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The Real Star Raiders II
New submitter Maury Markowitz writes: Star Raiders was the Atari 8-bit home computer's killer app, inspiring Ted Nelson to claim that "The Atari machine is the most extraordinary computer graphics box ever made, and Star Raiders is its virtuoso demonstration game." It was not until many years later that a sequel, of sorts, was released. This Star Raiders II was nothing at all like the original, as it was originally The Last Starfighter, a licensed tie-in to that was rebranded to avoid the stench of the box-office flop.
Well now, three decades later, Kevin Savetz of the excellent ANTIC podcast has dropped a bomb on the retrogaming community: there was a real Star Raiders II under construction for a long time, but it disappeared as Atari imploded. Kevin tracked down the author, Aric Wilmunder, and convinced him to release it after all these years. You can download the game for the emulator of your choice, and read the manual and backstory on the Internet Archive.
Well now, three decades later, Kevin Savetz of the excellent ANTIC podcast has dropped a bomb on the retrogaming community: there was a real Star Raiders II under construction for a long time, but it disappeared as Atari imploded. Kevin tracked down the author, Aric Wilmunder, and convinced him to release it after all these years. You can download the game for the emulator of your choice, and read the manual and backstory on the Internet Archive.
The Last Starfighter wasn't a bad movie. Technologically, it was incredibly groundbreaking. Pretty much any movie incorporating CGI is simply following in the footsteps of TLS. The Rotten Tomato and IMDB scores are all pretty good as well. The movie made a profit of several million dollars.
The huge problem with ANY video game version of TLS back then is that it could never, ever hold a candle to the game as shown in the movie. It would suck in comparison no matter what, thus it was wise to not try and market a game under that name. The game as shown then was absolutely amazing, and was rendered frame by frame on a Cray in the same way the CGI for the "realistic" scenes was created. The technology didn't exist then to create the game as depicted in the movie.
BTW, there is a freeware version of the game available, which appears to be incredibly true to the game as depicted in the film.
Better known as 318230.
Oh bugger off. I'm a die-hard Apple ][ fan and I even have to admit that what the demo-scene has done with the C64 is nothing short of amazing -- although I do have to point out that the Apple ][ demo's will switch video modes mid-scan line; giving the C64 scene a good run for their money!
I just tried the game, and if this had been finished and released in 1985, it would have competed well with Elite on the C64.
It plays very much like the first Star Raiders game, but the joystick moves the crosshairs as well as the ship. Objects in space are rendered in what looks like full 3D line art, rather than simple sprites. And you can fly into planets' atmospheres to do strafing runs of enemy bases. I was awestruck when I saw the spherical planet come into view; it looked like something just a little beyond what I expected an Atari game to do in the 1980s. You're not used to seeing big ol' globes on an Atari 8-bit. You're used to seeing big flat raster sunsets, or if you're lucky, some clever animation like Rescue on Fractalus used. The plantery terrain wasn't quite as realistic as Fractalus, but was still very good, and very arcade-like.
The part that really shows the game's ambition is the galactic map. The game starts with "galactic history", a cutscene for lack of a better word, which simulates the progress of the Zylon fleet up to the point of the player joining the fight. The map is no longer arranged in a simple grid like the original cartridge. It contains not only enemy squadrons and starbases, but star systems with orbiting planets. It is an extension of the thing that Star Raiders always had that Elite didn't: while you were in your sector, time was still passing in other sectors. Even in the original Star Raiders, enemy squadrons would move to different sectors, surrounding starbases, and eventually destroying them if the player didn't intervene. In this sequel, new squadrons could also be launched from occupied planets. I haven't played the advanced levels yet, but I imagine the player has to choose carefully between defending starbases and raiding shipyards.
I've found no game-ruining bugs, but I am not sure whether the flight and combat system has been completely worked out, or whether I'm just not good at the game yet. If this had been leaked on a BBS, it would have been received so much better than the ones that were, well, actually leaked.