"Softline" in 1982 called "Star Raiders" "quite a game ... stands repeat play well and remains quite difficult". In 1983 the magazine's readers named it "The Most Popular Atari Program Ever", with 65% more weighted votes than second-place "Jawbreaker", and in 1984 they named the game the most popular Atari program of all time. "The Addison-Wesley Book of Atari Software 1984" gave it an overall A rating, praising the realistic graphics and sound. The book concluded that "the game is simply great" and that despite imitations, ""Star Raiders" remains the classic". "Antic" in 1986 stated that "it was the first program that showed all of the Atari computer's audio and visual capabilities. It was just a game, yes, but it revolutionized the idea of what a personal computer could be made to do."