Star Rider is a laserdisc based arcade video game created by Computer Creations and Williams in 1984. The object of the game is to steer a motorcycle type vehicle in a race around a track in various surrealistic settings. The tracks themselves and the background graphics were actually video played from a laserdisc onto which the foreground graphics and racers were superimposed. This technique enabled a much more realistic appearance of the graphics than in other games of the time period.
At the time, Ken Fedesna managed general development at Williams electronics and the game was conceived to compete with the laser disc game Dragons’ Lair which was had just come to market. Ken Lantz was directing software development with leader programmer Richard Witt. John Newcomer was the creative director. The laser disc video prosecution was outsourced to third party company.
Rich and Ken developed a means by which the first few lines of NTSC video signal would contain data about the roadway, so that animated riders could be drawn to follow the roadway in the video background. A guest appearance occurs by Sinistar, from another game that Rich had recently finished working on with John Newcomer, Noah Falstein and Sam Dicker.
The game was produced in both an upright and a sit-down version (where the player would sit on a replica of the cycle).