''Bill Budge's Raster Blaster'' (or ''Rasterblaster'' on the disk label) is a pioneering home computer pinball simulation written by

Bill Budge Bill Budge (born August 11, 1954) is a retired American video game programmer and designer. He is best known for the Apple II games '' Raster Blaster'' (1981) and ''Pinball Construction Set'' (1983). Early games Budge says he became interested ...

for the

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

and published in 1981 by Budge's company, BudgeCo. It was ported to the

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

. ''Raster Blaster'' resembles the Williams ''

Firepower Firepower is the military capability to direct force at an enemy. (It is not to be confused with the concept of rate of fire, which describes the cycling of the firing mechanism in a weapon system.) Firepower involves the whole range of potenti ...

'' table from 1980. While not the first pinball game for home computers, ''Raster Blaster'' set a higher bar for visual fidelity, and the next several years saw a flurry of Apple II pinball titles: ''

David's Midnight Magic ''David's Midnight Magic'' is a pinball simulation video game written by David Snider for the Apple II and published by Broderbund in 1982. The game was published in Europe by Ariolasoft. A port to the Atari 8-bit family was released the same y ...

'' (1982), '' Night Mission Pinball'' (1982), and Budge's own ''

Pinball Construction Set ''Pinball Construction Set'' is a video game by Bill Budge written for the Apple II. It was originally published in 1982 through Budge's own company, BudgeCo, then was released by Electronic Arts in 1983 along with ports to the Atari 8-bit fami ...

'' (1983).

Reception

Debuting in April 1981, the game sold 25,000 copies by June 1982, tied for fourth on ''Computer Gaming World''s list of top sellers. ''

BYTE The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

'' praised the game's realistic physics, writing that "Most microcomputer games that are versions of existing board or equipment games aren't worth the disks they're printed on, but ''Raster Blaster'' does not fall into that category!" ''Raster Blaster'' was voted ''

Softalk ''Softalk'' () was an American magazine of the early 1980s that focused on the Apple II computer. Published from September 1980 through August 1984, it featured articles about hardware and software associated with the Apple II platform and the p ...

'' magazine's Most Popular Program of 1981."Most Popular Program of 1981: Raster Blaster!" Softalk. April 1982. '' Softline'' stated when reviewing ''

'' that it "ratifies Bill Budge's extraordinary program as a programming tour de force" and "proof of Budge's technical lead over his rivals", as ''Midnight'' was merely equal to ''Raster Blaster'' despite being nine months ("an eternity in the Apple II world") newer. ''

Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET c ...

'' called the Atari version "addictive", although it noted some bugs.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Interview with Bill Budge
1981 video games Apple II games Atari 8-bit family games Pinball video games Video games developed in the United States