Dogfight!
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EDIT ON: I should note, that when I heard the title of this game for the first time, without having seen the overlay nor knowing it was in Shooting Gallery, I actually thought it would be about dogs fighting. I'm glad I was wrong. No, really.
Whaaat!?
Well, okay, so I really wish it had been about dogs fighting. That would've been so frickin' barbaric I honestly would've loved it. /EDIT OFF
My son and I played Dogfight the other night. The playfield consists of a path through which Player Two's plane must fly. Periodically there are spaces in the path and that is where Player One can shoot at the "plane". My son quickly figured out he could take his time during the "I won't get shot here" parts and zip through the areas of vulnerability as quickly as possible. This is a Fun Game! We played it for about twenty entire minutes! My son didn't want to play his part as the shooter, though. He said he was just helping me to play the game. Isn't that benign?
I don't think we would've missed too much of Ultraman for this one, at least not all at once. Dogfight is fun, but it takes practice. We might've missed a little bit of Ultraman a couple of times over a period of two or three days, just to see if we could get any better at it. I'll give it a full point for the "I'd-like-to-get-a-little-better-at-this" desire it instills.
I noticed a progression in gameplay with the Shooting Gallery games. In Prehistoric Safari, the target sits still until you take a shot at it. In Shootout the target sits still for as long as it takes the player to say "You'll never get me Sheriff!". In Dogfight the target doesn't sit still at all and can be moved quite quickly through the areas in which it can be shot.
It is interesting to me to take a console that is only capable of drawing a center line, two player spots and a ball spot and make games from it. It seems that the designers would have one idea for a game that would work with one of the console's configurations and then they'd take that idea and make one or two entirely different games with that same idea. Each iteration was designed to make the gameplay a little more challenging. I think this progression is most evident with the Shooting Gallery, less so with the Pong type games.
So what was my point? I don't know. What game am I talking about? Oh, Dogfight. Yeah, I'll give it the point today.
The Score: Ultraman: 6, Odyssey: 8
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