FASTER for Atari STE
A downloadable game
This is FASTER, a brand new super-fast and silky-smooth 2.5D racing game built from the ground up for the Atari STE using modern tools, techniques and knowledge.
1st place in the Silly Venture 2024 WE Atari ST/STE games competition!
- 50 frames per second racing action on an 8MHz Atari STE
- 15+ large, full-colour sprites on screen drawn by Blitter chip
- 30+ colours on screen from enhanced STE palette
- Full 24 hour day/night cycle
- Simultaneous digital engine noise, sound effects and YM soundtrack
- Screen shaking effect courtesy of STE hardware scrolling
Don't expect endless game modes, achievements, tutorials or cutscenes - this is pure, unfettered and uncomplicated 1980's-style arcade action.
Please note that the game is freely distributable and I don't ask for any money. The most important thing to me is that people enjoy the game and spread the word! Following my socials is great, but if you can post playthroughs or reviews of the game on Twitter, YouTube, community forums etc, that would be particularly appreciated!
Download
Install instructions
Note: If you want to play this game on hardware other than an original Atari STE, you'll need a special application called an emulator to play the game. Steem SSE and Hatari are the most well-known emulators for this purpose.
System Requirements
- Atari STE (not compatible with STFM, even if a Blitter is installed)
- 1 Megabyte RAM or more
- Atari TOS or EmuTOS (note that TOS 2.* requires 2 megabytes RAM)
- Double-sided floppy drive (or equivalent - e.g. Gotek)
- Joystick in port 1
Note 1: not currently compatible with Falcon, but might be compatible in a future version. Unlikely ever to be compatible with TT as it has no blitter :)
Note 2: The game is primarily targeted at UK/European systems with PAL 50Hz displays. It may work correctly on US/NTSC systems but has not been extensively tested under such conditions.
How to play
- Download the ZIP file and use a suitable "unzip" utility to extract the files
- Plug digital joystick into port 1 (note: Jagpad currently not supported)
- Insert FASTER disk (or disk image), switch on/reset STE and wait for title screen (with 'Press Fire' prompt)
- Press fire to start game
- Controls are up/fire to accelerate, down to brake, left and right to steer
- Drive for as long as possible before running out of time.
Comments
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Que hermoso juego
Thank you!
thanks a lot fot this amazing great game for our STEs very fast, playable and addictive, I hope i'll be able to make it running on the Falcon...
You should be able to get it "sort of" working on the Falcon, albeit with some glitches. Without direct access to Falcon, it's hard for me to get it working any better...
Holy crap this is awesome I need a couple of days to myself!!! :D
Until that happens, is there a cheat mode? I am certainly not as good as I used to be...
Thanks! There's no cheat mode I'm afraid :)
YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, a retro game without a trainer? 😂
Anyhow, thanks so much for this, and congrats for the achievements!
Ha ha! Maybe a cracking group will be along at some point to put an intro and trainer on it!
Great game - amazing work. Here is my tribute...
Thank you for making the video! It looks like you're using a US TOS version and both the game and music are running a little too fast as a result. Use a 50Hz UK TOS for best results :)
Excellent game JT. Great sense of speed and of the car having some weight, like when you bang into the back of another car. Great controls - it's a joy to weave in and out of the traffic. The music is awesome too - fits really well. The engine sound was also a great choice.
Thanks for the feedback, and glad to hear you're enjoying it!
very good
Couldn't wait until this PM :-) Just launched the .ST floppy image directly on my Atari STe using Petari P's virtual floppy functionality on his latest HD Driver. Straight forward easy to play fun arcade game. Motion visual is really good :-)
Thank you very much for a new game specifically exploiting the capabilities of the STe. Just downloaded - hope to play it out later today on my real machine.
Thanks Paul - look forward to hearing what you think! The STE is a very misunderstood machine :)
Just popped this onto the Mister tonight and it's really really excellent !:)
Thanks - glad to hear it works on the Mister and glad you enjoyed playing it!
Game looks amazing, but I can't start it with Hatari emulator. After the title screen the emulated atari give me a "Panic: Bus error" message on screen.
I'm using ad Atari STE with EmuTOS 1.3.0
I used TOS 1.62 and it worked fine. It wouldn't work for me with TOS 2.06
I think I got a similar error in Hatari with EmuTOS 1.3 and 1MB RAM. I could start it if I bumped the RAM higher.
EmuTOS seems to work fine for me.
Absolutely brilliant game, love the hint of WEC Le Mans in it!!
Great video ... thanks for making it and helping to get the word out there!
No worries well deserved!!
Great game, thank you.
Thanks for making the video! It looks like the colour changes aren't working correctly - is this on some kind of emulator or FPGA?
I'm using Hatari emulator, I've already corrected the color, I hope it's OK. I don't know what else I could change.
Looks perfect - thanks for updating!
Thanks.
Awesome game!
Excellent, thanks for making the video! Is it running on a US TOS version? The game itself and music are running a little too fast and the engine sound is distorted :)
I used the Hatari emulator and EmuTos.
Thanks for clarifying! It looks like EmuTOS comes in both UK and US language versions (amongst others). You'll want to use the UK variant for best results :)
I have improved the gameplay - I hope the sound is now reproduced well.
I'd like to talk about this on tomorrow's recording of This Week in Retro. Do you mind if we use clips from your youtube video?
Thanks for spreading the word! You're most welcome to use clips from the video.
I played this at the Atari party in the US this weekend, and it was great! People loved it. I'm looking forward to running it on my own hardware!
Thanks - glad to hear people enjoyed it! It was really good of Peter to exhibit it at the Atari party, and it gave the ST some much needed exposure in the North America region!
A couple of extra observations:
I had trouble getting the .st image onto a floppy, which is 99% likely to be me working my greaseweazle incorrectly. But I dropped the .st file onto a USB drive, hooked up a gotek in the STE on my bench, and copied the files onto hard drive. Then hooked up a real floppy drive to go in the opposite direction: put the files on a floppy.
Upshot: the game actually runs great from the hard drive anyway! credits.prg bombs out from HD -- I figure because it's looking to call right into the game program which is in the wrong place -- but the game itself runs a-okay for me.
This machine also has an exxos 32MHz booster in it. Good news, the game runs fine under acceleration. One thing that I can't quite put my finger on is that the audio maybe glitches a little in this mode, but I don't have a side-by-side recording of that vs. the audio with the CPU clocked at 8MHz to convince myself. It does make me aware that there are probably some fixes I could make to this machine to improve the audio: in general, I get a few clicks and whistles that I don't want.
Otherwise, I tested exclusively on TOS 2.06, UK-english version on a 4MB STE.
If I were to want one feature, I think it would be a toggle for the chip music. The engine noises are a little low in the mix for me, and I kind of want to hear those good engine noises over the chip music!
Incredible work all round. Really happy to see this out.
Oh also: I realise the Falcon isn't a target, but it almost works. Attached a couple of photos.
Glitchy pixels! Including a strip along the horizon. And the tinny internal speaker didn't do anybody any favours, so I'm not sure how faithful the audio was. Those things aside, it booted and played smoothly so the core mechanics are good!
Thanks for your feedback! I have made some attempt to get the game running on the Falcon in this initial version - it attempts to disable the 68030 caches on startup. But it's hard to take things any further without direct access to Falcon hardware as emulation isn't really up to scratch :(
TT has enough horsepower to do by hand what the blitter would do.
That's very true. Just need somebody sufficiently motivated to write "Blitter emulator" code for the TT now, and test it on real hardware.
The source will be released in the coming days if you fancy having a go :)
Doesn't run from harddisk ?
You should be able to make it work from hard disk with a bit of tinkering. But I don't have a hard disk so my interest is mainly in single floppy auto-booting games.
Any chance of a .zip of the files? I tend to just fire things over to the Atari straight to HDD, am not really setup with disk images :(
I don't have any plans to provide this directly, but you could do something along the lines of opening the disk image in an emulator and then copying the files over to a GEMDOS drive on the host filesystem.
Ah yeah, that's a good point! Will have a play tonight for sure :)
Happy to report this runs fine off my (messy) STE with c't IDE interface + 128MB Disk on Module:
Just copy lemans.prg from the auto folder on the floppy to your partition of choice.
Just tried it on the MiSTer, runs very nicely ineed! Well done Jonathan!!!
Thank you! Glad to hear it works correctly on the MiSTer!
Awesome game Jonathan, a milestone for Atari ST computers!
Thank you! Hoping to get the word out far and wide so that everybody knows that the STE is actually quite good after all!
If this had come out back in the day a whole lot of things could have worked out very differently! Kudos to you.