As the ship's velocity increased they would slide past, giving a convincing sense of speed and direction." Published in 1979, Star Raiders was a launch title for Atari's new 8-bit computers, demonstrating their superior graphics and sound; Neubauer, just out of college, worked on Atari's POKEY [which stood for POtentiometer and KEYboard] chip and, prior to the completion of the Atari 800, decided to make Star Raiders as a side project, "just... for fun." Neubauer recalls some of his impressions of the time: "Neubauer had something in mind that was well beyond the single screen video games of the past. He wanted to simulate a real environment in three dimensions. "The 3-D algorithms had to be developed and no one at Atari had done this before so I had to figure them out on my own. I remember stupidly floundering for a couple weeks or so, before I finally sat down and worked out the geometry on paper," he said. "Finally the visuals started looking right!