Joust is an action game developed by Williams Electronics and released in arcades in 1982. While not the first two-player cooperative video game, Joust's success and polished implementation popularized the concept. Players assume the role of knights armed with lances and mounted on large birds, who must fly around the screen and defeat enemy knights riding buzzards.
Shoot 'em ups are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement, while others allow a broader definition including characters on foot and a variety of perspectives.
Berzerk is a video game designed by Alan McNeil and released for arcades in 1980 by Stern Electronics of Chicago. The game involves a Humanoid Intruder who has to escape maze-like rooms that are littered with robots that slowly move towards and shoot at the Humanoid. The player can shoot at the robots to try and escape the room. Along with the robots, a smiley face known as Evil Otto appears to hunt down the player within each room.
Defender is a horizontally scrolling shooter developed by Williams Electronics in 1980 and released as an arcade video game in 1981. The game is set on either an unnamed planet or city where the player must defeat waves of invading aliens while protecting astronauts. Development was led by Eugene Jarvis, a pinball programmer at Williams; Defender was Jarvis's first video game project and drew inspiration from Space Invaders and Asteroids. Defender was demonstrated in late 1980 and was released in March 1981. It was distributed in Japan by Taito.
Llamatron is a multidirectional shooter video game programmed by Jeff Minter of Llamasoft and released in 1991 for the Atari ST and Amiga and in 1992 for MS-DOS. Based on Robotron: 2084, players of Llamatron control the eponymous creature in an attempt to stop an alien invasion of Earth and rescue animals—referred to as "Beasties"—for points. Players advance by destroying all of the enemies on each level using a laser that fires automatically in the direction that the Llamatron is moving. Various power-ups exist to aid the player in defeating the wide variety of enemies and obstacles they face along the way.
Galaxian is a 1979 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Namco. The player assumes control of the Galaxip starfighter in its mission to protect Earth from waves of aliens. Gameplay involves destroying each formation of aliens, who dive down towards the player in an attempt to hit them.
Stargate is a horizontally scrolling shooter released as an arcade video game in 1981 by Williams Electronics. Created by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar, it is a sequel to Defender which was released earlier in the year. It was the first of only three productions from Vid Kidz, an independent development house formed by Jarvis and DeMar. Some home ports of Stargate were renamed to Defender II for legal reasons.
Tempest is a 1981 arcade video game by Atari, Inc., designed and programmed by Dave Theurer. It takes place on a three-dimensional surface divided into lanes, sometimes as a closed tube, and viewed from one end. The player controls a claw-shaped "blaster" that sits on the edge of the surface, snapping from segment to segment as a rotary knob is turned, and can fire blaster shots to destroy enemies and obstacles by pressing a button.
Robotron: 2084 is a multidirectional shooter developed by Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar of Vid Kidz and released in arcades by Williams Electronics in 1982. The game is set in the year 2084 in a fictional world where robots have turned against humans in a cybernetic revolt. The aim is to defeat endless waves of robots, rescue surviving humans, and earn as many points as possible.
Eugene Peyton Jarvis is an American game designer and video game programmer, known for producing pinball machines for Williams Electronics and video games for Atari. Most notable among his works are the seminal arcade video games Defender and Robotron: 2084 in the early 1980s, and the Cruis'n series of driving games for Midway Games in the 1990s. He co-founded Vid Kidz in the early 1980s and currently leads his own development studio, Raw Thrills Inc. In 2008, Eugene Jarvis was named the first Game Designer in Residence by DePaul University's Game Development program. His family owns the Jarvis Wines company in Napa, California.
Smash TV is a 1990 arcade video game created by Eugene Jarvis and Mark Turmell for Williams Electronics Games. It is a twin-stick shooter in the same vein as 1982's Robotron: 2084, which was also co-created by Jarvis. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Genesis, Master System, and Game Gear versions are titled Super Smash TV.
Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest is an arcade game developed by Williams Electronics and released in 1986. It is a sequel to Williams' 1982 game Joust. Like its predecessor, Joust 2 is a 2D aerial combat game with platforms to land on. The player uses a button and joystick to control a knight riding a flying ostrich. The object is to progress through levels by defeating groups of enemy knights riding buzzards. Joust 2 features improved audio-visuals and new features such as mutant buzzards created by eggs falling into lava, the ability to transform from an ostrich to a flying horse, and differently themed levels. Waves no longer seamlessly flow into each other; the gameplay is divided into separate screens with transitions between them.
Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit is a game creation system for the Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST created by Sensible Software and published by Outlaw in 1987. It allows the user to make simple shoot 'em ups by drawing sprites and backgrounds and editing attack patterns. The advertising promoted the Kit with the phrase "By the programmers of Wizball and Parallax".
Star Fire is a first-person arcade coin-operated space combat video game created by Technical Magic for Midway-Bally and licensed for manufacture to Exidy in December 1978. It was distributed in Japan by Taito and Esco Trading in 1979. Designed by Ted Michon and David Rolfe and inspired by the film Star Wars, the game is not based on a licensed property.
Assault is a 1988 multi-directional shooter arcade game developed and published by Namco. It was licensed to Atari Games for release in North America. Controlling a caterpillar-tread self-propelled gun, the player is tasked with completing each of the game's eleven stages while shooting enemies and avoiding projectiles. It uses a twin-stick control layout, similar to games such as Battlezone. The plot involves the human race searching for new planets after Earth reaches its maximum population - after discovering an exo-planet 35,000 light years away from the Milky Way, they enslave the planet's natives and take control, leading to the planet's native population vowing to abolish the humans and bring peace to their world. The protagonist who rides the aforementioned self-propelled gun which players control, is one such native.
Space Dungeon is a multidirectional shooter released as an arcade video game by Taito in 1981. Designed and programmed by Rex Battenberg, it was available both as a conversion kit and full arcade cabinet. An Atari 5200 port was published in 1983.
Strike Force is a horizontally scrolling shooter released as an arcade video game by Midway in 1991. In the same way that 1990's Smash TV is a modernized reimagining of Robotron: 2084 with two-player simultaneous play, Strike Force is a modernized reimagining of Defender with two-player simultaneous play. Strike Force was not widely distributed and was not ported to any home systems.
Major Havoc is an arcade action game released by Atari, Inc. in 1984. A vector-based upright arcade cabinet, Major Havoc consists of several smaller game experiences played in succession, including a fixed shooter, platform game, and a lunar lander sequence. It was developed by Owen Rubin with some levels designed and tuned by Mark Cerny, who joined the development team approximately a year into the game's development.
Minotron: 2112 is a multidirectional shooter for iOS written by Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin of Llamasoft. It is a mobile remake of Llamatron for the Atari ST and Amiga, which itself is an updated version of the 1982 arcade game Robotron: 2084. It is the Minotaur Project game representing the Mattel Intellivision.
Twin-stick shooter is a subgenre of shoot 'em up video games. It is a multidirectional shooter in which the player character is controlled using two joysticks: the first for movement on a flat plane and the second to shoot in the direction the joystick is pushed. Usually shots are fired as soon as the second joystick is moved, but in some games there is an additional button which must be held. Keyboard and mouse or touch input may supplant one or both joysticks. A few games, such as 1981's Vanguard, don't have a second joystick for shooting, but provide four buttons arranged in a diamond to fire in the cardinal directions.
