The players are in the Battle Control Central at the heart of the United Planets Interstellar Galactic Empire. From there, they monitor the activity of the twin solar systems of Terien and Lorien, forty-three billion light years away. Their mission is to control to protect the planets of those solar systems from the invasion fleet with the remote controlled battle cruisers.
They'll control their ships with the joystick and fire lasers with the action button. The invasion fleet will shoot the players and the planets as well. Shot planets will have their colors changed and will be conquered when their colors match the invaders ship's colors.
If the players' ship is destroyed, a new one will be launched from one of the planets with their color. If there's no planet with their color, they'll have to wait until a planet's color change to theirs.
If the players crash into planets with a color different than theirs, both the ship and the planet will be destroyed. Destroyed planets won't come back, but the central plane
A black and white bowling game for up to four people. Players roll a multi-colored trackball to simulate throwing a bowling ball down the alley. Attempt to knock down all the pins.
Star Fire is an early color game programmed by David Rolfe with graphics designed by Ted Michon and Susan Ogg. It was released by Exidy in 1979. Star Fire is a first-person space shooter where your mission is to seek out and destroy enemy spacecraft while avoiding incoming missiles.
If a number of elements of Star Fire seem similar to Star Wars, your eyes are not deceiving you. Star Fire was originally designed as a Star Wars game, with the eventual hope that either a license would be purchased or that they would change enough of the elements to avoid any legal entanglements. Originally, the authors had hoped that Midway would pick up the game for distribution, but they passed and instead Exidy purchased the game and released it.
Star Fire was the first game to come in an environmental cabinet, designed by Michael Cooper-Hart. Even more importantly from a historical perspective, Star Fire was the first game to keep a high score list where the player could enter his or her initials. Prior games had tracked the con
Canyon Bomber is the a port of the arcade game of the same name, rewritten in color and with a different visual style for the Atari 2600. The player and an opponent fly a blimp or biplane over a canyon full of numbered, circular rocks, arranged in layers. The player does not control the flight of vehicles, but only presses a button to drop bombs which destroy rocks and give points. Each rock is labeled with the points given for destroying it. As the number of rocks is reduced, it becomes harder to hit them without missing. The third time a player drops a bomb without hitting a rock, the game is over.
Head On is an arcade game developed in 1979 by Sega. In this game, players control their cars through the maze where the goal is to collect the dots while avoiding collisions with the computer-controlled car that is also collecting dots.
It was an early maze game revolved around collecting dots and is considered a precursor to Namco's 1980 hit Pac-Man.
Speed Freak is a monochrome vector arcade game created by Vectorbeam in 1979. It is a behind-the-wheel driving simulation where the driver speeds down the computer generated road past other cars, hitchikers, trees, cows and cacti. Occasionally a plane will fly overhead towards the screen. One must avoid crashing into these objects and complete the race in the alloted time. The player can crash as many times as he wants before the time runs out and players were treated to two different crash animations. The first was a simple cracked windshield effect, the second was a crash where the car explodes into car parts that fly through the air.
Starhawk is a 1979 vector arcade game by Cinematronics. Starhawk is a shoot 'em up with a fixed environment. The game was unique at the time as it presented the graphics in a pseudo-three dimensional way. Essentially, the game is a simple video game version of the Star Wars: Episode IV trench run. The game was later ported to the Vectrex video game console in 1982. The game is remembered as having quite advanced graphics for the time and being the first video game based upon or to have noticeable references to Star Wars.