Tail Gunner | 1979 | Arcade Experience | Cabinet Simulation
1This is my attempt to recreate the experience of playing the game Tail Gunner the way it was released, in an arcade cabinet with very beautiful art and the game being displayed on a vector monitor.
ABOUT THIS GAME
Tail Gunner is a monochrome vector arcade game created by Vectorbeam in 1979. The premise of the game is that the player is the tailgunner of a large space ship. Enemy spacecraft attack the vessel in groups of three, and the player must aim a set of crosshairs and shoot the enemies before they slip past the player's cannons. Because of the game's viewpoint, instead of appearing to fly into the starfield, the stars move toward the left and center of the screen. Tail Gunner's sound card was more complicated than any Cinematronics/Vectorbeam game before it. The cabinet uses the monitor's DAC to translate input from the joystick, so other games cannot necessarily be mounted in a Tail Gunner cabinet.
ABOUT VECTOR MONITORS
In a vector display, the image is composed of drawn lines rather than a grid of glowing pixels as in raster graphics. For this reason it is impossible to accurately present what a monitor of this type is like in real life, so my attempt was to simulate a recording of this type of monitor, where trails of bright lights remain on the screen for a while before disappearing, and glows are presented where there is a large concentration of light.
Thanks for watching. If you like this type of content please consider signing up.