Top 25 Vertical Shooters for the VCS (nomination stage)
Entry posted by StanJr
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Ok. So here comes the next great feature from the Electric Frankfurter! http://www.electricfrankfurter.com/
Stolen directly from recent hot topics in the 2600 forum here (shameless, really) I am going to take a shot at ranking the Top 25 Vertical Shooter games for the Atari 2600. I've trolled (in the good way) the library of 2600 games and have come up with about 42 games that fit my arbitrary criteria for what makes a vertical shooter. (see below) What I need from you good people is a bit of fact checking, opinion, and recommendation. Please, if you will, review the criteria and the list below and let me know if I have listed a game that does NOT fit the criteria, or if I have missed a game that does fit the criteria. Please note that I am limiting this to US NTSC releases in the classic era (before the proliferation of homebrews in the 1990's and beyond). I am not including prototypes or obvious clones like Zellers games etc. Also feel free to tell me what your top 5 or so vertical shooters are so I can have a little bias going into this project.
Above all, remember that this is meant to be FUN! I'll nerd out with the best of them (see CRITERIA), but there comes a point where the geekery eclipses the funnery, so keep it light.
CRITERIA: For the purposes of this project a "Vertical Shooter" will be defined as: any game where the primary focus of the game play is to "shoot" at "targets" in a playfield wherein the principle direction of the "shots" follows the vertical plane. Shooting at an angle greater than 45 degrees from the vertical plane is not allowed (so no Beanie Bopper). Also significant to this definition is the ability to move the player's character a minimum of side-to-side horizontally along the playfield. Movement along other axes is allowed, but not critical. Stationary characters are not allowed within the scope of this criteria (so no Commando Raid). "Shooting" is defined as the emission of missile-like objects from a character(s) in a direction that follows or roughly follows a line. Prime Examples of a "Vertical Shooter" include: Space Invaders, Megamania, Centipede.
The LIST:
Assault
Astroblast
Beamrider
Buck Rogers and the Planet of Zoom
Canyon Bomber
Carnival
Centipede
Communist Mutants from Outer Space
Condor Attack
Crackpots
Deadly Duck
Demon Attack
Demons to Diamonds
Espial
Fantastic Voyage
Galaxian
Glacier Patrol
Gorf
Guardian
Laser Blast
Megamania
Marine Wars
Millipede
Name This Game
No Escape!
Phoenix
Plaque Attack
Rescue Terra I
River Raid
River Raid II
Shootin' Gallery
Space Invaders
Space Tunnel
Space Chase
Spider Fighter
Spy Hunter
Sub Scan
Threshold
Vulture Attack
Wabbit
Warplock
Zaxxon
Discuss.
And thanks for reading!
Stan
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