The scales can be tipped slightly in favour of the player with a variety of power-ups that are dropped by shooting the high speed Spidroid that occasionally flies across the screen. Hey, nobody said it was going to be easy. However, gathering dropped funds comes at a slight risk in that the robots aren't above re-spawning on top of the player given half the chance. Vanquished foes drop cash, which will disappear if not collected in a timely manner. As is the norm with a twin-stick shooter, the right joystick replaces the need for a fire button, giving the hero the ability to quickly aim in all directions while the enemies themselves arrive in a variety of shapes, sizes, attack patterns and shield capacity. Welcome to today's world.Īll the action takes place on a static screen with the player starting each round in the centre of the top-down battlefield while the robots spawn around the outskirts and proceed to zero in for the kill. Eugene Jarvis was the man responsible for games such as 'Defender' (recently modernised as 'Resogun' by Housemarque), 'Smash TV' (a twin-stick shooter themed on Arnie classic 'The Running Man') and 'Robotron 2084,' a top-down shooter that pitched the player against hordes of killer robots that has been re-imagined here as Ultratron by Puppy Games. Successful game designers being revered and elevated to rock star status is a fairly modern phenomenon and while there was little to no glory in this field during the '80s, one person did become a household name for those in the know. Seeds were sown, blueprints laid out and many of the games that came to fruition during this era became the foundation that the whole industry was built upon with a far reaching influence that's still making its presence felt even now. It might not have felt like it at the time but THIS was the Golden Age of videogames. When compared to the modern day, big budget, story driven, visual masterpieces that most now take for granted as the standard, these arcade machines were blocky, primitive and reliant on pure gameplay for the most part. With a knock-on effect that resulted in the participant's pockets being drained of loose change while simultaneously nurturing mild addictions made it the perfect business proposition.
#ULTRATRON UPGRADING WINDOWS#
These noisy, magical, hypnotic … often smelly … places housed row upon row of coin-operated windows into interactive battlefields pitched at a difficulty level designed for advancement via pattern memorisation and repeated play. Back in the swirling, pixellated mists of time, folk were forced to visit large communal halls called 'Amusement Arcades' to play videogames (puzzled younger readers at this point may wish to refer to the Internet or indeed ask a parental figure or village elder for further explanation).
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