Star Raiders (original) ever ported?

[youxia]

It's easy to denounce these flawed ports now, and, sure, it'd be nice if they were better, but we should also remember the realities of the era. Many of these quick'n dirty jobs were done because publishers wanted to get something out pronto for a new machine on the market, and the devs also were still doing the OTJ-learning. That's how it was with any new micro. Even so,  back then did I not care much about ports of some old games, because it was all about the big next-gen stuff. In 1985 ST already got great ports of Sundog and King's Quest II, plus arguably the best Phantasie, and many great action games came later on.

[Keatah]

I never cared about ports either. In fact I always wanted something original and unique to a platform.

 

From what I remember, too many 16-bit games had slow action. Totally opposite of things like Demon Attack or Meltdown on the VCS. I can only guess that this was because 16-bit machines opened up more memory and encouraged blitting in their programming flow. That in turn encouraged the paper-cutout-like sprites and pasted-in sound effects. Both big distractions from the lean programming a few short years prior.

 

16-bit did appear to excel at games like SimCity and Carrier Command and other slow-moving realtime strategy games. Something the 8-bit rigs never really got a handle on.

[doctorclu]

Joust for the ST is amazing.  When CJ did the port of it to the Jaguar we found that all it needed was a good sound set.  The best mix is the Atari ST Joust and the Atari Lynx Joust sound in my humble opinion.

 

Moon Patrol CJ also ported to the ST.  It looks stunning.  Play-wise it is a little different, but not bad.   The front cannon shoots missiles instead of energy bursts.   And generally you fire that forward and it flies onward and does it's own thing.   Good for taking out a boulder on the other side of a crater you are about to jump.  Again, not bad, just a bit different.

 

Star Raiders ST, the "Speed of light: 186,000 miles per second is not a suggestion it's the law"   It's a fun enough game.  Like Star Raiders II on the Atari 8-bit it did not have the 360 degree vectors and target tracking like original Star Raiders.

 

Would be interesting to see 8-bit Star Raiders ported to the ST but you know, it was designed to play on the strengths of the 8-bit chip set so no matter what it would not be the same.

 

[Lostdragon]

10 hours ago, doctorclu said:

Joust for the ST is amazing.  When CJ did the port of it to the Jaguar we found that all it needed was a good sound set.  The best mix is the Atari ST Joust and the Atari Lynx Joust sound in my humble opinion.

 

Moon Patrol CJ also ported to the ST.  It looks stunning.  Play-wise it is a little different, but not bad.   The front cannon shoots missiles instead of energy bursts.   And generally you fire that forward and it flies onward and does it's own thing.   Good for taking out a boulder on the other side of a crater you are about to jump.  Again, not bad, just a bit different.

 

Star Raiders ST, the "Speed of light: 186,000 miles per second is not a suggestion it's the law"   It's a fun enough game.  Like Star Raiders II on the Atari 8-bit it did not have the 360 degree vectors and target tracking like original Star Raiders.

 

Would be interesting to see 8-bit Star Raiders ported to the ST but you know, it was designed to play on the strengths of the 8-bit chip set so no matter what it would not be the same.

 

Played sooo much Joust on the Atari systems... 2600 and ST. 

 

Wonderous game. 

 

 

Moon Patrol was another go to 2600 title for myself, but by the time it appeared on the ST, it felt very long in the tooth and the ST for myself was all about 3D worlds, something that couldn't be done justice on my old 8-bit micros. 

 

 

Any idea why they changed the gameplay slightly on the ST version?. 

 

 

A8 Star Raiders II looked gorgeous ?, but it wasn't Star Raiders when you sat and played it, name only. 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

I don't agree that the reason for some not so good classic game ports it is ST HW. Like lack of HW scroll, sprite support, or even PSG chip.

PSG or YM is not much different than what is in C64, and since CPU is much faster, it could be controlled with much less CPU time.

The reasons for bad ports were: lack of experience with programming 68000 CPU, ST HW, using TOS properly (and here to add not so good Atari DOCs) . Then, lack of time and motivation, interested only in doing it fast and getting money.

No HW scroll ? But there is CPU at least 6x faster than in C64, much more RAM, and yes, that can do fine scroll. Look games like: Terry's Big Adventure, Skidz, Heartland 2000 ... 

Bad playability is often caused by not so good controls, not well set manouevrability and like.

Maybe Uridium is best example: it has decent scroll (could be better), main flaw is that can not change ship direction and speed enough fast. That results in game being too hard, even with cheat. I made some improvements - like blitter aided scroll, but as more useful see changes done in how ship react on controls.

[Lostdragon]

5 minutes ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I don't agree that the reason for some not so good classic game ports it is ST HW. Like lack of HW scroll, sprite support, or even PSG chip.

PSG or YM is not much different than what is in C64, and since CPU is much faster, it could be controlled with much less CPU time.

The reasons for bad ports were: lack of experience with programming 68000 CPU, ST HW, using TOS properly (and here to add not so good Atari DOCs) . Then, lack of time and motivation, interested only in doing it fast and getting money.

No HW scroll ? But there is CPU at least 6x faster than in C64, much more RAM, and yes, that can do fine scroll. Look games like: Terry's Big Adventure, Skidz, Heartland 2000 ... 

Bad playability is often caused by not so good controls, not well set manouevrability and like.

Maybe Uridium is best example: it has decent scroll (could be better), main flaw is that can not change ship direction and speed enough fast. That results in game being too hard, even with cheat. I made some improvements - like blitter aided scroll, but as more useful see changes done in how ship react on controls.

Joe Hellesen was given the task of doing ST Uridium, no easy feat for any coder. 

 

Andrew Braybrook said he had gone to Chicago to kick off the ST version, by which I assume he means help get started and he admits himself it wouldn't of been easy, even for him to code. 

 

 

 

He seems to be of the mindset more time should of been spent by Joe, figuring out the best way to implement the game on the ST hardware, rather than just trying to port it, but again, without knowing the timescale Joe was given, his instructions, the deadline, it's easy to say it could of been done better. 

 

Andrew clearly wasnt overseeing the project, Joe might nor of even played the original before the conversion and thus failed to appreciate what made it so special. 

 

 

[bfollowell]

17 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

And the sad thing was it was the shareware authors like Dave Munise and Sinister Developments that not only did arcade remakes on the ST that took full advantage of the 16-bit's graphic & sound capibilities but actually surpassed the original gameplay by improving it but still kept what made them so fun to begin with.

 

</fullrunon>

 

 

Is there a complete list of their work listed somewhere?

 

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, bfollowell said:

 

Is there a complete list of their work listed somewhere?

 

Not sure if it's their complete work but.. 

 

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-st-sinister-developments_developer_589_S_G.html

[doctorclu]

5 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

A8 Star Raiders II looked gorgeous ?, but it wasn't Star Raiders when you sat and played it, name only. 

 

Now you did see the lost Star Raiders II that was found a few years ago?   That was a lot more like the original Star Raiders with some fun things added... like visiting planets and bombing Cylon bases.  Great stuff.

[griff3125]

27 minutes ago, doctorclu said:

 

Now you did see the lost Star Raiders II that was found a few years ago?   That was a lot more like the original Star Raiders with some fun things added... like visiting planets and bombing Cylon bases.  Great stuff.

That was really great, I wonder why it got scrapped. I loved the planet sections, and it had the original feel as well. The only thing that threw me off was the floating targeting cursor, a very odd choice - but it was an alpha, so sad it was abandon.

I think the only game, back in the days (get off my lawn!), that captured Star Raiders for me was was an old DOS game by Interactive Magic called Star Rangers - exact same game-play to a tee with a graphics overhaul. The later fake Atari remake of Star Raiders was an atrocity. I really did like the ST Star Raiders, I never created this thread to knock it, rather to see if there were any hidden ports that somehow evaded me. Maybe with the even newer fake Atari company, we'll see a vector version of Star Raiders with the original content intact, they did a decent job with Missile Command and Centipede (although I do miss the level structure).

 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

15 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Joe Hellesen was given the task of doing ST Uridium, no easy feat for any coder. 

 

Andrew Braybrook said he had gone to Chicago to kick off the ST version, by which I assume he means help get started and he admits himself it wouldn't of been easy, even for him to code. 

 

He seems to be of the mindset more time should of been spent by Joe, figuring out the best way to implement the game on the ST hardware, rather than just trying to port it, but again, without knowing the timescale Joe was given, his instructions, the deadline, it's easy to say it could of been done better. 

 

Andrew clearly wasnt overseeing the project, Joe might nor of even played the original before the conversion and thus failed to appreciate what made it so special. 

 

I saw Uridium first on Sinclair Spectrum. And it was playable better than Atari ST version - despite not smooth scroll and overall slower computer.

Later played it on C64 too.  We can talk about how hard is it to port on another computer, with different HW concept (even if main designer is same person - Shiraz Shivji ?  ) . For me, it looks that people working on it did not make proper play tests - if they could not do it well, should engage testers familiar with game and joystick - what was common practice.

Here can DL my hard disk versions: http://atari.8bitchip.info/SCRSH/uridium.html

 

Edited October 30, 2021 by ParanoidLittleMan

[Lostdragon]

1 hour ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I saw Uridium first on Sinclair Spectrum. And it was playable better than Atari ST version - despite not smooth scroll and overall slower computer.

Later played it on C64 too.  We can talk about how hard is it to port on another computer, with different HW concept (even if main designer is same person - Shiraz Shivji ?  ) . For me, it looks that people working on it did not make proper play tests - if they could not do it well, should engage testers familiar with game and joystick - what was common practice.

Here can DL my hard disk versions: http://atari.8bitchip.info/SCRSH/uridium.html

 

ZX Spectrum version was put in the extremely capable hands of Dominic Robinson, who went onto code the scrolling routines Graftgold used for their home conversions of Rainbow Islands in the ST and Amiga. 

[bfollowell]

6 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

Not sure if it's their complete work but.. 

 

http://www.atarimania.com/list_games_atari-st-sinister-developments_developer_589_S_G.html

Thank you. I’ll have to find the time to check these out soon.

 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

23 hours ago, Lostdragon said:

ZX Spectrum version was put in the extremely capable hands of Dominic Robinson, who went onto code the scrolling routines Graftgold used for their home conversions of Rainbow Islands in the ST and Amiga. 

I need to say again: it is not scrolling where Atari version is bad.

[Keatah]

I generally have a low tolerance for things claiming to be Star Raiders. SR was a special, sacrosanct, zen-like experience early on in 1979. Relatively speaking I have yet to find another game as enthralling.

 

17 hours ago, griff3125 said:

That was really great, I wonder why it got scrapped. I loved the planet sections, and it had the original feel as well. The only thing that threw me off was the floating targeting cursor, a very odd choice - but it was an alpha, so sad it was abandon.

This incomplete Wilmunder version comes close and I give it a passing grade all things considered.

 

17 hours ago, griff3125 said:

I think the only game, back in the days (get off my lawn!), that captured Star Raiders for me was was an old DOS game by Interactive Magic called Star Rangers - exact same game-play to a tee with a graphics overhaul.

That looks interesting.

 

17 hours ago, griff3125 said:

The later fake Atari remake of Star Raiders was an atrocity.

Yup. Don't know what was going on there.

[Lostdragon]

On 10/31/2021 at 8:02 AM, ParanoidLittleMan said:

I need to say again: it is not scrolling where Atari version is bad.

Not saying it is, just that ST and Amiga Rainbow Islands might well be the work of Dominic, people outside the UK are more familiar with. 

[Lynxpro]

On 10/28/2021 at 1:26 PM, Keatah said:

That's right. Not interested in a visual cacophony of noise..

 

Part of the the appeal of Star Raiders is what it achieved on the 8-bit machines in 1979. And finding loopholes in its program was like finding an Easter Egg.

 

Comparing the ST version to the 8-bit version is a classic example of an exercise in ridiculousness. And those copy/pasted sound samples, bllacch!! Pokey's sound is so much more real. Synthesized in realtime compared to what sounds like stolen Intellivision clips. The moving starfield is just so fake in the ST version. And so much more. Or should I say less?

 

You won't get any argument out of me on POKEY vs. YM2149. When the STe was stuck in development hell and it was apparent Atari Corp wasn't gong to recover the AMY from S+S, I think they should've pivoted, got Atari Games to cooperate a bit, and slapped a Quad POKEY with a DAC into the STe. Of course, had they cooperated with Atari Games, perhaps they could've gained whatever custom graphics chip they used in "Atari System 1" and had the ability to run 256 colors at once out of the 1,024 color palette at resolutions greater than what the ST or the Amiga could do. But I'll get off my soap box.

 

Interestingly enough, there's an Amigan YouTuber trying to code from Amiga to Atari System 1....

Edited November 12, 2021 by Lynxpro

[Keatah]

From what I recall from previous conversations I'm pretty sure the Atari 68000 and System-1 arcade boards didn't use any special graphics chip(s). The graphics output, again IIRC, is a bunch of discrete TTL shift registers controlling DACs. Seems rather dated for the 1987 timeframe of RoadBlasters & Blasteroids. But I can certainly see the versatility in doing that, easy to make custom raster circuit just so to a T.

 

I do know that the System-1 boards came in 2 flavors, "A lot of TTL" and a cost-reduced LSI version with less chips. But the circuitry would be the same.

 

The MAME sourcecode doesn't mention anything about a graphics chip either. It does talk about sound chips and the processors.