Re: [stella] adventure

Subject: Re: [stella] adventure
From: Nick S Bensema <nickb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 07:44:21 -0700 (MST)
>Okay, so what is it about Star Raiders on the 2600 that makes it not 
>representative of the 2600's catalog?  I realize few games reached the 
>level of SR on the 2600, but wow! what a game.  I've never played another 
>version of SR, but the 2600 version certainly led me on to games like 
>Elite and Privateer.  There was nothing quite like limping back to a 
>Starbase with flicking shields and merely one photon blaster working, and 
>that only intermittently.
>
>But back to my line of reasoning behind my question:  What exactly about 
>Star Raiders for the 8-bits is it that you see rendered in a way that the 
>2600 can't?  I'm looking more along the direction of, "What is it that 
>the 8-bit SR had that one should not include in a 2600 programming 
>mindset?"  Does that make sense?  :^P

Just about everything.  8-bit Star Raiders was used to show off
the abilities of the Atari 8-bits... namely, bit-mapped displays,
realistic 3-D perspective (proof: check the long-range scanner)...
and of course, flicker-less player/missile graphics.  It's really
little more than a cheap copy of the Atari 400/800 version, which
was done years earlier.

And it's the Atari 400 version which is responsible for Elite and all of those
games, really.


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