Let us provide just a little reminder, that these two Atari STE/Falcon enhanced games with very classic apparance are currently subject to the ST Offline Tournament (STOT) on Atari-forum.com. Both games, "Williams defender" and "Invasion of the emerald saucers" have been released in their latest version in 2025.
Matt Lacey, the author of "Invasion of the emerald saucers", used DML's "Atari Game Tools" to create the game and takes part in the round as well.
Grab your joystick and join in whenever you like.
🔗 Read more on the current STOT Round at Atari-forum.com
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- Written by: 505
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Well known HDDRIVER by Dr. Uwe Seimet has been subject to discussion in various forums, articles on patches and tests regarding the infamous STE "DMA chip" in the past months.
However, the software received two updates in September and is now available in version 12.71. While the topic mentioned above has not been adressed, a lot of other new features are listed on the official website.
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- Written by: 505
Pawel Goralski aka Saulot (of Chosneck magazine fame) announced a new hardware extension.
Saulot writes:
NokturnFM are cartridges for your Atari ST (and compatible) that add FM sound capability to your system. See it as adding Adlib to your Atari ST since it has OPL2 (YM3812) or OPL3 (YM262-M) on board depending on cartridge type.
A lot of 8-bit and 16-bit systems used to have OPL options as well. There were Adlib / Sound Blaster sound cards for PC, computer peripherials on MSX computers, C64, arcade games as well as Yamaha synthesizers. Even Atari ST had it's own 'FM Melody Cart' with cost reduced OPL2 soundchip.
Here is an example video:
Diving into that Dune soundtrack by Stephane Picq is highly recommended btw :-)
From 8th September 2025 until 10th October 2025 12.00 C.E.T. both cartridges can be preordered on the project website. Production run is planned shortly afterwards.
🔗 Read more about the project on the Nokturnal website
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- Written by: 505 and Saulot
Swedish Atari User Club SAK is holding its HöST(h)ack meeting from 19th to 21th of September in Falköping.
Among the people on the visitor list we find beloved scene veterans from Sommarhack and many other interesting names, such as the Atari clone pioneers PeP (Vampire V4SA) and agralund (Raven), MRF (aka Mister Future - decade long lost musician of the group Paranoia), Atari developer gokmase or the Substation and Octalyser luminary Blade/New Core.
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Loïc Lété aka monos51 released a new game for Atari ST/E. It was coded in Devpac and is called "Hero Fantasy:The King's Sword".
As a nice surprise the title is featuring music by Dma-Sc! The requirements are 0.5 MB RAM and the game is said to work on all Atari ST/Mega/STE machines.
🔗 Read more and download Hero Fantasy: The King's Sword via itch.io
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- Written by: 505
Mega stylish Atari chiptune artist YQN/Hemoroids has been work-benching maxYMiser again and released a new song after quite a long break this year. Good to hear another of his fresh, jazzy and detail-rich and this time rather laid back compositions again. Download is possible via the Battle of the Bits page.
Along with the music video displaying a beautiful Atari SC1425 monitor this wonderful track must be a good start into the weekend!
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DML who is known for his amazing 3D engines had already shown us his progress in recreating Quake on a standard Falcon. Yet tonight another video showed what seems to be a Minecraft engine, still on a bare Falcon, no accelerator needed. At the moment there is no hint at a public release or further plans but check out the video yourself and show respect to his coding skills!
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STS : Hi Samuel, can you tell us about you in a few words?
Sam : Hi, my name is Samuel Blanchard, I am in my fifties and I am French (note of STS : the interview was originally carried in French then translated by me so that I should be blamed for any mistake). I have been a professional programmer for more than 3 decades, mostly coding C# and of course I have been working for fun on creating emulators and games since 2000 or so.
STS : what’s your own story with ATARI products? Something going back to teen years or a late revelation? What is your current setting?
Sam : It all started when I was a teenager. Back then I was lucky enough to get an Atari Ste, the computer I dreamt of. It was my 17th birthday present even though I shared it with my 16 year old brother. He was pretty unlucky however since I kept the beast to myselft and spent hours working on games, first in GFA then ASM 68K.
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The Polish paper magazine "Atari Fan" has published issue #8 during summer. As far as I know it was sold out quickly but can be obtained again on their website. The magazine was initiated by Vulgar/Cobra (RIP) years ago and is now published by Piotr "Piter" Krużycki and a team around him. Great to have another paper based Atari magazine.
There is also an English issue (issue #1) available in the web shop at the moment. There is a rumor, that Kroll created the layout of that one entirely on real Atari hardware, but that's not fully verified.
Atari fan also offers some nice Atari related products and gimmicks in their webshop.
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- Written by: 505
Zerkman updated his new resolution enhancer for ST "Shifter Inside" to Version 1.1.
The changes are:
- Removed the horizontal extension on STE medium resolution, because it does not work on the real hardware. Therefore, horizontal resolution is back to 640 pixels. The horizontal resolution in low resolution remains 336 pixels on STE.
- Support for software that uses MFP timers A and D, such as the MaxYMiser player. It will not work if timer B is used (Shifter Inside already uses it).
- Modified the source code so it builds on Devpac (contribution by Troed/Sync).
- Deactivated the blitter for graphics display. Thanks to Nerve/Ephidrena and GGN/KÜA^D-Bug for suggesting the method.
- Use of a replacement routine for mouse cursor display on TOS 1.02. This fixes a known bug that prevented the cursor to display correctly below the 327th line. Thanks to Thomas Huth for pointing me to prior work about this.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed a bug in screen buffer allocation (Invalïd screen buffer address after a resolution change.
🔗 Information on the Update Inside on Zerkman's page
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- Written by: 505
Fujisan is a sort of user interface replacement for Atari800 emulator, available for Windows, Apple and Linux.
The author, Paulo Garcia, describes it as follows:
"A modern frontend for the Atari800 emulator, providing a native desktop experience with full keyboard support, machine configuration, and authentic Atari behavior."
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- Written by: 505
Atari, as the company, was present at last Gamescom that took place in August in Cologne, Germany. The CEO Wade Rosen shared his thoughts on Ataris latest developments and future in several interviews:
After many disappointing brand owners in the past, one can say, the current one has some respect for the history, interesting ideas, taste and even community interest, as the acquisition of AtariAge a while ago indicates. And well, we got BBQ sauce!
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- Written by: 505
Last weekends Xenium party in Lódz, Poland brought a couple of remarkable Atari releases.
Foremost, the pretty active group New Generation striked back with another massive Atari Lynx demo (also in terms of storage requirements). It features several streamed soundtracks, 3D objects combined with parallax or overlay graphic effects - a watermark of New Generation releases on the Lynx. The demo ranked 1st in the oldschool demo compo. Congratulations!
It seems the Lynx platform is very suitable for these kind of "new school" demos while still having that certain "oldschool hardware" something, similar to Amiga 1200 demos.
🔗 Download and comment Unbound by New Generation on Demozoo
🔗 Download and comment Unbound by New Generation on Pouet
Furthermore MKM/Lamers surprisingly released a nice 256 byte intro for Atari XL/XE named Into the Void and ranked 2nd place.
🔗 Download an comment Into t he Void by MKM/Lamers on Demozoo
🔗 Download an comment Into t he Void by MKM/Lamers on Pouet
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- Written by: 505
Cyrano Jones patched the well-established ICD harddisk driver regarding the STE DMA bug, similar to the previous attempts with HD Driver done by Nerve/Ephidrena reported here at Atariscne.org. The beta is available for download and testing.
🔗 Read more and Download on AtariAge forum
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- Written by: 505
Our Belgian friend Lastic just put out more indepth Fujiama coverage on his website with lots of interesting views and photos. Enjoy!
🔗 Fujiama report on Lastic's website
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- Written by: 505
Too Lazy to Switch Down…
“I’m too sexy to switch down, too lazy to go oh three oh, too sexy to switch down, so lazy it hurts!”
Hi there Atariscners, this is an article of a *very* niche interest to a few people with very specific hardware. I hope I can make this sort of entertaining to more general readers on the way.
After a long time away, I’ve got a CT60 Falcon working again. This story was told here, over many words, a short while ago. You’ve all had enough of me going on about it.
I’ve been playing with it, of course. Trying to test and stretch the boundaries of what is possible. Maybe finding out something we weren’t expecting? And having lots of fun on the way of course!
For today’s textual excursion into the realms of the unfeasible, I’m looking at some selected Falcon 030 productions, which managed to run with the 68060 without (too much) complaining. It really is too much of a hassle to operate the 030/060 toggle switch on the back in this sweaty summer weather. That’s my excuse, anyway.
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- Written by: CiH
Read more: Running some Falcon 030 productions directly on a Falcon 060!
Electronics design veteran Suavek is working on a replica of the Falcon 030 motherboard. As a professional engineer with over 25 years of experience designing electronics for consumer and commercial products, Suavek is well positioned to complete the task and deliver a fully functional PCB. His background in working at PCB fabrication houses and performing various boards reverse engineering further increases the chances of success.
The project is being executed using industry standard tools, including Altium Designer. A full design rule check and ongoing synchronization between schematics and the printed circuit board are underway to ensure an error-free replica. The engineer estimates that the prototype board should be available within the next 2–3 months.
Suavek is also active in the retro computing scene, exhibiting annually at the VCF West shows in Mountain View, CA, where he displays rare vintage computers and his own electronics designs.
Check out the dedicated project website:
https://re-falcon.com/
The site also features Suavek’s extensive bio and is updated daily as project work progresses.
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- Written by: Suavek
Three people, relatively known in the Atari circles, after quite a few long discussions in chat rooms decided to record their thoughts.
According to the description of the published episodes (so far):
A bunch of nerds discussing and sharing anecdotes from a pre-internet computer subculture you might vaguely be aware of, focused on a computer platform you wish you had forgotten.
Background music by goto80.
They do not describe the format as "podcast", because it really was not conceived as such. Therefore the usual podcast tropes largely don't apply here. So far there's been one guest, and more are planned in the future, as well as episodes.
If all this sounds intriguing, the episodes are up on YouTube:
🔗"Peterbourough Cracking Crew"
🔗"Big in the youtube poop community"
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- Written by: ggn
The very faithful Defender arcade port to the ST/e/Falcon released earlier this year has been updated with a number of improvements, see the original release notes by sark02 below.
This version includes an overscan test page in the setup menu, so you can adjust your monitor to ensure you're seeing the full height of the screen.
Some other little graphical tweaks, the noticeable ones being:
- Make sure the thrust plume is erased when the player explodes.
- Remove a little graphical artifact whenever the screen is cleared.
- Make the blue color channel a little brighter to match the game.
- Start the RAM test with an authentic blue background.
Two files: ST is a floppy image. ZIP can be extracted to a hard drive.
Defender ST-port in action
📄 Check out the source repository
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- Written by: evldhs
Few weeks ago Atari programmer Vincent Rivière has updated the UltraSatan firmware, so now it is more compatible with more SD cards, especially recent 32 GB (SDHC) and 64 GB (SDXC) cards.
Always good to see the Atariscene adapting properly to the international storage market :-)
The firmware can be downloaded on the Jookie's website (the UltraSatan mastermind and creator).
Speaking of Vincent Riviére: in case you are capable of French language and interested in learning Atari ST Assembler programming or programming basics generally we recommend his Vetrocomputing youtube channel.
🔗 Download Ultrasatan Firmware 1.30 on Jookie's website
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- Written by: 505
