Cosmic Avenger is a groundbreaking arcade shooter first released in 1981 by Universal. It was one of the first ever side-scrolling shoot ’em ups, and was released the same year as Konami‘s Scramble.
Tag Archives: spaceships
Delta, Commodore 64
Designed and programmed by Stavros Fasoulas in 1987, Delta is a classic side-scrolling shooter with spaceships, sprites, and fast, furious action.
And: like Fasoulas‘s previous game, Sanxion, it’s also immensely challenging.
Sanxion, Commodore 64
Designed and programmed by Stavros Fasoulas in 1986, Sanxion is a classic side-scrolling C64 shoot ’em that is remembered for being challenging, and for also being a slick piece of coding.
It was also the very first game released by Thalamus, who went on to publish some of the best games in C64 history.
Stargate, Arcade
Also known as Defender II, Stargate is the 1981 sequel to Williams Electronics‘ Defender, which was released earlier the same year.
Stargate was designed and programmed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz, for Williams, and it features the same superfast blasting action as Defender, but with subtle differences.
Salamander 2, Arcade
Released ten years after the original Salamander, Konami‘s 1996 sequel – Salamander 2 – is more of the same horizontal/vertical scrolling blasting action, but with a different style of graphics, bigger, better weapons, and more spectacular events.
R-Type Leo, Arcade
R-Type Leo is a spin-off from the famous R-Type series and was released into arcades in 1992. It was the last R-Type game to be made as an arcade game and was developed by Nanao, the parent company of Irem.
Journey, Arcade
This infamous 1983 arcade game from Bally Midway is a bizarre multi-stage action game where you play members of the prog rock band, Journey, trying to retrieve their instruments “from the dangers of the five galaxies”.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Arcade
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is the sequel to the timeless Atari, Inc. shooter, Star Wars, and it was first released into arcades in 1985. It is, of course, based on the classic 1980 film of the same name.
Xenon 1, Oric
Xenon 1 by IJK Software is a very early shoot ’em up for the Oric 1 home computer. It shows off what the Oric is capable of, which is: not very much… 😉
Pulstar, Neo Geo
Pulstar is a horizontally-scrolling, ‘bullet hell’ style shooter developed by Aicom and published in arcades for the Neo Geo MVS in 1995.
And – let’s face it – it’s also a blatant rip-off of Irem‘s R-Type too. That said: it’s not a bad rip-off at all, arguably eclipsing R-Type in terms of graphics.
