Star Raiders (1979)

Star Raiders is a first-person shooter space combat simulator video game for the Atari 8-bit family of computers. It was written by Doug Neubauer, an Atari employee, and released in cartridge form by Atari in 1979. It was later ported to other Atari computer and game platforms. The game simulates 3D space combat between the player's ship and an invading fleet of alien "Zylon" vessels. Star Raiders was distinctive for its graphics, which, in addition to various map and long range scan views, provided forward and aft first-person views, with movement conveyed by a streaming 3D starfield as the player engaged enemy spacecraft. The game's attract mode, a simple streaming star field, was a common sight in computer stores of the early-1980s to show off the Atari computers' graphics capabilities. The game is commonly referred to as the platform's killer app. While there had already been simple target-shooting games using the first person perspective (including...