Classic of the Month - Star Rider

Manufacturer:	Computer Creations/Williams
Genre:	Racing
Board:	?/LaserDisc
Year:	1983

Last month, legendary LaserDisc arcade game Dragon's Lair appeared on yet another home console, the Xbox 360. After playing the demo I quickly recognised that even my strong sense of arcade nostalgia could not help me overlook its lack of gameplay. This got me thinking, Were there any decent LaserDisc games? It was certainly all the rage for a few years in the mid-80s, but between Dragon's Lair, Space Ace and Fire Fox, none of them were particularly great games. Then I remembered a truly futuristic looking game from my childhood, a game that looked every bit as sci-fi as  films like Star Wars, Last Star Fighter and Tron, a futurist motorcycle game called Star Rider.

The cabinet itself looked like a rocket-powered bike had crashed through a traditional upright arcade cabinet, but that didn't stop it from feeling awesome to straddle the thing. Where Star Rider differed from Dragon's Lair was that you were not simply performing quick time events to play the next scene from the LaserDisc. Instead, only the track and environments were provided by the disc; the actual racers were sprites, overlaid on top. In order to simulate control, as you turned, the footage from the LaserDisc panned left and right. It was a simple trick and it meant Star Rider basically played the same as Pole Position or Hang-On (which was released a few years later).

The sci-fi theme meant races took place on different planets, with names like Hexagonia, Cubitania, Crystallia and Stalacta -- names that gave a hint to the overall look of the level. You begin each race in the Cosmodrome with a crowd of spectators seated either side of the track. It's only once you leave this area that the true fantasy and beauty of the game's landscapes are revealed. Your opponents in each and every racer were Gold Rider (yellow bike), Red Hawk (red bike), Sidewinder (green bike) and Thunderbolt (blue bike). Despite the names, they do not have any significant personalities or even game play traits (a la the ghosts in Pac-Man), they were just there to get in your way -- which was pretty standard for the time.

The game was pretty rare and like a lot of LaserDisc machines, it did not last long before it disappeared from arcades. I've heard that the LaserDisc players inside them were prone to breaking, so finding one today is hard. Sadly, the game has never been ported or emulated, which is a shame, because with modern media it would be a doddle to have the original LaserDisc footage with either the original sprites or perhaps some high res polygonal art.

I want to share two videos of this game with you. This first is some shaky-cam footage of the cabinet and the game in action.

This second video is just the laser disc playing, no game play, but it shows just how amazing the game looked and sounded (the music is great), especially when you consider 1983 was also the year of Spy Hunter, Atari's Star Wars and America's great video game crash.

MTW