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What's the first video game with a screen-clearing bomb?


Cobra Kai

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There were games launched the same year that did it (assuming you mean weapon and not like, killing a special enemy that clear the screen) the problem is, we don't have "months" of release for some of these games just the "year" and without painful research it's hard to determine which came out first.

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2 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

There were games launched the same year that did it (assuming you mean weapon and not like, killing a special enemy that clear the screen) the problem is, we don't have "months" of release for some of these games just the "year" and without painful research it's hard to determine which came out first.

If you can name these games that information can be more or less found out (with a month or two of uncertainty) from Play Meter/Replay and other coin-op trade magazines. As it stands I can't think of much besides Defender that year that the player would have direct control over its usage.

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Midway shooter from 78 or 79 had it where you rack up score you can save screen clear to use but don't remember the name, some Space game Midway had a lot of those. Was not very big.

Defender is the first popular game to do it though as it was big deal. Midway didn't become big deal until they publish that first person Space game and Pac man.

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15 hours ago, fiddlepaddle said:

Missile Command (1980) has smart bombs, but they don't clear the screen, except sometimes they DO, when you are down to your last city and a smart bomb kills it.

Also, Missile Command may also technically qualify because at the end, when you lose, the world always blows up (and clears the screen).

Missile Command smart bombs don't do any more damage than regular missiles.  Smart bombs are enemy weapons anyway.

 

1 hour ago, ColecoKing said:

Midway shooter from 78 or 79 had it where you rack up score you can save screen clear to use but don't remember the name, some Space game Midway had a lot of those. Was not very big.

Defender is the first popular game to do it though as it was big deal. Midway didn't become big deal until they publish that first person Space game and Pac man.

Midway didn't have that many space shooters.  It shouldn't be hard to find on klov.

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klov?

Also it's not just Midway I forget that Midway was a subsidiary it couldn't been anyone in Williams all I remember is it was a space shooter and you could save screen wipe ability after criteria but you had to earn it and you only got one at a time. Now I think about it I don't even think you could hold more than one. Definitely star wars like graphics for sprite which was very very common. Honestly, maybe too much.

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24 minutes ago, ColecoKing said:

Many space games had Star Wars graphics tai fighter and others sprites. 

This Tai fighter you speak of...

Was it a southeast Asian who fought... or someone who fought southeast Asians?

 

Chirrut Imwe might be considered a Tai Fighter I guess!

 

??

 

I'll get my coat...

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I know the Midway game you’re talking about. Space Encounters I think? Anyway it’s not a smart bomb in terms of something you can deploy whenever, it’s a screen clearing object that periodically comes across the screen that activates when you shoot it.

Edited by ubersaurus
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Funny that what I thought about first from the thread title was an explosion that removes all graphics on the screen.  Like an end of life or game over explosion.

 

There is a very disruptive explosion when you die in Defender that I thought was pretty awesome at the time.  While it doesn't clear the screen, it does "destroy" the graphics around it.

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At first I though you were talking about Galaga and got confused, then I remembered that the alien in space invaders did move fast later.

I never spend that much time with Space invaders to many better games at the same time or later. Asteroids was the big one. That's a game that could have benefited from screen nuke lol.

Edited by ColecoKing
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On 10/4/2020 at 7:06 PM, Cobra Kai said:

What do you think it is? Defender is the earliest I can think of, but at 1981, it seems like there would be other games before that with a screen-clearing weapon of some sort.

Defender is close, but no its not. So I think that Tempest wins by default.

 

The problem with defender, is a well known bug that doesn't kill everything when pods are on the screen.

most times swarmers are left over.

 

This is from one the masters of Defender that i asked about it:

(John Mccallister, and also Eze, eric lidell)

"Talking about the glitches.  Williams had a slow processor and when too many objects
appear on the screen it prioritizes which ones should stay and relocates the rest to
another part of the planet.  So when you smartbomb the pods a lot of stuff happens
and sometimes they will all be killed and other times it will relocate them. "

 

 

So although they tried to implement it, it didn't work.

 

later

-1

Edited by negative1
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On 10/8/2020 at 5:39 PM, ColecoKing said:

At first I though you were talking about Galaga and got confused, then I remembered that the alien in space invaders did move fast later.

I never spend that much time with Space invaders to many better games at the same time or later. Asteroids was the big one. That's a game that could have benefited from screen nuke lol.

What year was Tutankhamun released?  The arcade version had a left-right fire lever and a "genie bomb".

 

This is one of those games that be the exception to index-to-index mirroring on most ambidextrous layouts.  That's why I try to compensate for that on my joystick known as  sinistersticks.com

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