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Star Raiders is truly superb!


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Hi All,

 

well my XE console and games arrived yesterday safe and sound and am I impressed, this is my first experience of the machine (I'm a long term 2600 owner but never had an Atari computer).

Star Raiders is a truly awesome game, I have long been a fan of Starmaster & star raiders for the 2600 and recently got Phaser Patrol for the supercharger but XE 'raiders is in a different league.

I only wish I knew about this system back in the day!

Any how just wanted to share my joy!

Oh yeah and as an additional bonus the seller of the XE included a couple of unlabeled carts he found free, they turned out to be Ms Pacman and Miner 2049'er.

If I hadn't come down with a bloody summer cold this would have been one of the best days ever :)

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Star Raiders alone is worth getting an XL/XE for. It was the main reason I got my 600XL as a kid, rather than the Vic 20 or C64 like the rest of my friends. If you can find them, the 8bit Pac-man, Defender, Asteroids, and Demon Attack also have superb gameplay.

 

It would be awesome if someone would remake Star Raiders on a modern console. Perhaps adding a bit of an RPG element to it by allowing you to use the starbases to upgrade your ship or buy new ones. Maybe you could start out with a fighter and eventually earn yourself a capital ship, allowing you to take on bigger and bigger enemies. How cool would a Babylon 5 style capital ship battle be. So many possibilites. :)

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Well, BattleSphere is basically an updated Star Raiders. Of course, the Jag is going on 14 years now. ;)

 

I could never justify buying a Jag 'cause there were so few good games for it, so I missed out on Battlesphere. If they don't release an updated Star Raiders, maybe they'll start offering Jag games on the VC or Live Arcade. I can dream anyway. :)

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Hi All,

 

well my XE console and games arrived yesterday safe and sound and am I impressed, this is my first experience of the machine (I'm a long term 2600 owner but never had an Atari computer).

Star Raiders is a truly awesome game, I have long been a fan of Starmaster & star raiders for the 2600 and recently got Phaser Patrol for the supercharger but XE 'raiders is in a different league.

I only wish I knew about this system back in the day!

Any how just wanted to share my joy!

Oh yeah and as an additional bonus the seller of the XE included a couple of unlabeled carts he found free, they turned out to be Ms Pacman and Miner 2049'er.

If I hadn't come down with a bloody summer cold this would have been one of the best days ever :)

 

My absolute favorite game for any system is Star Raiders. I still remember getting the rank of Star Commander Class 1 and not having a camera to take a picture.

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Perhaps they should do a 'tie in' with a future Star Trek movie, Since the game itself is loosely based on star Trek (and text games like Hammurabi which existed on mainframes since the 60's) and call it something like Star Raiders, the next generation (Obviously under the Atari banner)

 

Didn't Atari release their own version of Hammurabi, called 'Kingdom'

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Perhaps they should do a 'tie in' with a future Star Trek movie, Since the game itself is loosely based on star Trek (and text games like Hammurabi which existed on mainframes since the 60's) and call it something like Star Raiders, the next generation (Obviously under the Atari banner)

 

Didn't Atari release their own version of Hammurabi, called 'Kingdom'

 

The game as it plays is really more of a mixture of the text-based Star Trek and a Star Wars/Battlestar Galactica action dogfight. It's neither all one or the other.

 

Something like Starmaster is more of a pure Star Trek insofar as the ship battles are more lumbering affairs.

 

I think the problem comes in when you try to bolt on a narrative. Then instead of a randomly arranged galactic map you have a series of "missions" where everything spools off in a predictable fashion. That's the Wing Commander formula that was adopted by Tie Fighter, X-Wing, Freespace, and all the others. At that point it just becomes a matter of learning the script and playing it over and over again until you master the right strategy. It just doesn't have the replay value of basic Star Raiders.

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It would be awesome if someone would remake Star Raiders on a modern console. Perhaps adding a bit of an RPG element to it by allowing you to use the starbases to upgrade your ship or buy new ones. Maybe you could start out with a fighter and eventually earn yourself a capital ship, allowing you to take on bigger and bigger enemies. How cool would a Babylon 5 style capital ship battle be. So many possibilites. :)

 

Interactive Magic had a DOS game called Star Rangers that was very obviously inspired by Star Raiders. Unlike Star Raiders, it had a "mission/scenario" format but within a mission the game basically played like Star Raiders. You left bases and warped out to engage enemy squadrons. In warp, you had to steer your way through a curvy shifting tunnel. Just as in Star Raiders, doing this badly would put you in the wrong place. As in Star Raiders, enemies would attack your bases and you had to defend them. This was more direct as you could actually see the bases taking hits and firing back. And yes, you could manage fuel and so forth by strategically docking with bases at opportune times. Also like Star Raiders, you had to choose when and where to engage the enemy for best effect. The best unlike Star Raiders bits allow you to attack enemy bases and capital ships so you could basically see what it was like to be a Zylon.

 

The only real flaw of the game was that it tended to be a bit on the easy side.

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Star Raiders was the "killer app" that convinced the parents to get me an Atari 400 back in 1981 or so... I remember going to Sears, they'd set up a 400 with Star Raiders, and it basically sold itself.

Exactly. Star Raiders sold the 400/800 to many people. It was, as you say, a "killer app".

 

This game is one of the most significant in the whole A8 library for that reason. Everybody should own this cartridge.

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This game is one of the most significant in the whole A8 library for that reason. Everybody should own this cartridge.

 

I own a Star Raiders variant for the 2600/5200/800/ST/Jaguar. I like collecting Star Raiders.

 

Star Raiders for the 400/800 (5200) is the best of all I think, though Battlesphere's "Alone Against the Empires"captured the game in a more modern setting. Check these videos out as they compare 1979 Star Raiders against the 2000 release of Battlesphere.

 

 

 

To mean I would love to see Star Raiders traditional graphics and gameplay with NETWORKING!! :)

(Many have threatened, none have delivered.)

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