Vanguard - A or B?

[pocketmego]

I actually didn't like playing Vanguard very much at first. I just cannot cotton to games that shoot for me. Then I discovered that you take over the firing of the ship's weapons in difficulty B. Now I love it. I can manuver or fire as I see fit and it makes the game much more enjoyable to me.

 

How about you?

 

How did the arcade version of this game play, did it fire for you with you controlling the directions of the blasts or did you fire yourself?

 

-Ray

[Lauren Tyler]

I think there were four buttons in a cross shape that you pressed to fire in those directions. Unfortunately, with only one button, improvisational changes had to be made, naturally.

[Lord Thag]

Yeah, it's much more challenging with the setting at B. Good game though, I never could figure out why folks don't care for it. It's a great shooter, I used to play it constantly as a kid.

[shadow460]

Larcen Tyler is correct. On the left side of the control board there was a joystick that moved the ship, on the right were the four fire buttons in a diamond formation. There were no other controls on the board.

Firing didn't slow your ship down, either.

 

I pounded on the right side of that board with my tiny hand when I was about ten years old, and I far outscored my daddy. We played at the Pizza Hut in Shawnee, OK.

 

The 2600 port is a little more natural than the arcade was, because you have to pay attention to a couple of things at once in the arcade. On the 2600, whether you shoot manually or automatically, whenever you move in a certain direction, the path will probably be cleared for you.

[Vic George 2K3]

I enjoyed Vanguard in the arcades, though it does get pretty tough. I liked how the 2600 version manages to implement the four-way firing mechanism originally done with four separate buttons in the arcade original into the system's one-button joystick controller, with the tradeoff being that you can only move half as fast when you're firing in any direction. I usually set it for having the ship fire in the forward direction when you press the button, while pushing the joystick in the other three directions while pressing the button fires in those directions.

[Recycled]

Vanguard was actually an arcade game were people would stand around and watch me play. What an ego trip!! Anyway I play the 2600 on the 'b' setting. I enjoy it. I think it misses the mark at being great though.

[+FujiSkunk]

I forget what the exact switch settings are, but my prefered way to play is to always fire forward, and not fire automatically.

[Inky]

Is there a way to hack it to enable use of 2 joysticks?

[shadow460]

Play this game with a Trak-Ball controller to better simulate the arcade game.

I'd set both of the switches to B and the Trak-Ball to joystick mode.

 

It gets a little more intense this way.