Garbage Scow Captain, Class 1
Sep. 28th, 2024 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinLast night, having properly connected a game controller to my computer, I booted up the Atari800MacX emulator and for the first time in ages I played through a whole game of Star Raiders, the Atari 400/800's true killer app and the granddaddy of the modern "space sim" genre.
This video is highretrogamelord playing it on the highest difficulty level (not sure if there are any cheats involved).
Star Raiders was basically a hybrid of the old text-based "Star Trek" game, and a first-person arcade space shooter like Starship 1. It had a bit of strategy to it: the galaxy is a grid of "sectors", and you're trying to wipe out all the enemies while keeping them from destroying your starbases, which they do by surrounding a starbase sector with enemy-occupied sectors on all sides for too long (like an attack in Go, the game that inspired the name Atari). Within a sector, you're chasing down enemies in three dimensions in a mostly smooth first-person perspective view that was just mind-blowing in 1979. You have limited energy and can take systems damage that affects gameplay in various ways; the starbases provide energy and repairs. Travel between sectors is by hyperspace jump, which is expensive and tricky. Your "rank" at the end of the game is computed from a formula that combines several aspects of your performance (the manual actually gave the formula).
I was playing it on Pilot, the lowest difficulty level that isn't baby/God mode (you can take damage, and have to manually fly the hyperspace jumps). Wow, I've gotten really bad at Star Raiders. I never got that good at it, I think because when I was a kid, its immersion was actually anxiety-inducing--a remarkable thing to say about a primitive game for an 8-bit personal computer.
But last night, I think I got the lowest possible joke ranking, even though I completed the game without dying and I think prevented any starbases from being destroyed. (It was a near thing--the *last enemy left in the galaxy* got in a lucky hit that took my shields down, and rather than continue to duke it out as a one-hit-point wonder I ran away to a starbase for servicing before coming back to kill it, and that probably dropped my score.)
I'd forgotten how tricky the "stay on the beam for the hyperspace jump" mini-game is. Mastering that is probably key because if you're not good at it, it doubles the number of expensive hyperspace jumps you have to do.
Seen with modern eyes, the game can get repetitive. But it successfully tugs at your emotions and it's got some interesting emergent strategy that comes out of the interaction of simple features, which is always something I like in a game. (For instance, how do you get to a starbase for repairs if your main engine is broken? The hyperdrive never goes out, so you have to initiate a hyperwarp and interrupt it until you're close enough.)
This video is highretrogamelord playing it on the highest difficulty level (not sure if there are any cheats involved).
Star Raiders was basically a hybrid of the old text-based "Star Trek" game, and a first-person arcade space shooter like Starship 1. It had a bit of strategy to it: the galaxy is a grid of "sectors", and you're trying to wipe out all the enemies while keeping them from destroying your starbases, which they do by surrounding a starbase sector with enemy-occupied sectors on all sides for too long (like an attack in Go, the game that inspired the name Atari). Within a sector, you're chasing down enemies in three dimensions in a mostly smooth first-person perspective view that was just mind-blowing in 1979. You have limited energy and can take systems damage that affects gameplay in various ways; the starbases provide energy and repairs. Travel between sectors is by hyperspace jump, which is expensive and tricky. Your "rank" at the end of the game is computed from a formula that combines several aspects of your performance (the manual actually gave the formula).
I was playing it on Pilot, the lowest difficulty level that isn't baby/God mode (you can take damage, and have to manually fly the hyperspace jumps). Wow, I've gotten really bad at Star Raiders. I never got that good at it, I think because when I was a kid, its immersion was actually anxiety-inducing--a remarkable thing to say about a primitive game for an 8-bit personal computer.
But last night, I think I got the lowest possible joke ranking, even though I completed the game without dying and I think prevented any starbases from being destroyed. (It was a near thing--the *last enemy left in the galaxy* got in a lucky hit that took my shields down, and rather than continue to duke it out as a one-hit-point wonder I ran away to a starbase for servicing before coming back to kill it, and that probably dropped my score.)
I'd forgotten how tricky the "stay on the beam for the hyperspace jump" mini-game is. Mastering that is probably key because if you're not good at it, it doubles the number of expensive hyperspace jumps you have to do.
Seen with modern eyes, the game can get repetitive. But it successfully tugs at your emotions and it's got some interesting emergent strategy that comes out of the interaction of simple features, which is always something I like in a game. (For instance, how do you get to a starbase for repairs if your main engine is broken? The hyperdrive never goes out, so you have to initiate a hyperwarp and interrupt it until you're close enough.)