Starglider

1986 · Space Combat · Atari ST

Overview

Starglider (1986) is Jez San's wireframe 3D flight game for the Atari ST and Amiga, fighting Egron invaders on the planet Novenia — the series that led Argonaut to build the Super FX chip.

Deep Dive

The planet Novenia has been occupied by the mechanised Egrons, whose battleships slipped past its defences disguised as Stargliders, a species of migratory bird. The player flies a prototype fighter over the landscape in first-person wireframe 3D, starting with only lasers; TV-guided missiles need energy, which is collected by skimming low over high-tension power lines. The story is told in a novella by James Follett packed with the game, and most versions feature sampled speech.

Developer Story

Starglider was developed by Jez San's Argonaut Software and published by Rainbird in 1986, starting on the Atari ST, with versions for many 8-bit and 16-bit computers following. Crash named it Game of the Year for 1986, it sold close to 200,000 copies, and the filled-polygon Starglider 2 followed in 1988.

Did You Know?

The Amiga version's title music by Dave Lowe used digitised samples as instruments, before tracker music became common.
Argonaut's work on Starglider led to its partnership with Nintendo on the Super FX chip that powered Star Fox.