SHOOT-'EM-UPS

Arguably the real biggies, this pair more or less cleaned up over the last couple of Christmases, and it's not too difficult to see why. (Why? Reader's voice) Well, for a start they were based on two of the most successful coin-ops of recent times, and, for another start, the gameplay (an update of that old shooting gallery idea where you have to pop off anyone and everything that appears on the screen - except for the few good guys thrown in as red herrings) can be picked up in a jiffy by just about anyone. And for a third and final start, the Spectrum versions were particularly well-presented and playable. They're both in lousy monochrome, it's true (though the big sprites mean there's little danger of anything getting lost on-screen) and pretty repetitive (but then with this sort of game you pretty much know what you're getting from word go anyway), but mighty playable all the same.

And the difference between them? Well, Operation Wolf is the original and can easily be identified by the fact that there's an easy-to-see cursor floating about in the middle of the screen so you can tell where you're shooting. Thunderbolt, on the other hand, has the happy addition of a two-player option but suffers from the funny little quirk that you have to pick up your cursor as an extra add-on weapon, meaning that for half the game you're just guessing where the bullets are going by simply seeing who's failing over and dying and who isn't. Some people actually claim to prefer this, but I can't for the life of me see why - you pays yer money and you takes yer choice basically.
 

Well, what can you say about the biggest-selling Speccy game ever? It was number one for an infeasible (and record-breaking) length of time, and is still riding high in the charts even as I write, a good year and a half after it first came out. Astounding.

So why did it do so well? Can it really be that good? Well, not really. There's nothing actually wrong with the game itself, but honestly (and I'm writing this for the mere handful of people who've never seen it) it's pretty standard stuff, isn't it? Most of the levels are your familiar monochrome sideways-scrolling stuff, with a few platforms, baddies leaning out of windows and so on thrown in for good measure. Graphics are crisp, gameplay fast and frantic (as should be expected) but there's nothing particularly innovative about any of it. Basically, it's just like a souped-up Rolling Thunder or something, and, as such, slightly disappointing (but only because its reputation is so strong).

Thankfully we do get a bit of variety thrown in here and there to spice things up a bit though. For instance, Level Two is an Operation Wolf style blaster based on the famous bit in the film where Robo has to shoot a villain through his hostage's skirt (if you remember that), while Level Four is a sort of puzzle thing with a photofit machine, where your task is to try and identify the chief baddy. Robocop is just about as ideal a subject for a film licence conversion as you could possibly hope for (lots of nice violence, you see, and a good strong central character) and the computer game has obviously rode to success on the coat tails of the film and (especially) the video's popularity. It's nice to see that Ocean managed to come up with something that captured the flavour of the movie, but personally I reckon they've done even better lately, with both Batman and The Untouchables - more characterful efforts than this one. Still, there's no arguing with those sales figures, is there?
 

This is more or less the sequel to Commando, your archetypal vertically-scrolling walk-around-the-jungle-a-bit-and-blow-people-to-pieces jobbie, packed to the brim with action. Ikari Warriors is made up of largely monochrome backdrops with big, cartoony sprites (more or less the norm with this sort of thing), but the scrolling's smooth, there's a two-player option and an agreeable pace to the action. Ambush an enemy tank and you get to cause some extra damage for a bit (but don't try and cross a river in one though - it'll sink!).

So what's wrong with it? Well, not too much, I have to admit - the graphics are only occasionally on the ropey side, and I suppose they could have thrown in a bit more variety (difficult with this sort of shoot-'em-up), but, well, that's about it. It's what a shooty-shooty game should be all about.
 

Another oldie, and just about the classic horizontally-scrolling blaster, Green Beret is an extremely playable Rambo retread, divided into four different sections. Armed initially with only a knife, Bert (our hero) soon collects flame throwers, grenades, rocket launchers and so on as he bounces along shooting people (for such a Rambo type he's a very rubbery little chappy, this one). It's very fast, pretty tricky and has a nice platform-and-ladders element to give it variety too - a bit of a winner all round really.
 

Another US Gold Megagame from '88, this was a largely monochrome scrolling coin-op conversion with the action mainly taking place on two levels - the ground and an overhead catwalk affair. The whole concept is very James Bond-ish - you play a Rolling Thunder Undercover Police agent on a mission to penetrate the underground fortress of arch-villain Geldra, rescue some hostages and kill him. (All in a day's work really.) There are five basic levels, though for some spooky reason you have to go through the whole lot twice (with extra traps and baddies added the second time) before you reach Geldra at the end game. The sprites are fairly small and skinny (but well animated), controls are neat (though jumping onto platforms can be tricky), and the whole thing is pretty bloomin' hard. I didn't like it that much when I first saw it, but I've warmed to it since. It's certainly made this sort of platform shoot-'em-up pretty easy to describe - you just say the game is "Rolling Thunder-ish".
 

What a completely skillo trio of games! Half shoot-'em-up, half arcade adventure, each flip-screen extravaganza set new standards graphically for its time, and turned out to be very playable indeed. Dan Dare III is perhaps a little easy to complete, but the graphics are easily amongst the best ever seen on the Speccy, with the little jet-pack-equipped Dan and giant Mekon sprites being especially faithful to the comic originals (not so sure about the other baddies though!). And the bouncing bombs and so on are amongst the most spectacular and fun-to-use weapons ever too!

Dan Dare II ('88), which features a similar sort of gameplay (only this time Dan rides around on a little jet bike) is only marginally less colourful, just as lovingly crafted and perhaps even more involving to play. Lots of traps to avoid, loads of extra weapons and energy to collect, and oodles of baddies to dodge - it's all a bit wizard really. Dan Dare II even offers you an extra-special option to let you play the Mekon, taking on a computer-controlled Dan (though this is an incredibly difficult way to play the game)! Even the original Dan Dare was a pretty playable and graphically impressive little concoction (for the time, at least). Dan Dare - what a hero!
 

The big arcade hit of '85 became the big Christmas hit on the Speccy the same year, and it's a fair measure of its popularity that people still say "that looks a bit Commando-ish". Today the game seems simple in the extreme. It's a big vertical scroller with tiny sprites wandering up a yellow field littered with walls, trucks and lumps of rock to hide behind. And that's about it - there are unlimited bullets and lots of grenades to use, and everything is very faithful to the simple but addictive (and very influential) original. If you don't mind all that yellow it still holds up pretty well.
 

There's one thing you have to say about Dinamic games - they're hard. Ridiculously, frustratingly hard. Army Moves is all about driving a little jeep and shooting things, then driving a little helicopter and shooting things, then running around a swamp on foot shooting some more things - and it's hard. Navy Moves (the sequel) is about driving a little rubber dinghy and shooting things, then scuba-diving along and shooting things, then running around a platform-and-laddery submarine shooting things. And it's hard too. Nine out of ten people give up before they get past the third screen, but the tenth person (who's made of sterner stuff than the rest of us) perseveres, and usually comes out of it saying it's the greatest game he (or she's) played in months. Which sort are you?
 

It makes sense really - light gun games just have to be shoot-'em-ups, don't they? There's no two ways about it. No Clay Pigeon Shooting Simulator yet to the best of our knowledge (we're still waiting), but we did get a light gun version of Operation Wolf which is the next best thing (except that it was marred by a horrible white bar flashing across the screen each time you fired, of course). Other delights given away originally with the Sinclair Magnum Light Phaser included Missile Ground Zero (a light gun version of that ancient arcade hit Missile Command, Solar Invasion (a space shoot-'em-up), Rookie (a shooting gallery game along the lines of what you've probably played at the fair), Bullseye (darts, of course) and Robot Attack (a primitive platform game).

The rival Cheetah weapon had a selection of CodeMasters goodies on show - Jungle Warfare (an Operation Wolf clone), Supercar Trans Am and Advanced Pinball Simulator (two odd games that weren't really shoot-'em-ups at all), F16 Fighting Falcon (an Afterburner clone), Bronx Street Cop and Billy The Kid. These last two are typical shooting gallery/Operation Wolf type games and work very well indeed - simple, yes, but they do exactly what they say they'll do and are about as pure shoot-'em-up as shoot-'em-ups ever get. Worth rather more than mere novelty value, I'd say.
 

A bit important historically because at the time it came out (mid '89) it was the first really classy Speccy conversion US Gold had done for ages, this fast and flashy Capcom original converted well to our rubber-keyed chum, though perhaps not quite as well as everybody thought it would. I still got the feeling I was slightly out of control half the time and found the 'unusual' control system demanded more getting used to than I was capable of. Still, it's all rather impressive - you play one of two jetpack-equipped chappies (in two-player mode, would you believe) blatting across a crumbling post-apocalyptic landscape, passing all sorts of neat industrial-style stuff along the way - twisted tubing, spinning cog wheels and a bizarre dance of set-squares, protractors and so on. Handy weapon shops crop up along the way ("a quarter-pound of your best four-way lasers please, my good woman") and the whole thing has a very professional feel to it. My only problem is that I often felt a bit out of control, wacked about like a pinball on a giant table. Still, a sterling effort, and deservedly popular.
 

This game isn't purely a shoot-'em-up I suppose - like many arcade conversions it has strong elements of a number of genres - but it's close enough to count. What we have here is either a shoot-'em-up with an unusually large platform-and-ladders element to it, or a very fast-playing platformer - the choice is yours. I'm not going to go overboard talking about games like this, but one or two of them can't really be ignored - they're shoot-'em-ups as much as they're anything else, and besides (in this case anyway) they're just too good.

So how's it all work? Well, a bit like the most recent Batman game actually (which was obviously slightly modelled on this). You play our little hero running around a series of trees, battlements and towers, leaping from platform to platform, swinging on your giant bionic arm (Bat-rope style) to the higher platforms and generally acting the goat. Oh yes, and you shoot lots of people too. Detailed and colourful graphics, a choice of routes to take, a neat gimmick (the bionic arm) and bags of baddies help make a varied and interesting game that's actually a good deal better than 99.9% Of straight shoot-'em-ups anyway. A bit of a stonker really.
 

These could hardly be anything other than shoot-'em-ups, could they? The first (from early '86, and based on the film Rambo - First Blood Part Two, explaining the sudden jump to Rambo III for what was only the second game) is very much a Commando clone, but with a bit more of a thinking element to it. Rambo starts slower than the Elite game, and has a bigger, more empty playing area, so the same level of excitement just isn't quite there. Rambo III on the other hand (a Christmas '88 release) is very different - an impressive three parter, each section featuring some very different gameplay. The first is a four-way overhead scroller (like a cross between Commando and Gauntlet) with you, as Sly, dashing around a Russian fort collecting weapons, avoiding infrared security beams, looking for door keys and shooting guards. Part Two is another overhead scroller, but set outside this time, and featuring grenades, more guards and a bit more action. Finally, the third part is a pretty nifty Operation Wolf clone with you in charge of a tank making a bid for freedom against what looks like the entire Russian army. Nice graphics, a fair amount of variety, lots of action - what more could you ask for? (It's better than the film anyway.)
 

Calling this a shoot-'em-up seems to be stretching the point somewhat, but then what is it? Well, okay, I guess it's sort of a fantasy role-playing game (you get to choose between four suitably Tolkienesque characters at the beginning), and it's very much an arcade adventure (lots of collecting of potions and so on), but when you actually get down to playing it (especially in the very amusing two-player mode) what does 90% of the gameplay turn out to involve? Yes, it's solid shoot-'em-up action all the way!

The overhead viewpoint, millions of rooms, thousands of simply drawn but menacing baddies and oodles of collectable bits and pieces all add up to one of the most imitated games ever - whether in direct rivals (like Elite's Dandy, which actually came out before it if I remember right) or in more recent things like Xybots and Crackdown, which share the tiny sprites, lots of maze-like rooms and thousands of baddies gameplay. A Megagame then and now, and an all-round classic.
 

"Like a kiddies' version of Operation Wolf," they said about Cabal, a copycat coin-op follow-up to the original which probably ended up in more arcades than the (dauntingly oversized) Operation Thunderbolt cabinet - or at least, it seemed that way to me. Yes, the game is certainty more cartoony, but for me that Bionic Commando-type look and the generous splashings of colour added to the game, and made it an equal to its more famous cousins. Cabal plays a bit differently too - it's a flip-screen jobbie for a start, with a whole screen's worth of nasties to be blasted to oblivion before you move onto the next one, rather than the constantly-panning camera effect of Operation Wolf. It's just as effective and earned itself a worthy YS Megagame last Christmas. (Oh, and watch out for Midnight Resistance too, in a very similar vein and looking like the bee's knees.)
 

Almost like a giant mega-compilation of different sorts of shoot-'em-up, The Untouchables features six multiload levels, each one depicting a different scene from the film. Level One has hundreds of little gangster figures jumping around an eight-way scrolling warehouse scene - the area is quite large (say three screens tall by eight wide) and scrolls around at quite a lick. Level Two is more your Operation Wolf/Cabal lookalike, with your character rolling around the bottom of the screen trying to pick off the baddies (who are hiding behind a couple of trucks). A couple of the other levels (such as the shoot out in the alleyway) are quite Operation Wolf-ish too, but then there's the vertically scrolling railway scene too, and the... But you get the idea (there's a lot to it). The game's all in crystal-clear monochrome and, though each section is perhaps a bit too short to get your teeth into, as both a technical achievement and a film conversion it's no mean feat.