Their Story: The Atari ST, James Norris' Timeless Passion for Retro Computing and Music Production
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In a world dominated by the latest technology, there’s something uniquely captivating about the machines of the past,...
Ilmenit, known for his impressive size coding intros and the game "Adam is me" just released a first version of his cross-platform music tracker for composing sample-based music targeting Atari XL/XE 8-bit computers.
Features as stated on Github:
- 3-channel polyphonic playback using VQ-compressed samples
- 3 octaves (C-1 to B-3) with pitch control via 8.8 fixed-point multipliers
- Pattern-based sequencing with variable-length event encoding
- Real-time audio preview that closely matches Atari hardware output
- Export to Atari executable (.XEX) via MADS assembler
- Self-contained project format (.pvq) with embedded samples
- Multi-format audio import — WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, M4A, and more
- Timing analysis to verify IRQ cycle budget before export
- Optional per-note volume control (at lower sample rates)
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- Written by: 505
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Thorn writes:
We played some great rounds in the ST Offline Tournament (STOT) on atari-forum.com in 2025, and we all had lots of fun! 
As well as playing and scoring, the STOT aims to support new releases and provide feedback on them.
That year, we played five rounds of new or updated versions.
- S07R01: Faster
- S07R02: Chroma Grid
- S07R05: Randominer STOT version
- S07R07: Yoomp!
- S07R09: Defender
- S07R09: Invasion of the Emerald Sourcers
The STOT version of Randominer was also a premiere, being the first game to feature the STOT logo. I hope there will be more to follow.
Players had enough time to get to know these games well.
For the first time, STOT held a poll to vote for:
'Players' favourite new STOT game of the 2025 season'.
STOT has some great judges, so we hope this award will provide valuable feedback.
The voting period was 14 days. 
The winners are:
1. Faster and Yoomp.
3. Chroma Grid and Defender.
5. Randominer (STOT version)
6. Invasion of the Emerald Sourcers
Thanks to everyone who releases ST games. Please continue. We will prioritise any STOT-compatible release for playing ASAP (possibly as early as next month).
Winners will receive a medal to use on social media.
þorN^pionierwerk
🔗 ST Offline Tournament on Atari-forum.com
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- Written by: Thorn
To conclude a remarkably busy January, here’s yet another game that has surfaced for the Atari ST.
This one is a rediscovered unreleased 1991 game from Level 9, the classic adventure game software house. Details of this one came from ‘Games that Weren’t’ a link is at the end of this article.
‘Grange Murders’ is a complex detective adventure, utilising a Sierra Online style game engine developed by Level 9. They linked up with Cinemaware to publish the game, but unfortunately, financial issues hit both companies and the game was lost.
Until now!
The game assets have been rediscovered and made into a playable version.
Find out more about this lost and re-found treasure at:
Games That Weren't - Grange Murders
CiH - Atariscne.org - Jan 2026.
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- Written by: CiH
At some point in the 1980s 'sampledemos' where a big thing. People started to sample complete songs and put them on one floppydisk. If you are searching the tag 'sampledemo' on Demozoo (https://demozoo.org/productions/tagged/sampledemo/) you will find a lot. Well usually you did not had CD quality but what did we know back then?
Being not satisfied with his 1987 release, T'Pau decided to do a proper update for 2026 and uploaded it to youtube.
2026 edition of 'Male Stripper' by T'Pau
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Dune's Atari Jaguar game Xenowings is now available for free as a rom download.
The game will run on the real deal but also emulated by using Bigpemu 1.21 DEV version.
Xenowings gameplay video
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- Written by: Mic
Over the past weekend, the GERP 2026 party took place.
While GERP is traditionally an Amiga party, the "other platform" category is growing strong.
This year we saw Five Finger Punch doing their first bit of work for the Atari 800. A tiny intro entierly made during the party if we're correctly informed.
Then Django the Bastard, known for his truecolour rotozoom demo from last summer, strikes back with a challenge; The Knobhead Cup 2026. It's about rotozooming and it's showing off a new technique with a huge rotozoom using a 64 colours texture.
The Knobhead Cup 2026 by Django the Bastard on Atari STe
Finally SMFX and DHS brought an invitation intro for Sommarhack 2026 that presents this years special compo; 33 second demo. And as it so happened, the intro won the GERP 2026 other platform demo.
Short STe intro - Blink And You Miss It by SMFX & DHS
🔗 Imodium by Five Finger Punch (Demozoo)
🔗 The Knobhead Cup 2026 by Django the Bastard (Demozoo / Pouet)
🔗 Blink And You Miss it by SMFX & DHS (Demozoo / Pouet)
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The French GemTos ATARI based convention has now become something of a regular meeting after what, maybe 3 or even 4 succesful editions? Anyway here come some info about the 2026 edition to be held somewhere in May (no date announced yet). However it gives you some time to prepare a contribution for another friendly ATARI convention.
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- Written by: sts
In previous years, some of the Polish Last Party compo releases turned out to reveal as hidden gems. As I remembered some great Atari XL/XE pictures from last year (have a look - they are awesome!), I was already curious how the compo would turn out this time. And in this year's edition we also got a number of creative and quite nostalgic artwork again, many of them including references to the world of Atari 8-Bit.
Let's have a look:
"Cicho, bo się nie wgramy" by Piesiu (1st place)
Ninja - check, Boulder dash - check, Bruce Lee - check, Frogger - check, little clown on the left - no idea! ;-)
I took the effort and tried to get a translation for this: "Be calm, or we won't get in". Any interpretation of the motive aside, this is obviously another masterpiece by Piesiu presenting a combination of motive, graphical skill and color richness way above the level of graphics that were common during the classic Atari XL/XE era. I would have been blown away back then by the "photo realism".
After having read parts of mOdmate's Graph2Font guide, I suppose the color change of the area around Bruce Lee's chin downwards may be for technical reasons allowing to use the more violet and later green palette from there? Wild guessing, but anyway, amazing!
"Last Museum" by Rocky (2nd place)
A trip to this museum, puts us Atarisceners into perspective. What a hilarious and - somewhat - realistic idea and what masterful execution. Much work went into this picture obviously, with those detailed characters using so few pixels, the lightning and many little details to spot. The image has a great graphic adventure vibe, too (but more like a 256 color VGA one!).
So, dear reader, who do you prefer to be? I think being an industrial human just sucks! ;-)
Anyway, as long as creative pictures like those are delivered in Atari compos, the scene's heartbeat feels just right to me!
Spy vs. Spy by Rocky (3rd place)
What an extremely colorful picture reminding us to this odd couple of agents. Honestly, I always loved the original Spy vs. Spy game due to it's great comic like graphics and adventure like feeling but just as honestly, never understood what I was doing gameplay wise! ;)
Anyway, about the many colors, I can only guess: On first view, this looks like straight from an Atari Falcon demo (Absence's Joint Venture comes to mind)! But right, we are about 24 bit away from this platform. I suppose that "interlaced" mode helps to manage to put all the colors on screen? Or maybe it's just an artistic tool, who knows.
New Year Disc by Kaz (4th place)
Very nice picture, supposedly done for PPS's new years disk. Can you spot the NYD letters? Original idea and the dithering of the parts looks really nice. Kaz has also published working steps from paper sketching to the full picture on youtube.
Frozen Creatures Surprised by the Arrival of Hot FLOP #69 Discmag by Kaz (5th place)
The title says it all. Now there is no excuse to not release issue #69 of the Czech Atari XL/XE FLOP diskmag. And with some smart mirroring, the picture can then be re-used to motivate the FLOP team for issue #96, too!
Imaginacja by marduk-pl (6th place)
Rightfully stated, "Last party, not least". Watching this, a lot of memories are crawling back from my foggy long-term memory: Bruce Lee, Alley Cat, Zorro, Pacman, HERO, possibly Pirates of the Barbary Coast and who knows, there are surely more things to discover? A nice homage to the golden past!
Well, the hidden-gem-theory worked out again. And as usual, Last Party brought some releases in other categories as well, such as small size intros, games, musics and more. Feel free to investigate further via Demozoo.
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For those who are lucky to own the rare STBook, there’s exciting news: AndresPlaza developed a WiFi module for it. The board fits into the space that was originally intented to host a modem but it was never used for anything until now!
The hardware design and the software drivers are open source with more information available on GitHub.
Photo by Andres Plaza
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- Written by: Charon
Forewords: I have known Thadoss from fame as a Dune member for 3 decades. He has brought us several nice games and demos among others but more recently he has also amazed us all with Taedium Vitae, in my opinion already a classic Falcon demo that was released at the latest Sillyventure winter edition. This is the reason why I wanted to learn more about him in this first part.
As you may have guessed you can expect a second part that will be dedicated to this great demo. I thought it would be cool to invite both Jade (gfx) and Virgill (msx) to join him in this second part to share their thoughts about the making of the demo.
Before I forget, part one of the interview was carried in French and then manually translated by me, no AI implied here so that I will take full responsibility for my poor English. :) Now let's get started!
STS: Hello Thadoss, first question, an easy one to start with: can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Thadoss: Hi everyone. My name is Laurent Sallafranque, I am a 51 French man who lives by the seaside near Brest in Bretagne (west coast). I work as a risk manager in a bank company but I have also worked in various IT departments over the last 2 decades first as a coder then later as a project manager.
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It’s yet another release for the ‘Dead’ Atari ST scene this week.
This time, it’s a conversion of an old MS-DOS game from 1993, carried out by Baky, who has popped up in previous productions for 8-Bit and 16-Bit Atari. The game itself can be best described as a ‘Worms game, but needing careful forethought.’ There is a soundtrack from Tao, which dates back to 2005.
The basic mechanism is the same as worms, but the ‘worm’ is a train, with ever-adding carriages, as you pick up objects in the play field. The objective is to clear the screen and safely exit the screen. You can imagine this gets somewhat complicated with the later, more involved levels. The usual causes of death, from crashing into walls, turning into yourself, still apply.
This game has already been finished and released, with no changes, unless any really horrific bugs are found, according to Mikro, who has been promoting the release.
There is a link to http://www.atariportal.cz/news_detail.php?itmid=2001368 to download the game.
Also there is a video link from Saberman RetroNews to watch it in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRceE8UgtTE
CiH - For Atariscne.org - Jan 2026.
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Some time since he released his STE-fantastic racer, ‘Faster’, Chicane is now working on a new game for the Atari STE.
This is *not* a racing game, astoundingly, but features elements of ‘Thrust’ and ‘Crazy Taxi’. This is the provisionally named ‘Cavey Taxi’.
The player has to pick up and drop off passengers, threading their way through a mean and rugged looking cave system, battling time limits and fuel consumption. It remains to be seen if the basic premise is expanded upon, but the players rotating and manouvering skills will be heavily tested.
There is heavy usage of STE hardware, as hardware scrolling is there, along with a neat particle system for the engine thrust. The playing area looks fullscreen. There is currently no sound, but STE DMA effects would be expected.
The target system will be a 1MB STE. The game should be available for free download sometime in February or March 2026. We will bring more news as the story develops.
Link to Youtube to see it in (silent) action.
CiH For Atariscne.org - Jan 2026.
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- Written by: CiH
Back in July 2024 at the Sommarhack party, Cream released a massive music demo for ST; playing lots and lots of classic C64 music files on the YM-chip using their very impressive music driver that simulates almost everything the SID-chip can do (apart from filters). The demo then had several parts and even a complete version of the C64 basic ported to 68000 (yes, not emulated).
Fast forward one and half year, and the music from the demo have been transformed into SNDH-files that can easily be played stand alone on your ST: STay4Evr::SNDH Files
As a bonus, Cream have also thrown in all music files without their advanced music driver, playing them on the YM without timer interrupts. It's fun to compare the non-timer versions with the ones made in the 80's. Even with the same level of limitations there's a big improvement.
As if that wasn't enough, there's a second bonus; a demo to present the SNDH-pack! Featuring effects from the mythical Heftig demo that was seen already back at Error In Line 1999, still looking spendid!
💾 STay4Evr::SNDH Files at Demozoo
💾 STay4Evr::SNDH Files at Pouet.net
📺 STay4Evr::SNDH Files at Youtube
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We’re barely into the new year and we have some new gaming goodies from a Spanish enthusiast, Carles Orial.
This is an adventure game ‘Babaliba’, made for the ZX Spectrum by the Spanish software house, Dinamic and released in 1984. It has elements of Spectrum Classics, ‘Mazogs’ and ‘Sabre-Wulf’.
The author recalls that this was one of the first games he owned, first playing it on a black and white television and being astounded when he finally got to see it in colour.
He was so enamoured by this game, he set to work to convert it to his equally beloved Atari ST. First attempting this in Assembly language but switching to C coding.
The Author adds “I hope you enjoy my conversion. It was made with lots of love, lots of flowers , and INCREDIBLY BIG NOSES."
Here’s a link to the Github page:
CiH - Atariscne.org - Jan 2026.
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- Written by: CiH
An Atari STE sample demo made in STOS.
This one has appeared without any pre-announcement. Just one guy getting on with stuff and releasing it, I guess.
The functionally named ‘M.Lynn’, who made an STE Outrun music disc a while ago, has created this very ‘UK- Sceners of a certain age group specific’ release.
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It’s CiH here, with another short(ish) article for your enjoyment.
This text is about another of those long-hidden legacy sites, that still somehow exists and can still be used today, in this case for picture enhancement enjoyment.
I’m writing about the one-stop, multi-formatting image conversion shop which is atari.anides.de. This was created by ‘Anima’, aka Percy of Light, who was also responsible for several arcade to Atari conversions. The most memorable to me personally being Galaga 88 and Cho Ren Sha, but there were several other experimental projects at varying stages. (Will the Sharp 68000 PacMania conversion ever be finished?)
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Drygol, of retrohax fame, recently posted on atari.area forum that he is producing and selling 15x14cm plexiglass laser engraved plates that are lit up by a led lights base.
drygol mentions that he could not capture the real vibrance of the colours, so expect even better results up close.
If you're interested,use your favorite translation service on https://www.atari.org.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=323978 and read up on instructions on how to order.
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- Written by: ggn
Puckman, as the same suggests, is a Pacman-like game. In fact, it's more or less identical to the arcade version of Pacman, graphics, sound and all.
Coded by JC-DUSSE it incorporates some demo-techniques such as top/lower border removal and multiple STe PCM-channel sound.
The game was just recently updated to support Mega STe, previously it failed to detect the machine.
Puckman video by JC-DUSSE
🔗 Download the game at Itch.io
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- Written by: evldhs
Zerkmans Atari ST re-implementation for cheap development FPGA boards was just updated with exiting new features.
- GEMDOS harddrive; similar to virtual harddrives in emulators, you can use a folder in the underlying Linux OS as a harddrive for the ST.
- Mega ST realtime clock
- More drivers for WiFi and and ethernet networking
- Better compatibility with USB and Bluetooth mouse/joysticks
- Bug fixes in the extended fullscreen graphics modes
🔗 Check out the zeST project page
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- Written by: evldhs
The annual SNDH release schedule is on point and the 2026 archive is ready for download. 222 new or fixed files.
The 2026 release also brings the SNDH specification up to v2.2 with a couple of improvements;
- The TIME tag is replaced with FRMS. TIME was always a bit inaccurate, while FRMS measure exactly how many calls to do before loop/end. Almost all files have the FRMS tag, while only a small subset had the TIME tag.
- The FLAG tag is finally official which detail what hardware the track in question is using (MFP timers, STe PCM sound and so forth)
Furthermore many SNDH headers have been cleaned up with more uniform names.
As a bonus, here are some Atariscne.Org picks from 2025!
🎼 Get the archive and read about format upgrade at the SNDH site
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