Star Raiders - Atari ST Longplay

This is the Atari ST remake of the 1979 Doug Neubauer classic Atari 8-bit game. It was released in 1986 in the US (1988 in the UK). Developer: Atari, Inc. Design and programming: Rob Zdybel Graphics and animation: Jerome Domurat The Zylon Empire threatens humanity, etc., you have to keep the starbases in this quadrant safe. If any of them remain surrounded on three sides for long, the base will be lost, and two new Zylon ships will be constructed from the debris. Your ship has a large number of working parts (shields, two fore torpedoes, aft torpedoes, long range scanner, radio, engines, etc.), each of which can be damaged in combat, reducing your effectiveness until you can seek repairs at a starbase. I played on Novice difficulty here so that the longplay would be short; the action is a little repetitive, but on higher difficulties it's an exciting race against the clock as the Zylons crush in around your bases. You don't get to see in this play what happens when you, say, lose your radio and can't keep track of enemy ship movement any more. At 11:30 I got bored and gave the emergency hyperspace a pull for a quick thrill. I think that this has some really nice graphics for 1986. I love all the detail in the control panel. I had a lot of fun playing it as a kid, though at the time I had no idea I could dock at a starbase, so I was always doomed to die a Garbage Scow Captain when my fuel ran out. I could have sworn there was an alternate firing mode with a different sound effect, but I might be remembering a different game. Disk image from Automation CD 001:
Video created with SainT emulator: