The Last StarFighter Videogame
Excerpted from The Last Starfighter FAQ, by Russel J. Krook III

Q: Was there really an arcade game?
A: Yes and No. In the spring of 1995 I called Atari Games on an unrelated matter (trying to find an old instruction manual for an arcade game) and asked the same question.

The representative I talked to said that the game was created, and test marketed in a limited fashion, but never went into mass production because of the glut in movie related games at the time, and the fact that Atari had lost a great deal of money paying licensing fees for their previous movie related games (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones/Temple of Doom...). Around this time, Atari was also losing millions because of "The Crash" of the home gaming market, so that may have been an additional nail in Starfighter's coffin.

Update: 12/1/96
I recently received an e-mail from one of Atari Games founders, Nolan Bushnell. Here's the contents of that e-mail:

From: NolanB@XXX.XXX.XXX 7-NOV-1996 13:17:10.38
To: WAYLAND

How many units were produced? What were the graphics like?

It was never produced. It earned almost no money. Some of the graphics were later used in another game.

Nolan

The Mystery Solved!
I recently was able to contact Lyle Rains (formerly of Atari Games, now with Leisure Video Research) and Mike Albaugh (currently of Atari Games :}). They have graciously (and for me, sadly) solved the mystery of The Last Starfighter arcade game.

From: Mike Albaugh
Subject: Re: Last Starfighter
To: WAYLAND@VAX1.BEMIDJI.MSUS.EDU
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1997 16:57:23 -0800 (PST)

At the end of the film, in the credits of course, it says that the arcade games were supplied by Atari. I, and a great many of the people I know, have never seen the real, "Last Starfighter" arcade game.

To the best of my knowledge, _nobody_ ouside Atari or the consultant (Ted Michon, of General Magic) who designed the video hardware, or the film company, ever saw the Last Starfighter game. It not only was never produced, it did not make it to field-test.

If possible, I'd like any information you could provide about the game. I have "spoken" via e-mail with Nolan Bushnell and his answers were quite brief, and only confirmed what we already knew, that the game never made it into mass production.

1) Was The Last Starfighter an X-Y vector game, or a raster game?

Raster, I believe Medium Res (512x384), but it might have been standard-res. Color.

2) How many units were actually produced? 5, 10, 1000?

One prototype set of electronics. No actual cabinet. The electronics consisted of a set of wire-wrap boards. The video was designed by Ted Michon. The "Math box" was designed by me and programmed by Jack Ritter.

3) What kind of controls did it use? A flight yoke similar to the Star Wars XY game? Joysticks?

Flight-yoke, originally designed for the military version of BattleZone, later used on Star Wars.

4) What was the basic gameplay like? Was it a scrolling shooter, like Raiden, Sky Shark or 1942? Or was it a simulator style like the XY Star Wars?

More like the Star-Wars game, although it didn't have the performance it needed be be so involving, and the needed enhancments would have driven its already too-high cost _way_ too high. If the movie had been a real block-buster, it _might_ have been worth making a few for promotional purposes, but...

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From: Mike Albaugh
Subject: Re: Last Starfighter
To: WAYLAND@VAX1.BEMIDJI.MSUS.EDU (Wayland DeGreene)
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 08:29:36 -0800 (PST)

First a correction. I wrote Ted Michon, of General Magic. That was a brain-slip. It should have been of Technical Magic.

Do you know if the original source code still exists for the game? Given the recent explosion of "non-professional" arcade game emulators out there now, and with modern computer hardware as advanced as it is, it might be fun to see an emulation of The Last Starfighter.

I doubt it would be of interest, _if_ you could read it. Game code from that time is archived on nine-track (6250 or 1600 BPI) Magnetic tape in VMS BACKUP format. _If_ we could find the specific tape, and _if_ we could scounge up a nine-track drive to hook to one of our current machines and _if_ we could also scrounge software to read the archive, then what you would get is 68000 and TMS32010 assembly code for a _very_ twisty (and ill-documented, even at the time) hardware. _If_ you persevered anyway, you would eventually have a very preliminary game that played much like Star Wars, but on a raster screen with ships that looked something like those in the movie. Oh yeah, it would be slow and a little flakey. What killed the project was the realization that it would take more time and money to get a playable game than we really had.

About the only really interesting bit for _me_ would be to find the original 3D data describing the objects in the game.

Again, I have my doubts, but maybe one of the guys who was more involved with the game has photos. If I had the kind of time and money it would take to actually reproduce the hardware and software to take screen-shots today, I'd spent it on a nice house, and my _current_ house cost about $500K :-)

Mike

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Date: Sat, 22 Feb 1997 15:21:14 -0800
To: Wayland@vax1.bemidji.msus.edu
From: Lyle Rains

Subject: Last Starfighter

A few months into the project, several troubling things happened. First, the guys who did the hardware had a falling out with each other, and the design engineer left the subcontractor's company. So the ability to correct the remaining design problems and put the electronics into production was severely hampered. Next, old Atari Inc. was coming apart. This was the time of the huge losses incurred by Atari in the consumer and computer businesses, which ended with Warner Communications selling almost everything but the Coin-op Division to Jack Tramiel. The Last Starfighter movie had already been released, and was far from the huge commercial success aniticipated. Also, the arcade games business was poor, with a huge amount of used equipment on the market, and little sales of new equipment. Finally, the Coin-op division was also on the auction block, and Warner Communications agreed to eat certain costs in order to make the division more attractive. One such cost was the $1 million guarantee in Last Start Fighter royalties which old Atari Inc. had incurred.

It was decided that since the hardware was a problem, and would result in a very expensive product in a poor arcade market, and since the movie had not been a huge hit, that the risks in continuing the project (and possibly incurring the million-buck guarantee) were imprudent. Consequently, with little fanfare, and in an environment of fear and loathing following several rounds of layoffs, the project was killed. We may have designed a game cabinet for the movie (I don't recall), but there was never an actual Last Starfighter game completed beyond early prototypes.

After 21 years at Atari, I left 2 years ago. There are probably only a couple of people left at Atari who would remember anything about this game. And they probably don't know as much of the story as I do. None of the people who worked on the Last Starfighter are still at the company.

Lyle Rains

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Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1997 09:20:11 -0800
To: Wayland DeGreene
From: Lyle Rains
Subject: RE: Last Starfighter

Thank you for replying to my questions about the game, The Last Starfighter. It's nice to finally have some first hand recollections about the game, which has long been a source of speculation among my fellow arcade game collectors.

Now all I have to do is find a Prototype boardset and I can die a happy man. :}

I happened to re-read the reply I sent you, and I noticed that somehow, in the editing, I had deleted the first few paragraphs of the message! Don't ask how, 'cuz I have no idea!!

Anyway, besides a brief introduction, I had meant to include a description of the game. It was going to be a flat-shaded polygonal game, sort of like I, Robot (a few years later). The game was going to start with shooting target bouys and proceed to taking on the whole enemy armada single-handed (just like the movie). There was a button to push that would put you in the berserker mode (star-blossom, or whatever it was called), again, just as in the movie. I think we were even going to try to implement the enemy mother ship, which was cutting a hole in the frontier shield, but I don't think we ever got beyond a design for it. The controls were going to be the same as Star Wars.

I also explained that the hardware was designed by an outside company, while the programming was being done at Atari. I don't believe any surviving prototype boards exist (but ya never know).

Lyle Rains
Leisure Video Research

Q: Was there an Atari 2600 TLS game?
A: There was at least was one in development, but the final version of the gamecart never made it into mass production, again due in part to the "Crash" of the home videogame market. A version was also created for the Atari 5200 game system and the Atari 800 computer system. The prototypes of the game contain a Last Starfighter intro, and graphics similar to the ships from the movie. Gameplay involved fighting your way through wave after wave of enemy ships, and then a final confrontation with the with the command ship, which would then pound you into infinity. :}

The prototype Last Starfighter game was suddenly renamed and released as Star Raiders II in both cartridge and floppy disk format for the 5200/800 systems. The game has slightly changed graphics and an increased difficulty. The TLS intro was also removed and replaced with an Atari corporate logo.