List of the 100+ most influential arcade shmups

[The Eidolon]

#10 Star Castle (1980)
Maker: Cinematronics

Tags: B&W, Overlay, Vector, Boss Only
Scrolling: None (Fixed Playfield, Wraparound)

In an era where few shooters included bosses, Star Castle dispenses with everything
else and includes only one big boss, and it's a tough one. So, Star Castle can be thought
of as the first "boss rush" game in a way. The game is relatively late for use of black
and white only, but the vector graphics are well suited to the game's mood and give the
enemy castle a sharp, menacing angular look. Since the Star Castle does not move, an
overlay with concentric colored rings gives the illusion of red, orange and yellow shields.
Color vector games like Tempest, Space Duel and Space Fury (I haven't found an clear
source for which came first) would be coming along soon, removing the need for such
charming trickery.

Star Castle is reportedly one of the earliest games to use artificial intelligence, to make
the mines change their behavior depending on the player's movements. Gameplay
involves shooting through three rings of concentric shields to destroy the central cannon.
If a ring is destroyed completely, a new one regenerates from the inside, so shooting
indiscriminately is not a reliable strategy. Once the center ring is breached, the cannon
will fire through the opening whenever it has a clear shot at the player, so finishing a
level is harder than it looks.

The background pattern of stars is reportedly a trace of a nude picture from a 2/1980
issue of Oui magazine. (It would take a lot of imagination to verify this, but the
distribution is suspiciously irregular.) Star Castle had a home port to (naturally) the
Vectrex. A licensed Atari 2600 game was planned, but it eventually evolved into a
separate game, Yars' Revenge. (It's probably a more successful translation of an arcade
game's play than many actual licensed ports to the 2600...)

Useful links: Wikipedia x 2, Everything2.com, KLOV

[The Eidolon]

#11 Tempest (1980)
Maker: Atari

Tags: Color Vector, Tube Shooter, Spinner, Super Bomb, 1-Axis, Variable Bomb, Level Select, Continue
Scrolling: None (Fixed Playfield, Wraparound)

The tube shooter is a very small niche of shmups, and it is pretty much defined by its originator,
Atari's Tempest. Originally designed as a first person Space Invaders-type game, the designer
(Dave Theurer) then added the idea of a circular tube based on a nightmare he had of monsters
crawling out of a hole in the ground. Tempest featured a spinner allowing for rapid lateral
movement around the perimeter of the tubes, and the game is very fast-paced to compensate.
A super bomb is allowed twice per level, but with variable effect. The first time it zaps all monsters
on screen, but the second only zaps a single enemy.

Tempest also had a level select, allowing the player to choose which number tube to start on. The
level choices vary, and include the last level reached in the previous game. In essence, this is the
earliest continue option in an arcade game. (Bosconian would introduce the continue in its now
traditional format.) To prevent pirated bootlegs (prevalent in the Far East) from being made,
Tempest had an early form of copy protection in its code which would check for the Atari logo on
the startup screen (to make sure it was not an illegal version with the Atari copyright removed).
After the designer v the position of the logo for aesthetic reasons, it introduced a glitch
which would cause the game to register 40 credits if a high score in a certain range was reached.
This was quickly exploited by knowledgeable players, and had to be fixed in later revisions.

For all its success, Tempest did not receive a home version until the early 90's. Atari 2600
and 5200 ports were cancelled, but unfinished prototypes exist, done in by difficulty adapting
the graphics and by the video game crash of 1983-4. Notable successors in the (small) tube shooter
genre would be: Gyruss, S.T.U.N. Runner, Tempest 2000, Tempest 3000 and Space Giraffe.

Useful links: Wikipedia, Flyers, YouTube Interview, AtariProtos.com

[BrianC]

Microsoft Arcade for Windows 3.1 came out in 1993 and had an official licensed port of Tempest.

[The Eidolon]

Microsoft Arcade for Windows 3.1 came out in 1993 and had an official licensed port of Tempest.

I did not know that. Fixed!

[The Eidolon]

#12 Astro Blaster (1981)
Maker: Sega/Gremlin

Tags: Fuel, Technique Bonus, Secret Bonus, Slow-motion, Docking, Voice, Fuel, Shot Limit
Scrolling: None (Fixed Playfield)

There's a lot going on in Astro Blaster for a 1981 game. It's a multi-wave space
shooter in the vein of Space Invaders or Galaxian. To that, they added a fuel
gauge, simulated speech, secret bonuses, a slowdown button, a shot limit (by
overheating) and a docking phase. The enemies come as 29 different kinds of
assorted objects, resembling cells, medals, flying saucers, Galaxians (Hey,
copyright infringement!), meteors and many others. Activision shamelessly
copied this "fight random crap falling from space" motif in Megamania, and
Astro Blaster inspired a few clones in the arcade, but other than that it's a
relatively underrepresented genre.

Just shooting and dodging to stay alive are not enough to get by in Astro Blaster.
Only one shot is allowed on screen at a time, but it moves quite quickly. The
game penalizes misses with an overheat gauge. Once it touches a critical
threshold, no firing is allowed for several seconds until your laser cools to the
normal range. Compounding this, there is a fuel gauge ticking away, acting as
a multi-stage time limit. Fuel can be replenished a small amount by shooting
fireballs (on the few stages where they show up), and completely by docking. But
running out of fuel by taking too long or by failing to dock ends the game entirely,
no matter how many spare lives are in stock. A once per life "Warp" button
greatly slows down the enemies and their shots (but NOT your fuel gauge).

There are numerous score bonuses in Astro Blaster, generally awarded after the
docking phase. They are listed by number, but with no indication of what actions
trigger them. Risk-taking is rewarded by double points scored for enemies shot
while the fuel gauge is critical (which is partly counteracted by a bonus for
remaining fuel after docking). A robotic-sounding voice narrates various game
events ("FUEL STATUS CRITICAL"), which seems to have been a popular way for
arcade cabinets to try to attract attention in 1981. (Taito's Stratovox did voice first
a year earlier.) The slowdown button was probably Astro Blaster's most innovative
feature and shows up again in shmups much later. (Although plenty of shmups
have inadvertent slowdown as a hardware "feature"!) Secret score bonuses would
show up again in Xevious (Sol Citadels) and would become popular in many modern
shooters. In ways, Astro Blaster seems to have been ahead of its time, introducing
features which would catch on much later, but not obviously being a direct influence
on its succesors.

Useful links: KLOV, Arcade-History.com, Flyer

[The Eidolon]

#13 Bosconian (1981)
Maker: Namco

Tags: Radar, Persistent World, Technique Bonus, Formation, Tail Gun, Rank
Scrolling: 4-Way Free-Scrolling (Wraparound)

Bosconian takes much of the structure of Defender and adds another dimension.
The persistent world bigger than one's field of view, enemies who can reside off-
screen, and radar view are all present. Mercifully not present are Defender's
characteristically Williams-like wonky controls. Instead, the Bosconian ship has
full two-axis motion with the player fixed at the center of the screen (similar to
1982's Time Pilot, but with the ability to turn on a dime). This 2-D free-scrolling
engine was based on hardware developed for Namco's New Rally X earlier that
year. An extremely useful tail gun fires along with the main shot, making Bosconian
the first game I've found to introduce multiple shots from the ship at the same time
(as opposed to multiple shots sequentially in games like Phoenix).

The goal of Bosconian is to clear the map of hexagonal enemy space stations, by
destroying all six lobes or with a single clean shot to the station's core. The
cores are initially unarmored, but from stage 3 on they can only be shot when
their armor is opened, which they do to shoot missiles at the player. A wide
variety of small ships circulate to harass you and defend the stations. The three
main types of enemies are I-Type (Eich), P-Type (Ploor) and E-Type (Eddore)
Missiles. All of these terms as well as Bosconian itself (Boskonian) are borrowed
from Edward "Doc" Smith's 1930's space opera "Lensman" series.

Bosconian has a primitive version of rank. Depending on how long the player has
stayed on a level and one's proximity to the enemy bases, the intensity of the
enemy ship attacks varies. This is indicated by an colored alert level visible to
the player, as well as various voiced warnings. The enemies are sometimes
issued in formations, elaborating on the formation attacks from Namco's own
Galaxian. If the lead ship (differently colored) is destroyed, the others will scatter.
Shooting all the ships in a formation gives a scoring bonus, again similar to Galaxian.
At the end of the credit, Bosconian introduced the timed "continue" screen now
ubiquitous in arcade games, allowing play to resume on the same level with damaged
and destroyed stations in the same condition. Tempest introduced continues a year
earlier, but only as a level select, so Bosconian is the father of the continue option
in its present form (allowing the dreaded practice of credit-feeding!).

Useful links: StrategyWiki, Flyer, Lensman, Wikipedia

[The Eidolon]

#14 Galaga (1981)
Maker: Namco

Tags: 1-Axis Motion, Technique Bonus, Bonus Stage, Power-up, Ship Capture
Scrolling: Background only (Fixed playfield)

Galalaxian's sequel, Galaga, marked the high point in popularity of the series. Since this was
the early 80's, that naturally meant it was one of the most bootlegged cabinets ever. Galaga
takes the formation-based attacks of Galaxian and elaborates on them. Now the enemies
swoop on-screen in intricate patterns rather than starting in rows. Every few rounds, a
bonus stage is introduced, consisting of non-firing enemies which need to be destroyed
quickly for bonus points, before they swoop off-screen. The bonus stages have a
performance evaluation at the end, based on enemies shot down and hit percentage, which
seems to be the origin of the "level performance" evaluation now common in shmups at
the end of each level or after clearing the game. Galaxian's insect motif is maintained,
and the enemy shots are even barbed to resemble miniature bee stingers. The top row of
enemies take more than one hit to destroy, still a novel feature in shmups at the time
(though preceded by a few examples like by Phoenix's big birds, Moon Cresta's aliens,
and the falling fleas in Centipede).

Galaga's most famous feature is the ship capture/double fire mechanic. Similar to the
multi-ship docking in Moon Cresta, it allows the player a high-risk way to increase firepower
by using one's spare lives. In Galaga's case, this is an optional technique. If one's ship is
snared by the big alien's tractor beam, it is pulled up and that life is sacrificed. Destroying
the capturing alien (without hitting and destroying the captured player) allows one to dock
with the second ship, doubling one's firepower while making one a much fatter target. This
technique is essential in getting high shooting percentages in the bonus stages, as one shot
can take out two enemies. For an expert player, the additional firepower more than makes
up for the lost life. But for a beginner, the risk of a failed ship recovery or immediately
losing the docked ship to enemy fire makes it a poor trade-off. Though Galaga's
implementation of power-ups was complicated, the idea of power-ups to increase firepower
caught on as a fundamental feature of most future shmups. The double ship was a great
attention-getter, probably accounting for some of Galga's success in the arcade. It felt
like a novel, secret technique, though attentive players might notice it was explained on the
control panel. (If you weren't playing on a bootleg cab...)

Useful links: StrategyWiki, Flyer, Control Panel, KLOV

[The Eidolon]

#15 GORF (1981)
Maker: Midway

Tags: Boss, Multi-stage, Shot Cancellation, Shot Limit, Voice
Scrolling: None (Fixed Playfield)

In the early 80's, the vast majority of shmups seem to have been shameless copies or
outright bootlegs of a few popular games. (Space Invaders, Galaxian, Scramble etc.)
GORF does them one better by being a Frankenstein's Monster-like game, stitched
together from the pieces of several other, better, games. There's a Space Invaders
clone level, a Galaxian clone level, and even a boss flagship level reminiscent of the alien
ship from Phoenix. Two of the levels seem more original (or perhaps are inspired by
games so obscure I've never heard of them). The Laser Attack level has enemies which
shoot difficult to dodge laser beams, and the Space Warp level has enemies which spiral
out from a hole in the center of the screen while getting larger in a pseudo 3-D effect
(reminiscent of Tempest, but with completely different gameplay).

Actually, for its time, GORF was not a bad game at all. Multi-stage games were still
novel and usually had only slight variations from level to level. Even Phoenix, the original
multi-stage shooter, used repeated levels and had only 3 unique types, compared to GORF's
five. GORF is an acronym, by the way, for Galactic Orbiting Robot Force, explaining its
ALL CAPS title. The Gorfians have an oddly-cute mascot, a little strawberry-shaped bouncing
robot who appears as a regular or bonus point enemy on most levels. The final level has a
huge enemy flagship which needs to be destroyed by a lucky shot through a tiny exhaust port.
(Now why does that sound familiar?)

GORF had some unique features. The player has only a single shot on-screen at a time, but
can let off a new shot at any time which cancels the one already in flight (useful to reduce
the delay after a missed shot). A large force shield on the first level flickers to let player
shots out, but blocks enemy shots, in a twist on the Space Invaders shields. The same shield
appears inverted to protect the enemy ship on the last level. The GORF cabinet had a clever
gimmick with six lighted panels displaying the player's rank, starting with Space Cadet and
advancing to Space Avenger. Every time the enemy flagship was defeated, the next rank
would light up and the game would loop to a harder set of five levels.

GORF had a number of console ports, but the "Galaxian" level was left out of each, presumably
to avoid the ire of Namco's legal department. Oddly, the Space Invaders clone level was left
in. Maybe Taito's lawyers were lazier, or exhausted from dealing with so many Space Invaders
clones to have little time for small fry... A sequel was planned, the awesomely-named "Ms. Gorf,"
but it was never completed and was sadly abandoned during the great video game crash.

Useful links: Designer's web page, Wikipedia, StrategyWiki, Flyer

[The Eidolon]

#16 Pleiades [Pleiads] (1981)
Maker: Tehkan

Tags: 1-Axis Motion, Technique Bonus, Hyperspace, Boss, Allies, Multi-stage, Bonus item
Scrolling: Mixed (Fixed playfield plus vertical)

Pleiades: The game no one knows how to spell. The in-game title is "Pleiads," but
the marquee has "Pleiades." The promotional materials have a mixture of each,
including a nice flyer titled "Pleiads" featuring a "Pleiades" cabinet prominently. The
star cluster can be spelled either way, so maybe it doesn't matter. Whatever you
call it, Pleiades is a sort-of sequel to Phoenix, with the same distributor (Centuri)
but developed by a new company (Tekhan versus Amstar). It was actually Tekhan's
(now Tecmo) first arcade game ever.

Both Pleiads and Phoenix are early multi-stage shooters, and Pleiads shows the
influence of its predecessor, especially in the "giant birds" stage, which is nearly
identical. Both feature boss battles against a giant alien ship, but Pleiads uses
a different mechanic, where the ship must be destroyed by shooting out all the
engine fires (or by defeating all of the accompanying enemy fighters). Pleiads
is innovative for having a strong sense of place for each stage. The first stage is
on Earth, with structures and defensive satellite dishes that serve as shields
comparable to the bases from Space Invaders. The dishes can actually pivot
and launch desultory fire at enemies, making Phoenix the first shmup to include
independent computer-controlled allies.

Unusually for a single-axis shooter, Pleiades includes an Asteroids-like hyperspace
button, which transports the player's ship to a random spot on the bottom of the
screen once per life or stage. After defeating about three waves aliens on Earth,
the screen shifts colors to simulate night. One last batch comes and then the player
blasts off into space to fight the Phoenix-like aliens (while the star field background
inexplicably vanishes, just like in Phoenix). The game offers a double points for
shooting the birds when they are large instead of small, and doubles the score again
for each wing which has been damaged. (The wings smoke, but do not get blown off
as in Phoenix).

The third stage is the alien mothership, followed by an epilogue in stage four where
the player is called back to Earth and needs to navigate a scrolling cone of obstacles
to wind up back where he started for the next loop. This makes it one of the earliest
vertically-scrolling shooter stages in an arcade game (not counting scrolling
backgrounds like in Galaxian--Pleiades has actual obstacles which influence play).

Useful links: MAWS, Wikipedia, Flyer, KLOV

[devilmanozzy]

Where is Spacewars! ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!

Spacewars! was the very first shmup ever made. Read about it!

It is said to be the third video game made. It trumps all the list as it was before the term Arcade was even around. Seriously without this game, your list comes off being a complete joke.

[The Eidolon]

Where is Spacewars! ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!

Spacewars! was the very first shmup ever made. Read about it!

It is said to be the third video game made. It trumps all the list as it was before the term Arcade was even around. Seriously without this game, your list comes off being a complete joke.

I know about Spacewar!, but as you mention, it precedes the coin-op video game industry
(though not mechanical coin-ops), so doesn't fit on this list, which is arcade-only. Any such
list will make arbitrary judgment calls and questionable omissions. But I'd rather pick
something fun and start researching/writing than worrying if I've picked the perfect category.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For The Eidolon,

If you consider Funai's 1983 Interstellar LaserDisc arcade shmup, it has some interesting gameplay combined with some cool CGI background FMV. Not to mention Interstellar's arcade joystick twists to the left & right (while moving in the basic 8-way movement scheme) changing the firing direction on your fightercraft (akin to the firing direction of your spacecraft on the classic Atari 2600 Imagic game of Moonsweeper when skimming on the surfaces of the four different colored moons -- perfect for taking pot shots at those pesky surface destroyer saucers).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[The Eidolon]

For The Eidolon,

If you consider Funai's 1983 Interstellar LaserDisc arcade shmup, it has some interesting gameplay combined with some cool CGI background FMV. Not to mention Interstellar's arcade joystick twists to the left & right (while moving in the basic 8-way movement scheme) changing the firing direction on your fightercraft (akin to the firing direction of your spacecraft on the classic Atari 2600 Imagic game of Moonsweeper when skimming on the surfaces of the four different colored moons -- perfect for taking pot shots at those pesky surface destroyer saucers).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Thanks for the heads up--I hadn't heard of Interstellar. The only laserdisc shmups I was
aware of are Mach 3, Cobra Command, Astron Belt and Galaxy Ranger/Star Blazer.
Interstellar looks like it has a more traditional shmup structure than the others, with the
laserdisc just for the backgrounds. Does that match your impression? I've added it to my
arcade shmup database (approaching 600 entries). 1983 seems to have been the year
for laserdisc shmups, but they seem to have been a short-lived phenomenon. Did you see
Interstellar as influential on other shmups/games? The twist joystick sounds similar to
games like Ikari Warriors or Gondomania. Was it 8 directional fire or some other twist variant?
The KLOV entry is unclear and gameplay videos don't really show the control scheme...

[Elixir]

Half of these games are unheard of. If you want influential shmups, maybe narrow it down to.. 20.

[The Eidolon]

#17 Scramble (1981)
Maker: Konami

Tags: Fuel Gauge, Setback, Secondary Weapon, Shot Limit, Bombs
Scrolling: Horizontal

This is it--Scramble is the grandaddy of all scrolling shoot-em-ups. Defender came a year
earlier, but its brand of free-scrolling horizontal gameplay spawned relatively few
descendants. Scramble established the template which would be used for nearly all future
shmups, particularly horizontal ones. Scramble's influence on the development of the shoot-
em-up genre is probably second only to Space Invaders.

Scramble introduced a generation of gamers to the joys of controlled flight into terrain. The
caves and buildings that need to be dodged by your craft are as much a threat as any manned
enemy craft. The game scrolls at a fixed rate, with the plater limited to the left half of the
screen. In the later zones, the "slack" between the player position and the end of the screen
is a resource that must be carefully managed to avoid being force-scrolled into tall vertical
obstacles. Scramble also uses a fuel gauge to keep pressure on the player. Fuel as a game
element predates Scramble by a couple years with Atari's Lunar Lander (1979), but Scramble
seems to have been the first to use fuel in a shmup context. Fuel can (illogically) be partly
restored by exploding enemy fuel tanks.

Shots are limited to a generous 4 on screen at a time, but bombs are limited to only two. The
bombs arc forward in a downward path that takes a bit of practice to aim precisely, so it is
essential not to rapid-fire the bombs carelessly but instead to pick one's targets. There are
usually more ground targets to take out than there is time to bomb them, so the player must
make a risk/reward calculation between fuel (bombing fuel tanks), safety (bombing rocket
interceptors which might otherwise launch and kill the player) and score (bombing the higher
value mystery point bases). As the game goes on, the fuel consumption increases, forcing
the player to target fuel tanks above all in the later loops. A "boss" base (in a very hard to
reach place!) must be taken out at the end of each loop or the player is forced to repeat the
last section with ever-dwindling fuel.

Scramble introduces the dreaded "setback" feature which forces the player back to a fixed
checkpoint (the start of each section) with each player death. Combined with a lack of
continue feature, this makes Scramble surprisingly unforgiving. The setback feature clearly
influenced future horizontal shmups like the Gradius and R-Type series, but is also seen
occasionally in vertical shmups such as Truxton/Tatsujin. The connection between Scramble
and Konami's own Gradius is debatable. The shot/bomb/crash into terrain mechanic is very
similar, but Gradius' more futuristic theme feels different. The Gradius Galaxies intro lists
Scramble as the first game in the Gradius series, but other Konami materials list it separately,
so whether it is a direct or spiritual ancestor is unclear.

For such a successful game, Scramble was translated into relatively few contemporary console
ports, arriving only on the Vectrex. Its immediate successor, Super Cobra, was ported to
almost everything under the sun. Scramble is unfortunately known for its lack of hardware
copy protection, so that Scramble cabinets can and were converted to nearly any game
using a Z80 chip (leading to the running joke that any game, no matter how recent, can
be hacked to run on Scramble hardware).

Useful links: Complete Terrain Map, KLOV, Wikipedia, Flyer, Arcade-History.com

[Leeram]

Number one simply has to be Space Invaders, it's easily the most influencial shoot 'em up. Nothing even comes close, not even R-Type. Sure others came before it, but that was the most influencial.

Cheers

Leeram

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For The Eidolon,

If you consider Funai's 1983 Interstellar LaserDisc arcade shmup, it has some interesting gameplay combined with some cool CGI background FMV. Not to mention Interstellar's arcade joystick twists to the left & right (while moving in the basic 8-way movement scheme) changing the firing direction on your fightercraft (akin to the firing direction of your spacecraft on the classic Atari 2600 Imagic game of Moonsweeper when skimming on the surfaces of the four different colored moons -- perfect for taking pot shots at those pesky surface destroyer saucers).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

Thanks for the heads up--I hadn't heard of Interstellar. The only laserdisc shmups I was
aware of are Mach 3, Cobra Command, Astron Belt and Galaxy Ranger/Star Blazer.
Interstellar looks like it has a more traditional shmup structure than the others, with the
laserdisc just for the backgrounds. Does that match your impression? I've added it to my
arcade shmup database (approaching 600 entries). 1983 seems to have been the year
for laserdisc shmups, but they seem to have been a short-lived phenomenon. Did you see
Interstellar as influential on other shmups/games? The twist joystick sounds similar to
games like Ikari Warriors or Gondomania. Was it 8 directional fire or some other twist variant?
The KLOV entry is unclear and gameplay videos don't really show the control scheme...

Interstellar has that unique Japanese designed shmup engine with the unique joystick that was a 8-way digital joystick combined with a specialized mechanism to allowed it to be twisted in 45 degrees to the right or the left...this enabled the player the opportunity to shoot enemies from a 45 degress angle and not have to be in the direct "line of fire" of the enemy's firing range. Of course, like most early 1980s shmup titles, Interstellar had a big hitbox for your fightercraft -- just one direct hit from an airborne enemy or a ground-based enemy and you watched a cool FMV explosion of your fightercraft being ripped apart.

I was blown away by the cool CGI imagery that it used for it's time back in 1983...very well done game.

If you're able to attend a California Extreme show, Interstellar does make an apppearance almost every year for the retro arcade laserdisc fans.

Shmup Factoid: Funai made more of the upright Interstellar cabs than of the rarer deluxe sit-down type of cabs of the same name.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[UZI]

You should delete Ibara from the list. It's a spiritual sequel to Battle Garegga. Ibara doesn't bring anything new to the genre.

(no chronogical order)

-Gradius (1st shoot with stages and options)
-Zanac ( 1st game with a good A.I and ranking + number system)
-Batsugun (1st ''danmaku'')
-Battle Garegga ( Tsuneki Ikeda was inspired by this game when he worked on DoDonpachi...>no Garegga = no DoDonpachi)
-DoDonpachi ( You know why...> no DoDonpachi = no Ketsui and etc...)
-Space invaders (1st shoot was born)
-Gun frontier (S. Yagawa was inspired by this game when he created Garegga)
-???
-???
-???

There are about only 10 games that were influential.

[The Eidolon]

#18 Space Fury (1981)
Maker: Sega/Gremlin

Tags: Color Vector, Voice, Weapon Select, Docking, Power-ups, Time bonus
Scrolling: None (Fixed Playfield, Wraparound)

Space Fury is evolved from the Asteroids template, but with a few twists. In the words of a wise man,
"This might be a good time to point out that this game is NOT a rip-off of the incredibly popular arcade
game, Asteriods. Asteroids, if you remember, puts you in control of a triangular ship which must shoot
big chunks of space debris into smaller chunks of space debris. Space Fury puts you in control of a
triangular ship where small chunks of space debris form into big chunks of space debris, which you then
shoot. So, it's totally different!" The game consists of waves of enemy fighters, which assemble from
four pieces into a larger ship which then pursues and shoots at the player. The individual pieces can be
picked off to prevent the fighters from forming completely, resulting in a partial ship which can't shoot
but mercilessly follows the player around the screen with increasing speed and attempts to ram him.
The screen has complete wraparound for the player, enemies and all shots, so one must watch the
opposite side of the screen for hazards as well. Oddly, the individual enemies cannot ram the player, and
pass right through him, but larger and complete fragments are fatal to touch.

Between rounds, a docking phase allows the player to select one of three power ups, which give either
two extra forward shots, two rear shots, or one shot to each side in addition to the regular front cannon.
This is the first shmup with a weapon select feature, making it a precursor to games like Twin Cobra, R-Type
and the Raiden series. Unusually, the power-ups do not go away when the player loses a ship, and last
for the entire level. At subsequent levels, one must pick from one of the remaining unused power-up
options, making order of selection important to have the best choices left for the harder stages.

Most memorable about Space Fury is the one-eyed green alien who appears to taunt you at the beginning
and end of the game, along with a few (voice only) insults between levels. Unfortunately, you never get
to call him to account for his abuse until the pseudo-sequel, Zektor, where he appears as a secret final-
stage boss. Space Fury is also one of the earliest color vector arcade games, when the technology was
still notoriously unreliable. Reportedly, the monitors have an unfortunate tendency to catch fire... A
contemporary console port was made for the Colecovision, complete with (sadly text only) alien insults.

Useful links: KLOV, Wikipedia, Flyer, Arcade-history.com

[devilmanozzy]

You should delete Ibara from the list. It's a spiritual sequel to Battle Garegga. Ibara doesn't bring anything new to the genre.

(no chronogical order)

-Gradius (1st shoot with stages and options)
-Zanac ( 1st game with a good A.I and ranking + number system)
-Batsugun (1st ''danmaku'')
-Battle Garegga ( Tsuneki Ikeda was inspired by this game when he worked on DoDonpachi...>no Garegga = no DoDonpachi)
-DoDonpachi ( You know why...> no DoDonpachi = no Ketsui and etc...)
-Space invaders (1st shoot was born)
-Gun frontier (S. Yagawa was inspired by this game when he created Garegga)
-???
-???
-???

There are about only 10 games that were influential.

nope Spacewars! was the first shooter

[Ed Oscuro]

nope Spacewars! was the first shooter

You keep spelling Spacewar! wrong. It's easy to remember, there's only one war so no S. Also, the OP has excluded it for not being an arcade shooter.

This thread belongs in "most influential top 100 lists posted to Shmups."

[The Eidolon]

#19 Super Cobra (1981)
Maker: Konami

Tags: Fuel Gauge, Setback, Secondary Weapon, Shot Limit, Bombs, Continue
Scrolling: Horizontal

Super Cobra is a slight reworking of Konami's own Scramble, which come out earlier that
year. The ship is replaced by a helicopter, but the basic gameplay is almost unchanged.
Super Cobra does engage in the proud shmup tradition of being longer and much harder
than its predecessor. There are 10 stages to traverse before the end sequence instead of
5, and the terrain becomes treacherous much earlier. The variable point bases have been
changed to gun emplacements which fire diagonally at your chopper, also increasing the
difficulty. Super Cobra adds a continue feature, making it one of the earliest games to
include one, along with Bosconian and Tempest. Oddly, even though it is a horizontal
scroller, Super Cobra has a vertically oriented monitor (like Scramble), allowing the
skyscraper-like obstacles to be that much taller compared to the limited horizontal space
in which you have to maneuver.

Super Cobra has one advantage over Scramble in that it was ported to a wide variety of
home consoles (2600, 5200, Coleco, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, MSX, Atari Computers, Entex
Adventure Vision), while Scramble only made it to the Vectrex and a few home computers.
Because of its wide distribution, Super Cobra was one of the first games to introduce home
players to the joys and frustrations of scrolling shmups. (River Raid was about
contemporaneous, coming out in 1982, but was an original game rather than arcade port.)

Like Scramble, Super Cobra has a goal (besides "don't get killed," of course). Scramble
cryptically questions prospective players: "How far can you invade our scramble system?"
While Super Cobra commands: "Invade the base and carry away booty." The booty (a
cache of gold bars according to the flyer, though this has no effect on gameplay whatsoever)
is a conveniently dollar sign labeled box which must be picked up and then somehow pulled
over that last obstacle tower (If the booty touches it, it is destroyed, and it's a tight fit!) to
complete the loop and start over with an extra life for a reward. On a personal note, I
wasted a good chunk of my childhood playing Super Cobra on an Atari 5200, not knowing
that the analog controllers of that system were almost completely unsuitable for the precise
movements needed in shmups. I was young and naive, and had nothing better to play, so
I was hooked anyway...

Useful links: KLOV, Flyer, Retrogames.com, Arcade-History.com

[The Eidolon]

#20 Vanguard (1981)
Maker: TOSE (Distributed by SNK)

Tags: Fuel Gauge, Shot Cancellation, Invulnerability, Boss, Muti-Loop, Continue, Voice
Scrolling: Mixed (Horizontal/Diagonal/Vertical)

Vanguard takes the multi-stage scrolling shooter template established by Scramble,
and adds a pulp sci-fi theme with a wider variety of stages and enemies. Vanguard's
most notable innovation was mixing multiple different scrolling directions in the same
game, depending on the stage. (It came out a month before Namco's free-scrolling
game, Bosconian.) Most shmups have stuck to a purely vertical or horizontal design, but
quite a few have followed in Vanguard's footsteps, particularly Capcom's "jet-pack hero"
games: Section Z, Sidearms and Forgotten Worlds.

Vanguard keeps the fuel gauge from Scramble, but makes it nearly pointless by removing
fuel tank targets. Instead one increases fuel (just as illogically) by shooting enemies. There
are also energy tanks in certain stages which reset the fuel gauge and provide temporary
invulnerability, plus and a cheery theme song. One cannot fire while invulnerable, so it
encourages the player to ram enemies until the time runs out. Firing is an unusual system
with 4 orthogonal shot directions, each with its own button. This introduced independent
fire and movement long before arena shooters like Robotron popularized it with a 2-joystick
control system. Whether Vanguard was the first to include independent fire is unclear, as
Arctic's shmup Mars (an otherwise forgettable Scramble clone) came out the same month
as Vanguard with 2-joystick move/fire controls.

Vanguard has a boss stage at the end, but treats it as a bonus stage. Fail and you lose a life
and are ejected to the second loop without a second chance at him. Many shmups by this
point had multiple loops with ramping difficulty, but Vanguard is unusual in having the layout
of stages different in the second loop than the first, with fewer of the diagonal rainbow stages.
Vanguard was only moderately successful, but spawned a sequel (not by TOSE but by SNK)
and a couple of home ports, to the Atari 2600 and 5200.

Useful links: Centuri.net, KLOV, Flyer, Wikipedia

[The Eidolon]

#21 Satan's Hollow (1982)
Maker: Bally Midway

Tags: Branching Paths, Power-ups, Boss, Shield, Life-stealing
Scrolling: Fixed Screen

It would be easy to dismiss Satan's Hollow as just a heavy metal rip-off of
Galaxian/Galaga. It's got colorful enemies flying in formation who break off
to dive bomb you. It even has a ship-stealing mechanic where enemies try
to fly off with your reserve lives. (Unlike Galaga, there's no hidden upside to
this: if you want to get a power-up, you have to earn it the hard way by
defeating Satan himself.) But if you can look past the demonically adorned
cabinet art and the huge red translucent joystick, Satan's Hollow actually has
a lot going on for an early 80's shmup.

Satan's Hollow was the first shooter to introduce branching paths. The left
half of the two game screens contains all the normal waves, where one fights
formations of enemies alternating with the occasional (literally) diabolical boss.
Each enemy destroyed earns a bridge piece in the bottom left corner which can be
dragged by your ship to build a bridge across the river of fire, which blocks the
right side of the screen. This gives one more room to maneuver, which can be
very valuable in the later levels, but the main goal is to complete the bridge and
gain access to the right game screen, where one can challenge Satan.

Fighting Satan is completely optional, but earns a large point bonus proportional
to the level number, and earns a second (or third) cannon which increases your
rate of fire. It also skips you ahead to the next level, so there is quite a bit of
strategy as to when to cross over the bridge. It's useful to build the bridge, then
wait until a tight spot to cross over and avoid that level. Each time Satan is
defeated, the bridge is gone, and the river of fire becomes much wider, increasing
the game difficulty. The widest rivers take up a large fraction of the play field, so
you need to add bridge segments (which can be bombed out by enemies) quickly, or
you will be stuck in one corner of the screen with almost no room to dodge.

The total amount of fire and enemies on screen at a time can get very hectic. The
enemies have no qualms about crashing into your ship with kamikaze tactics.
Fortunately, you have a rechargeable shield which can give brief invulnerability.
You can still move while shielded, so it makes a good offensive weapon to ram
enemies on the bottom of the screen. The shield regenerates quickly when not in
use, but even a full charge doesn't give protection for long. The bosses shoot huge
columns of fire (except Satan, who favors pitchforks, of course), which can outlast
your shield unless you dodge through with just the right timing.

Useful links: GameFAQs, Arcade-History.com, KLOV, Flyer

[EinhanderZwei]

Um, guys... I know it's a stupid question, but I have to ask it:

Where the hell is After Burner?

[The Eidolon]

Um, guys... I know it's a stupid question, but I have to ask it:

Where the hell is After Burner?

Not a stupid question, of course! I would think of Afterburner as only a borderline
shmup. It's an arbitrary decision, but I've avoided looking into anything with a
cockpit view (like Star Wars arcade) or a behind-the-player view, like Space Harrier
or Afterburner. There will always be hard cases, such as why Zaxxon is on the list,
with a 3-D isometric perspective, but would not be if the same game had a behind-the-ship
perspective. Or what about Raystorm with it's pseudo 3-D tilted play surface? Or Dragon Breed,
which is a shmup where you can jump out of your ship and pretend it's a platformer for a
few moments if you want. Or why not include Robotron or other arena shooters? If the
sprite were changed to a mech or the player movement had momentum, it might very well
be a shmup... Anyway, I've tried to follow the general consensus as to what is a shmup,
but the genre is diverse enough that there never can be a perfectly satisfactory definition.

[Dale]

Wouldn't Spacewar! be an arena shmup like Asteroids? Also their was an arcade version of the game called Computer Space I've actually played an original cab at Funspot. Good to play just because the cabinet is epic.

[EinhanderZwei]

Not a stupid question, of course! I would think of Afterburner as only a borderline shmup.

AB1 was obviously created to advance beyond the classic shmup camera positions, but eventually Sega invented a brand new subgenre - rail shmup. I think it's enough for inclusion

[The Eidolon]

Wouldn't Spacewar! be an arena shmup like Asteroids? Also their was an arcade version of the game called Computer Space I've actually played an original cab at Funspot. Good to play just because the cabinet is epic.

I agree with you about Computer Space, that's why it's, um, #1 on the list.
As far as I know, Spacewar! is a mainframe game, which is outside the
scope of this list, which focuses only on arcade releases.

[Dale]

Oh sorry what every one else said confused. I don't know if it I'd consider it a shmup though, I'd put in the same genre as Robotron which might be counted now on this forum I'm not sure.