Star Fire: The Weirdness of Pseudo-3D

As for Star Fire, it's clear right from the title screen what its primary inspiration was:

Another shortcut is the targeting system. In order to avoid having to calculate whether the laser cannons cross the path and profile of the fighters, the game has a "lock" feature where your crosshairs automatically fix on any target that you center on. There is actually some logic in this -- in the original Star Wars movie, they depict the targeting computers working in exactly this way. Unfortunately, auto-targeting also removes the most entertaining challenge of dogfight simulators; that is, trying to hit your target as it moves across your sights.
But the most confounding thing of all is the trajectory of the enemy laser blasts. Maybe I'm just being thrown off by the odd perspective created by the sprites, but the lasers (or torpedos?) appear to be following curved trajectories. The animation below shows an example of this, in slow motion. It's possible to avoid the enemy fire, but determining the logic of how that works was beyond my patience.
Whatever its faults, there is one thing that this game delivers in spades: a show. Even in 2019, when the graphical capabilities of arcade games are light years more advanced (pun intended), there is something spectacular about Star Fire. Converging laser blasts, fiery explosions, flickering backgrounds that respond to the action, and mobs of TIE fighters converging on your viewfinder are going to make for a good show in any era. No doubt the "full environment" experience of the arcade cabinet was even more spectacular (though I have not had the pleasure myself). Also, there is something cathartic about blasting fighter after fighter into space dust, even if the auto-targeting feature makes it a rather pedestrian affair.
Overall, though, I don't recommend Star Fire to most gamers -- I think it is more valuable as a historical artifact than a playable game, at least in 2019. There are several aspects of Star Fire that were "firsts" in the history of arcade games, most notably the inclusion of a high scores table, but I will leave that discussion to other authors. For a detailed history of the game's development and release, I recommend checking out this article by The Golden Age Arcade Historian.

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