Astro Fighter

"Not to be confused with Astro Blaster, a 1981 arcade fixed shooter by SEGA."

Astro Fighter is a scrolling shooter arcade game developed by Data East. Following its Japanese release in September 1979, Sega released it for North America in November 1979 and then it was released for Europe in January 1980.

It was notably the first shoot 'em up with multiple distinct vertical scrolling levels and a boss battle at the end of each level. It became a major hit in North America, where it was the fourth highest-grossing arcade video game in 1980 (below Asteroids, Galaxian and Space Invaders).

Gameplay
Astro Fighter is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game where the player faced a multitude of enemies that behaved differently, making the game fairly unique when it was released. If a player allowed one or more ships to get past them, they would have to start the wave over, but with their ship bumped up a notch on the screen, having less time to react to enemies’ attacks.

Along with enemy ships moving in certain patterns, they also fired diagonal and vertical shots at the player. Comets would also appear throughout the game, traveling straight down the screen, from top to bottom. Being hit by anything would destroy the player’s ship, and the game would end once there were no reserve ships remaining or if the player ran out of fuel, as their fuel was constantly depleting.

At the end of each level, a GS ship would appear, which, if destroyed, would refill the player’s fuel tank, then the game would start over with the first set of enemy ships again.

Scoring

 * Blue ships–20 points
 * Purple ships–30 points
 * Green ships–40 points
 * Yellow ships–50 points
 * Comets–60 points
 * GS ship–300 points, then 700 on the second level
 * Extra ship--depended on setting (usually 3,000 or 5,000 points)

Enemy ships/behavior
The first wave of enemies the player faces are blue ships that stay in a small formation, moving from side to side, then occasionally dropping down a notch. The second wave of ships are purple, which behave in pretty much the same manner, although their formation covers a much wider area, spanning across almost the entire width of the entire screen.

The green ships afterwards (which somewhat resemble T. I. E. Fighters from the Star Wars movies) fly at a diagonal, reverse direction, then fly at a diagonal again, and the final round of yellow ships only occupy a few vertical rows that move straight down.

At the very end of each level is the GS ship, which is at the top of the screen and moves from side to side.

Trivia

 * For some reason, the left/right buttons on the game did not respond well. This was intentional.
 * The game had a write-up in the 1981 book of How to Master the Video Games (which mentions the above problem with the controls).
 * A sequel of Super Astro Fighter was also released.

Links

 * Stage Select review (7/10)
 * Killer List of Video Games entry