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.
Tag Archives: overhead
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.
Sprint 2, Arcade
The Sprint series began in 1976 with Sprint 1 and Sprint 2 – not, as you may think, a first game and a sequel, but the “1” and “2” denotes the number of players who can play the game.
Sprint 1 had a single steering wheel, and Sprint 2 had a pair of steering wheels, and in each game players control their vehicles through a variety of overhead, black and white race tracks.
Atic Atac, Commodore 64
Wow… This is arguably the best modern remake of an old video game that I’ve ever seen!
This beautiful 2020 homebrew rendition of Ultimate‘s classic Spectrum game comes courtesy of three individuals: the code was written by Tomaz Kac of Nostalgia, the graphics were created by Steven Day (aka Ste), and the music by Saul Cross.
All three of them deserve some serious credit.
“After 37 years the C64 finally gets its own version of Atic Atac,” says Tomaz Kac, “I hope we did the game justice. We tried to make it very special, not just by getting as close to Spectrum version, but by expanding it quite a bit. We hope you like it!”
Shock Troopers, Neo Geo
Shock Troopers is a one or two-player, over-the-top arcade shooter developed by Saurus in 1997. It is a mixture of overhead and isometric style Run-and-Gun action – similar in some respects to Total Carnage and Caliber .50.
Harvest Moon, Super Nintendo
First in the classic Harvest Moon series, this cute Super Nintendo ‘farming simulator’ was developed by Amccus and published by Pack-In-Video in Japan, Natsume in North America, and Nintendo in Europe.
It wasn’t the first farming simulator ever to come out (that might be SimFarm by Maxis (1993), although there may be earlier examples), but it was certainly one of the first to really popularise the genre.
SunDog: Frozen Legacy, Atari ST
Sundog is a sci-fi strategy/RPG/adventure game designed by Software Heaven (aka FTL – the makers of Dungeon Master), and is generally held in high regard. It originally came out on the Apple II in 1984, then later converted to the Atari ST in 1985.
I have to admit, though, that Sundog is a touch too archaic for my tastes. At least in terms of wanting to put hours into a game. The Atari ST version certainly looks better than the Apple II version, though.
Aleste Gaiden, MSX
Developed by Compile and released in Japan only in 1989, Aleste Gaiden is the third Aleste game to come out for MSX home computers – specifically: for the MSX2.
Micro Machines V3, PlayStation
The third Micro Machines was released in 1997 for the Sony PlayStation. In V3 the environments and vehicles are all 3D-modelled, and the action is displayed at a slightly tilted angle, rather than directly overhead.
The same excellent gameplay mechanics of the previous games have been retained though. Mostly revolving around getting ahead of your opponents in order to push them off-screen.
River Raid, Atari 2600
Written by Carol Shaw for Activision and published initially for the Atari 2600 in 1982, River Raid is an early vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up with simple graphics, challenging gameplay, and its own unique set of rules.
The King of Grabs 