A Look Back At Star Raiders 104
blacklily8 writes "Gamasutra has just published our history of Doug Neubauer's Star Raiders, a 1979 game for the Atari 8-bit that offered 'high-speed first-person perspective through a fully navigable 3D-like environment in just 8K of RAM (memory) and 8K of ROM (storage).' Designed by the creator of the Atari's POKEY chip, Star Raiders was a hit on its home platform but now seems to have fallen into obscurity: 'Star Raiders is a shining example of what happens when a developer is told that something can't be done, does it anyway, and then is promptly forgotten for having done it.' In addition to describing the game itself, the article focuses on its impact on later games such as Wing Commander, X-Wing, and Elite."
Video link (Score:4, Informative)
Video of the game on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlsdNKPYw0s [youtube.com].
The article managed to work in a Karl Marx quotation--and it actually fits!
Re:X-Wing marketing conspiracy (Score:5, Informative)
Boy, that Matt Barton sure did a lot to cover up his marketing tracks, like writing a book about vintage games [amazon.com] or being an assistant professor in Minnesota [gamasutra.com].
He's also listed right above the marketroid you mentioned [linkedin.com] - freak coincidence or the usual /. conspiracy?
You decide... (that is - if you've read that far...)
Re:Had it for the 800 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Glad I'm not the only one who didn't like it. (Score:5, Informative)
For the time, it was amazingly deep in terms of gameplay. I don't know what other real-time game you could even compare it to. You had several tactical views, you had to manage fuel, system-specific damage, the AI felt menacing (in terms of how it would home in on your starbases). Fuel wasn't just magic; you had to dock with a starbase to get more. The whole game was highly interactive in a real-time way: AI units would move when you were looking at the map view, you could veer off course in hyperspace and end up in adjacent sectors
I actually thought the visual side of things was fairly lame.
Re:That's no troll (Score:3, Informative)
It's not a troll to say you don't like Star Raiders. It is a troll to say "gameplay is pretty much absent", when the game is deeper than most other games of the time.