- Star Raiders is the link between the classic Star Trek text games I've been playing recently, and my childhood favorite space sim Elite.
- Completed the game on Novice (1/4) difficulty. STAR FLEET TO STAR CRUISER 7 MISSION COMPLETE NEW RANK IS: ENSIGN CLASS 5
- Even though Star Raiders is pretty complex compared to other classics of the 70s, my recent experience with the 1971 Star Trek and the similar but more recent Star Fleet I, has prepared me a bit for this game. Armed with a scan of the manual I managed to get the hang of the systems pretty quickly. I figured out the hyperspace jumps, docked with a starbase, and killed all the Zylons ships, including a couple of Zylon Basestars. In the Novice Mission you are indestructible, so it was mostly a question of killing the enemies before they surround your Starbases.
- Damn, this game is 8K. Amazing.
- Failed my first mission on Pilot level. Stressful.
- According to research on the AtariAge forums, the often mentioned 1979 release date is wrong, and this game was actually released March 5th, 1980. This is according to Atari's lawyers, mentioned in the Trademark registration (serial number 73363484):
FIRST USE: 19800305. [March 5th, 1980] FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19800305
The source code is available, and states that the game itself was completed June 17th, 1979. - I played some Star Raiders on the MiSTer and beat the NOVICE MISSION.
- This game runs from a cartridge rom file with the 'OS-A' BIOS.
- I was annoyed with the release date being wrong on Wikipedia, so I fixed it with a reference to the Trade Mark registration. Now I can sleep again.
My correction to the release date on MobyGames is now also approved. Nice that it's possible to fix these incorrect assumptions.
2014-03-18
2014-03-19
2019-04-28
2020-09-12
MiSTer Atari 8-bit2022-09-28
2023-10-14
