Star Raiders (1979)

Star Raiders was a milestone in the evolution of the first person shooter, developed by Douglas Neubauer. It won dozens of awards over the years, including "best video game" for three consecutive years in a popular computing magazine. It was produced for several of the Atari home video game consoles.



The game puts the player in the cockpit of a starship hunting aliens (surprise) throughout different quadrants of the galaxy and defending friendly starbases. What separates this game from the countless other alien-killing games throughout this period is its first-person perspective and advanced graphics.



There are multiple visual modes, including the cockpit view shown above, the galactic chart, which is a sort of map which displays the locations of ships and starbases, and the long range sector scan, which is a view of the player's ship from above.



The player is responsible for strategically planning his attack on the Zylons and defense of the friendly starbases. The player uses the hyperspace function to travel between quadrants.