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.
Tag Archives: spaceships
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.
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.
Descent, PC
Descent is a famous PC DOS shoot ’em up developed by Parallax Software and published by Interplay in 1995.
Colony 7, Arcade
Taito‘s American division developed this vertical screen base defence game in 1981. Colony 7 owes quite a bit to Missile Command, if the truth be known, and was also probably the very first video game to feature “rip-off” micro-transactions too…
Death Star Interceptor, ZX Spectrum
Looking at Death Star Interceptor now you might be surprised to discover that it was a “number one” game when it first came out in 1985.
And – while it did make it to the top of the games charts back then – the charts were not very reliable, and the game actually wasn’t that good, even though it does officially license use of the Star Wars theme, for a warbly Speccy interpretation of John Williams‘ classic music.
Death Star Interceptor was a case of style over content, and also maybe a touch of Star Wars fever as well. These are thoughts I had about the game when I first played it back in 1985.
The King of Grabs 