Namco‘s Galaga – the sequel to Galaxian – came out in 1981 and was an immediate hit with gamers.
Gone were the days of Space Invaders and rigid attack patterns – the baddies in Galaga danced around the screen; made circles, and flew around in distinct and fluid attack patterns. It was new and it was revolutionary!
Designed by Ed Logg and Dona Bailey, Centipede is a superfast fixed-screen shoot ’em up from the arcades of 1981.
Phoenix is another great vertical shoot ’em up from the golden age of video gaming. It was developed by Amstar Electronics of Arizona and manufactured by Centuri in 1980, and featured even more progressive gameplay than Space Invaders and Galaxian.
Galaxian is an iconic video game from the golden age of gaming history.
In fact, Galaxian was Namco‘s response to Space Invaders. It came out in 1979 and enthralled gamers with its hypnotic but brutal gameplay. Which it still does, to this day.
Space Invaders, owned and manufactured by Taito, is the best-selling video game and highest-grossing entertainment product of all time.
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).
Another classic ZX Spectrum game from Beam Software, Bedlam is a straightforward vertical-scroller, but done in an incredibly finessed manner.
The original Defender on the Atari 2600 is rubbish, but Defender II is the shizzle.
I was thinking to myself: “What’s the best out-and-out blaster on the Super Nintendo?” and a couple of names came to mind. Axelay I’ve already featured on here. Smash TV, I’ve featured the arcade parent, but not the 1991 SNES version.
Granada is an obscure-but-brilliant overhead tank shooter on the Sega Megadrive/Genesis that was developed by Wolf Team Japan and published by Renovation in North America in 1990. Granada was never given an official European release.
The King of Grabs 