A relatively obscure Taito arcade game from 1989*, Fighting Hawk is a vertically-scrolling bullet hell shooter where you fly an A-10 ‘Tankbuster’ up the screen, fighting its way through waves of enemies and bosses.
Tag Archives: Arcade
Fantasy Zone, Arcade
Fantasy Zone is a colourful scrolling shooter from 1986. It was created by Sega and it looks simple and cartoony, but is in fact very challenging.
The main character, Opa-Opa, is sometimes referred to as “Sega‘s first mascot” and is very similar to the one seen in the earlier TwinBee. Both TwinBee and this game have been credited with the creation of the “cute ’em up” genre, and that is probably not too far from the truth.
Cosmic Avenger, Arcade
Cosmic Avenger is a groundbreaking arcade shooter first released in 1981 by Universal. It was one of the first ever side-scrolling shoot ’em ups, and was released the same year as Konami‘s Scramble.
Thunder Blade, Arcade
Thunder Blade is a single-player helicopter combat game that debuted in arcades in 1987, courtesy of Sega. It combines overhead shooting sections with third-person, ‘over-the-shoulder’ shooting sections and it features lots of impressive graphical scaling effects on the buildings and enemies.
Skull & Crossbones, Arcade
I hadn’t seen this 1989 arcade game from Atari Games before, until I played it recently, and even then I found it on the Commodore 64 first, then realised that it was an arcade conversion.
Skull & Crossbones has all the ingredients of a classic arcade action game, but – having played it extensively now – I can see why it failed…
Stargate, Arcade
Also known as Defender II, Stargate is the 1981 sequel to Williams Electronics‘ Defender, which was released earlier the same year.
Stargate was designed and programmed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz, for Williams, and it features the same superfast blasting action as Defender, but with subtle differences.
Flicky, Arcade
Originating in arcades in 1984, Flicky is a super cute bird-collecting platform game by Sega that relies heavily on gravity, inertia, and jumping to provide the challenge.
The aim of the game is simple: you play a blue bird who must collect up the small, yellow chicks (the “PioPio“), and avoid contact with the cats (the “Nyannyan“) on your way to taking the chicks home (the door you came in through). The quicker you do this, the more bonus points you get.
Simple. Or at least you might have thought so…
Mercs, Arcade
Mercs is a classic arcade shooter from 1990. It was jointly developed by Sega and Capcom and features simultaneous three-player cooperative gameplay.
Salamander 2, Arcade
Released ten years after the original Salamander, Konami‘s 1996 sequel – Salamander 2 – is more of the same horizontal/vertical scrolling blasting action, but with a different style of graphics, bigger, better weapons, and more spectacular events.
Bubble Memories, Arcade
Bubble Memories: The Story of Bubble Bobble III was released into arcades by Taito in 1996, and – as the subtitle makes clear – this is a canonical Bubble Bobble sequel. It has been described as “Bubble Bobble on steroids”…
The King of Grabs 