24 replies to this topic

[Atari Smeghead]

Hi!

I was just curious if there are any games for our Atari 8 Bit machines like Phoenix or that one level in Gorf. Ya know, where you shoot at the mother ship and knock pieces off of it until you hit the gooey center.

I love Dreadnaught Factor, but it's not really the same. I wanna shoot chunks off a mother ship!!

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Smeg

[Curt Vendel]

Demon Attack

[Atari Smeghead]

Thanks, Curt, but I'm thinking about the fourth Mission in Gorf as an example, where the mother ship moves across the screen and you have to shoot one piece at a time off of it. It seems like Phoenix, the arcade game, has something similar. But it's been a while since I played that.

I didn't remember Demon Attack having that sort of thing, just individual ships coming at you and splitting into two ships in later levels.

There's just something about taking down a goliath that appeals to me.

Cheers,

Smeg

Edited by Atari Smeghead, Fri Sep 30, 2005 7:45 PM.

[Curt Vendel]

Hmmm

Can't really think of anything else off the top of my head that would fall into that category...



Curt

Atari Smeghead, on Thu Sep 29, 2005 10:09 PM, said:

Thanks, Curt, but I'm thinking about the fouth Mission in Gorf as an example, where the mother ship moves across the screen and you have to shoot one piece at a time off of it.  It seems like Phoenix, the acrade game, has something similar.  But it's been a while since I played that.

I didn't remember Demon Attack having that sort of thing, just individual ships coming at you and splitting into two ships in later levels.

There's just something about taking down a goliath that appeals to me.

Cheers,

Smeg

[batari]

Atari Smeghead, on Thu Sep 29, 2005 9:49 PM, said:

Hi! 

I was just curious if there are any games for our Atari 8 Bit machines like Phoenix or that one level in Gorf.  Ya know, where you shoot at the mother ship and knock pieces off of it until you hit the gooey center.

I love Dreadnaught Factor, but it's not really the same.  I wanna shoot chunks off a mother ship!! 

Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Smeg

My game Zirconium has this property... however, it's for the 2600...

[Jess Ragan]

Tell me more about this... Zirconium.

JR

[batari]

Jess Ragan, on Fri Sep 30, 2005 12:25 AM, said:

Tell me more about this... Zirconium.

JR

It's one of my 1k minigames. Actually, there's a post from you on the thread, so I assume you've seen it before...

[Schmutzpuppe]

Atari Smeghead, on Thu Sep 29, 2005 10:09 PM, said:

Thanks, Curt, but I'm thinking about the fouth Mission in Gorf as an example, where the mother ship moves across the screen and you have to shoot one piece at a time off of it.  It seems like Phoenix, the acrade game, has something similar.  But it's been a while since I played that.

I didn't remember Demon Attack having that sort of thing, just individual ships coming at you and splitting into two ships in later levels.

There's just something about taking down a goliath that appeals to me.

Cheers,

Smeg

The Atari version hasn't a mother ship but the intellivision version has one.

[Gunstar]

Can't help you there, but if you are a shooter fan in general, there are a bunch of really good horizontal and vertically scrolling shooters that have bosses and/or "motherships." Many are absolutely top notch. I can tell about/direct you to them if you would like. if it's just a fancy you have to being able to take "chunks" out of stuff when you shoot it, there are many other shooters that allow such destruction, like Fort Apocalypse; you fly a "copter" into an underground base and blow chunks...out of everything...

Edited by Gunstar, Fri Sep 30, 2005 12:24 AM.

[carmel_andrews]

It's a bummer that Atari (Warners) didn't do phoenix for the a8/5200, after all they certainly owned the rights to doing it

[Atari Smeghead]

batari, on Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:02 AM, said:

It's one of my 1k minigames...for the 2600. 

Um... any chance you're gonna do an A8 version some day? After all, it's only a measly 1k!

Schmutzpuppe, on Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:07 AM, said:

The Atari version hasn't a mother ship but the intellivision version has one.

Ah, I did not know that. I've only ever played the A8 version. That sounds cool. I wonder why we didn't rate a mothership?

Gunstar, on Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:22 AM, said:

Can't help you there, but if you are a shooter fan in general, there are a bunch of really good horizontal and vertically scrolling shooters that have bosses and/or "motherships." Many are absolutely top notch. I can tell about/direct you to them if you would like. if it's just a fancy you have to being able to take "chunks" out of stuff when you shoot it, there are many other shooters that allow such destruction, like Fort Apocalypse; you fly a "copter" into an underground base and blow chunks...out of everything...

Thanks, Gunstar. I'm a shooter fan in general. I probably know most of the shooters out there, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's already a thread from eons past covering this. But I do love the shoot-em-ups, so if you do have any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Fort Apocalypse is a fun game. I tend to die a lot, but it's okay since ya get so many lives!

Cheers,

Smeg

[geosteve]

If you're not limiting the answers to 2D shooters, there's an impressive mothership battle to finish off Star Raiders II, once you've cleared both galaxies of white blips and refueled, you'll have to face a huge battleship.
If I remember right you'll get a 'ranking' too

Edited by geosteve, Fri Sep 30, 2005 11:42 PM.

[kevin242]

It's been awhile but there was a game called Satans Hollow for the 8bit that was
similar to pheonix, I dont rem if it had a mothership.

[Goochman]

Just Satan blowing fire - no mother ship

[Foxsolo2000]

I think Curt was talking about the Intellivision version of Demon Attack which had a demonic faced mothership that had to be blasted to get to the next level.

[Gunstar]

Atari Smeghead, on Sat Oct 1, 2005 1:56 AM, said:

batari, on Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:02 AM, said:

It's one of my 1k minigames...for the 2600. 

Um... any chance you're gonna do an A8 version some day? After all, it's only a measly 1k!

Schmutzpuppe, on Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:07 AM, said:

The Atari version hasn't a mother ship but the intellivision version has one.

Ah, I did not know that. I've only ever played the A8 version. That sounds cool. I wonder why we didn't rate a mothership?

Gunstar, on Fri Sep 30, 2005 6:22 AM, said:

Can't help you there, but if you are a shooter fan in general, there are a bunch of really good horizontal and vertically scrolling shooters that have bosses and/or "motherships." Many are absolutely top notch. I can tell about/direct you to them if you would like. if it's just a fancy you have to being able to take "chunks" out of stuff when you shoot it, there are many other shooters that allow such destruction, like Fort Apocalypse; you fly a "copter" into an underground base and blow chunks...out of everything...

Thanks, Gunstar. I'm a shooter fan in general. I probably know most of the shooters out there, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's already a thread from eons past covering this. But I do love the shoot-em-ups, so if you do have any recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Fort Apocalypse is a fun game. I tend to die a lot, but it's okay since ya get so many lives!

Cheers,

Smeg

Well, since you are here (Atari fan) and like shooters, there's a chance YOU may be able to tell ME what some good 8-bit shooters are, but I'll give you a list of my favorites, i.e. the best. Now, half are U.S. releases, and I'm sure are ones you already know about and have played. My ace in the hole are the English ones, which most will work on NTSC(60hz) with some glitches, I recommend either using an emulator in PAL(50hz) mode or convert you're 8-bit's ANTIC chip to a PAL version. This will not giv you 100% compatibility with all PAL programs, you need to convert the GTIA chip too for this, but it works with most PAL games with just the PAL ANTIC and works fine with every shooter listed below. It's unfortunate that these were never converted to NTSC as they are the best of the best IMHO. Some of these like Zybex and Panther were converted from English PAL versions, but not all

NTSC:

Xevious
Flak
Zybex
Panther
Blue Max
Blue Max 2001
Mirax Force (this may be PAL only, but it works fine on NTSC too)
Thunderfox

PAL:
Plasteron
Screaming Wings
SpeedHawk
Tiger Attack

Tiger Attack and Speedhawk were both done by Atari U.K. and are definately in the great tradition of classic Atari shooters, and the best of the bunch IMHO. These two alone are worth the PAL conversion.

There are many more of course, but these I have found to be the best of the best and all I could remember off the top of my head.
Most of these great shooters (especially those grom U.K.&Europe) and many more can be found here: http://people.freenet.de/mrbacardi/

Edited by Gunstar, Mon Oct 3, 2005 12:57 PM.

[www.atarimania.com]

Not really crazy about Tiger Attack... It was supposed to be an adaptation of Flying Shark on the A8 but there's just a single level that loops over and over... In the end, Speed Hawk is pretty disappointing as well...

Zybex is by far the best of the bunch, Dropzone is a fantastic Defender clone and Mirax Force works very nicely as well. Other recommended titles: Thunderfox (very hard but worth trying), The Last Guardian (beautiful graphics), Kult (cool Polish game with hi-res graphics), Warhawk (great music and lots of fun), Vanadium (Uridium rip-off but not as difficult), The Tail of Beta Lyrae (like Scramble but better!), Pastfinder (very underrated title), The Extirpator! (unpretentious but very playable shooter)...

BTW, Panther was written by Sculptured Software so it's a US title actually

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Edited by www.atarimania.com, Mon Oct 3, 2005 2:17 PM.

[deathtrappomegranate]

www.atarimania.com, on Mon Oct 3, 2005 9:08 PM, said:

Not really crazy about Tiger Attack... It was supposed to be an adaptation of Flying Shark on the A8 but there's just a single level that loops over and over... In the end, Speed Hawk is pretty disappointing as well...

Zybex is by far the best of the bunch, Dropzone is a fantastic Defender clone and Mirax Force works very nicely as well. Other recommended titles: Thunderfox (very hard but worth trying), The Last Guardian (beautiful graphics), Kult (cool Polish game with hi-res graphics), Warhawk (great music and lots of fun), Vanadium (Uridium rip-off but not as difficult), The Tail of Beta Lyrae (like Scramble but better!), Pastfinder (very underrated title), The Extirpator! (unpretentious but very playable shooter)...

BTW, Panther was written by Sculptured Software so it's a US title actually

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Excellent summary!

I agree with it all, except that I haven't tried Vanadium.

[Gunstar]

www.atarimania.com, on Mon Oct 3, 2005 8:08 PM, said:

Not really crazy about Tiger Attack... It was supposed to be an adaptation of Flying Shark on the A8 but there's just a single level that loops over and over... In the end, Speed Hawk is pretty disappointing as well...

Zybex is by far the best of the bunch, Dropzone is a fantastic Defender clone and Mirax Force works very nicely as well. Other recommended titles: Thunderfox (very hard but worth trying), The Last Guardian (beautiful graphics), Kult (cool Polish game with hi-res graphics), Warhawk (great music and lots of fun), Vanadium (Uridium rip-off but not as difficult), The Tail of Beta Lyrae (like Scramble but better!), Pastfinder (very underrated title), The Extirpator! (unpretentious but very playable shooter)...

BTW, Panther was written by Sculptured Software so it's a US title actually

--
Atari Frog
http://www.atarimania.com

Well, as far as Tiger Attack goes, It's one I've recently discovered in the past months, and I'm only good enough to get about halfway through the second "loop," but I didn't realize it was one level looping, that is disappointing as I really liked this game and had hoped for more. But SpeedHawk is still my favorite Atari shooter, and I have played games like The Last Guardian, which is also very cool, but I couldn't remember it off the top of my head or else it would have been on my list too. But, I still think SpeedHawk is far better in gamplay as it's very challenging, but not too, hard and has great graphics. Mirax Force and The Last Guardian are great graphically, but I find them to be far too difficult like Thunderfox, actually, I find Thunderfox easier, but all three have those stupid obstacles that you can run into and half the time you are too busy avoiding enemy fire and returning it to be bother looking for the very hard to see obstacles (due to the limited colors) and I always end up getting killed off in all three games by those lame obstacles rather than the enemies! To me, that is just lame gameplay.

[atariz28]

what about return of the jedi for the 2600. You get to blow chunks out of the deathstar. And yars revenge you get to blow chunks also.

[sunbeacher]

Does Xevious count?

[Atari Smeghead]

Wow, this turned out to be an excellent thread, didn't it? And here I thought I knew all of the scrolling shooters!

I don't think I ever played Star Raiders II far enough to face a mother ship. I wonder... I played "The Last Starfighter" which was probably a pre-release pirating job of SRII. Maybe it didn't have the mother ship, since I thought I had beaten the game. Hard to recall...

I'm going to check out the many games I hadn't yet. Wow again... what a huge and varied selection of games our li'l A8 had, huh?


Thanks!

Smeg

[Heaven/TQA]

dont forget "Warhawk" which i liked to play for pure highscore...very challenging and of course nice msx by rob hubbard.

[CharlieChaplin]

Well,
thinking of Uridium clones...
- Dreadnought Factor by Activision (available on cartridge); actually the game is older than Uridium, it was on the market long before Uridium, so Uridium is a D.F. clone !
Easy gfx and good playability, but gets boring very soon...
- Oxygene by TAT, a PD game from a german demo group; wait 10-15 seconds for depacking and you are looking at a good Uridium or Mirax Force clone; think the goal of the game here is a little different in that you have to land at (the end of ?) the big ship instead of completely destroying it...

And err well, I think Gunstar is right - Mirax Force, The Guardian and Thunderfox (as well as Oxygene) are too hard. They would be much more playable if one would not die by running into certain obstacles (afaik, those little things that have shadows)... Mirax Force can be made easier by typing in "CPM", but then again its much too easy, since one has infinite lives with this cheat... (the same counts for Henry`s House, which is much too hard in normal play and much to easy with the cheat CPM...)

-Andreas.

[Allas]

Don't forget the good horizontal shooter NIGHTMARE, good graphics and plenty of objects in screen.

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