Star Raiders (video game)



Star Raiders is a video game for Atari 8 Bit Computers developed by Doug Neubauer and released by Atari in 1979. Intended as an action version of the Star Trek Text Game, it is most notable for being one of the earliest examples of the "space combat simulation" genre, and is a clear ancestor to later titles like Wing Commander and X-Wing. Stanford University selected it in 2007 as one of the 10 Most Important Video Games Of All Time.

The game tasks the player with finding and destroying an invading enemy fleet of Zylons, while simultaneously defending his own starbases from them. The player wins by destroying all enemies; the game is lost if either the player's ship or all of his starbases are destroyed. After consulting a Galactic Map to see where the Zylons are, the player must then warp to the sector, then find and engage them in a first-person view. The player can repair ship damage by docking with a starbase.

At the end of the game, the player receives a rank and class based on the difficulty level, time taken, and number of starbases lost; only the most proficient players would earn the coveted rank of "Star Commander - Class 1".

The game was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and the Atari ST; the 2600 version came with a special touchpad controller. (This controller had a removable overlay, suggesting that it could be used in other games, but none were produced.) A graphic novel loosely based on the game was released in 1983. A sequel In Name Only, Star Raiders II, was released in 1986. A remake was released in 2011.

This game provides examples of the following tropes:

 * Bullet Time: Notable for being done completely unintentionally. When a Zylon ship is destroyed, the game draws an exploding cloud of pixels for several seconds. That maxed out the processing power of the Atari computer, so the game slowed down temporarily... which proved beneficial when there was a second Zylon ship nearby.
 * Camera Lock On: Played straight and subverted. If the player turns on his Attack Computer, the screen will automatically switch between fore and aft views to track the enemy. Subverted when the player is engaging multiple ships on both sides; the screen will rapidly flip between the two views, tracking each ship as they attack.
 * Cool Starship: Averted, as the player never actually gets to see his ship.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Your ship could endure multiple hits... at least until your shields were destroyed.
 * Deflector Shields: Although a single hit when the shields were down would instantly kill the player, daredevil pilots would engage the Zylons with damaged (flickering) or destroyed shields anyway just to avoid a time-consuming trip to a starbase.
 * Dolled Up Installment / In Name Only: Star Raiders II was originally a never-released Licensed Game based on The Last Starfighter. When the rights were lost, it was renamed to be a sequel instead.
 * Expy: One of the Zylon ship designs is clearly based on Imperial TIE fighters.
 * The Zylon basestars are even more blatant, and apparently the cruisers were based on a forward view of the Klingon battle cruiser.
 * Faster Than Light Travel: The only way to travel to a different sector.
 * Interface Screw: Happens if your long range sensors are damaged; you get both the regular view and a mirrored opposite, and must reconcile which image is the right one.
 * Killer App: Star Raiders was a genuine Killer App for the Atari computer line; many people bought the system just to play the game.
 * One Hit Point Wonder: The player's ship goes down in one hit from an asteroid or enemy photon. Fortunately, the ship's energy can retain a shield which changes hits from fatal to merely damaging some key component of your ship (at easier levels, there's a chance it won't even hurt). The shield itself is a damageable component, so you are at least two photons away from death.
 * One Man Army
 * Red Alert: A warning klaxon sounds whenever you warp into a sector occupied by Zylons.
 * Spiritual Successor: The Atari 2600 game Solaris was developed by Neubauer as an unofficial sequel to Star Raiders, and incorporated some ideas that were omitted from the original.
 * Rank Inflation: Getting a rank of "Star Commander" isn't enough; only the truly best players will get "Star Commander Class 1".
 * Streaming Stars
 * Subsystem Damage: One of the earliest examples of this trope. Your ship's shields, engines, weapons, targeting computer and scanners could be damaged or outright destroyed.
 * To be fair, the game would never destroy a combination of systems that left the player completely helpless; there would always be just enough systems (barely) functional to allow the ship to limp back to a starbase.
 * Video Game Cruelty Potential: Yes, you can shoot your own starbases. It takes just one hit to destroy them, too...