Astro Blaster, 1981 Gremlin/Sega (20 From 1981 #7)
19Man.. this game was my reprieve for going back to school on Mondays because that night my dad bowled league in Milwaukie OR, and they had some cool arcade games like this (not to mention candy and soda machines too)! We weren't particularly supportive kids, rooting on our dad or anything.. but we were happy. Plus, there was good thin crust pizza next door (Pietro's)! Anyway, on to the game: this had great voice samples (still a relatively new thing in arcades), wonderful sound effects, unique enemies and cool hidden bonuses! Note that many enemies bob and weave in a fairly predictable pattern-- line your ship up to fire shots for maximum efficiency, since you can overheat your laser with too many reckless shots (this keeps you from shooting for about 5 seconds or so). Since you have limited fuel and running out ends your game, you don't really want to overheat your laser. If the fuel reaches critical you get double points for all enemies shot.. but you're almost out of fuel! If you are in this state and reach the asteroid/meteor shower, aim for the fireballs-- they give you a little bit of fuel back. You can fire rapid-fire at close enemies holding the button down but you otherwise fire one shot at a time. The warp option is only available once per life or sector and you want to save it for enemies that wrap over from one side to the other, especially the ones that descend as they do (they will eventually nail you if you let them!). If you use it you get 10 seconds of greatly slowed-down enemies. After the meteor/asteroid shower you will dock with the mother ship-- unless you crash, which ends your game! If you do dock successfully (pretty easy to do), you refuel completely and advance to the next sector, of which there are 7 (unless you hack the game to get to sector 8, which just repeats the last 4 enemies from sector 7). Bonuses are displayed at top with the bonus number (of 15 that I know of; the highest numbers shown aren't really that many) and involve shooting all enemies without missing; shooting enemies before they wrap over to the other side of the screen; not getting laser temperature critical warning; not losing a ship in a sector; not moving during docking (place yourself dead center after finishing the asteroid/meteor shower); etc. Great, great game that deserves its place in arcade lore for at the very least great voice samples. Especially: Fighter pilots needed in sector wars! Play Astro Blaster!