By Kurt Kalata
Space King / Space King 2 - Arcade (1979)
Space King
|
Space King
|
Space King
|
|
Wait, what's this? This looks exactly like Space Invaders! Indeed, Konami's first foray in the arcade gaming market consist of two Space Invaders clones, using identical graphics. This was published under the name Leijac, which they continued to use for a few more years, up until the release of Scramble in 1981.
|
Space King
|
Tactician - Arcade (1981)
Tactician
|
Tactician
|
Tactician
|
|
At its core, Tactician might seem like another Space Invaders/Galaxian clone - you control a small ship at the bottom of the screen, which can actually move up or down a bit, instead of just left and right - but it has a pretty cool gimmick going for it. At the beginning of each stage, you can "draw" a barrier by placing little dots around the playing field. After several seconds, enemies are released from their bases and begin to swarm the screen. They'll usually make quick work of the barrier, but if you shoot the red ball it'll explode and destroy anything near it. Quite a cool concept for something from 1981 - it's a shame that Tactician is so unknown, and that the idea was never expanded on in any other games. Some versions list the game as copyrighted by Sega, but they apparently only distributed the game in certain territories.
|
Tactician
|
The End - Arcade (1981)
|
What a dramatic name. The End is a combination of Namco's Galaxian with Cinematronics' Rip Off. You control a ship at the bottom of the screen who must fend off a group of alien invaders. In other words, pretty typical...except there are three structures at the bottom of the screen. They aren't qutie shields, but they can be dismantled brick by brick and carried to the top of the screen by the enemies. Once they steal enough and spell out "END" at the top of the screen, the game is over. The object is simply to survive long enough - the enemy spacecraft will continue to pop out new creatures as long as you keep killing them. The End was the first game licensed to Stern by Konami for North American distribution. They made some minor graphical changes, as well as sticking the structures beneath your ship, making it easier to guard.
|
The End
|
Comparison Screenshots
|
|
|
Japanese
|
American
|
Scramble - Arcade / Vectrex / Playstation / Gameboy Advance / DS / Xbox 360 (1981)
Arcade Flyer
|
Scramble (Arcade)
|
Scramble (Arcade)
|
|
One of the earliest known side-scroller shooters, Scramble is
credited in Gradius Generations for the GBA as the progenitor
of the Gradius series. It's not directly related, but you can kinda see the parallels. Your ship is armed with two weapons - a standard gun, and missiles which fly towards the ground. It was distributed in the US by Stern Electronics.
Merely surviving is not enough though - your ship is
constantly running out of fuel and needs to be replenished
constantly. Fortunately, the landscape is littered with
little FUEL containers, which will mystically replenish a bit
when destroyed. Now, Scramble arms your rocket ship with two
weapons - bullets, which fire straight forward, and missiles,
which drop downward at an arc. The key is, dropped rockets
travel along with your ship, sort of like the papers to
Paperboy. This might make targeting difficult at first, but a
skilled player can use this to manipulate the missiles in
their favor.
The game is only six stages long, alternating between fields
and caverns, before entering the enemy base. Enemies are
sparse in the base, but the extremely narrow passages require
exact precision to maneuver through. Once completed, you
simply need to bomb the final target to win the game and
begin the next loop. It's probably unfair to criticize the graphics of a game from
1981, from Scramble is really ugly. This is mostly because
the palette cycles through a series of eye gashing colors
every few seconds, which is both trippy and distracting.
The only real ports of Scramble at the time of release were for the Vectrex and Commodore 64. The Vectrex one looks pretty awesome if you're into vector graphics, naturally. There appear to be several versions of Scramble for the 64, but many are either ripoffs or homebrewed.
Years down the line, Scramble also showed up on several Konami arcade compilations for the Playstation, Gameboy Advance, DS and Xbox 360 Live Arcade. The Playstation and DS versions are straight emulations, the latter of which obviously has a bit of trouble due to the resolution changes. The Gameboy Advance version zooms in the display and shrinks the status bar to fit on the right side of the screen. If you enter the Konami Code, you'll activate an updated version that include three ships to pilot, updated graphics, and actual music. It's certainly better from a technological standpoint, although the new visuals are equally as gaudy as the original - ugly, but somehow appropriate. The Xbox 360 version offers updated graphics as well, which looks substantially better.
|
Scramble (Arcade)
Scramble (Arcade)
Scramble (GBA)
|
Comparison Screenshots
|
|
|
|
Arcade
|
Commodore 64
|
Vectrex
|
|
|
|
|
Xbox 360
|
GBA (Original)
|
GBA (Updated)
|
Super Cobra - Arcade / Atari 2600 / Atari 5200 / Commodore 64 / ColecoVision, Intellivision / Odyssey^(2) / Atari 8-bit / Playstation (1981)
Box Cover
|
Super Cobra (Arcade)
|
Super Cobra (Arcade)
|
|
Super Cobra is the sequel to Scramble, although it really
just expands on some of the concepts without really adding a
whole lot. Primarily, you pilot a helicopter instead of a
rocket, although it handles the same way. It's a much harder game overall, but at least you can continue where you left off. Most of the
graphics are the same, but there are a few new enemies, and
the game is substantially longer, with eleven stages in total
compared to the six of its predecessor. Also, at the end, you need to pick
up a briefcase instead of bombing a building.
Evidently most companies at the time felt that Super Cobra was the definitive version
of Scramble, so that's what they based on their console and arcade ports of. These include ports for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200 (and 8-bit computers), Commodore 64, Colecovision, Intellivision, and Odyssey2. Most of these versions were published by Parker Brothers and some lack all of the stages. The only modern compilation it's appeared on is the Konami Arcade Classics for the PSOne.
|
Super Cobra (Arcade)
|
Comparison Screenshots
|
|
|
|
Arcade
|
Atari 2600
|
MSX
|
|
|
|
|
Colecovision
|
Intellivision
|
Odyssey^2
|
Juno First - Arcade / MSX / Commodore 64 / Atari 8-bit (1983)
Juno First
|
Juno First
|
Juno First
|
|
Juno First combines the aesthetics of Defender with the basic concept of Galaxian. Though the visuals are outwardly spartan, they exude a certain retro-cool style, especially noted by the pixellacious explosions. Each stage consists of an infinitely looping playing field, and a series of enemies which repeat wave after wave. Once destroyed, naturally, you progress to the next stage, but Juno First lets you speed both forward and backward, giving you more options than simply moving left and right. The overhead perspective is slightly isometric, giving it a unique feel compared to other shooters at the time. It's a pretty obscure game, but like Tactician, undeservedly so. Ports were released for the MSX, Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit computers, the latter two by Datasoft, and a homebrew version was released in 2008 for the Atari 2600.
|
Juno First
|
Comparison Screenshots -
|
|
|
Arcade
|
MSX
|
|
|
|
Commodore 64
|
Atari 800
|
Megazone - Arcade (1983)
Megazone
|
Megazone
|
Megazone
|
|
A very early shooter where you control a tank. You can roll
across water but not across trees. Every few screens the
scenery changes to a bizarre series of blue squares before
cycling back to the regular scenery. This happens a few times
before you happen upon the final boss, whose variations
turrents and cannons form a giant face. The game may actually have been
developed by a company called Kosuka, but their name does not appear anywhere outside of Megazone, so who knows how much Konami actually had to do with it, beyond its distribution.
|
Megazone
|
On to Page 2
Back to the index
