There Must Be A PC Emulator Somewhere

Does anyone else dream about playing 30-year-old video games that they never even liked?

And we go diving, once again, into the swirling miasma of randomness that is Jeremy's mind.  We really should leave a trail of bread crumbs or something.  

So anyway...not long ago, I had an unusually vivid dream involving video gaming.  I'm not entirely sure why...I don't play video games all that much these days.  Regardless, in my peaceful slumber, I was playing a rousing game of the 1979 Atari classic "Star Raiders," or "Star Raider" as the first run of cartridges mistakenly said.  If you're not familiar, it's a space adventure game where you're piloting an interstellar Star Cruiser (Number 7 to be precise) in an all-out battle with the Zylon race.  The evil Zylons are rushing to destroy the human Star Bases positioned randomly around the galaxy, and it's your job to destroy them all of their ships before they get a chance.  This involves Hyperwarp travel, photons, outer-space dogfighting, timing, strategy, and situational awareness not common to 1970s video games.  

Here's A Gameplay Video by somebody who's not completely atrocious at the game.  There are other videos of people who totally suck, and those may be more entertaining, but don't really help my cause here.  Those are left as an exercise for the reader.  

Anyway...I never particularly cared for the game.  I wasn't especially awful at it, and certainly knew my way around the controls seamlessly, but I never wanted to put in the time to get better.  I'm okay with that.  I'm also not 100% sure where my old Atari 400 is at the moment, but I'm reasonably certain it hasn't been powered on in a number of years, and I doubt all the necessary keyboard keys still work.  Stupid membrane keyboard...

So why it was that the Galactic Chart from this game popped into my head not long ago is a complete and total mystery to me.  What I can tell you is that I successfully saved the Star Base from Zylonic destruction thanks to my quick thinking and impressive piloting.  You are welcome, Star Base.