LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Star Raiders
built 215 days ago
A cult classic on the Atari 400 & 800 computers, Star Raiders was something that the VCS just couldn't do. The demands of the control scheme were simply too complex for a machine whose controls consisted of one joystick and one action button. Enter the Video Touch Pad - not really much of an innovation, but more of a futuristic restyling of the 12-button keypad controllers that dated back to the Basic Programming cartridge. One Video Touch Pad was included with each Star Raiders cartridge in a king-sized box, along with a plastic overlay detailing the Star Raiders-specific actions that could be triggered.
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After enjoying two years of unprecedented success, Atari decided to port Star Raiders to it's new 5200 super system. Although Star Raiders was old news by this point, the game was still popular with many sci-fi/computer geeks. Since the 5200 was pretty much the same as the Atari 400/800 the port was basically identical except for the controls. However programmer Joe Copson took the time to clean up some bugs that were present in the original version and even added a few new features. The biggest differences between the two versions are:
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The effect that Star Raiders had on the fledgling video game market was tremendous, inspiring multiple copies, such as Activision's Star Master and Imagic's Star Voyager for the Atari 2600 and Namco's Star Luster for the Famicom. It's influence continued on with the popular Wing Commander and Star Wars: X-Wing series. It was ... a game that you could complete, which was extremely rare that early in gaming history. Upon the game's completion, the game ranked the player's performance.
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The game play for the ST version of Star Raiders is not as exciting as other versions of the game. Unlike the 2600 version, where you are engaged with very fast, skilled enemy pilots, ST Star Raiders feels more like shooting at orbiting satellites. The enemies are usually drifting aimlessly toward you from a distance and seem to have no artificial intelligence or maneuvering capability. You aim your targeting crosshair at them and shoot them like fish in a barrel. It is not uncommon to be able to pick one off in the far distance when it appears as a motionless spec in the center of your crosshair. The higher difficulty levels of play are more exciting, with enemies swarming in front of and behind you, usually with deadly and accurate photon attacks.
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The VTP was a large square keypad that added nine buttons to the 2600 allowing it to easily handle most of Star Raiders functions (only 3 were actually used). However the VTP wasn't any new piece of technology, it was just a repackaged keypad controller with a snazzy new overlay. In fact many players discovered that the keypad could be used in a pinch instead of the bulky VTP (minus the overlay of course).
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The Atari 2600 version of Star Raiders was packaged with the Atari Video Touch Pad. Here is a picture of the Video Touch Pad at AtariAge.com. It ... came with a comic book of Atari Force #3. Here is that comic at AtariAge.com.
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