Posted on May 21, 2023
Star Raiders for Atari 8-Bit: Blow Up Your Own Starbase
Occasionally, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed and about to lose a star war(s). That’s when you might as well go rogue and blow up your own starbases!
Star Raiders is a first-person space combat simulator for the Atari 8-bit family of computers. It was written by Doug Neubauer, an Atari employee, and released as a cartridge by Atari in March 1980. The game is considered the platform’s killer app. It was later ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Atari ST.
The game simulates 3D space combat between the player’s ship and an invading fleet of alien “Zylon” vessels. Star Raiders was distinctive for its graphics, which, in addition to various map and long-range scan views, provided forward and aft first-person views, with movement conveyed by a streaming 3D starfield as the player engaged enemy spacecraft.