@thejoyofsticks hell...yes.. I lived for FF books when I was younger and now collect game books. Some of the later/last FF books are ridiculously expensive now though.
@@thejoyofsticks Or a speed run of it 😁
Super Cars 2 and Nitro are by far my two favourites here.
Nitro has four worlds and eight tracks per world. It gets pretty apocalypsy by the end.. 😄
Great video!
Yes! A lot of love for Nitro in the comments, which is great to see. And cool that the world goes to shit as your racing season progresses. Thanks for watching!
There was an overhead racing game that I remember playing a lot, but I can't for the life of me remember the name. I think it was a shareware game and the main thing that differentiated it was that it had a map editor. Other than that, it was the usual cars racing, oil spils to spin you around and power-ups.
I don't even know recently there was Super Cars series on the ST, thinking it was Amiga exclusive... I need to reroll my life really
Life's a constant lesson, our kid. No shame in learning something new. Amiga did get Super Skidmarks and we didn't though. Would love a go on that.
Another great video Marc 👍🏻 I always preferred the first Super Cars back in the day but think I may have to go back and revisit the second one. Definitely agree about Super Sprint though 😀
Thanks Dan, most appreciated! 👍
Interesting to hear that you preferred the original Super Cars. Care to share why you preferred it over the sequel?
@thejoyofsticks Not sure really lol. Think maybe because it was simpler and I had played it so much that when the sequel came out I didn't adapt to it
Since the list was visible from the beginning, the results were not that surprising. Super Sprint and Super Cars II are fantastic games. There is also Turbo GT by the way, but it would need a category E. I wanted to play BMX shortly because it has a nice two-player mode.
Yes, this one maybe a little predictable. At least the Bitmap tier list gave me an opportunity to put the boot into Xenon 2! :D Any suggestions on the next tier list?
Yes, Turbo GT was one of the ones I couldn't get running. I'm glad I didn't miss anything good!
That's why I didn't put BMX in the bottom tier. I could tell you could have some fun with it in 2 player.
Last level(s) of nitro really went post apocalyptic. Brilliant game!
Nice! Unfortunately I never made it that far! More practice needed...
@thejoyofsticks it's the kind of game for which you need to learn the tracks, that was easier when we were kids, these days I'm lucky if I make it past the first night 😄
@@veryeld My 44 year old brain that was mistreated heavily during its teens and twenties does not relish a memory test! :D
Been waiting for one of these!
Happy to oblige! Any other tier lists you'd like to see?
Super fun video. Well done! Some games I never saw before...
Glad you enjoyed it! And nice to be able to show you something new. 👍 Thanks for watching.
Great video. Love your presentation and am eager to check out your top games in my new-to-me 1040ST.
Thank you so much for the kind words. Always happy to help people find good games to play!
Thanks for this list! I agree with all your rating from what I saw. Back then I only played Supzr Sprint, and a bit of Super Cars and Off Road, but Super Sprint always was and still is the 🐐. Maybe one day I'll fix add thz Badlands cars and tracks to ly python remake so we can get the mechanics of Super Sprint in Badlands?
A Badlands remake would be epic! It would just need some tweaks. Mostly in how it deals with collisions, both with the other cars and the trackside.
Yes, my thoughts exactly! If Teque had had the source code from Super Sprint the game would have been near perfect!
Absolutely brilliant idea and execution.
I think we are going to do a few ST tier lists to change things up too.
I love NITRO and the Music in Super Cars the most.
Awesome! Looking forward to watching those. Thank you so much for the kind words.
Bmx was great on the specci but really took some effort to enjoy on the st
“Takes some effort to enjoy” is the “his mother loves him” of video games. Love that turn of phrase, definitely going to use that one! 👍
Enjoyed this, more tier lists 👍
More on the way! Any suggestions for topics?
@@thejoyofsticks Best shoot 'em ups. I want to see where you put Sidewinder, the game where everything explodes
weirdly, i just ran across BMX SIMULATOR in an unlikely place; one of those unlicensed codemasters carts for the NES. 1991 release. three riders instead of two. not sure whether they fixed the collision loops (didn't play it long!).
Nice! Was it better? Were the CPU bikers a bit fairer?
@@thejoyofsticks
played pretty much as you described, i think.
Super Sprint is so good! The only game I other game I can think of is Hot Rod, a conversion of a Sega arcade game.
Or man I used to play Super sprint for hours, it used to get more difficult once you had completed all the tracks once, there used to be whirlwinds and oil slicks and metal stumps that would try and stop you, it’s gotta be the best out of those, I used to like nitro but found it difficult as I was only a kid at the time and I remember playing that bmx game and getting tangled up in the hay bales 🤦♂️ the joys of playing on the ST I guess, watching this makes me want an ST so bad, even if I could play super sprint, I miss those days so much 😢
Yes! I used to like racing a vanilla car with no upgrades, but it gets pretty difficult to keep up with the drone cars after a while, so recently I’ve trained myself to use upgrades so I can stay competitive for longer.
The way you get stuck in BMX really makes me giggle. I can just imagine the rider running up to his bike and instantly falling over and over. 🤣
An ST isn’t completely out of reach. Good examples do pop up on eBay regularly and you can always emulate if you want to relive some of the games more conveniently. Thanks for watching, bruv.
@@thejoyofsticks I was thinking of getting an emulator but wasn’t sure what to get, any advice on a decent emulator would be fantastic, I don’t own a pc so I’ve always looked into getting those box things off Amazon but some have bad reviews saying that some games are just demos etc
I used to play super sprint that much I used to be the red car as I worked out you could play as player 2 even when playing solo (just to be different) I remember I always wanted to use the blue car but that would ave meant using the keyboard which only my dad was able to use,
I forgot to mention about super cars and off-road, super cars had a great introduction but the game play for me got boring quickly and I’m sure our super car 2 version didn’t work for some reason, and I can’t remember the difficultly issue with off-road but I was only 10 at the time so it was along time ago 🤣
Great vid btw love watching old ST games 👍🏻
Well, my only real experience of emulators is on PC, where SteemSSE and Hatari are kings. They are both great emulators. It's a generalisation, but Hatari tends to be more accurate, but SteemSSE is easier to set up and use. Great thing is, they'll run on a potato, so even if you can get your hands on a £20 second hand laptop, you can use them. I have an Anbernic handheld emulator thingy, but haven't even put an ST emulator on it yet as I don't like the idea of emulating microcomputers without a keyboard.
I started playing Super Sprint with at my mate's house and was the youngest, so got relegated to keys and the blue car. I got so used to it that i would choose to play that way even when I got my own ST and Super Sprint later on! It took me a while to adapt to the joystick.
Glad you are enjoying the videos!
@@thejoyofsticks thanks for that mate, I do have a laptop but it keeps turning itself off randomly so maybe I’ll look into getting another one just to download an emulator 👍🏻
And I thought I used to be good at super sprint 🤦♂️ I couldn’t use the keyboard at all, the helicopter would be out on every corner 😬 using the Z and X to steer was a nightmare when you where 10 years old 🤦♂️ yeah great vids mate I always watch,
I don’t suppose you have battleships by Ocean, I’ve never played that game in so long used to love it, operation wolf too that game was so ahead of its time, and obviously international karate, the cheats on that game man, I’d love to see these games in a vid, or even better play them 🤣
thanks again 👍🏻
I've not seen Battleships by Ocean. There's one here from Epyx: www.atarimania.com/game-atari-st-battleship_21470.html is that the one you played?
IK+ is my favourite game of all time, so I find it really difficult to go back to the original. I will do one day, though. Stay tuned!
If you do need any help setting up the emulator, don't hesitate to get in touch.
Good man! It aint a top down retro review without badlands >:) but yeah ya right, bot the best on st.. always used to miff me off having the spectrum version, because the back of the box showed the ST and amiga versions!! XD
What was it like on the Speccy?
@@thejoyofsticks Slow XD bad frames, unresponcive but its all we could afford lol spectrum was such a russian roulette in terms of quality back then. Menu music and sound effects were great imo though lol
Russian roulette! But with colour clash. That made me chuckle. You did get some amazing conversions, too. I think it just depended on the coder. Some were absolute wizards.
@@thejoyofsticks Absolutely agree and games specifically designed for the speccy were even better. I know alot of new aged gamers dont agree but I still love dizzy XD We had ALIENS which was a FPS before DooM... still have it but i don't think the powerpack works anymore.
Need a Thalion games tier list next 😄.
Hey, that’s not a bad idea, you know!
@@thejoyofsticks yeah, both some greats, and some questionable un their library.
I really enjoy top-down racers, so this was a really interesting viceo.👍 Jupiter's Masterdrive looks really good, so I'll give it a go. Super Off Road looks like a very good port, so it's a shame the gameplay is spoiled by having stupid difficulty spikes. Indy Heat is great, despite being too easy. Super Sprint is a totally awesome conversion that made Amiga owners jealous back in the day.😁Nitro is a decent game, but I've always found the gameplay quite frustrating. The Super Cars games are still really nice and well worth playing. Super Grand Prix truly is an abomination.🤮 Mean Machine looks pretty nice, but is really poorly designed.😟
Glad you enjoyed it! Sounds like we are in agreement about the rankings of these games. Let me know how you get on with Jupiters Masterdrive. I was nicely surprised by its quality and I’m looking forward to playing it again soon.
Super Sprint my fav
Yes, mate! 💯
Some great games there many hours of fun ..gotta put super off road at the s tier for me ..difficulty can be sorted with a shit ton of nitros lol
Yeah… maybe I just need to ‘git gud’. 😂 It’s not the first time I’ve struggled to enjoy a Graftgold game because it’s too difficult. (Probably won’t be the last!)
@thejoyofsticks the level of detail in super off road ,always amazed me ..OK maybe it has a slight oil painting effect ,the closer u get the more it looks like a blur of pixels..but even today I just love the game ,and gotta say for an arcade conversion wow 👌
Definitely a game that benefits from playing on a CRT. The tracks look amazing with the natural anti-aliasing effect. I'm going to give it another go with your nitro strategy! 👍
@@thejoyofsticks can't beat crt ,not only does it look better but it's nostalgic and just feels right
Night time driving in Nitro was infuriating but the headlights thing was really appealing for some reason 😊 was this a power pack game ST Format offering, I can’t recall? 🚗
Such a cool implementation of a cool idea. It did compound an already irritating problem, though. It was already difficult to memorise where the tracks went! Nitro definitely wasn't in the Power Pack, but it might have been in a different bundle.
@@thejoyofsticks It must of been a demo on one of the hundreds of ST Format disks I had shoved in a drawer then :D Thank you once again for a super nostalgia trip; I don't think I have thought about this game for several decades!
You are most welcome. I love the thought of these silly videos helping people to relive happy memories. 👍
It's funny how much we disagree about games. Super Sprint better than both Super Cars? Oh well.
I wish I really wish I liked more overhead racing games of the 8-16-32 bit era. Only a handful I like. Funny thing is on this very limited "list" of mine is the 1979 SEGA game Monaco GP.
I am quite surprised I never even heard of the first game from Ubisoft. I need to try it.
As I said, I don't like this type, for more or less a combination of short view range, narrow tracks, collision detection, slow controls, short tracks, unfair A.I. cars which don't suffer when hitting your car, etc. There are exceptions at some level, or games which are so good that I tolerate them (like the Super Car series, International Truck Racing (played it?) and barely Badlands), but overall no thanks.
I am glad someone mentioning BMX simulator is a bad bad bad bad bad game. Also the only one that I remember which had a game progressing bug where your bike can get stuck with no way to proceed.
I love the graphics though. Still an E for me, not even close to a C.
Thanks for the video!
Life's rich tapestry, Trusty! Or in other words, we can't all be right. 😉
Monaco GP looks great. Did the original arcade have LED numbers to show timers etc. The emulated version I've seen pops them on the side of the screen. Can't be many arcade games that have that.
I wasn't aware of Jupiter's Masterdrive either until I started this channel and some viewers spoke about it in the comments section, so grateful for that. It's actually really decent. Let me know what you think of it.
You mention the unfairness inherent in these games and I wish that's something I made more of in the video. You are so right. It is really frustrating when your collisions are game ending, but the CPU cars just brush it off as if it is nothing.
Someone else mentioned International Truck Racing, and it looks really fascinating. There aren't many truck racing games out there for a start (remember Sega's 18 Wheeler?) so I'm gutted I missed that. I might need to make an addendum video further down the line!
@@thejoyofsticks I don't remember the lights of Monaco GP. I haven't played it since the 1980s and while I remember the game, the cabinet not so much.
Yes ITR is good, I definitely liked it when it was new. Far from perfect, but still very much fun. I did a video on it on my main channel, but as all my retro videos there it is now set to private. I recommend you give it a go, you might like it. Probably not.
Cheers, mate. I will!
I thought about Ivans Iron Mans Stewards Super Off Road just the other day, wanted to check it out, from fond arcade memories but could not remember its name. Thank you Joy of Sticks. I found it! shame about the difficulty spikes. Does the other systems home ports have the same issue?
It's all part of the service. o7
I don't remember the Megadrive version having that issue, but then I always played that in 2 player, so that might have ameliorated the problem.
I tried Amiga version on my WiiU (I know I know..), and it's the same ridiculously difficulty, if I'm right...
That's a shame. (about the difficulty, not your frankly bizarre choice to play the Amiga version on a WiiU 🤣)
@@thejoyofsticks Playing 16 bit home computer games on your sofa or your bed is nothing that bizare, except that's Amiga 😅 My ST Is somewhere in the limbo, ho that shape and that smell... humm
Well, if you put it like that it all makes sense. Sofas make everything better.
S is for Super Sprint!
And D is for Codemasters apparently! :D
What is the really late 96? Or later over head racer
The ST was pretty much dead by 1996, so I don’t think there were any commercial releases, but maybe a homebrew game? In 2016 there was F1 GP Circuits?
I did see that Karting game you mentioned. Zeusdas did a Sh*t game time for the Amiga version which looked pretty poor but I saw the ST version onan Ashens video and oh boy, is it bad. Not only would it rate the lowest tier I reckon it could even rate being lower than lowest, if you get a chance take a look at both videos. The Amiga version is what the ST version should have been like at the very least, but what you guys got was unforgivable as the ST was capable of far better (as the wonderful conversion of Super Sprint clearly shows).
No way! Does it feature in Ashen’s Flickering Skeletons book? I’m definitely going to have to get it working now.
lill-a-pew-shun.
lol What did I say? Did I mispronounce it? 🙄😄
🤣Just watched it back... kill me now.