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Shoot Em Ups

Alpha Mission on the NES

written by retrogamer71

Alpha Mission is a one-player scrolling shooter game in its segregation of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons. Missiles are used to destroy ground enemies, while laser-like weapons are used for aerial opponents.

Throughout each of the levels, the player must fight off waves of enemies that threaten several space stations and a boss must be defeated at the end of each.

Like most early games in this genre, when the player dies, all weapons are lost and the player is moved to a point slightly before the point of death.

The player’s craft can also be upgraded to have more powerful weapons by picking up various power-ups throughout the level.

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May 13, 2021 0 comment

Alien 3 on the NES

written by retrogamer71

Alien 3 is a side-scrolling run and gun in which the player controls Ellen Ripley, the film’s main character, who progresses through the Fiorina 161 prison colony that was featured in the film. The player can jump, shoot, climb ladders, crawl through tunnels, open doors, and use elevators. Unlike the film, Ripley has a large arsenal of weapons that can be used against the game’s enemies, consisting of Aliens and Facehuggers.

Weapons include pulse rifles, flamethrowers, and grenades. A motion tracker warns the player of nearby enemies.

Level objectives are chosen from computer terminals, which are located throughout the game and also offer blueprints of the prison layout.

Objectives include sealing off doors to prevent Aliens from entering, and rescuing prisoners. A time limit is present on each level, and the player loses a life if the level is not completed before the time expires. The game concludes with a battle between Ripley and the Alien Queen

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May 13, 2021 0 comment

NES Shoot Em Ups

Airwolf on the NES

written by retrogamer71

The game contains thirty missions, each with the objective being to rescue prisoners being held captive in enemy bases. The layout of each level changes as the player progresses. There are three types of bases:

Home base – This is where the player can refuel the Airwolf and repair damage it may have taken.
Enemy airfield – This is where many of the enemy craft take off from. The base can be destroyed, which lessens the number of enemy aircraft pursuing the player.
Prisoner base – This is where the prisoners are being held. To rescue them, the player must successfully land Airwolf and rescue the prisoner.

Airwolf is equipped with missiles and a machine gun in order to fend off enemy craft and their weapons. In order to successfully complete a mission, the player must rescue all prisoners and reach the border of the level without losing all of their lives.

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May 13, 2021 0 comment

NES Shoot Em Ups

Salamander on the NES

written by retrogamer71

Salamander is a scrolling shooter arcade game by Konami.

Released in 1986 as a spin-off of Gradius, Salamander introduced a simplified power-up system, two-player cooperative gameplay and both horizontally and vertically scrolling stages.

Some of these later became the norm for future Gradius games.

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Some gameplay

May 8, 2021 0 comment

NES Shoot Em Ups

Gun Nac on the NES

written by retrogamer71

The player assumes the role of commander Gun-Nac, and throughout eight different levels, fights a host of enemies from a space ship.

The ship can be upgraded to a larger ship by acquiring a “wing”, which allows the player to sustain two enemy hits rather than one, and allows the player to upgrade his weapons further than the standard ship would allow.

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Some gameplay

May 8, 2021 0 comment

NES Shoot Em Ups

Gradius on the NES

written by retrogamer71

The first Gradius game to introduce the concept of the ‘weapon bar’. During the game, many enemy craft leave behind icons or ‘pick ups’ when destroyed. Collecting one of these will shift the selection cursor along the weapon bar at the bottom of the screen. T

he player can then select the weapon highlighted if they want it. The cursor then resets.

In general, the more useful ‘power ups’ are towards the right hand side of the bar, so the player may decide to stock up on pickups until the better item is available.

This innovation allowed for deeper tactics on the part of the player and for greater freedom of weapon choice rather than relying on the pre-determined power ups common in other games in the genre.

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Some game play

May 6, 2021 0 comment

NES Shoot Em Ups

Raid on Bungeling Bay on the NES

written by retrogamer71

Raid on Bungeling Bay is a 2D shoot ’em up. The player controls a helicopter launched from an aircraft carrier to bomb six factories scattered across islands on a small planetoid occupied by the Bungeling Empire, while fending off attacks by gun turrets, fighter jets, guided missiles, and a battleship.

There is also a hidden island for the player to reload on. Failure means that the Bungeling Empire develops a war machine to take over the planet Earth. Players have to attack its infrastructure while defending the aircraft carrier which serves as home base.

Over time, the factories grow and develop new technologies to use against the player.

In order to win the game, the player must prevent the escalation by bombing all the factories as quickly as possible, keeping them from advancing their technology. If left alone for too long, the factories create enough new weaponry to overwhelm the player.

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Some game play

May 6, 2021 0 comment

NES Shoot Em Ups

Contra on the NES

written by retrogamer71

Contra was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America in February 1988. This version was produced in-house by Konami and features several differences from the arcade release in order to better suit the NES’s hardware. For example, sprites for effects (like explosions) are shown at 30fps instead of 60fps to work around the sprite limitations of the system. Another game to use this technique is Recca. The Famicom version contains cutscenes, an additional music track, and environment effects which were removed from the NES version.

The game can be played by one or two players, but due to the graphical limitations of the NES, Bill and Lance lost their individualized character designs. Instead, they are both depicted as shirtless commandos distinguished by the colors of their pants (blue pants for the first player and red pants for the second). When one player loses all of their lives, they are given the option to use the other player’s stock to keep fighting.

The power-up icons for the Machine Gun and Laser Gun are represented by letter-based falcon symbols (M and L) used by the other weapons. The Rapid Bullets and Barrier power-ups are also more common in this version, since unlike the arcade game, the flying item capsules now appear regardless of which weapon the player character currently possesses. The NES version introduces a seventh item that clears the screen of all on-screen enemies when obtained.

The NES version recomposes the seven stages of the arcade version into eight stages. Stages 2 and 3 were combined into one stage, resulting in the renumbering of the Waterfall level from Stage 4 to Stage 3, while Stages 5 and 6 were combined into the new Stage 4. The final four stages of the NES version are based on the different areas featured in the arcade version’s final stage.

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Some game play

May 6, 2021 0 comment

NES Racing Shoot Em Ups

Spyhunter on the NES

written by retrogamer71

Spy Hunter is a vertical scrolling driving game with the player in the role of a spy driving an armed sportscar. The object of the game is to travel the freeway destroying as many enemy vehicles as possible while protecting civilian vehicles.

The game begins with the player driving the fictitious G-6155 Interceptor. Various enemy vehicles try to destroy the player’s car or to force it off the road, including a helicopter that drops bombs from overhead. A counter increments the score while the car is moving and on the road. Additional points are earned destroying enemy vehicles using weapons or by forcing them off the road.

Following periodic forks in the road, players can enter new regions with different terrain or weather conditions.

Three special weapons are available: oil slicks, smoke screens, and surface-to-air missiles. Each has limited ammo and are lost if the player’s car is destroyed.

The in-game road is endless and the game itself has no ending

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Some game play

May 6, 2021 0 comment

NES Shoot Em Ups

1943 Battle of Midway on the NES

written by retrogamer71

The game is set in the Pacific theater of World War II, off the coast of the Midway Atoll.

The goal is to attack the Japanese fleet that bombed the American aircraft carrier, pursue all Japanese air and sea forces through the 16 stages of play and make their way to the Japanese battleship Yamato and destroy it.

11 of these stages consist of an air-to-sea battle , the other 5 stages consists of an all-aerial battle against a squadron of Japanese bombers with a mother bomber at the end.

As in 1942, players pilot a P-38 Lightning.

button 1 fires main weapons
button 2 performs two special actions: a loop maneuver like in 1942, or one of three special lightning attacks in exchange for some of the player’s fuel. Indeed, players now have only one life, in the form of a large “fuel” meter; constantly depleting, but refillable by collecting various powerups.

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Some game play

May 6, 2021 0 comment