Starglider

Starglider combines a space simulator with action shooting and ranks among the most technically impressive titles of the early Atari ST era. The player pilots the fighter craft Egron and defends the planet Novenia from an invasion of hostile robotic machines, switching between a cockpit view and a tactical map of the surrounding area. Combat takes place in a fully rendered 3D space with filled polygons, which in 1986 was an exceptionally demanding and ambitious feat for a home computer. The player must switch between flight mode, maneuvering among the mountains and canyons of the surface, and direct combat against enemy robots such as the Egg Fighter, Walker, or Mine, each of which demands a different tactic.

The game was developed by Argonaut Software and, on the Atari ST, used the power of the 68000 processor to render smoother and faster 3D scenes than eight-bit machines could manage. The gameplay was built around fighting waves of enemies of various types, spiced up with occasional dialogue from the enemy commander that lent the game a good dose of humor and personality. Gradually destroying enemy forces and defending the planet's key points formed a clearly readable, if not especially long, gameplay loop that motivated players to replay for a better score and deeper penetration into the enemy's defenses.

At release, Starglider was praised chiefly for its technical execution of 3D graphics, which ranked among the best home computers had to offer, and helped establish the Atari ST as a platform capable of competing with more demanding simulations. The game later received a sequel, Starglider 2, with an even more elaborate world. Today Starglider is interesting mainly as a demonstration of just how far programmers could push vector and polygon graphics on mid-1980s hardware, and as a reminder of the early days of Argonaut.

Why play: For anyone interested in the history of 3D graphics on home computers - it shows just how far programmers could push vector graphics as early as the mid-1980s.