Tag Archives: shoot em up

Green Beret, Arcade

Green Beret is a classic old school run-and-gun arcade game that was developed and manufactured by Konami in 1985. The game was called “Rush’n Attack” in some territories, which is a play on words of “Russian attack” due to its Cold War setting.

Continue reading Green Beret, Arcade

River Raid II, Atari 2600

Based on Carol Shaw‘s classic vertically-scrolling shooter, but not created by her, River Raid II is a more challenging and slightly more complex take on the River Raid concept.

Continue reading River Raid II, Atari 2600

Rapid Reload, PlayStation

Called Gunner’s Heaven in its native Japan, Rapid Reload is a run-and-gun scrolling shooter with amazing 2D graphics, massive amounts of destruction, and lots of tough boss battles. It was developed by Media.Vision and published by Sony.

Rapid Reload was first released for the PlayStation in 1995 and made an immediate impression with gamers, predominantly because of the action-packed gameplay and the sheer amount of on-screen carnage. Outside of arcades, little had been seen on this scale before – at least in terms of the amount of stuff going on on-screen. You only have to play the first level to know what you’ve got in store when you play Rapid Reload.

Continue reading Rapid Reload, PlayStation

Quarth, Arcade

Quarth is a brilliant mixture of Tetris and shoot ’em up and was first played in arcades in Japan in 1989. Outside of Japan it is known as “Block Hole“, which – let’s face it – is a stupid name, so I’m sticking with the original name, Quarth.

Continue reading Quarth, Arcade

Ikari Warriors, ZX Spectrum

The 1987 conversion of Ikari Warriors is bit of an “auteur piece” on the ZX Spectrum. What I mean by that is: one guy made it on his own. He programmed the game; created the graphics, and did the sound. That man was David Shea, and the truth be told: he did an excellent job of it – managing to squeeze in most of the arcade game‘s features. Which is pretty impressive on a Spectrum.

Continue reading Ikari Warriors, ZX Spectrum

Ikari Warriors, Commodore 64

This Commodore 64 conversion of SNK‘s classic arcade game, Ikari Warriors, is considered to be one of the best vertically-scrolling shooters on the system. It was programmed by John Twiddy and published by Elite Systems in 1986.

Continue reading Ikari Warriors, Commodore 64

Cyberun, ZX Spectrum

Released in 1986, Cyberun was arguably Ultimate Play the Game‘s most successful Spectrum game after the label’s sale to US Gold. The game received a Crash Smash in issue 28 of Crash magazine. Although it really shouldn’t have…

Continue reading Cyberun, ZX Spectrum

Space Invaders, Atari 2600

This conversion of Taito‘s classic arcade game to the Atari VCS/2600 was first released in 1980, and – boy – did it shift some units…

Continue reading Space Invaders, Atari 2600

Ghoul Patrol, Super Nintendo

Ghoul Patrol is the 1994 sequel to Zombies Ate My Neighbors and it features gameplay and graphics very similar to its predecessor, which is no bad thing on the face of it, considering that Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a fun game.

Continue reading Ghoul Patrol, Super Nintendo

Time Bandit, Dragon 32

An American TRS-80 release imported to the Dragon 32, Time Bandit is a scrolling maze game with shoot ’em up elements. It was written by Bill Dunlevy and Harry Lafnear and first published by MichTron in 1983. Microdeal published it in the UK.

Continue reading Time Bandit, Dragon 32