The ColecoVision port of Konami‘s 1982 arcade game, Time Pilot, is a decent attempt to bring this simple, eight-way scrolling shooter to the home. It was first released in 1983.
Tag Archives: shoot em up
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Arcade
Based on the 1983 film of the same name, Atari‘s Return of the Jedi was first released into arcades in 1984, and the game uses 2D, rasterized graphics, instead of vector-based graphics, like the Star Wars arcade game does.
Action Force II, ZX Spectrum
The sequel to the first Action Force, Action Force II is a game that I knew had reviewed well at the time of its original release (in 1988), so I was expecting good things from it. Having never played the game before, I sat down and gave it a go, but was disappointed with what I found…
Action Force, ZX Spectrum
Developed by Gang of Five and published by Virgin Games in 1987, Action Force is a scrolling shooter set in the world of the Action Force toys by Hasbro/Milton Bradley (aka G.I. Joe toys in North America). Action Force was also released for the Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC, although the Spectrum version is notably different to those versions.
Twinkle Tale, Megadrive/Genesis
Developed by ZAP Corporation and published by Wonder Amusement Studio (a subsidiary of Japanese record label Toyo Recording), Twinkle Tale is a scrolling ‘bullet hell’ shooter released exclusively for the Sega Megadrive, in Japan only, in 1992. Fan translations into English, Spanish and Korean exist, making the game accessible to a good proportion of the world outside Japan.
RoboCop, PC
The 1989 MS-DOS version of RoboCop is part conversion of the Data East arcade game, and partly does it own thing, with level structures that connect rooms above and below, with staircases that instantly flip the screen, rather than scroll it. The majority of levels do scroll horizontally, though, although the scrolling is very jerky.
Shadow Skimmer, Commodore 64
Published by The Edge in 1987, Shadow Skimmer is an overhead scrolling shooter set on a large, maze-like spaceship. At first glance, the game looks a bit like Andrew Braybrook‘s Paradroid, but it plays much differently.
RoboCop, Amstrad CPC
The Amstrad version of Ocean‘s RoboCop came out in 1989, and it is much like the Commodore 64 version, but with a smaller play window and chunkier graphics.
Total Eclipse, 3DO
Developed and published by Crystal Dynamics for the 3DO in 1994, Total Eclipse is a third-person space shooter with impressive graphics (for the time), but two major flaws…
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Nintendo 64
Turok: Dinosaur Hunter is a first-person shooter, developed by Iguana Entertainment and published by Acclaim for the Nintendo 64 console and Microsoft Windows. It was initially released in 1997 in North America and Europe.
The King of Grabs 