Konami‘s Super Cobra was released into video game arcades in 1981. It not only uses the same hardware as Konami‘s hit game Scramble, but it also borrows many of its gameplay features.

In Super Cobra, though, you’re flying a helicopter, and not a space ship, but you are still shooting your way through colourful side-scrolling caverns.

Let not kid ourselves though: in all other aspects Super Cobra is a clone of Scramble – the dual shoot/bomb firing combo; the rising enemy rockets; the fuel containers that you have to shoot to keep your fuel topped-up… all of these are lifted straight outta Scramble.

What Super Cobra does do – that Scramble doesn’t – is let you continue from where you died when the game is over. If you insert more coins you can pick up where you left off – minus your score (you start scoring again from scratch). There are also directional rockets that fire at you, tanks that move and shoot at you, and a few other surprises that aren’t in Scramble.

Super Cobra is a decent ‘iteration’ of Scramble overall, though. Konami can’t be blamed for cloning their own game, because they at least tried to improve it, and succeeded in many respects.

More: Super Cobra on Wikipedia