In Sega‘s 1984 arcade game, Future Spy, you fly an F-15 jet fighter across an isometric landscape, shooting down enemy aircraft while at the same time dropping bombs on ships, submarines, and ground forces.

I’ve got no idea why it’s called “Future Spy“, given the subject matter, but I can only assume that you’re on some kind of spying mission in your plane.

Eagle-eyed retro gamers will notice that Future Spy is similar in many respects to Zaxxon (although it did come out two years afterwards), and that’s because the game existed only as a conversion kit for Zaxxon. So was a bit of a rarity in arcades back in the mid Eighties.

Unlike in Zaxxon, though, you can’t change the aircraft’s altitude, which is a little disappointing. But Future Spy is a more hectic game, so gives you plenty to keep you occupied – trying to avoid the relentless enemy fire – than to burden you with altitude changes as well as all the ‘bullet hell’ going on around you. In later stages the game automatically changes the craft’s altitude, but this doesn’t really seem to do much other than increase the jeopardy. There are also some stages where you enter a dark cloud and seem to be teleported to another dimension, but – again – this doesn’t really amount to much (other than provide a bit of a surprise).

While Future Spy is not what I would call a ‘retro gaming classic’, it is fun to play for a while. It’s not particularly memorable, but might amuse someone looking for an old arcade shooter they might not have played before.

More: Future Spy on arcade-history.com