Namco‘s groundbreaking Xevious gave you a ship (the Solvalou) that could fire both a laser at flying targets and drop bombs on ground targets. Two fire buttons… Innovative in arcades in 1982.
Tag Archives: Boss Battles
Zaxxon, Arcade
Sega‘s Zaxxon is an early arcade shooter that broke the mould. It was first released in 1982.
Gorf, Arcade
Gorf is an early arcade shooter that feels like a poor relative to many of its peers of the time.
It borrows most of its features from other games (one wave is actually called “Galaxians” although I do believe that the developers properly licensed it from Namco) and doesn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay, but it did pioneer one thing. And that is: in the use of synthesised speech. Gorf was one of the earliest video games to use it (and although clear, it is quite robotic).
Quake, PC
Doom was good, but Quake – for me – was where id Software really broke the First-Person Shooter mould, with a game far ahead of anything else at the time – even their own games…
R-Type, Arcade
Released into video game arcades in 1987, Irem‘s side-scrolling shoot ’em up, R-Type, is considered by many to be the best of its type (pun intended).
Bedlam, ZX Spectrum
Another classic ZX Spectrum game from Beam Software, Bedlam is a straightforward vertical-scroller, but done in an incredibly finessed manner.
The Legend of Zelda, NES
1986 saw the release of the original The Legend of Zelda on the NES, although it wasn’t on cartridge – it was on floppy disk. Specifically: for the Nintendo Famicom Disk System (FDS).
A cartridge version, with battery backup-up saves, was released in North America in 1987.
Shadow Warrior, PC
The original Shadow Warrior was released for PC MS-DOS by GT Interactive in 1997.
Shadow Warrior is a fast, high fun factor, oriental comedy First-Person Shooter. It was created by 3D Realms and used the Duke Nukem ‘Build’ Engine to display the world.
Brave Fencer Musashi, PlayStation
Square‘s 1998 PlayStation release, Brave Fencer Musashi, is an entertaining single-player action/RPG, with real-time sword combat and a 3D environment and characters.
Ninja Golf, Atari 7800
A notch above “Monkey Tennis” in terms of great ideas, Ninja Golf was dreamt-up and released for the Atari 7800, way back in 1990.
