Shooter

Arcade

Asteroids

Apple II

Asteroids is an arcade space shooter released in November 1979. The player controls a spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The objective of the game is to destroy both, asteroids and saucers. The triangular ship can rotate left and right, fire shots straight forward, and thrust forward. Once the ship begins moving in a direction, it will continue in that direction for a time without player intervention unless the player applies thrust in a different direction. The ship eventually comes to a stop when not thrusting. The player can also send the ship into hyperspace, causing it to disappear and reappear in a random location on the screen, at the risk of self-destructing or appearing on top of an asteroid.

Music

PlayStation 2

Dreamcast

A rail shooter with a heavy emphasis on audiovisual elements in which a hacker attempts to breach an AI integral for the continuation of the human race to prevent it from shutting down due to information overload.

Platform

Indie

Vector

PC (Microsoft Windows)

Ouya

Vector is an exciting, arcade-style game featuring you as the exceptional free runner who won’t be held down by the system. In this totalitarian world freedom and individually is nothing more than a distant dream. But the heart of a freerunner is strong, and so you break free.

Simulator

Strategy

Elite

Commodore C64/128/MAX

Amiga

Nintendo Entertainment System

Amstrad CPC

ZX Spectrum

Atari ST/STE

BBC Microcomputer System

Acorn Archimedes

Acorn Electron

Tatung Einstein

Elite is a space trading video game, written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in September 1984. Elite's open-ended game model, and revolutionary 3D graphics led to it being ported to virtually every contemporary home computer system, and earned it a place as a classic and a genre maker in gaming history. The game's title derives from one of the player's goals of raising their combat rating to the exalted heights of "Elite".

Elite was one of the first home computer games to use wire-frame 3D graphics with hidden line removal. It added graphics and twitch gameplay aspects to the genre established by the 1974 game Star Trader. Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel, a novella by Robert Holdstock which gave players insight into the moral and legal codes to which they might aspire.

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2

Xbox 360

Xbox One

Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 contains six different game modes: Deadline, King, Evolved, Pacifism, Waves and Sequence. Multiplayer was introduced in this sequel.

Battlezone

Atari Lynx

Atari 8-bit

Commodore VIC-20

Battlezone is an arcade game from Atari released in November 1980. It displays a wireframe view (using vector graphics rather than raster graphics) on a horizontal black and white (with green and red sectioned color overlay) vector monitor. Due to its novel gameplay and look, this game was very popular for many years. Throughout the 1980s, Battlezone was ported to several home computer systems (usually on the Atarisoft label), including the Apple II, the Commodore 64, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and the Atari XEGS. The Atari ST port contains large parts of the original 6502 code which is emulated in real time. An Atari 2600 port was also released, but has colored raster graphics due to limitations and the view is behind the tank rather than inside it.

Racing

RoboCop

Xbox

Nintendo GameCube

RoboCop allows the player to play as RoboCop and to uncover a sinister plot involving OCP, local gangsters dealing a deadly new synthetic drug and a powerful cyborg known only as MIND. As a last hope, RoboCop must capture, destroy, or arrest hostile characters in a desperate search for clues and evidence.

Adventure

Ballpoint Universe: Infinite

Linux

Wii U

Ballpoint Universe Infinite is a shoot-em-up adventure game featuring artwork entirely drawn in ballpoint pen. Explore immaculate worlds, discover the secrets of the doodles, and customize your Ink-Ship for battle!

Frontier: Elite II

Amiga CD32

Frontier: Elite 2 is, of course, the sequel to Elite and it continues in much the same way. You have a ship and limited funds, and nowhere to go but out into space. Trade, fight, hunt criminals, work for the various governments, anything goes in Frontier. There are few, if any, limits on what you can do or where you can go. And Frontier's universe (with approx. 100,000,000,000 planets and moons) is so big you'll never see the end of it.

Puzzle

Captain Blood

Apple IIGS

Five clones scattered throughout the galaxy, draining your life force. You must find and assimilate them before the ship's auto-bionic functions take over completely... and render you inhuman.

Death-defying flights through hyperspace and dangerous terrain lead to strange worlds with alien inhabitants: Migrax, Croolis-Ulv, and the beautiful and beguiling Torka. They have the information you need to find and destroy your clones- if you're clever enough to get it.

Lunar Lander

TRS-80

Lunar Lander is an arcade game released by Atari, Inc. in 1979, which uses a vector monitor to display vector graphics. The object is to pilot a lunar landing module to a safe touchdown on the moon.

Geometry Wars: Galaxies

Nintendo DS

Geometry Wars: Galaxies is set in a space-like environment where the player must shoot geometrical shapes in order to score points, gain lives, acquire bombs and survive as long as possible. The game is played to an upbeat electro soundtrack.

Tempest X3

PlayStation

In Tempest X3 you control a claw that perches and crawls around the outer edge of a series of geometrically shaped, tube-like constructs, shooting down or out into the nebulous void of outer space. From the core of this void, fuseballs, rockets, pulsars, tankers and other hazardous aliens and alien artifacts move toward your ship. Once you clear a screen, you fly into the void and onto the next level. Watch out for spikes as you advance.

Utopia Must Fall

Defend humanity's last metropolis from mysterious alien machinations in this base-defending arcade shooter. Featuring rapid progression, randomly generated attack patterns and laser-sharp retro aesthetics.

Tempest

Tempest is a 1981 arcade game by Atari Inc., designed and programmed by Dave Theurer. It takes place on a three-dimensional surface, sometimes wrapped into a tube, which is viewed from one end and is divided into a dozen or more segments or lanes. The player controls a claw-shaped spaceship (named Blaster) that crawls along the near edge of the playfield, moving from segment to segment. Tempest was one of the first games to use Atari's Color-QuadraScan vector display technology. It was also the first game to allow the player to choose their starting level (a system Atari dubbed "SkillStep"). This feature increases the maximum starting level depending on the player's performance in the previous game, essentially allowing the player to continue.

An official port was released for the Atari ST. An official port that bears the Atari logo was released by Superior Software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron in 1985, and another by Electric Dreams for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC in 1987. Versions for the Atari 2600 and 5200 were in the works in Atari, Inc. during 1984, and unfinished prototypes exist for both of them.

Eliminator

A fast based vertical scrolling shooter written by John Phillips, the man behind Nebulus (also known as Tower Toppler).

Major Havoc

Long ago the evil Vaxxian Empire overran the galaxy. Most of humanity was enslaved and abducted to the Vaxxian homeworld. A few humans, who were scientists, managed to escape. At the current moment (according to the timeline of the game), the Empire has since collapsed. However, numerous Vaxxian space stations, all blindly controlled and defended by robots, still remain in the galaxy, mindlessly pursuing their original orders.
The small band of scientists who initially escaped managed to clone the great human hero Major Havoc, in order to fly his Catastrofighter through a wormhole in space, so that he may lead a clone army against the dreaded Vaxxian robots, and to liberate the remnants of humanity by destroying the enemy reactors. The player controls Major Havoc, the leader of this very band of clones.

Warning Forever

Warning Forever is a top-down shooter that pits you against a never-ending onslaught of procedurally-generated bosses which evolve to counter your strategies.

Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator

ColecoVision

Texas Instruments TI-99

Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator is an arcade action game where you take control of the Starship Enterprise. Your mission is to save the Federation from NOMAD! Before you get a chance at destroying NOMAD, you'll have to battle your way through ten levels (each consisting of multiple rounds). In each round you may encounter Klingon fighters, deadly anti-matter saucers, asteroid fields, and deadly meteors, all of which are capable of depleting the Enterprises energy. The game ends when your energy supply has completely run out. To fight these dangers, the Enterprise is equipped with an unlimited supply of phasers and a limited supply of photon torpedoes. Each round also contains one or more starbases; if you dock at a starbase, some of your supplies (such as energy and torpedoes) will be replenished. The game is played from two points of view; the top of the screen contains a third person view of the Enterprise (along with the ships gauges), and on the bottom of the screen is a first person point of view

Fighting

RoboCop 3

F29 Retaliator authors DID developed this particular use of the Robocop license, and produced something different from most film licenses. While it featured a succession of levels based around sections of the movie, these were highly varied and presented in polygon 3D graphics. These can be played in any order in the Arcade mode, or in planned sequence in the Movie Adventure mode, which follows the film's plot of Japanese investors wishing to replace Robocop with their Robot Ninja designs, and thus expecting him to prove himself as superior.

The first task is a car chase resembling Chase HQ, in which a mazey section of road must be followed efficiently. There are several first-person 3D shooing sections,. in which you must use a target to shoot down punks and invaders, without harming civilians. Robocop also takes to the skies in a simulation of his new Gyropack flying device. Also, he must do battle with his intended replacement in a fixed-perspective beat 'em up section.

Mystery House

PC-8800 Series

PC-9800 Series

FM-7

In the first graphic adventure game ever, the player along with seven other people is in an old mansion hunting for some jewels. All too soon it becomes obvious that someone is killing one member of the group after another. It is the player's task in this murder mystery to find out who the murderer is before the player is killed himself.

Role-playing (RPG)

Moria

PLATO

Moria is a dungeon crawl style role-playing video game first developed for the PLATO system around 1975, with copyright dates listed as 1978 and 1984. It was a pioneering game, allowing parties of up to ten players to travel as a group and message each other, dynamically generating dungeons (instead of pre-computing them), and featuring a wireframe first-person perspective display. One of its authors, Kevet Duncombe, claims not to have read the works of J. R. R. Tolkien or heard of Dungeons & Dragons at the time development started, but he was aware of the PLATO game, dnd.

Im Null

Im null is an experimental multiplayer game in which players explore wireframe environments. Im null received praise from critics for its experimental gameplay and themes of isolation and connection.

Spasim

Spasim (abbreviation of 'space simulation') was a 32-player 3D networked computer game by Jim Bowery involving 4 planetary systems with up to 8 players per planetary system, released in March 1, 1974. Jim Bowery claims that it is the very first 3D multiplayer game and has offered reward of US $500 to anyone who could document an example of a multiplayer 3D virtual reality game prior to Spasim. In Spasim the players flew around in space and to each other they appeared as wire-frame space ships. Their positions were updated about every second.

The game was played on the PLATO computer system, and was heavily influenced by another PLATO space multiplayer game Empire. Later 3D multiplayer games on the PLATO network included airace by Silas Warner that evolved into airfight (by Brand Fortner), and then spawned Panther by John Edo Haefeli at NW University. Atari, Inc had a PLATO account and Panther is said to be the origin of Battlezone while airfight led up to Sublogic's Microsoft Flight Simulator. Also, Panther was developed into the more sophisticated Panzer by the US Army.

vector graphics

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