Star Raiders II is the follow-up Atari Corp. published for its 8-bit computers as the heir to Star Raiders (1979), the space combat simulator that defined the 400/800 line in its early years. Its path to store shelves was a bumpy one: the project started life as a tie-in to the film The Last Starfighter, and when that deal fell through, the team reworked it into a legitimate Star Raiders sequel, taking advantage of the new 32 KB cartridges to expand the star maps, missions, and variety of enemy ships beyond the original.
Today it remains essential study material for anyone who wants to understand how Atari tried to stretch its flagship franchise well into the 1980s. It's worth playing for historical curiosity and because it keeps the arcade-simulation pulse that made the first Star Raiders great, even if its difficulty and period-accurate interface demand some patience.
This system doesn't run in the browser yet (Dreamcast, GameCube, PS2 and Xbox are on the way as web emulation matures). The dossier, media and community are already all yours.
If you liked this one
