Favorite single-screen games

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Curious what your favorite single-screen games are? Stuff like Burger Time, Donkey Kong, etc. I’ve been playing some basic stuff like those lately and was on the lookout for some games I might not be familiar with also.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I'm pretty fond of Namco Classic Collection Vol 2. Pac Man Arrangement and Dig-Dug Arrangement are a lot of fun for coop multiplayer.

There's also Chameleon which I find pretty amusing.

[Stevens]

Akane is a recent one I dig.

[To Far Away Times]

Binary Land. You are always controlling both characters at the same time. It's a real trip.

[SuperDeadite]

Chipchan Kick
Joust
Wizard of Wor

[Sumez]

Does completely abstract stuff like Tetris count as a single screen game in this context? Because that's a clear winner.
Otherwise I'm going with Bubble Bobble.

[Stevens]

Donkey Kong Jr and 3 are fun. 3 is like the bastard child of the series.

How about Tron and Discs of Tron? The game play in all four mini games is single screen as is Discs.

[evil_ash_xero]

Probably one of the Tetris games.

I also really liked Ms. Pac-Man.

[TransatlanticFoe]

I really enjoyed Lunar Rescue via the Space Invaders Invincible Collection. Super Space Invaders '91 is a great modernised take on Space Invaders, the Japanese version with a truncated stage set is probably the better balanced revision.

[DMC]

Robotron 2084!

[davyK]

A pile of the early arcade games still play really well.

Asteroids is pretty timeless.

Space Invaders and its various updates,
Warlords (local MP),
Tetris,
Kaboom! (on the 2600),
Super Breakout,
Bubble Bobble,
Bust-A-Move/aka Puzzle Bobble.

[BIL]

Robotron 2084!

PREACH

That's the fuckin stuff One of gaming's ultimate distillations. Balls to the wall topdown shoot & rescue. Timeless intensity and precision, immortally arresting aesthetic - best enjoyed in a pitch-black room with the speakers cranked to window-shattering, for the true sense of MAN IS INFERIOR TO HIS OWN CREATION

[Stevens]

I forgot Food Fight.

[vol.2]

Dr. Mario

[null1024]

Asteroids is an eternal favorite.
I really like Mad Planets, and it's a shame I don't have a spinner to play it at home.
Tapper is also pretty fun, and so is Timber.

[Stevens]

Spinner you say?

Tempest, Black Widow.

And the trackball division:
Missile Command, Centi/Millipede, Crystal Castles

Night Stalker

[BrianC]

Speaking of Night Stalker, I love that 7800 homebrew named Dungeon Stalker that combines aspects of Night Stalker with aspects of Wizard of Wor and the first AD&D on Intellivision. Nice AtariVox support too.

[CIT]

Qix
Volfied
Gals Panic

…you get the idea what kind of games I like.

[BIL]

Qix
Volfied
Gals Panic

…you get the idea what kind of games I like.

That reminds me, I recently took a fancy to #1 BASHISHI GAME Libble Rabble's recent ACA release. Had the superb SFC port forever, but it was always a rainy day game (it was mostly the killer PCB-styled DIP menu and boxart that really sold me, tbh ).

Really cool twin-sticker. I thought I was just incredibly bad at it, initially, until learning it's regarded as tricky to pick up. The arrows pointing to their respective sticks is a minor bit of design genius. IIRC it's actually Toru Iwatani's personal favourite of his catalogue, though he was assigned to other projects before completion. Apparently that's where the Wizardry-esque treasure finding came in, the new staff were RPG nuts. Serendipity imo, it gives it a really compelling risk-your-neck aspect.

The ACA one is the series' customarily no-frills excellence, and they very smartly let you assign the righmost arrow to P2's pad/stick. So the door's open for something like this custom beaut.



(also enables EZ couch co-op... I wonder if people played like this in arcades, BITD? so much easier yet just as fun, tackling the field with a player on each stick)

[Davey]

I always thought the Pang games (aka Buster Bros) deserved more love. I'm not a fan of the regular stage modes, but panic mode is great. Such a simple yet fun mechanic that can lead to some really hectic gameplay. While certainly not a shmup, it's arguably shmup adjacent. At least I get that sort of feel from it when things start getting crazy. I'm not sure if a manic Pang would work, but the vague image in my head of what it'd be like is pretty awesome.

A modernized version of Balloon Fight would be cool, too. I'm not sure why I prefer it over Joust to be honest, probably just more exposure.

[Lethe]

I'm not sure if a manic Pang would work, but the vague image in my head of what it'd be like is pretty awesome.

Is this the item you are looking for?

[SuperDeadite]

Qix
Volfied
Gals Panic

…you get the idea what kind of games I like.

That reminds me, I recently took a fancy to #1 BASHISHI GAME Libble Rabble's recent ACA release. Had the superb SFC port forever, but it was always a rainy day game (it was mostly the killer PCB-styled DIP menu and boxart that really sold me, tbh ).

Really cool twin-sticker. I thought I was just incredibly bad at it, initially, until learning it's regarded as tricky to pick up. The arrows pointing to their respective sticks is a minor bit of design genius. IIRC it's actually Toru Iwatani's personal favourite of his catalogue, though he was assigned to other projects before completion. Apparently that's where the Wizardry-esque treasure finding came in, the new staff were RPG nuts. Serendipity imo, it gives it a really compelling risk-your-neck aspect.

The ACA one is the series' customarily no-frills excellence, and they very smartly let you assign the righmost arrow to P2's pad/stick. So the door's open for something like this custom beaut.



(also enables EZ couch co-op... I wonder if people played like this in arcades, BITD? so much easier yet just as fun, tackling the field with a player on each stick)

Libble Rabble is one of those games I try and git gud at every few months or so. I stick to the X68000 port which is not only basically perfect, but being a Dempa/Micomsoft release every copy came with the XPD-1LR dual d-pad controller in the box so it controls beautifully too. Still though after some years with it, I still suck lol. The confusion is real and my brain is getting too old...

[BIL]

It's a bit of a mindfuck, even moreso with its affable style. Some D.A.R.Y.L. shit going on. At this early stage, I find it helps to actively resist crossing up the arrows. Being able to reorient my hand/eye connection at a glance frees up a lot of braintime. It's one of those tiny, profound examples of design genius, having the arrow sprites visibly point to their respective sides of the controller, then leaving it to the player to maintain this guidance. Or perhaps grow beyond it? I suppose the next step is associating red/left and blue/right (as the builder of that lovely custom stick above did!). Compelling little gem, I see why Iwatani loves it.

The craftsmanship of those Dempa X68k Video Game Anthology releases is wonderful to behold. I was looking up Rygar's and Dragon Buster's, recently. Great selection and bang-on (yet judicious) conversion. I wish ACA Dragon Buster had Dempa's true 8way controls, it's a handful at times with the PCB-spec 4way.

[Davey]

I'm not sure if a manic Pang would work, but the vague image in my head of what it'd be like is pretty awesome.

Is this the item you are looking for?

Not quite what I was imagining, but I downloaded it and after a brief session it seems pretty cool. I'm a sucker for neat little doujins, anyway.

There are some genres where cranking the intensity up to 11 works, like shmups or rhythm games, but I'm not sure if a Cave-esque Pang clone would work. Even if it could, you might have to change the mechanics so much that it wouldn't have the same feel. But something similar but crazier, like what Prism Land Story/Sorcerer's Maze did for Breakout, could probably turn out decent.

[null1024]

This talk of Libble Rabble had me go try it in MAME. Good fun, although I'm playing on a modern analog controller for each stick, which is not ideal. Tried using d-pad and face buttons too, and like, it's arguably more precise, but I seemed to screw up more since the face buttons aren't a real directional input.
Took me like 20 minutes to wrap my head around the basic flow of things, haha.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Ladybug!

[null1024]

So, I've been pretty hooked on Libble Rabble now. It really is quite fun once you get to grips with it.
Was doing miserably yesterday [couldn't even make it onto the default HS table], but I'm feeling super comfortable playing it now. Mediocre day 2 scores of ~90k on season 6, but hey.

I've ended up just bringing the two arrows together and moving them apart so I can keep track of where I am without crossing them too badly.

[BIL]

Great to see you pick it up! It really is a wonderful oddity. #1 BASHISHI GAME

[dojo_b]

Is Robotron acceptably playable via Midway Arcade Origins on 360? (Or egad, should I buy a fuckin' Lego game for the PS4, inside of which it's allegedly playable?) The wiki page paints an undignified picture of the game's stewardship over the years, repeatedly appearing and disappearing from online services.

Geometry Wars 3 has been a pleasant-enough substitute, but lacks the harsh, primitive sensory violence that fit the original so well. I have heard good things about Nex Machina.

[dojo_b]

Tetris Attack / Panel de Pon. The first striking thing about it is that it's a quite fun 2p competitive slugfest, even for the relatively large fraction of players who never learn about or explore advanced chaining (in the 1p or points-competition, where it shines properly and comes to seem like the whole point of the game). The next is that, while it shares with Tetris the basic idea of rapidly-improvised simple decisions, it also has a larger horizon in which you can get out ahead of the eight-ball and (with appropriate visualization) plan actions considerably in advance, or even interleave multiple chains. There are difficult precision-input tricks for the mechanically gifted (enabling chain-extensions in sticky spots), but it also seems one can go far without them by judicious stack management.

A current single-screen fancy: Hypnocult, a minimalist action-puzzle game focused on overcoming perceptual confusion in a simple but novel environment (riffing on Tempest). Kind of a follow-on to Super Hexagon. Again, simple, but some kind of radical learning is needed to make progress. Both developers (increpare, Terry Cavanagh) have great games in other genres.