A black and white bowling game for up to four people. Players roll a multi-colored trackball to simulate throwing a bowling ball down the alley. Attempt to knock down all the pins.
Shoot aliens as they move across the screen. Shoot the spaceship for extra points. Choose one of three games.
Space Fever is a 1979 arcade game by Nintendo R&D2. Some sources claim that Ikegami Tsushinki also did design work on Space Fever. It was released in both monochrome and color versions. The gameplay is similar to Space Invaders, which had been released by Taito in 1978. It was distributed by Far East Video.
The gameplay of Space Fever is reminiscent of Space Invaders (1978), where the player controls a laser cannon situated at the bottom of the screen and must defeat waves of enemy aliens. The aliens are arranged in rows and slowly move to the edge of the screen, before descending and continuing in the opposite direction. As more aliens are defeated, they increase in speed. A UFO will occasionally appear towards the top of the screen, which can be shot down for bonus points. There are three game modes that change the way the aliens move; the first presents two formations of enemies that move in opposi
Star Fire is an early color game programmed by David Rolfe with graphics designed by Ted Michon and Susan Ogg. It was released by Exidy in 1979. Star Fire is a first-person space shooter where your mission is to seek out and destroy enemy spacecraft while avoiding incoming missiles.
If a number of elements of Star Fire seem similar to Star Wars, your eyes are not deceiving you. Star Fire was originally designed as a Star Wars game, with the eventual hope that either a license would be purchased or that they would change enough of the elements to avoid any legal entanglements. Originally, the authors had hoped that Midway would pick up the game for distribution, but they passed and instead Exidy purchased the game and released it.
Star Fire was the first game to come in an environmental cabinet, designed by Michael Cooper-Hart. Even more importantly from a historical perspective, Star Fire was the first game to keep a high score list where the player could enter his or her initials. Prior games had tracked the con
Canyon Bomber is the a port of the arcade game of the same name, rewritten in color and with a different visual style for the Atari 2600. The player and an opponent fly a blimp or biplane over a canyon full of numbered, circular rocks, arranged in layers. The player does not control the flight of vehicles, but only presses a button to drop bombs which destroy rocks and give points. Each rock is labeled with the points given for destroying it. As the number of rocks is reduced, it becomes harder to hit them without missing. The third time a player drops a bomb without hitting a rock, the game is over.
Head On is an arcade game developed in 1979 by Sega. In this game, players control their cars through the maze where the goal is to collect the dots while avoiding collisions with the computer-controlled car that is also collecting dots.
It was an early maze game revolved around collecting dots and is considered a precursor to Namco's 1980 hit Pac-Man.
Speed Freak is a monochrome vector arcade game created by Vectorbeam in 1979. It is a behind-the-wheel driving simulation where the driver speeds down the computer generated road past other cars, hitchikers, trees, cows and cacti. Occasionally a plane will fly overhead towards the screen. One must avoid crashing into these objects and complete the race in the alloted time. The player can crash as many times as he wants before the time runs out and players were treated to two different crash animations. The first was a simple cracked windshield effect, the second was a crash where the car explodes into car parts that fly through the air.
Starhawk is a 1979 vector arcade game by Cinematronics. Starhawk is a shoot 'em up with a fixed environment. The game was unique at the time as it presented the graphics in a pseudo-three dimensional way. Essentially, the game is a simple video game version of the Star Wars: Episode IV trench run. The game was later ported to the Vectrex video game console in 1982. The game is remembered as having quite advanced graphics for the time and being the first video game based upon or to have noticeable references to Star Wars.
A special version of Space Fever called SF-Hisplitter was released the same year and features aliens that are double the width of the standard variety, which can either be destroyed completely or split into two smaller aliens depending on where they are shot. This version is in color, and the shelter blocks are visually distinct from the monochrome version.