billkendrick Posted July 28, 2021 Share Posted July 28, 2021 Over on the AtariAge Facebook group, Daniel C. Avina (sorry if you're out here; I don't know your AA forum handle!) posted some photos of what looked like a photocopy of the Star Raiders manual, with the statement: "This small piece of history was in a recent lot I purchased. Looks like we could always use “more stars”." Welp, it turns out it's a pre-production copy of the Star Raiders manual, passed around for review by various departments! It includes a number of edit mark-ups, many of which made it into the final manual. I asked Daniel if I could share his photos on my "Star Raiders Tribute" website (first created in 1996!), and he agreed, and sent some cleaner photos. He's hoping he can get out his flatbed scanner and do a proper scan of them, as well. So, I've posted them, along with some commentary: http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/star-raiders/preprod-manual/ I'm a bit too tired to do an exhaustive review of every single page of this, versus the final version, but I took the time to look at and talk about the individual mark-ups, and any obvious changes I saw. (The cover of the manual calls it "STAR RAIDER", not "STAR RAIDERS"! I know that 'typo' variation exists on the cartridge label, and in fact was given one by a friend a few years back. It's apparently not rare, and the ROM inside is identical. But now I'm wondering whether the game's name changed somewhere along the way. I sent Doug Neubauer a note asking about this, via his website.) And, when/if Daniel can get me some cleaner scans, I'll post them on my site. If anyone happens to notice anything else worthy of mentioning, or if you know who's scribbles are who's, let me know and I can update the text on the page. Thanks & enjoy! (?pew pew!) 10 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billkendrick Posted July 28, 2021 Author Share Posted July 28, 2021 Also, as noted on the page, Daniel told me that he found this document in a lot he purchased, and the seller told him it came from an estate sale in the SF Bay Area. My morbid curiosity makes me wonder who passed away (and when) that had this in their collection... 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted July 28, 2021 Share Posted July 28, 2021 Cool - now that explains the labels not being a mistake. I guess they just chose to use them on early production carts rather than throw them away. I only just noticed (and it's in the final version) the time units mentioned as Centons in the Technical Information at the end (thanks BSG) yet elsewhere in the manual e.g. rank calculation they refer to seconds. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schnurrikowski Posted July 28, 2021 Share Posted July 28, 2021 Now that is interesting news! Thanks for sharing! I always wondered when Star Raider(s) actually was released. Now it looks like march 1980 is more likely. If you understand German you may check out my article about Star Raiders. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+hunmanik Posted July 30, 2021 Share Posted July 30, 2021 Earlier draft of the manual: https://archive.org/details/AtariStarRaidersDraftManual Looking to decipher the initialers on page two, I'm pretty confident about two of them: Micro- (Microelectronics) D.K. = Dennis Koble, who was Atari (Consumer) software manager at the time. Legal- SP = Skip Paul (Charles S. Paul), Atari corporate VP and general counsel at the time. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schnurrikowski Posted July 30, 2021 Share Posted July 30, 2021 28 minutes ago, hunmanik said: Earlier draft of the manual The game is called Star Raiders (with 's' at the end) earlier, interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivop Posted July 30, 2021 Share Posted July 30, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, hunmanik said: Earlier draft of the manual: https://archive.org/details/AtariStarRaidersDraftManual The first page says 5 July 1969. The next page says 21 June 1979. Fascinating. Edited July 30, 2021 by ivop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billkendrick Posted August 1, 2021 Author Share Posted August 1, 2021 On 7/30/2021 at 10:55 AM, hunmanik said: Earlier draft of the manual: https://archive.org/details/AtariStarRaidersDraftManual Looking to decipher the initialers on page two, I'm pretty confident about two of them: Micro- (Microelectronics) D.K. = Dennis Koble, who was Atari (Consumer) software manager at the time. Legal- SP = Skip Paul (Charles S. Paul), Atari corporate VP and general counsel at the time. Oh awesome! How had I not seen this before?! Adding a link Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danimal Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 Just saw this @billkendrick, I’ll get you the better scans I promised 😬 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted September 7, 2022 Share Posted September 7, 2022 I somehow missed this first time around. Now we have an explanation for what was thought to be misprinted cartridge labels. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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