Which Came First?

[Dolt]

Not the chicken or the egg, but rather Star Raiders or the Keypad Controller--which came first? Did they design SR around the controller or did they make SR and then realize "damn, we need to invent a whole new controller just to play this game!"? If it's the latter, I'd have loved to sit in on that meeting where they broke it to management that there would have to be a serious hardware addition plus new sized packaging to fit it all.

 

Anyone know?

[video game addict]

I believe it was already an 8bit title, just reworked for the VCS. The touch pad came bundled with the cart, three boxes total, but I believe that was the only game ever to use it, and seeing as it was made to use the controller they were both probably worked out at same time.

 

I'm sure they could have made Star Raiders work without the touch pad, just do something similar to Starmaster or Space Shuttle, use every last switch on the console, but the controller was the better way IMO.

[NovaXpress]

The PC version was out at least 3 years before the 2600 vesion. The Star Raiders controller was existing hardware in a new shell, so it was a cheap add-on.

 

As Activision showed with Star Master, it would have been possible to have skipped the keypad, but in this case it was also a marketing tool to hype a pretty lousy looking game for late 1982. I'm sure the keypad was planned from the beginning. Star Raiders was the most-acclaimed game of the time, so Atari probably wasn't looking to cut any corners.

[Nukey Shay]

Weren't the keypads already around when the 8-bit original Star Raiders was released? As pointed out, the controller design was just stuck into a new case. And as for the 2600...the control method would need to be incorporated into the game engine at a pretty early stage. So I'm guessing that the controller came first in either way you look at it (at least in another form).

[NovaXpress]

Sure the keypads were around for the original, but it was all about the keyboard. I never though about it, but there's no reason they couldn't have offered the option on the 800.

 

If you go back to the very first EGs and Video Review columns, you'll see that Star Raiders was far and away the high water mark for video games at the time. It stayed at the top of EG's poll for about four years. Many people bought a 400 just for that game. I'm sure Atari would have brought it home sooner if not for fear of the 4K barrier, though Alan Miller was sure up to the task.

 

When Star Raiders finally came to the 2600 it was overshadowed by the Colecovision and hot 2600 titles like Pitfall and Berzerk. I think it plays great but looks terrible. It also marked the final Sears-labeled game ever sold.

[Nukey Shay]

Sure the keypads were around for the original, but it was all about the keyboard. I never though about it, but there's no reason they couldn't have offered the option on the 800.

The 400 and 800 already have a typewriter-style keyboard...they didn't need a keypad. What I meant was that the controller itself already existed (as a older style "keyboard controller" even before 8-bit SR (AFAIK). IIRC, SR was released in 1979...the "keyboard controllers" were already around in 1978 (Brain Games for the 2600 used 'em). And the 2600 SR keypad is functionally the same as a keyboard controller.

[NovaXpress]

I knew that, just couldn't figure out how you were relating the original to the keyboard controllers.

 

I wonder how Atari felt abot Star Master

[Nukey Shay]

Threatened, I'd guess. They certianly spun it out pretty quick.