Looking for old shooter (early 90s)

[djmitchella]

For a long while now I've been trying to re-locate a game I played back in university; that was '91 to '94, so the game can't be newer than that, and based on what I remember of the graphics quality/smoothness of gameplay, I don't think it's a whole lot older than that, either. Same era as the shooter bit of Three Wonders, at least.

Details: it was available in the UK and the text was in English, though I don't know if it was an official release in that country or just something that they'd somehow got into the common room.

Vertical shooter, set in space rather than over earth/rivers/etc, at least in the bits I can picture, and I'm pretty sure that you were flying a spaceship rather than a giant mech or person or whatever.

The distinctive part is that you had two weapon types, one of which made a large cone of death come out of the front of your ship, the other of which made a large ball of death come out of the front of your ship, and once you'd levelled them up enough these would be as wide as the screen. It was a single solid block of weapon, not a spray of bullets in that shape; if I remember correctly, the ball/circular one would appear and move slowly up-screen, but the tip of the cone was fixed to your ship. They were both a single colour, green/blue, maybe (rather than being made of fire or energy or lightning or such) and the ball was a circular gradient of black (or possibly white?) fading to colour. Or maybe the other way around and the colour was in the middle, but then it couldn't be black that it faded to. Or possibly it was a series of colour/black(white?) circular stripes coming out from the middle. (...sorry...)

I can't remember if those were only once you'd charged the weapon, or the effect when you hit 'bomb', or just what happened if you got enough powerups. Half-a-dozen levels or so, and not so difficult that I couldn't beat it with maybe 5 continues and not an awful lot of practise.


Sorry that's such a fuzzy description; I've looked through the screenshots in the review section of the main site and none of them match what I remember, at least, and googling doesn't get me anything because I don't have the right keywords.

[Xyga]

Arcade ? Console ? Computer ?

[Perikles]

Might be Acrobat Mission - if you power it up a few times the charged up wave shot produces a huge beam in cone form whereas the hurricane weapon unleashes a large ball. It's vertical, all stages but the first one are either in space or inside a battleship, five stages in total, the text is in English, you fly a regular spaceship.

[djmitchella]

Might be Acrobat Mission - if you power it up a few times the charged up wave shot produces a huge beam in cone form whereas the hurricane weapon unleashes a large ball. It's vertical, all stages but the first one are either in space or inside a battleship, five stages in total, the text is in English, you fly a regular spaceship.

Yes! That's the one -- I think I'd tried it briefly but not for long enough to get enough amount of powerup for the charge shot to be the way I remember, so I'd assumed it wasn't this one. (also, I guess I had the backgrounds completely mis-remembered, or maybe I just spent more time on the off-planet levels so I assumed they were all like that)

Thankyou! That's been nagging at me for, ooh, two decades or so now, so I am very pleased to have it solved.

-- dan