Beamrider
Description official descriptions
Beamrider is a 3D arcade action game. You control a beam riding spaceship on a mission to clear 99 sectors of space from hostile aliens. The spaceship is located at the bottom of the screen and it can only stop on one of five beams. You are armed with both lasers and torpedoes; torpedoes are more powerful and can destroy more enemies compared to lasers, however you only get three per level. To complete a sector, you need to destroy fifteen white flying saucers. After all saucers are destroyed, the sector sentinel passes by which can be destroyed for extra points. Each even number sector up until sector 16 will add a new type of enemy to deal with. These additional enemies will just try to slow your mission, though, only the saucers need to be destroyed to advance. Occasionally a rejeuvinator will appear; if this is collected, you can earn an extra life. But be careful, because if you accidentally shoot the rejeuvinator it will turn into an enemy!
Spellings
- ビームライダー - Japanese spelling
Groups +
Screenshots
Promos
Credits (Intellivision version)
Design | |
Program |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 76% (based on 17 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 45 ratings with 1 reviews)
The Good
Its just so much fun to hunt for high scores. It has tight controls and a graphic style that is perfect for the system.
The Bad
I have nothing to complain.
The Bottom Line
Great Arcade Action, highly recommended, even for those who usually won't play 2600 games.
Atari 2600 · by Alex Fest (164) · 2025
Trivia
High score reward
Anyone who took a photo showing there score over 60,000 on level 20 or above and sent it to Activision were rewarded with an Activision Beamriders emblem. Here is a picture of that patch at AtariAge.
Signature
David Rolfe's signature in the instruction is not his real signature. It was signed by somebody else because Rolfe was wary of thousands of people knowing his signature.
Awards
- Video Review
- April 1984 - Best Cartridge Game of the Year
Analytics
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Servo.
Atari 5200 added by RKL. Xbox 360, Windows added by Alaka. Atari 8-bit added by Kabushi. MSX added by koffiepad.
Additional contributors: RKL, MAT, LepricahnsGold, Patrick Bregger, robMSX.
Game added April 16, 2003. Last modified February 28, 2025.