September 27, 2004

The 50 best shooters
posted by dng 20 years ago
  • very inspiring! if only i had time to waste (pixels) i'd go out and buy some of the newer games that are high on the list. i used to play an arcade game--i think it was called zaxxon--that i was surprised not to see. it might have been called something else. but it featured a bird's eye view of your ship and ground scrolling beneath. you were presented with oncoming meanies, and when you shot them, you got weapon upgrades (or downgrades, if you didn't know what to pick)...then at the end of each level there was a baddie. on second thought it wasn't called zaxxon. i think zaxxon was some kind of skewed-perspective game that i hated.
  • gorgorbalabala: Was it Raiden?
  • I don't have quite enough patience to look through all of those.
  • defender was/is the greated game ever created. You cannot convince me otherwise.
  • Huh? No Tyrian?! I spent, like, my youth playing that game.
  • I'm very disappointed that Galaga lost out to Galaxian. Galaga's two-ship shooter was a landmark improvement over its humble predecessors. The fact that Namco stuck it into a Ms Pac Man hybrid is a tribute to its longevity. I still feed Galaga quarters wherever I find a machine.
  • We just went through and played a ton of the old Arcade games #2 downloaded a few weeks back. Mad Planets is my new favourite. Nice to see Doom on that list too. My first introduction to computer games, aside from Carmen Sandiego and a ton of games programmed out of a C64 manual.
  • gorgorbalabala, there definitely was a game called Zaxxon. It took all my allowance away from me when I was 11 years old.
  • galaga is hands-down the best shooter ever made. i can't believe it only made it to #18, or that it lost to that tool of a predecessor, galaxian. galaxian is to galaga as mario bros is to super mario bros. same concept (shoot bugs), better execution. why does galaga deserve the #1 spot (aside from the fact that the "winner" listed is something i've never heard of)? because, as alex reynolds pointed out, the game is like 20 years old, but people will still go to an arcade and pay $2 to play it on the galaga/ms. pacman hybrid machine. $2 a play. for a 20 year old game. that's hard to beat. although that star wars game was pretty cool too, with the vector graphics and the sound clips from the movie... one time on my trusty MAME emulator, i racked up about 99,000 points on galaga. i was so proud. i never went that far in the arcade. i called a buddy to brag, he promptly came over and had the game of his life - broke 100,000 points - so my high score lasted all of about 15 minutes. sigh. i decided a while ago that, aside from the ubiquitous pool table, dartboard, and a high-end air hockey table, my ideal basement gameroom would sport the ms. pacman/galaga machine.
  • $2 for a play? Galaga's a quarter over at the dive bar in town. I can remember my father teaching me how to play it, probably in the neighborhood bar. And I just taught my girlfriend how to get her second ships... I do concur that Zaxxon should have been on there, with its ever-narrowing holes in the bricks that you had to fly through. Raiden (especially the newer ones) should be on there, and if Commando qualifies, why not Contra? (And Robotron? Fuck that game, gimme Berzerk any day. "Get the humanoid, got the humanoid.") Anybody remember Star Crusaders? js
  • How could Raiden be left off of that list. For shame. However, seeing Sinistar (my favorite older coin-op) so high restored my faith.
  • Matrix sure looks like Gridrunner to me. That was a great one - it should be much higher than 47 !
  • Old-school Star Wars, baby. Best game ever.
  • Oooh, I loved Gyuss. I never could get back to earth, though. Matrix looks like Foxfire, or Star Fox, or whatever the hell it was called. I remember having fun with Gorf at Showbiz Pizza, before Chuckie Cheeze and Skeeball took over. Vanguard: great game, crappy controls. Come on, a separate button for each laser? Who can do that? Galaga: most addictive game evar. Digita crack. I've got the MAME version and I spend hours on it a week, for no reward other than a stupidly low hit percentage. Tempest (original), Missle Command, Centipede, Asteroids...oooh, baybee, take me back. I find it hard to argue with the top five. My only question is: WHERE IS BERZERK?
  • *COIN DETECTED IN POCKET*
  • 3) Zaxxon 2) Gaplus 1) Stargate. No contest. And where's Astro Blaster? /looks back at misspent youth, sheds a tear
  • I can't believe crimsonland isn't on this list (free demo available). I mean for god's sake, it doesn't even have more than 1 level, just bigger and bigger guns and more and more and more and more and more monsters. There are no obstacles, no jumping... nothing but shooting things. And watching their blood splatter all over the place. What else are you looking for?
  • I concur with tha. crimsonland is the true innovative successor to the original shooters. I even paid for the shareware (something unheard of in my personal life).
  • My favorites less common shooters that didn't make the list: Exerion (watch out for pop ups on this site) MegaZone (goofy quicktime) Moon Patrol Satan's Hollow (And I always really loved vector arcade games) besides the already mentioned Tempest & Star Wars - Space Duel Space Fury I think Gyruss was my all-time favorite, you definately could get all the way to Earth, but then you just started back at Neptune again (only three times as fast) The big bummer was that when you got up to 999,999 points it rolled back to 0. Obviously, I spent more than a few quarters in my youth...
  • (And Robotron? Fuck that game, gimme Berzerk any day. "Get the humanoid, got the humanoid.") OMG js, I hate you. Does anyone here remember the song "Pac Man Fever?" Well, I had the album in third grade or so... it was all songs about arcade games. Anywhoozle, there was a song about Berserk on there, I think it was the final track on the album, and the chorus went "Berserk, berserk, berserk over youuuuu..." I pride myself on the fact that songs generally don't get stuck in my head, and yet I am going to have that half-remembered fragment of song stuck in my noggin all night.
  • ooh--yeah, it was raiden. how could you omit it from the list? not that anyone is reading this thread anymore, but...THE INJUSTICE is killing me... btw, i hated zaxxon, approximately as much as i hate hitting my head on a low doorframe.