Star Raiders is an oxymoron of a game: it was one of the first of its kind and yet it comes across as hackneyed and contrived. Had the designers put more effort into making a challenging game rather than basing a game around a gimmick, this game would have been fun.

PRESS FIRE TO START

The premise is a contrived, cliché story that sounds eerily similar to many science fiction TV shows, movies and other video games of the time. You play as a star fighter who must protect the last remaining home base from a swarm of enemy fighters know as the Krylon (insert spray-paint joke here).

The screen is the POV of your star fighter with a cross-hair of sorts in the middle and a control panel along the bottom. All you have to do is shoot the bad guys before they shoot you while also avoiding asteroids. There is also a secondary map screen you must occasionally switch to in order to ensure you’re on the enemy’s tail. This screen plays such a vital role in the game that a peripheral controller known as the video touch pad was included with the game.

The controller also gives you manual control over use of your shields and the display screen - which is redundant since they can also be controlled via the console itself (and illogical since there’s no reason NOT to use these helpful features).

Star Raiders plays in the classic Sisyphus format in that there are no distinct stages, just the same challenge repeated indefinitely. At least it gives you the ability to work your way up through “ranks” as well as offering four distinct skill levels.

PLAYER 1 – READY!

Games where the screen is the player’s POV and involve fast action and quick reflexes are inherently fun and challenging. But Star Raiders offers very little in the way of challenge and instead just assaults the player with extreme difficulty. The two concepts are not the same thing and they are not proportional, either.

Enemy fighters fly in and out of the screen at random and so quickly that there is no opportunity for the player to develop a real strategy, instead it’s all just reaction. Therefore, the game becomes little more than a button-masher and joystick-craner. There’s simply no way for the player to outwit, out-shoot and out-fly the enemies at the rate they move.

It also doesn’t make use of its own features properly. For example, the main screen features a radar scope of sorts, but trying to gauge a reference from this display is perplexing. Since you pilot a spaceship flying in a three-dimensional environment and the radar screen is only two-dimensional, it’s impossible to tell where the enemies actually are even though there are moving dots within the field.

JOYSTICKING

The map screen and the secondary controller should’ve helped make the game more complex and fun to play, but both come across as arbitrary. All the map screen does is show you how far away from home base you and the enemy fleet are. You do have the option of flying back home for “repairs,” but because the game offers no way to pause the action this is very difficult task. Ideally, Star Raiders is a two-player game since it uses two controllers simultaneously. However, controlling the touch pad alone would be very boring, and trying to switch back and forth is an annoyance.

The map screen adds very little to the game anyway. Had the action component been not only playable, but fun, this might have made the game a little more interesting. But even the action is not all that exciting because you never really have much sense of control here. Craning the joystick gives you a slight sense of movement, but it seems so slow and delayed. There is simply no way to react and maneuver fast enough to engage the enemies so there’s little sense of challenge.

SPRITES & PIXELS

For the most part, Star Raiders has very generic and primitive-looking graphics and this is acceptable. It does incorporate the use of changing colors as warnings signs and reactions to the gameplay, but trying to keep track of which indications represent which actions can be difficult.

One thing I did like was how the game is able to use a flickering, stuttering effect to convey a real sense of damage and imminent doom. It’s almost like something out of a movie rather than a video game. If the rest of the game was this creative it would’ve been a classic.

CHIPPED TUNES

There isn’t much to discuss in terms of sound here. More variety would’ve been nice, of course, but at least it’s listenable.

INSERT COIN TO CONTINUE

Since this game doesn’t involve stages or levels its appeal is based on its replay value. Unfortunately, it’s too difficult to really be challenging and only a seriously dedicated player could finesse its random gameplay.

GAME OVER

It’s a shame Star Raiders is such a lame duck of a game considering that it not only was one of the first of its genre, but also incorporated a peripheral device. It just goes to show that gimmicks do not equal quality.

Recommended: No