Atari 520STfm Power Pack

Information

Genre

Various

Language

[unknown]

Controls

-

Players

-

Resolution

Low

Programmer(s)

[various]

Graphic Artist(s)

[various]

Game design

[various]

Musician(s)

[various]

Sound FX

[various]

Year

1989

Publisher

Atari Corporation

Distributor

Atari (UK)

Developer

[n/a]

Licensed from

-

Country

United Kingdom

Software

English

Box/Instructions

English

License

Compilation - Commercial

ST Type

ST, STe, 0.5MB

Number of Disks

15, Double Sided

Votes / Statistics

Rating: 7.6/10 · Votes: 39 · Downloads: 4,929 · Hits: 29,671

Additional Comments

Compilation

Includes: After Burner, Black Lamp, Bomb Jack, Bombuzal, Double Dragon, Eliminator, FirST BASIC, Gauntlet II, Music Maker, Nebulus, Organiser, Out Run, Overlander, Pac-Mania, Predator, R-Type, Space Harrier, Star Goose!, Starglider, StarRay, Super Hang-on, Super Huey, Xenon.

Screenshots (46)

Cover Art (25)

Instructions (33)

Ads (12)

Article (1)

Noticias

Trivia (3)

Origins

Introduced at Atari Show 1989 at the West Hall, Alexandra Palace, London

News

<br>Handing sales lead over to Commodore

In Atari UK's marketing manager Darryl Still interview at the retrovideogamer.co.uk he explained why Atari's most succesful ST sales booster ever became one of their biggest mistakes in European home computer history:

"Well, for a long time we were well ahead of the Amiga regarding UK sales and distribution. In the early days, developers were using ST as their main platform and just porting to the Amiga, so not taking any advantage of the extra few features the Amiga offered them. This meant there was no difference between an ST game and its Amiga port, meaning it came down to price, placement and promotion, which we were pretty good at.

Because there were more ST games, we had a distinct advantage for some time. In hindsight, and as a complete paradox, our most successful piece of marketing also became a complete present handed to Commodore. The STFM pack we put together with 20 odd free games was an amazing package and sold by the truckload.
What we had not thought through fully was the impact it had on developers. There was quite a backlash. Secret meetings and the like (which were never that secret!). They were unhappy that, us giving so many great games away with the machine meant there was no real incentive for the consumer to go out and buy any more ST games for some time after purchase…

So as a group they decided to support the Amiga more and started to use the extra features that could make Amiga games look 15% better than their ST versions. That really gave Commodore a leg up and was all our own making.

It was a big lesson for me. I believe that, much more than the often quoted STFM/STe incompatibility issues, was key point we handed the advantage over. The incompatibility thing was actually quite minor. We had thoroughly checked the top 100 or so games leading up to release, what none of us expected was for a small indie game from Kent called Kick Off to come from nowhere and be number 1 on day of STe release. That was unfortunate, but quickly and easily fixed compared to the earlier issue, which was a ride we could not turn back.
Source: https://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/rvg-interviews-darryl-still/

Comments (4)

• TronicOfEffect — 2 Jan 2020

  I have all these as RAW files if anyone needs them for this web site. --- Yes please, could you upload it to our FTP? Thanks, Marko

• Oma72 — 14 Dec 2016

  Yeah same here as my first console was the Atari 2600 then commodore 64 but when I bought the st with power pack I was in heaven. Still to this day I play the games on it

• Maartau — 28 Nov 2014

  Will be cool to get those dumps too :)...

• Fredrik Olsson — 17 Feb 2012

  This is where it all started for me. Got this for my birthday in 1990. Got me hooked on games, and Atari. Thanks to the the Basic development tool on one of the disks I also got hooked by programming. Allowing me to do work for the demo scene, and earn my living as an iOS-developer today.