Star Ship

You’re sitting in your Star Ship cockpit. And your television screen is suddenly transformed into the window of your Star Ship. A constant barrage of meteors whiz toward your window. Eerie enemy space objects float from the darkest parts of space.

About the Game

Star Ship was the first space-themed video game released for Atari’s home console. Despite lukewarm critical reception, this type of game was a necessity for a home console. After Star Wars released in May 1977 and became a cultural phenomenon, the demand for anything space-related skyrocketed. Everyone wanted to pilot a ship between the stars, blasting enemies, and warping at high speeds.

Object of the Game

Your mission in the first nine games is to score points by destroying enemy space objects, but colliding with them deducts a point. Warp Drive measures distance covered. Hitting an asteroid reduces your total points, so steer carefully. Lunar Lander tracks successful landings on the lunar surface, awarding one point per accurate touch down. All one-player games last 2 minutes and 16 seconds. Two-player games are twice as long, but you trade roles halfway through the game. Your score begins to flash when the timer hits 16 seconds remaining.

How to Play

The flight controls change between game types, but you’re usually in command of a star ship. In the two-player games of Star Ship and Lunar Lander, you take turns piloting a star ship and keeping the other player away from their objective: a command module in Star Ship and moon in Lunar Lander.

Star Ship

In one-player games, you guide your ship using the joystick and fire missiles by pressing the red button. The joystick acts like a flight stick (i.e., left and right move your ship left and right). Pushing up guides your ship toward the bottom of the screen, while pushing down causes your ship to climb toward the top of the screen.

In two-player games, the second player steers a Space Module, which moves in the same direction as the direction of the joystick. Avoid collisions and incoming missiles from the star ship. This time, though, the red button activates invisibility. The Space Module commander doesn’t score points, but halfway through the game the players switch roles.

The window turns from blue to orange and the second player has a fresh 2:16 to beat the first player’s score.

Warp Drive

Your space meter ticks away each parsec (a measure of space distance equal to 19.2 trillion miles) in the upper-right corner of the Space Window. You lose one parsec each time you collide with an asteroid.

Lunar Lander

You control the movement of the Lunar Lander with the joystick and fire retro rockets to land by pressing the red controller button. You score a point for each successful touch down on the surface of the moon. You lose a point if you collide with a meteor.

In two-player games, the second player controls the moon, which moves in the same direction as the joystick. Keep away from the Lunar Lander, but don’t worry about meteors since you can’t score when playing as the moon. Halfway through the game the players switch roles. The window turns from blue to orange and the second player has a fresh 2:16 to beat the first player’s score.

If the Lunar Lander or the Moon moves off the top, bottom, or sides of the Space Window, it will reappear at the opposite side. For example, should the Moon disappear from the top of the Space Window, it will reappear at the bottom.

Difficulty Options

For Star Ship games, the difficulty switch in the A position decreases the power of your laser missiles. If you set the difficulty to the A position during Lunar Lander games, you must be right on target to score points. The difficulty switch has no effect in Warp Drive games.

Game Options

Scoring: Star Ship

Features

The number and speed of space objects varies between games. The other variable is the appearance of asteroids and meteors that must be avoided, since your weapons are ineffective against them.

Double Objects (2X)

Enemy space objects appear two at a time.

Fast Moving Objects (FF)

Enemy objects move faster than normal.

Asteroids/Meteors (AM)

Avoid the indestructible asteroids or meteors in the area.