April 18th, 2011 by Benj Edwards
They came out of the blue of the black sky.
[ From Compute!, June 1982, p.25 ]
Discussion Topic of the Week: What’s your favorite 2D space shooter of all time?
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April 18th, 2011 at 3:07 pm
Of all time? Probably Space Dual.
April 18th, 2011 at 3:08 pm
Sorry, typo: Space Duel.
April 18th, 2011 at 3:12 pm
Parsec for the TI99-4A
April 18th, 2011 at 3:24 pm
I’d have to say Phoenix for the Atari 2600 ranks up there for classics. Overall Life Force for the NES. Great conversion of an excellent game.
April 18th, 2011 at 3:35 pm
MUSHA Aleste for Genesis/Mega Drive. Man that was a great game.
April 18th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
Agreed on MUSHA. The Thunderforce series on Genesis is up there for me too. I can’t just pick one.
April 18th, 2011 at 8:13 pm
Skramble for the C64. That was wicked. And R-Type for the SNES.
April 18th, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Does Solar Jetman count? (NES)
April 18th, 2011 at 9:06 pm
Aww man, this was the first game I ever bought.
April 18th, 2011 at 9:55 pm
>ahem
April 18th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
Sorry ’bout the re-post. Dang it… My clever use of the ‘less than’ sign in my previous post caused the balance of the post not to appear. Bummer.
Asteroids is my response, hands down. Certainly the coin-op, but also (perhaps especially) the Atari 2600 version.
I lasciviously awaited the arrival of the cartridge in our house. I recall saying to my Mom, ” I can use it to practice for getting the 99,990 points high score. AND think of all of the quarters I will save!”
April 19th, 2011 at 4:37 am
It had been so long that I had to dig the disk out, but my favorite was Repton. I don’t remember it terribly well, just that it was fun enough that even though I never lasted all that long, I kept trying over and over and over.
Here’s a page on it with a GIF animation showing the demo/instructions:
http://www.jeffbots.com/c64/repton.html
(I had it for the Apple II, but aside from the usual color differences they seem to be the same.)
April 19th, 2011 at 8:19 am
My favorite 2D space shooter would have to be Life Force or Gradius for the NES. E.D.F., Gradius III and Super R-Type for the SNES weren’t bad either.
April 19th, 2011 at 8:48 am
That’s a good question. I’d probably have to go with Spriggan 1 or Soldier Blade for the PC-Engine. R-type was up there as well. Loved it on both the Turbografx-16 and the Sega Master System (as well as the arcade).
April 19th, 2011 at 9:57 am
Raiden for the arcade. although i’m not good at playing arcade in general, i love watching people play them.
April 20th, 2011 at 2:03 pm
What’s your favorite 2D space shooter of all time? Space Raiders for the Atari 400/800 published 1979. It was the reason I bought an Atari 400 in 1980. Not sure it qualifies since it was more 3D then 2D. This 360 degree first person shooter [You could be attacked from the rear.] had elements from Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica. In 2007, it was included in a list of the 10 most important video games of all time.