Self Promotion: Top 100 Shoot-em-up list

[The Eidolon]

I've been working on a list of the most influential shoot-em-up arcade games which at the moment I

have posted over at the shmups.system11.org forums. I know such lists are completely arbitrary, but

it's been fun researching and doing mini-write ups of various 70's and 80's games. It's still a work

in progress, and if any of you have any suggestions or corrections they would be very welcome.

Anyway, here's a link if any of you happen to be interested.

 

If I ever get the write-ups finished (9 down, ~91 to go), I may look for somewhere more permanent to host

them and try to add some screen captures and cabinet pictures.

[VectorGamer]

Missile Command

Robotron:2084

Juno First

Millipede

Spiders

Moon Patrol

Lunar Rescue

Astro Invader

Magical Spot II

Sea Wolf

Star Wars

TailGunner

Space Fury

Space Firebird

Stratovox

Uniwar S

Wizard of Wor

Star Trek

[Bountybob]

1 Defender/Defender Stargate/Strike Force

2 Robotron 2084

3 Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe/Space Fury

4 Berzerk/Frenzy

5 Space Invaders/Space Invaders Deluxe

6 Missile Command/SDI

7 Galaxian/Gorf/Galaga

8 Scramble/(Nemesis/Gradius)/(Salamander/Lifeforce)

9 Xevious/Terra Cresta

10 Centipede/Millipede

Edited October 25, 2009 by Bountybob

[Retro Rogue]

Couple of things -

 

Exidy's Star Fire should really be on there - besides being a very popular first person shoot-em-up (in the sit down model), it introduced the high score/initial table, and AFAIK introduced partial damage glancing shots.

 

And the person in the thread on your board who stated that Omega Fighter "pioneered the "closer to enemies = more points" scoring system." is wrong. That would be Centipede, which awards more points the closer you are to the spider as you kill it.

[Retro Rogue]

Just posted a few corrections over there to try and help out.

[The Eidolon]

Couple of things -

 

Exidy's Star Fire should really be on there - besides being a very popular first person shoot-em-up (in the sit down model), it introduced the high score/initial table, and AFAIK introduced partial damage glancing shots.

 

 

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I'll look up the details for the games suggested

for when I post the next update for the list. By the way, I'm arbitrarily limiting the list

to more or less traditional fixed screen or scrolling shoot-em-ups. So I haven't included

any cockpit view games like Star Fire or the Star Wars arcade game, for example. They

were certainly influential, but I fell the dodging mechanic for cockpit view games is a

little different, so for now, they are beyond the scope of this project.

 

Likewise, I'm not looking at arena shooters (Robotron, Berzerk, etc) unless they feel particularly

"shmup-like" in execution. There's a lot of gray area, so I've made some arbitrary judgments.

For example, I left out Major Havoc, which is a shmup plus a platformer. Or I included

Atari/Kee games Jet Fighter but not Tank, even though they are minor variants of the same

game (proto-Combat).

[Retro Rogue]

Couple of things -

 

Exidy's Star Fire should really be on there - besides being a very popular first person shoot-em-up (in the sit down model), it introduced the high score/initial table, and AFAIK introduced partial damage glancing shots.

 

 

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I'll look up the details for the games suggested

for when I post the next update for the list. By the way, I'm arbitrarily limiting the list

to more or less traditional fixed screen or scrolling shoot-em-ups. So I haven't included

any cockpit view games like Star Fire or the Star Wars arcade game, for example. They

were certainly influential, but I fell the dodging mechanic for cockpit view games is a

little different, so for now, they are beyond the scope of this project.

 

Likewise, I'm not looking at arena shooters (Robotron, Berzerk, etc) unless they feel particularly

"shmup-like" in execution. There's a lot of gray area, so I've made some arbitrary judgments.

For example, I left out Major Havoc, which is a shmup plus a platformer. Or I included

Atari/Kee games Jet Fighter but not Tank, even though they are minor variants of the same

game (proto-Combat).

 

If you're making up calls like that along the way, you might want to change the title from "the most influential shoot-em-up arcade games" to "the most influential shoot-em-up arcade games except....", because your title is no longer descriptive of the actual content.

[The Eidolon]

If you're making up calls like that along the way, you might want to change the title from "the most influential shoot-em-up arcade games" to "the most influential shoot-em-up arcade games except....", because your title is no longer descriptive of the actual content.

 

Well, people argue about what exactly constitutes a shoot-em-up all the time. I don't think I have

much useful to contribute to that debate. I originally was just interested in scrolling shooters,

which is slightly easier to define, but then added fixed screen shooters because there is a clear

evolution from stuff like Space Invaders to stuff like Galaga and Scramble and so forth. I don't

know what term would be best to use to be specific, certainly Robotron etc. are shoot-em-ups

in a literal sense, so I apologize for being unclear. Usually I just use the term shmups, but that

sounds silly and doesn't really clarify anything... These days I when one uses the term shooter

everyone seems to think of FPS type games, so I've despaired of finding a proper term.

 

I'm not averse to including arena shooters or cockpit view games in such a list; there was some

interplay of influence and ideas between those and scrolling shooters. But that would expand

the scope of a project beyond what I have time and knowledge for at this moment, so I'm

starting from here with that (admittedly arbitrary) distinction.

[VectorGamer]

Just a suggestion that you could use the genres defined in MAME as to what games to include in the list.

[Jamie W]

1. StarForce. (Temco - 1984 I think)

2. Defender.

3. Stargate.

4. Robotron.

5. Galaxian.