February 2009

Missile Command Retro Game

Missile command was a very simple (as far as graphics go) yet very addictive arcade game released in 1980 by Atari. The aim of the game was to defend your six cities against a never ending barrage of missiles, and with your three anti-battery stations, you had to stop them.

To do so you had a trak ball to move your cross hair, and three buttons to shoot from your three respective anti-battery stations. From memory, it was one of the first arcade games that used the trak ball. If not, it was certainly the only game where it was the main control that was heavily relied on to play the game. From my youth, I remember slamming the ball at an angle, as hard as I could, to get my cross hair from one side to the other as quick as possible.

missile-command

The game is split up into levels, with each one getting harder as more and more missiles being sent down the screen – faster and faster too.

The game ends when all your six cities have been destroyed. An amusing part of the game was the flashing, huge block lettered ‘game over’ message displayed on the screen. Typical retro stuff.

If you would like to play it online, go to the Atari site and have a go.

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles

All that Neal Page (played by Steve Martin) wants to do is to get home for Thanksgiving. His flight has been cancelled due to bad weather, so he decides on other means of transport.

As well as bad luck, Neal is blessed with the presence of Del Griffith (played by John Candy), who is a shower curtain ring salesman and all-around blabbermouth, never short of advice, conversation, bad jokes, or company.

And when he decides that he is going the same direction as Neal, that’s when the fun starts.

As the title suggests, to get home they try via three main modes of trasnport with hilarious results. Another famous actor is in this movie, being Kevin Bacon.

Similar to Ferris Bueller, this is an iconic movie of the 80s, as is the promo picture for the movie shown below:

1987 iconic movie

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Play Galaga online here

A very popular arcade game of the 80s was Galaga. It was the sequel to Galaxian and was released in 1981 by Namco.

I’d call Galaxian a typical space invaders clone but taken to the next level where the aliens have much more movement when flying around.

Galaga goes one step further. The aliens fly in more daring flight patterns but are in no way random. Regular players know where to sit so the aliens can be shot when they initially appear.

A cool, new feature in Galaga is where a “boss Galaga” attempts to capture the player’s fighter using a tractor beam – if successful, the fighter joins the formation and must be freed by the player (using another ship and costing him/her a life), enabling him/her to control two ships simultaneously. That doubles the firepower but if you miss in capturing it, there goes (in effect) two lives.

Play it here:

Galaga

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