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.
Maneuver your humanoid through the electrified mazes of robot filled rooms. You many kill off the first group of robots but initial success does not mean survival...future groups begin firing at your! Added danger lurks when Evil Otto enters. He can jump the maze walls and squash you if you linger too long!
A military simulation version of Battlezone. You do not control the tank, just the turret. Enemy tanks do not fire at you. The only way to lose is to run out of ammo or shoot a friendly tank.
Radar Scope is a 1980 fixed shooter arcade game developed by Nintendo R&D2 and published by Nintendo. The player assumes the role of the Sonic Spaceport starship and must wipe out formations of an enemy race known as the Gamma Raiders before they destroy the player's space station. Gameplay is similar to Space Invaders and Galaxian, but set in a forced perspective angle.
Radar Scope was a commercial failure and created a financial crisis for the subsidiary Nintendo of America. Its president, Minoru Arakawa, pleaded for his father-in-law, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, to send him a new game that could convert and salvage thousands of unsold Radar Scope machines. This prompted the creation of Donkey Kong. Radar Scope is one of the first video game projects for artist Shigeru Miyamoto and for composer Hirokazu Tanaka.
Retrospectively, critics have praised Radar Scope for its gameplay and design being a unique iteration upon the Space Invaders template. One critic labeled it one of Nintendo's most important ga
HeliFire is a Nintendo developed and published arcade video game released in America and Japan in 1980. The game gives you the unfortunate task of controlling a submarine that is under fire by a host of helicopters and even marine wildlife. As the submarine, you must dodge the bombs that the helicopters drop as well as the sea creatures and shoot upwards at the oncoming onslaught of enemies, delivering your fire a little ahead of the helicopter so that it connects in time. Interestingly, a version of the game was planned for the Nintendo Entertainment System, though was for whatever reason canceled by Nintendo. The game was presented in both a standard cabinet form and as a tabletop title.
Exciting Space Game! Mysterious Enemies Attack The Earth! Players' Beam-Cannon can be moved from side to side by the lever. Beams to destroy 'Andromeda-Ships' are fired by pressing the button. When all 'Andro-Ships' are destroyed, a new screen image of all ships will appear again. Bonus points shown at the bottom of the screen will be added to player's total points, as player resumes the game.
To put it in simple terms, if it moves and it is not your ship, destroy it. This game follows in the same vein as many of the early 1980's space shooters.