Star Raiders - missing Video Touch Pad cover

[DiggDugg]

I wanted to play Star Raiders earlier today, since I haven't played it in several years, but I realized that I have lost my cover. Does anyone have a website os a scan of one. I would greatly apreciate it.

[Albert]

Hi DiggDugg and welcome to AtariAge. You can find a scan of the Star Raiders overlay here. Hope this helps!

 

..Al

[ubersaurus]

You should resize it to the size of the touchpad. Although it is something one can do manually, which I did do ;p

[Lemmi]

heh i just made my own useing paper

 

this was before i has a computer, but since i have no printer, i still have to make my own stuff by hand

[DiggDugg]

Thank you all for your quick replies. I wasn't really expecting a reply this quickly. Thanks again.

[Jack-Ass Tramiel]

On a separate but related note, the layout of this overlay always bugged me. Why didn't they arrange the buttons in a neat cross-hair pattern, instead of the boring "first five buttons on the keypad" arrangment? For example, put Gal Map in the center, then have the button above be Fore View, the button below be Hyperwarp, the button to the left be Computer On/Off and the button to the right Shields On/Off. Then the rest of the layout should have been prettied up with some cool graphics that make the keypad look like the control panel of a star fighter cockpit.

 

There were many instances in the design of the Atari 2600 (from Atari, not from those like Activision) games that made me conclude that most of these programmers were not artists, did not have artistic design skills, nor had interest whatsoever in executing design sense. (Look at the graphics to Galaxian, Mario Bros. and Pac-Man.) Star Raiders' keypad layout to me is just another frustrating example of a "eh, whatever" design sensibility.

 

J-AT

[Albert]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jack-Ass Tramiel:

There were many instances in the design of the Atari 2600 (from Atari, not from those like Activision) games that made me conclude that most of these programmers were not artists, did not have artistic design skills, nor had interest whatsoever in executing design sense. (Look at the graphics to Galaxian, Mario Bros. and Pac-Man.) Star Raiders' keypad layout to me is just another frustrating example of a "eh, whatever" design sensibility.

---

 

You have to keep in mind that this was still a pretty young industry and Atari was, for the most part, breaking new ground. The 2600 doesn't have great graphics capabilities, and it would be a while after the system was introduced that programmers could tame this wild beast to the point where having a graphic artist would become more important. I imagine Activision was probably the wake up call for Atari in this department.

 

And Atari certainly didn't do a great job designing ergonomic controllers over the years. I think they got lucky with the 2600 joystick, because their later efforts (until the Jaguar) were subpar. So I'm not really too surprised that they simply used the first five buttons on the keypad controller for Star Raiders, rather than thinking through the process, "What would be the most convenient arrangement of buttons for the user while playing the game?" At least Atari did include the controller and overlay, as opposed to dumbing the game down further to make it work with a single joystick.

 

..Al

[Paul Slocum]

Also, it's easier from a programming perspective to read 2 rows instead of 3 or 4. Reading a keyboard row involves writing to a register, then implementing an annoying delay for a pretty significant number of cycles, then checking registers to see if any keys on that row are pressed.

 

-Paul