The player takes control of a cowboy battling Native Americans. There are three types of enemies including the Indian footman, Indian on horseback and Buzzard. Arrow and tomahawk projectiles can also be shot for points. Enemies on the same plane such as scorpions cannot be shot and limit where the player can move the cowboy. Obstacles such as cacti and rocks block the cowboy's line of fire. One hit from an enemy or projectile takes a life away. The player is required to kill a set number of enemies to progress to the next level.
Also known as "Mad Rider" and "HWY Chase", Mad Alien is one of Data East's earliest arcade games. It's also the first game released on their cassette-based hardware.
The gameplay is a mixture of Space Invaders and Monaco GP.
Released by SNK in 1980, it was an early shoot 'em up that featured human characters on foot instead of vehicles, spacecraft, or aliens. The player character faces off against multiple shuriken-throwing ninjas and along the way faces several bosses, such as a flame-shooting shinobi.
Tail Gunner 2 is the sequel to Cinematronic's Tail Gunner, produced after Exidy purchased the original developer Vectorbeam. It is essentially the same game as Tail Gunner, but produced in a deluxe sit-down cabinet.
You play Lupin, a character who is trying to get money for his sweetheart. You try to take up to two of the six bags from the top and get them to the bottom without getting caught by an enemy. If an enemy gets too close or you are surrounded you can teleport, but there is no telling where you will end up -- you could end up in a worse spot than the one you escaped from!
After you have gotten all six money bags, you go to meet your sweetheart, but she tells you to get her more money and you proceed to the next level. If you lose all your lives you will be shown being dragged off to jail.
Zero Hour is a top view shooter where you control a spacecraft in multiple directions and try to blast and destroy three alien ships at the top of the screen. As you blast them, you will encounter meteors falling down the screen which can be avoided or shot, and other alien ships dropping bombs. If you hit a meteor, alien ship or its bombs then you lose one of three lives. Once the three aliens have been destroyed and the screen cleared of meteors and aliens then you move to a bonus screen. Your ship falls down the screen and you have to land on a landing pad for a bonus score. Two players can play and each player takes it in turns when the other player is killed.
In the first part of each wave, space monsters descend from the top of the screen towards your ship, dropping bombs as they go. If they reach the bottom of the screen, they will start hopping towards your spacepod if they catch your spacepod, they'll eat it. In these rounds, your spacepod fires in three directions simultaneously straight up, and 45 degrees to either side. The eight types of monsters shown in the score table attack in the order shown for the first eight waves (i.e. wave 1 is all 100-point monsters, wave 2 is all 200-point monsters, etc.) wave nine is a mass attack of all eight types, and waves ten and up are randomly-chosen from the first nine types. Each space monster round contains a total of 25 monsters, though only eight will be on the screen at any one time.
The second half of the wave starts out with a spinning space ring that drifts around the screen, growing in size if you shoot it, it splits into two smaller rings that go off in different directions and start growing again. If any ring rea
Spectar, released by Exidy in 1980, is the follow-up of Targ. Gameplay is apparently unchanged, you control a vehicle called Whummel into a 9x9 grid maze, chasing down, and being chased by, the alien invaders. Targs have evolved into the more dangerous Rammers, and Spectars appears more often, shooting at player's ship.
You use a 4 way joystick to guide your vehicle in the maze, and a pushbutton to shoot at enemies. Up to two players can alternate in gameplay.
The most noticeable difference from his predecessor is that to complete a level you must now collect all the gems in the maze, in a Pacman-like game. Rammers and Spectars continue to appear from flashing pods, so you cannot rest and plan your course easily, or you will be overwhelmed by the alien force.
Graphic is highly improved compared to his predecessor: the maze now has barricades that must be avoided or can be used as a shielding against the enemies, and has ten environement settings, changing from the "square-block town" of Targ to a city, a forest,
Red Baron is an arcade game developed by Atari, Inc and released in 1980. A first-person flight simulator game, the player takes the role of a World War I ace in a biplane fighting on the side of the Allies.
Warlords is an arcade game released by Atari, Inc. in 1980. The game resembles a combination of Breakout and Quadrapong (an early Atari arcade game) in the sense that not only can up to 4 players play the game at the same time, but also the "forts" in the four corners of the screen are brick walls that could be broken with a flaming ball. Warlords uses spinner controllers for player control, and came in both an upright 2 player version and a 4 player cocktail version. The upright version uses a black and white monitor, and reflects the game image onto a mirror, with a backdrop of castles, giving the game a 3D feel. The upright version only supports up to two simultaneous players, which move through the levels as a team. The cocktail version is in color, and supports 1-4 players. 3-4 player games are free-for-all's where the game ends as soon as one player wins. 1-2 player games play identical to the upright version.
Men are lined up the right side of the screen and alien ships fly out, swirl around the screen and eventually try to grab the men. This was one of the first all color graphics games and might be the first one that used speech. Some of the phrases are "Help Me! Help Me!", "Very Good", "We'll be back" and "Lucky!"
In this shoot 'em up the player has to fight off four assault waves consisting of different enemy types until he reaches a huge UFO. After destroying the protective plates guarding the UFO's pilot in his cockpit the player can kill the pilot. The game starts anew with harder enemies.