Looking for an Arcade game

[Gabriel]

I need to know the name of an arcade game. My information is spotty, but hopefully someone can help me with this.

 

I played this game in the summer of 1989, of that part I'm certain. I THINK the copyright screen on the game said it was made in 1987. I'm not certain about that last part.

 

The game was a Galaga-like game. The screen was vertical. You controlled a ship which faced and fired upward. Enemies would appear on screen and you'd kill them all to pass the wave. I think some of the enemies were ball looking things, but I'm not entirely sure of that either.

 

One major difference is that your ship could move anywhere on the screen. You were stuck facing and firing up, but otherwise you had free reign of the playfield.

 

Graphics were similar to and at about the detail level of Gyruss, maybe slightly more pastels.

[MrRetroGamer]

Have a look on http://www.klov.com

 

That is the Killer List Of Video games and if you look around ( I think you can sort by year) you may see it.

[Nukey Shay]

That doesn't quite narrow the list of candidates down There was a veritable plethora of games made that fit your description. Anything specific you can think of? Sounds/graphics? Backdrop? Enemies/bosses?

[NE146]

Hmmm.. hard to say as there are a lot of vertical shoot em ups. The closest thing to a clue that we might have is your description of being able to move about the screen freely and it being a Galaga-like game with waves (as opposed to a vertical shmup like Twin Hawk or similar)

 

What makes it harder is your date.. 1989, by that time Galaga was pretty old school and we were already up to the point of games like Stun Runner, etc. And of course there were a lot more shmups to cloud the issue

 

First guess: Gorf? But that game is much older than 1989... Second guess, Gaplus (aka Galaga 3), But you can only move left/right in that game. Third Guess.. Galaga 88'? But you could only move left/right in that one as well.. hmmmm

 

Could you give more details?

[Starscream]

You can move in all directions on Gaplus well, except when ya get the little tractor beam thingy then you can only move left and right.

[NE146]

You can move in all directions on Gaplus  well, except when ya get the little tractor beam thingy then you can only move left and right.

 

oh yeah! (I always avoided that game)

 

But maybe we have a winner?

[Starscream]

I play it every day so that is the only reason I know

Also, the enimies do appear all over the screen but eventually fall into the galaxian type formation. Only thin is, it's copyright is 1984 I believe.

[Gabriel]

I wish I could narrow it down more.

 

There were no bosses. It was definitely an old school game with level upon level of one hit wonders.

 

Gaplus looks like a promising match. But I seem to recall the player's ship being more squat. And I don't remember being able to tractor beam enemies to help my firepower.

[Gabriel]

I'm bumping this thread from 15 years ago because I've decided on what game I'm going to say is that game I played in a gas station in the long ago summer of 1989. Note that I didn't say I'd definitively found the game. I've just decided the game I found is as close as I'm ever going to determine.

 

I've looked for the game for all these years, but my faulty memory of what the game actually looked and played like certainly hampered me. I find it interesting to see that 15 years ago I was certain that the game was a vertical screen, because somewhere along the years I changed my mind and recalled the game as a horizontal screen.

 

The only other thing I seemed to recall about the game was that I associated it with Pleiades for some reason. If my recollection is correct (and it's already highly suspect), I recall the game having a strange title. The title reminded me of Pleiades which I knew was a sort of follow up to Phoenix, and something about the game made me think it was a follow-up to Phoenix.

 

I also seem to recall the game was made by a company I recognized. Even though I say above the copyright screen read 1987, that memory also warped to the point where I had started recalling the copyright screen reading 1985. But the game I recalled was more at home in 1982.

 

Anyway, long story short, the game I decided this was is EXERION by Jaleco and the cabinet version I saw was likely a Taito version. The ship and the way the ship moves feels familiar to me. The enemies also seem familiar, and the presence of bird enemies gives some traction to my recollection of a pseudo connection to Phoenix.

 

The big catch is that I don't recall the game I originally played back in the day having a background at the bottom third of the screen as Exerion does. I also distinctly recall not realizing the player ship could move vertically as well as horizontally until I played the game for a while and was scoring high. Playing the game in emulation, it's hard to believe that I could ever have played Exerion without moving vertically and done well.

 

Anyway, I remember playing this game at a gas station convenience store which was situated on my way home from the job I had in the summer of 1989. If I had some quarters after work I'd drop in there and play a few rounds of this game. I never went back there after quitting the job I had, so I haven't played the game since. I think the gas station was closed down sometime in the early to mid 90s, and has been boarded up and closed ever since.

 

The gas station was recently in the news. It seems it's the property with the most back taxes due in the entire city. So many things from back in those days are gone, bulldozed away, with new things built over. It seems absolutely bizarre this gas station is still standing, boarded up and rotting for over 25 years.

 

Part of me almost wants to believe that the old machine I played was still in the building when the gas station closed. I envision this dark place filled with decay, and a gutted cabinet sitting near the front of the store. In my mind's eye I see the purely imaginary smashed monitor, and the bashed in side panel covered with graffiti applied by trespassing vandals. But in this vision, the marquee is still miraculously partially intact, and the title is just waiting there to be known.

 

It sucks being old. I will never be able to know with 100% certainty that Exerion is that game from my youth. The memory is so dim and distorted. This game wasn't my first like Space Encounters. It wasn't a particularly good game. It was just something I played to wind down after a 12 hour shift of busing tables and washing dishes. There was no one I played it with. There was no great love of the game. It's only real claim to fame is that it's a blank spot in the boundary between my childhood and adulthood that I've been frustrated with my inability to label.

[NE146]

Glad you "probably" figured it out (as best as possible).. if not 100% certain, it gives a clearer picture/detail of the type of game you were thinking about.

 

On another note.. Exerion was a game I liked back in the day.. the accumulation and holding back of rapid fire bullets for the big action payout, the on-ice momentum-based movement.. the variation of enemies as you progressed, and the 3D scenery made for a pretty cool game... However Exerion wasn't easy.. and the momentum of the ship and pace of the gameplay (e.g vs. a game like Star Force) I think are pretty big marks of the gameplay that would have been obvious if that's what you played. So background aside, is the pacing and ship movement in Exerion for sure similar to what you remember?

Edited August 13, 2018 by NE146

[Nukey Shay]

I would have guessed Mega Zone or Xevious from the initial description...but arcades around here were few and far between in the late '80s.

[Gabriel]

So background aside, is the pacing and ship movement in Exerion for sure similar to what you remember?

 

It feels familiar, and that's about the best I can say. Playing it feels like scratching some kind of long unaddressed itch. I'm not entirely sure if it's because it's legitimately that old game I've searched for so long or if it's just because I generally enjoy death from above games of this style.

 

Those little pastel satellite enemies and the birds seemed super familiar tho. As in, when I first saw them, I was like "Is this it? Have I finally found it?" The NES version has some spinny disc enemies that similarly seemed like some from the game I remembered.

[Cynicaster]

I've had many obscure games pop into my mind through the years that I remember playing once or twice as a kid but struggle to recall the name. When I think of these games I always want to identify them so I can give them a try on my MAME cabinet to see how they hold up. I've been successful in most cases in identifying the games, but some of them took some hunting.

 

There were a few where I thought I had identified the game but wasn't 100% sure, only to later identify a different game as being the correct one with absolute certainty. If Exerion isn't 100% for you, then I'd wonder if it's the right game. Especially when it comes to that style of game; there were hundreds of titles with that same basic fixed-screen space shooter gameplay.