The 10 Best Atari ST Games [Ranked]

The Secret of Monkey Island

To call this game revolutionary would be an understatement. The Secret of Monkey Island is one of the best adventure games of all time, and its influence can be felt to this day. I still go back to play it every odd year, just to feel the nostalgia. 

Pirates were a big thing in the 90s. Come to think of it, that sentiment never went away. They're still one of the coolest things ever. One of the most memorable games of the 90s was The Secret of Monkey Island. A pirate-themed point-and-click exploration adventure game that puts us in the shoes of Guybrush Threepwood, an aspiring pirate with just about the worst luck a human being can have.

I constantly tell my friends that this is one of the best 90s games of all time, yet none of them are willing to go back and try it out for themselves. Their loss I guess. It's a damn shame though. Point-and-click games aren't what they used to be. They used to be the best way to tell a compelling story, nowadays, that role's been delegated to the open-world adventure genre. Lame!

Prince of Persia

The Atari ST had many cool games, however, few Atari ST games managed to reach the levels of epicness that the first Prince of Persia had.

It didn't matter whether you were playing on the Atari ST or on another platform for that matter, as it was still fundamentally the same game. And a great game at that. It was one of the earliest games to introduce parkour as a mechanic before parkour even became a cultural phenomenon. The later entries perfected the formula. To this day I still believe Sands of Time is one of the best parkour games ever made.

Back to the first game. The reason Prince of Persia is considered one of the best Atari ST games is because of how simple it was, all while being perfectly exhilarating. The game puts you in control of the unnamed hero whose task is to rescue the Princess and kill the evil Vizier in the final fight. Simple, yet captivating.

Sid Meier's Civilization

The Civilization series is now seen as one of the best games of the 2020s. Frankly, few other games have had such a successful sequence of launches as the Civ series has. And it all started in 1991.

In 1991, the first entry into the Civilization series was released. The game revolutionized the turn-based strategy genre and infected us all with the "one more turn" virus. I still haven't been able to get better because of it. This only got better once the second game was released, but that discussion is for another day.

What made Civilizations stand out so much? What made it one of the classic games of the 90s? Honestly, I think It's all because it's simple yet addictive formula. It give the player just enough agency during his turn, but don't give him too much agency. Thus, you're locked in an eternal cycle of lying to yourself that it'll be "just one more turn." Yeah right!

Carrier Command

In my opinion, Carrier Command 2 is one of the best military games of the last few years. That game wouldn't have existed if it weren't for Carrier Command 1. I still can't believe they managed to pull this off in 1988?!

Carrier Command 1 does something that is still mindblowing to this very day. Frankly, it's even more mindblowing nowadays looking back at it. It makes me question myself: "How the hell were the developers able to pull this off in the 80s?"

The game puts you in control of an aircraft carrier, with everything that entails. From a variety of aircraft to multiple stations. This game is anything but an arcade game. I'd honestly even consider it one of the first military simulators. Making it all work is a sublime sight that is still impressive, some odd 45 years later.

Turrican 2: The Final Fight

Contra might have set the bar for side-scrolling shooters, but Turrican 2 raised it!

In the late 80s, Contra was all the rage. It was notoriously difficult but exceedingly fun. Turrican 1 came out at the turn of the decade to compete with the Contra series, but it simply couldn't hold its own against the behemoth that was Contra. However, that all changed when Turrican 2 came out.

The Atari ST version of Turrican 2 proved that PCs can also be used to play side scrollers. And in certain cases, they were even the superior option. Turrican 2 pushed the boundaries of what a side-scroller shooter should be. It had an amazing atmosphere. Great gameplay, and a captivating story. Everything was better in Turrican 2, which is why it's remembered as one of the best Atari ST games of all time.

Dungeon Master

Dungeons and Dragons had been a relatively niche hobby in the 70s, but by the 80s it was in full swing. And what better medium to experience the DnD experience than through video games?

Dungeon Master was just that experience. It puts you in the shoes of Theron, an apprentice tasked with delving deep into the dungeon and recovering the lost staff of your master. To cut a long story short, your master needs this staff to resurrect and defeat the big baddie of this game yadda yadda.

The neat thing about Dungeon Master is that it was one of the first real-time games with a DnD setting. Most other DnD games at the were turn-based, so this was quite unorthodox. A gamble that ultimately paid off, as it's considered one of the best Atari ST games of its era. As a DnD nerd, I'm glad this game exists. If it didn't we wouldn't have gotten many of the amazing DnD-inspired games that came out in later years.

Falcon

There's something about flying a state-of-the-art jet aircraft that's just so appealing to a child's mind.

Hello, I am the child in question. You can never go wrong with a military arcade game. Especially one centered around the F-16 Falcon, one of the coolest aircraft to ever exist. Falcon puts you in charge of an F-16 Falcon as you go through a series of challenges. Usually "go there, bomb that." Simple and fun.

What wasn't simple however were the controls. At the time, Falcon was realistic enough to be considered a simulator. Nowadays, not so much. Simulation technology has advanced quite a lot in the last 40 years, but for the era, this was one of the best Atari ST games, bar none.

Xenon 2

Xenon 2. Man, what a weird game. No, I'd even go so far as to call it an experience, rather than a game.

There really is no other way to describe this game than weird. But in a good way. It's one of the most atmospheric games ever made, despite its simplicity. It's a vertical-scrolling bullet hell-type of game. It's notable for having a very peculiar aesthetic design, as well as a strange music composition.

Still, it's a pretty cool game. One of the best Atari ST games even. It's a bit janky for 2020s standards, but what can you do? At the time, it blew kids' minds. Everyone who had an Astari ST wanted it on their system.

Hunter

Hunter is a weird adventure game that came out in the early 90s. It was strange even at the time, however, the Atari ST version really pushed the technology of the time. Which was the most impressive thing about the game.

The game puts you in control of a nameless soldier. Based on which game mode you chose, your objective would be different. You could either be tasked with hunting down the enemy general, military objective sabotage missions, or assassination missions.

Hunter was quite impressive in that it had a fully 3D world to explore and interact with. Most of the objects and characters in the world could be interacted with. A feat that many games struggle to achieve to this day.

Maniac Mansion

Maniac Mansion was basically "cliche slasher movie the game," and that's why it was so awesome.

The game was a point-and-click adventure game set in a haunted mansion. You play as a group of teenagers up to no good. The setting literally cannot get any more cliche than that, and yet, it always gets you! It always gets me at least.

Long story short. Some of the teens get eliminateed, you have to discover and stop the big baddie from eliminateing more people. Yadda yadda, you know how the story goes. In the late 80s, there weren't that many Atari ST games yet, so Manian Mansion really stood out as one of the best Atari ST games of the time.