Star Rider

Star Rider is a laserdisc-based arcade video game created by Computer Creations and Williams in 1983. The object of the game is to race a futuristic motorcycle around a track in various surrealistic settings. The tracks themselves and the background graphics are video played from a laserdisc, and are of higher quality than possible with real-time computer graphics at the time. The foreground graphics and racers are superimposed on the video.

Star Rider was produced in both an upright and a sit-down version where the player would sit on a replica of the cycle. It was released after the video game crash of 1983 and was not widely distributed. According to Eugene Jarvis of Williams, Star Rider was a "major dog" and resulted in or contributed to a loss of 50 million US dollars.[1]

The title characters from Sinistar and Joust make cameo appearances in the background graphics.

Development

The game was conceived to compete with the laserdisc game Dragon's Lair which had just come to market. R.J. Mical coordinated the project,[2] Ken Lantz directed software development, Richard Witt was lead programmer, and John Newcomer was the creative director. The laser disc video production was outsourced to a third-party company, Computer Creations, of South Bend, Indiana. Witt and Lantz developed a means by which the first few lines of NTSC video signal contained data about the roadway, so that animated riders could appear to follow the track.

References

  1. ↑ Hague, James. Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers.
  2. ↑ "Work History of RJ Mical".

External links

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