110-660: Angry Birds Transformers is a 2014 shoot 'em up mobile game and the tenth installment in the Angry Birds series. The game is a crossover between Angry Birds and the Transformers franchise, featuring battles between the Autobirds and Deceptihogs, Angry Birds ' versions of the Autobots and Decepticons . It was published by Rovio Entertainment with collaboration from Hasbro , being released on October 15, 2014, for iOS, and
220-401: A dogfight while maneuvering in the gravity well of a star. Both ships are controlled by human players. Each ship has limited weaponry and fuel for maneuvering, and the ships remain in motion even when the player is not accelerating. Flying near the star to provide a gravity assist was a common tactic. Ships are destroyed when they collide with a torpedo, the star, or each other. At any time,
330-455: A first-person perspective version played on two screens that simulates each pilot's view out of the cockpit. Some of these Spacewar! installations also replicated Saunders' gamepad. DEC learned about the game soon after its creation, and gave demonstrations of it running on their PDP-1, as well as publishing a brochure about the game and the computer in 1963. According to a second-hand account heard by Russell while working at DEC, Spacewar!
440-408: A side-scrolling format. Later notable side-scrolling run and gun shooters include Namco's Rolling Thunder (1986), which added cover mechanics to the formula, and Data East's RoboCop (1988). In 1987, Konami created Contra , a side-scrolling coin-op arcade game, and later a NES game, that was particularly acclaimed for its multi-directional aiming and two-player cooperative gameplay. By
550-431: A sub-genre of action games . There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement, while others allow a broader definition including characters on foot and a variety of perspectives. The genre's roots can be traced back to earlier shooting games , including target shooting electro-mechanical games of
660-471: A "shmup" or "STG" (the common Japanese abbreviation for "shooting games"), is a game in which the protagonist combats a large number of enemies by shooting at them while dodging their fire. The controlling player must rely primarily on reaction times to succeed. Beyond this, critics differ on exactly which design elements constitute a shoot 'em up. Some restrict the genre to games featuring some kind of craft, using fixed or scrolling movement. Others widen
770-401: A black background. It had a more interactive style of play than earlier target shooting games, with multiple enemies who responded to the player-controlled cannon's movement and fired back at the player. The game ended when the player was killed by the enemies. While earlier shooting games allowed the player to shoot at targets, Space Invaders was the first where multiple enemies fired back at
880-440: A character, however gems to upgrade instantly (slowly earned or purchased with real money) make the upgrade happen instantly. At SDCC 2014, IDW Publishing and Rovio announced an Angry Birds Transformers crossover comic books series; it was written by John Barber and art by Marcelo Ferreira and published in early 2015 as a four issue mini-series. Shoot %27em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are
990-415: A collaborative environment without concern for ownership or copyright, which led to a group effort to elaborate on Russell's initial Spacewar! game. Consequently, since the inaccuracy and lack of realism in the starfield annoyed TMRC member Peter Samson, he wrote a program based on real star charts that scrolled slowly through the night sky, including every star in a band between 22.5° N and 22.5° S down to
1100-493: A monitor and many of the remainder to secure military locations or research labs with no free computer time, which prevented the original Spacewar! from reaching beyond a narrow, academic audience. Though some later DEC models, such as the PDP-6 , came with Spacewar! pre-loaded , the audience for the game remained very limited; the PDP-6, for example, sold only 23 units. Spacewar!
1210-555: A more successful attempt to incorporate a 3D perspective into shooter games; Tempest went on to influence several later rail shooters. Sega's Zaxxon (1981) introduced isometric video game graphics to the genre. The term "shmup" is believed to have been coined in 1985 by the British Commodore 64 magazine Zzap!64 . In the July 1985 issue, the term was used by the editor Chris Anderson and reviewer Julian Rignall . 1985 saw
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#17328697177331320-445: A program that functioned equally well as an entertainment experience for the players and as a demonstration for spectators: to use as much of the computer's resources as possible, to be consistently interesting and therefore have every run be different, and to be entertaining and therefore a game. It took Russell, with assistance from the other programmers—including Bob Saunders and Steve Piner (but not Wiitanen, who had been called up by
1430-430: A prototype coin-operated computer game, Galaxy Game , with a US$ 20,000 (equivalent to about $ 150,000 in 2023) PDP-11 , though they never produced more than two prototypes exhibited at Stanford. Around the same time, a second prototype coin-operated game based on Spacewar! , Computer Space , was developed by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney , which would become the first commercially sold arcade video game and
1540-417: A rail shooter released in 1985, broke new ground graphically and its wide variety of settings across multiple levels gave players more to aim for than high scores. In 1986, Arsys Software released WiBArm , a shooter that switched between a 2D side-scrolling view in outdoor areas to a fully 3D polygonal third-person perspective inside buildings, while bosses were fought in an arena-style 2D battle, with
1650-421: A ship moves past one edge of the screen, it reappears on the other side in a wraparound effect. A hyperspace feature, or "panic button", can be used as a last-ditch means to evade enemy torpedoes by moving the player's ship to another location on the screen after it disappears for a few seconds, but the reentry from hyperspace occurs at a random location, and in some versions there is an increasing probability of
1760-529: A shoot 'em up, as opposed to an action-adventure game . The success of Commando and Ikari Warriors led to run and gun games becoming the dominant style of shoot 'em up during the late 1980s to early 1990s, with the term "shoot 'em up" itself becoming synonymous with "run and gun" during this period. Konami 's Green Beret (1985), known as Rush'n Attack in North America, adapted the Commando formula to
1870-526: A straight line at constant speeds. The player's character can collect " power-ups " which may afford the character's greater protection, an " extra life ", health, shield, or upgraded weaponry. Different weapons are often suited to different enemies, but these games seldom keep track of ammunition. As such, players tend to fire indiscriminately, and their weapons only damage legitimate targets. Shoot 'em ups are categorized by their design elements, particularly viewpoint and movement: Fixed shooters restrict
1980-491: A tape containing the code, slammed it down in front of Russell, and asked what other excuses he had. Russell, later explaining that "I looked around and I didn't find an excuse, so I had to settle down and do some figuring", started writing the code around the time that the PDP-1's display was installed at the end of December 1961. The game was developed to meet three precepts Russell, Graetz, and Wiitanen had developed for creating
2090-604: A tenement building on Hingham Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts . "We had this brand new PDP-1", Russell told Rolling Stone in a 1972 interview. "Somebody [ Marvin Minsky ] had built some little pattern-generating programs which made interesting patterns like a kaleidoscope . Not a very good demonstration. Here was this display that could do all sorts of good things! So we started talking about it, figuring what would be interesting displays. We decided that probably you could make
2200-564: A third-person view, and featured the use of force feedback , where the joystick vibrates. Over the course of the 1990s, a new subgenre of shooters evolved, known as " danmaku ( 弾幕 , "barrage") in Japan, and often referred to as "bullet hell" or "manic shooters" in English-speaking regions. These games are characterized by high numbers of enemy projectiles, often in complex "curtain fire" patterns, as well as collision boxes that are smaller than
2310-610: A time limit, the hyperspace function, and a larger, second screen for viewers at the demonstration, and in May Graetz presented a paper about the game, "SPACEWAR! Real-Time Capability of the PDP-1", at the first meeting of the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society . The demonstration was a success, and the game proved very popular at MIT; the laboratory that hosted the PDP-1 soon banned play except during lunch and after working hours. Visitors such as Frederik Pohl ,
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#17328697177332420-460: A torpedo launch button. The button was silent so that the opposing player would not have a warning that the player was attempting to fire a torpedo during a cooldown period. Russell, Graetz and Wiitanen developed the basic Spacewar! concept in the summer of 1961, in anticipation of the PDP-1 being installed. Russell had recently finished reading the Lensman series by E. E. "Doc" Smith and thought
2530-452: A two-dimensional maneuvering sort of thing, and decided that naturally the obvious thing to do was spaceships." The gameplay of Spacewar! involves two monochrome spaceships called "the needle" and "the wedge", each controlled by a player, attempting to shoot one another while maneuvering on a two-dimensional plane in the gravity well of a star, set against the backdrop of a starfield. The ships fire torpedoes, which are not affected by
2640-487: A vehicle or spacecraft under constant attack. Thus, the player's goal is to shoot as quickly as possible at anything that moves or threatens them to reach the end of the level, usually with a boss battle . In some games, the player's character can withstand some damage or a single hit will result in their destruction. The main skills required in shoot 'em ups are fast reactions and memorising enemy attack patterns. Some games feature overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles and
2750-555: A wrap-around game world, unlike most later games in the genre. The scrolling helped remove design limitations associated with the screen, and it also featured a minimap radar. Scramble , released by Konami in early 1981, had continuous scrolling in a single direction and was the first side-scrolling shooter with multiple distinct levels . In the early 1980s, Japanese arcade developers began moving away from space shooters towards character action games , whereas American arcade developers continued to focus on space shooters during
2860-418: Is a graphics display connected to a computer", and Graetz recalled in 1981 that as the game initially spread it could be found on "just about any research computer that had a programmable CRT". The majority of this spread took place several years after the initial development of the game; while there are early anecdotes of players and game variants at a handful of locations, primarily near MIT and Stanford, it
2970-482: Is a subgenre of shooters in which the screen becomes crowded with complex "curtain fire" enemy patterns. It is also characterized by collision boxes that are smaller than the sprites themselves, to accommodate maneuvering through these crowded firing patterns. This style of game, also known as "manic shooters" or "maniac shooters", originated in the mid-1990s as an offshoot of scrolling shooters. The DonPachi and Touhou Project series are early titles establishing
3080-477: Is notable for using a traditional fantasy setting in contrast to most shoot 'em up games filled with science fiction motifs. R-Type , an acclaimed side-scrolling shoot 'em up, was released in 1987 by Irem , employing slower paced scrolling than usual, with difficult, claustrophobic levels calling for methodical strategies. 1990's Raiden was the beginning of another acclaimed and enduring series to emerge from this period. Run and gun games became popular in
3190-859: Is still a single axis of motion, making these a subset of fixed shooters. Rail shooters limit the player to moving around the screen while following a specific route; these games often feature an "into the screen" viewpoint, with which the action is seen from behind the player character , and moves "into the screen", while the player retains control over dodging. Examples include Space Harrier (1985), Captain Skyhawk (1990), Starblade (1991), Star Fox (1993), Star Wars: Rebel Assault (1993), Panzer Dragoon (1995), and Sin and Punishment (2000). Rail shooters that use light guns are called light gun shooters , such as Operation Wolf (1987), Lethal Enforcers (1992), Virtua Cop (1994), Point Blank (1994), Time Crisis (1995), The House of
3300-411: Is the fourth game in the franchise to be compatible with Angry Birds ' Telepods , a toys-to-life toy line that is also used in other Angry Birds games; Angry Birds Star Wars II , Angry Birds Go! , and Angry Birds Stella . When using Telepods, it can summon the toy's Transformer and either boost its power or recharge its armour. It is necessary to scan the toy's QR code each time after
3410-503: The Geometry Wars series, Space Invaders Extreme , Super Stardust HD , and Resogun . The concept of shooting games existed before video games , dating back to shooting gallery carnival games in the late 19th century and target sports such as archery , bowling and darts . Mechanical target shooting games first appeared in England 's amusement arcades around the turn of
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3520-539: The Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California , where demonstrations of the machine are held, which include playing Spacewar! . In addition to Galaxy Game and Computer Space , Spacewar! had long-lasting effects, inspiring numerous other games. These include Orbitwar (1974, PLATO network computers), Space Wars (1977, arcade), and Space War (1978, Atari 2600 ). Additionally, in
3630-569: The Front Line tank shooter format with unique rotary joystick controls, which they later combined with Commando -inspired run and gun gameplay to develop Ikari Warriors (1986), which further popularized run and gun shooters. Ikari Warriors also drew inspiration from the action film Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), which it was originally intended to be an adaptation of. Contemporary critics considered military themes and protagonists similar to Rambo or Schwarzenegger prerequisites for
3740-631: The PGM-11 Redstone rocket. That early version also contained a randomly generated background star field, initially added by Russell because a blank background made it difficult to tell the relative motion of the two spaceships at slow speeds. The programming community in the area, including the Hingham Institute and the TMRC, had developed what was later termed the " hacker ethic ", whereby all programs were freely shared and modified by other programmers in
3850-527: The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC), led by Alan Kotok , Peter Samson , and Bob Saunders. The games included Tic-Tac-Toe , which used a light pen to play a simple game of noughts and crosses against the computer, and Mouse in the Maze , which used a light pen to set up a maze of walls for a virtual mouse to traverse. In September 1961, a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 minicomputer
3960-506: The United States Army Reserve )—about 200 total hours to write the first version of Spacewar! , or around six weeks to develop the basic game. It was written in the PDP-1's assembly language . Russell had a program with a movable dot before the end of January 1962, and an early operational game with rotatable spaceships by February. The two spaceships were designed to evoke the curvy spaceship from Buck Rogers stories and
4070-658: The University of Minnesota , where MIT graduate Albert Kuhfield in 1967–68 recreated the game for the CDC 3100 , and submitted a description to Analog Science Fiction and Fact , published in 1971. The Stanford installation was so popular that in 1966 the researchers created a special "Spacewar mode" for time-sharing computer resources on their PDP-6 so that games could be played on it while research programs were also being run. Early computer scientist Alan Kay noted in 1972 that "the game of Spacewar! blossoms spontaneously wherever there
4180-462: The Xbox 360 , PlayStation 3 and Wii online services, while in Japan arcade shoot 'em ups retain a deep-rooted niche popularity. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved was released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2005 and in particular stood out from the various re-releases and casual games available on the service. The PC has also seen its share of dōjin shoot 'em ups like Crimzon Clover , Jamestown: Legend of
4290-455: The early history of video games . It was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and the public domain code was widely ported to and recreated on other computer systems at the time, especially after computer systems with monitors became more widespread towards the end of the decade. It has also been recreated in more modern programming languages for PDP-1 emulators . It directly inspired many other video games, such as
4400-430: The vertical scrolling format later popularized by Capcom 's Commando (1985), which established the standard formula used by later run and gun games. Sega's Ninja Princess (1985), which released slightly before Commando , was a run and gun game that was distinctive for its feudal Japan setting and female ninja protagonist who throws shuriken and knives. SNK 's TNK III , released later in 1985, combined
4510-498: The 1980s to early 1990s, diversifying into a variety of subgenres such as scrolling shooters, run and gun games and rail shooters. In the mid-1990s, shoot 'em ups became a niche genre based on design conventions established in the 1980s, and increasingly catered to specialist enthusiasts, particularly in Japan. " Bullet hell " games are a subgenre of shooters that features overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles , often in visually impressive formations. A "shoot 'em up", also known as
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4620-522: The 20th century, before appearing in America by the 1920s. Shooting gallery games eventually evolved into more sophisticated target shooting electro-mechanical games (EM games) such as Sega 's influential Periscope (1965). Shooting video games have roots in EM shooting games. Video game journalist Brian Ashcraft argues the early mainframe game Spacewar! (1962) was the first shoot 'em up video game. It
4730-507: The Dead (1996) and Elemental Gearbolt (1997). Light-gun games that are "on rails" are usually not considered to be in the shoot-em-up category, but rather their own first-person light-gun shooter category. Cute 'em ups feature brightly colored graphics depicting surreal settings and enemies. Cute 'em ups tend to have unusual, oftentimes completely bizarre opponents for the player to fight, with Twinbee and Fantasy Zone first pioneering
4840-487: The History of Electronic Games . During the 1950s, various computer games were created in the context of academic computer and programming research and for demonstrations of computing power, especially after the introduction later in the decade of smaller and faster computers on which programs could be created and run in real time as opposed to being executed on a schedule . A few programs, however, were intended both to showcase
4950-580: The Lost Colony , Xenoslaive Overdrive , and the eXceed series . However, despite the genre's continued appeal to an enthusiastic niche of players, shoot 'em up developers are increasingly embattled financially by the power of home consoles and their attendant genres. Spacewar! Spacewar! is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders , Steve Piner, and others. It
5060-511: The Transformers. It has also turned the eggs into the EggBots, which are turning all non-bipal pigs into their minions and then turning non-living things into monsters that want to destroy life, replacing it with technological beings across the island. The Autobirds and Deceptihogs must put their differences aside to destroy the transformed pigs and to chase the mischievous Eggbots, ultimately rescuing
5170-508: The app is closed since the application will reset the effects of Telepods upon startup. Angry Birds Transformers has received generally positive reviews, with a Metacritic score of 70/100 based on 13 reviews. The Guardian praised that the game appeals to Transformers fans, while also providing more proof that the Angry Birds can fit neatly into new stories and game genres, while the downside there are timers of multiple hours to upgrade
5280-558: The arcade game Asteroids (1979), designer Ed Logg used elements from Spacewar! , namely the hyperspace button and the shape of the player's ship. Products as late as the 1990 computer game Star Control drew direct inspiration from Spacewar! . Russell has been quoted as saying that the aspect of the game that he was most pleased with was the number of other programmers it inspired to write their own games without feeling restricted to using Russell's own code or design. On March 12, 2007, The New York Times reported that Spacewar!
5390-629: The closure of Toaplan, the following year, a number of studios formed from former Toaplan staff that would continue to develop this style, including Cave (formed by Batsugun's main creator Tsuneki Ikeda) who released 1995's seminal DonPachi , and Takumi, who would develop the GigaWing series. Bullet hell games marked another point where the shooter genre began to cater to more dedicated players. Games such as Gradius had been more difficult than Space Invaders or Xevious , but bullet hell games were yet more inward-looking and aimed at dedicated fans of
5500-465: The computer's control and power switches. The location of the switches also left one player off to one side of the CRT display due to the limited space in front of the computer, which left them at a disadvantage. To alleviate these problems, Saunders created a detached control device, essentially an early gamepad . The gamepad had a switch for turning left or right, another for forward thrust or hyperspace, and
5610-456: The drawing functions to free up processing time to calculate the effects of gravity. The initial version of the hyperspace function was limited to three jumps, but carried no risk save possibly re-entering the game in a dangerous position; later versions removed the limit but added the increasing risk of destroying the ship instead of moving it. Additionally, in March 1962, Saunders created gamepads for
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#17328697177335720-453: The early 1970s, Spacewar! migrated from large computer systems to a commercial setting as it formed the basis for the first two coin-operated video games. While playing Spacewar! at Stanford sometime between 1966 and 1969, college student Hugh Tuck remarked that a coin-operated version of the game would be very successful. While the high price of a minicomputer prevented such a game from being feasible then, in 1971 Tuck and Bill Pitts created
5830-629: The early 1980s, up until the end of the arcade golden age. According to Eugene Jarvis , American developers were greatly influenced by Japanese space shooters but took the genre in a different direction from the "more deterministic, scripted, pattern-type" gameplay of Japanese games, towards a more "programmer-centric design culture, emphasizing algorithmic generation of backgrounds and enemy dispatch" and "an emphasis on random-event generation, particle-effect explosions and physics" as seen in arcade games such as his own Defender and Robotron: 2084 (1982) as well as Atari's Asteroids (1979). Robotron: 2084
5940-400: The early 1990s and the popularity of 16-bit consoles , the scrolling shooter genre was overcrowded, with developers struggling to make their games stand out, with exceptions such as the inventive Gunstar Heroes (1993) by Treasure . Sega's pseudo-3D rail shooter Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom demonstrated the potential of 3D shoot 'em up gameplay in 1982. Sega's Space Harrier ,
6050-496: The editor of Galaxy Science Fiction , enjoyed playing the "lovely game" and wrote that MIT was "borrowing from the science-fiction magazines", with players able to pretend to be Skylark characters. Beginning in mid-1962 and continuing over the next few years, members of the PDP-1 programming community at MIT, including Russell and the other Hingham Institute members, began to spread out to other schools and employers such as Stanford University and DEC, and as they did they spread
6160-503: The emergence of one of Sega's forefront series with its game Fantasy Zone . The game received acclaim for its surreal graphics and setting and the protagonist, Opa-Opa, was for a time considered Sega's mascot . The game borrowed Defender's device of allowing the player to control the direction of flight and along with the earlier TwinBee (1985), is an early archetype of the "cute 'em up" subgenre. In 1986, Taito released KiKi KaiKai , an overhead multi-directional shooter. The game
6270-414: The fate of their homeland. Coins may be collected either during runs, by popping pigs or simply by waiting and collecting coins that generate over time from freed areas. Some levels or features can be only unlocked when the player has upgraded enough Transformers. In addition, gems can also be collected and can be used to purchase and to keep going through a run or upgrade a Transformer instantly. The game
6380-431: The fifth magnitude , displayed at their relative brightness. The program was called "Expensive Planetarium"—referring to the high price of the PDP-1 computer compared to an analog planetarium, as part of the series of "expensive" programs like Piner's Expensive Typewriter —and was quickly incorporated into the game in March by Russell, who served as the collator of the primary version of the game. The initial version of
6490-602: The first commercial arcade video games , Galaxy Game and Computer Space (both from 1971), and later games such as Asteroids (1979). In 2007, Spacewar! was named to a list of the ten most important video games in history, which formed the start of the game canon at the Library of Congress , and in 2018 it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame by The Strong and the International Center for
6600-464: The first few months after its installation, the PDP-1 programming community at MIT focused on simpler programs to work out how to create software for the computer. During this period, Russell visited his old friends in the community frequently and described the Spacewar! concept to them. Russell hoped someone would implement the game, but had no plans to do so himself. Other members of the community felt he
6710-494: The first games to popularize twin-stick controls was Robotron: 2084 (1982). Space shooters are a thematic variant of involving spacecraft in outer space . Following the success of Space Invaders , space shooters were the dominant subgenre during the late 1970s to early 1980s. These games can overlap with other subgenres as well as space combat games . Tube shooters feature craft flying through an abstract tube, such as Tempest (1981) and Gyruss (1983). There
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#17328697177336820-485: The first widely available video game of any kind. Though Tuck felt that Computer Space was a poor imitation of Spacewar! and his Galaxy Game a superior adaptation, many players believed both arcade games to be upgraded variants of Spacewar! . Byte magazine published an assembly language version of Spacewar! in 1977 that ran on the Altair 8800 and other Intel 8080 -based microcomputers using an oscilloscope as
6930-406: The game also did not include the central star gravity well or the hyperspace feature; they were written by MIT graduate student and TMRC member Dan Edwards and Graetz respectively to add elements of a strategy to what initially was a shooter game of pure reflexes. Russell had previously wanted to add gravity, but was unable to get the program to perform the calculations fast enough; Edwards optimized
7040-452: The game featuring a variety of weapons and equipment. In 1987, Square's 3-D WorldRunner was an early stereoscopic 3-D shooter played from a third-person perspective, followed later that year by its sequel JJ , and the following year by Space Harrier 3-D which used the SegaScope 3-D shutter glasses . That same year, Sega's Thunder Blade switched between both a top-down view and
7150-429: The game to other universities and institutions with a PDP-1 computer. As a result, Spacewar! was perhaps the first video game to be available outside a single research institute. Over the next decade, programmers at these other institutions began coding their own variants, including features such as allowing more ships and players at once, replacing the hyperspace feature with a cloaking device , space mines, and even
7260-578: The game was well known enough in the programming community that Rolling Stone sponsored the "Intergalactic Spacewar! Olympics". The event was held on October 19, 1972, at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory using a variant of Spacewar! on a combined PDP-6/PDP-10 that supported five players, and was the first ever video game tournament, with an account published in the December 7, 1972 issue of Rolling Stone . In
7370-494: The game, to counter "Space War Elbow" from sitting hunched over the mainframe toggles. The game was a multiplayer-only game because the computer had no resources left over to handle controlling the other ship. Similarly, other proposed additions to the game such as a more refined explosion display upon the destruction of a spaceship and having the torpedoes also be affected by gravity had to be abandoned as there were not enough computer resources to handle them while smoothly running
7480-469: The game. One feature, having the speed and direction of torpedoes differ slightly with each shot, was added and then removed by Russell after player complaints. With the added features and changes in place, Russell and the other programmers shifted focus from developing the game to preparing to show it off to others such as at the MIT Science Open House at the end of April 1962. The group added
7590-431: The genre looking for greater challenges. While shooter games featuring protagonists on foot largely moved to 3D-based genres, popular, long-running series such as Contra and Metal Slug continued to receive new sequels. Rail shooters have rarely been released in the new millennium, with only Rez and Panzer Dragoon Orta achieving cult recognition. In the early 2000s, the genre achieved recognition through
7700-639: The graphical display and a lookup table to approximate the calculations for orbits, as well as a three-dimensional variant in 1979 written in Tiny BASIC . More modern recreations of the game for computers have been made as well. An emulated version of the original game, made publicly available by Martin Graetz and running in a JavaScript PDP-1 emulator , was made available to play on the internet in 2012. The Analogue Pocket handheld console added support for running Spacewar! on an emulated PDP-1 in 2022. The only working PDP-1s that are known to exist are kept in
7810-413: The gravitational pull of the star. The ships have a limited number of torpedoes and supply of fuel, which is used when the player fires the ship's thrusters. Torpedoes are fired one at a time by flipping a toggle switch on the computer or pressing a button on the control pad, and there is a cooldown period between launches. The ships remain in motion even when the player is not accelerating, and rotating
7920-420: The mid-1980s. These games feature characters on foot, rather than spacecraft, and often have military themes. The origins of this type of shooter go back to Sheriff by Nintendo , released in 1979. SNK 's Sasuke vs. Commander (1980), which had relatively detailed background graphics for its time, pit a samurai against a horde of ninjas , along with boss fights . Taito's Front Line (1982) introduced
8030-411: The mid-20th-century, but did not receive a video game release until Spacewar! (1962). The shoot 'em up genre was established by the hit arcade game Space Invaders , which popularised and set the general template for the genre in 1978, and has spawned many clones. The genre was then further developed by arcade hits such as Asteroids and Galaxian in 1979. Shoot 'em ups were popular throughout
8140-432: The mobile game Space Impact , which is considered one of the important games in the history of mobile games . Treasure's shoot 'em up, Radiant Silvergun (1998), introduced an element of narrative to the genre. It was critically acclaimed for its refined design, though it was not released outside Japan and remains a much sought-after collector's item. Its successor Ikaruga (2001) featured improved graphics and
8250-459: The new computer's capabilities in a compelling way. Three of them— Steve Russell , then an employee at Harvard University and a former research assistant at MIT; Martin Graetz, a research assistant and former student at MIT; and Wayne Wiitanen, a research assistant at Harvard and former employee and student at MIT—came up with the idea for Spacewar! . They referred to their collaboration as the "Hingham Institute" as Graetz and Wiitanen were living in
8360-452: The player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing speed. Nishikado conceived the game by combining elements of Breakout (1976) with those of earlier target shooting games, and simple alien creatures inspired by H. G. Wells ' The War of the Worlds . The hardware was unable to render the movement of aircraft, so the game was set in space, with
8470-401: The player and enemies to a single screen, and the player primarily moves along a single axis, such as back and forth along the bottom of the screen. Examples include Space Invaders (1978), Galaxian (1979), Phoenix (1980), and Galaga (1981). In Pooyan (1982), the fixed axis of movement is vertical, along the right side of the screen. In Centipede (1980) and Gorf (1981),
8580-427: The player can engage a hyperspace feature to move to a new and random location on the screen, though in some versions each use has an increasing chance of destroying the ship instead. The game was initially controlled with switches on the PDP-1, though Bob Saunders built an early gamepad to reduce the difficulty and awkwardness of controlling the game. Spacewar! is one of the most important and influential games in
8690-574: The player has to memorise their patterns to survive. These games belong to one of the fastest-paced video game genres . Large numbers of enemy characters programmed to behave in an easily predictable manner are typically featured. These enemies may behave in a certain way dependent on their type, or attack in formations that the player can learn to predict. The basic gameplay tends to be straightforward with many varieties of weapons. Shoot 'em ups rarely have realistic physics. Characters can instantly change direction with no inertia , and projectiles move in
8800-491: The player in a trance-like state. In trance shooters, enemy patterns usually have randomized elements, forcing the player to rely on reflexes rather than pattern memorization. Games of this type usually feature colorful, abstract visuals, and electronic music (often techno music ). Jeff Minter is commonly credited with originating the style with Tempest 2000 (1994) and subsequent games including Space Giraffe , Gridrunner++ , and Polybius (2017). Other examples include
8910-480: The player primarily moves left and right along the bottom, but several inches of vertical motion are also allowed within an invisible box. Multidirectional shooters allow 360-degree movement where the protagonist may rotate and move in any direction such as Asteroids (1979) and Mad Planets (1983). Multidirectional shooters with one joystick for movement and one joystick for firing in any direction independent of movement are called twin-stick shooters . One of
9020-415: The player's flying vehicle moving forward, at a fixed rate, through an environment. Examples are Scramble (1981), Xevious (1982), Gradius (1986), Darius (1987), R-Type (1987), Einhänder (1997). In contrast, Defender (1981) allows the player to move left or right at will. Run and gun games have protagonists that move through the world on foot and shoot attackers. Examples include
9130-549: The player. It also introduced the idea of giving the player multiple lives and popularized the concept of achieving a high score . With these elements, Space Invaders set the general template for the shoot 'em up genre. It became one of the most widely cloned shooting games, spawning more than 100 imitators with only the most minor differences (if any) from the original. Most shooting games released since then have followed its "multiple life, progressively difficult level " paradigm, according to Eugene Jarvis . Following
9240-585: The power of the computer they ran on and as entertainment products; these were generally created by undergraduate and graduate students and university employees, such as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where staff and students were allowed on occasion to develop programs for the TX-0 experimental computer. These interactive graphical games were created by a community of programmers, many of them students and university employees affiliated with
9350-548: The principle of bullet hells. A bullet heaven or reverse bullet hell is a subgenre characterized by the player character collecting or unlocking abilities and attacks whose visuals overlap and clutter the game screen as the game progresses. They also share a feature of many enemy characters, commonly called "hordes", walking toward the player from off-screen. This genre is generally attributed to Vampire Survivors , released in 2022. A small subgenre of shooter games that emphasizes chaotic, reflex-based gameplay designed to put
9460-534: The programming community was too small to support any commercial industry. It spread initially both by people bringing copies of the code to other installations as well as by programmers recreating the game with their own code. Early installations included the PDP-1 at Bolt, Beranek, & Newman , which also recreated the gamepads; an installation by Russell on a PDP-1 at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Stanford University in 1963; and
9570-416: The release of Konami's Gradius , which gave the player greater control over the choice of weaponry, thus introducing another element of strategy. The game also introduced the need for the player to memorise levels in order to achieve any measure of success. Gradius , with its iconic protagonist, defined the side-scrolling shoot 'em up and spawned a series spanning several sequels. The following year saw
9680-423: The scope to include games featuring such protagonists as robots or humans on foot, as well as including games featuring "on-rails" (or "into the screen") and "run and gun" movement. Mark Wolf restricts the definition to games featuring multiple antagonists ("'em" being short for "them"), calling games featuring one-on-one shooting "combat games". Formerly, critics described any game where the primary design element
9790-416: The ship exploding with each use. Player controls include clockwise and counterclockwise rotation, forward thrust, firing torpedoes, and hyperspace. Initially, these were controlled using the front-panel test switches on the PDP-1 minicomputer, with four switches for each player, but these proved to be awkward to use and wore out quickly under normal gameplay, as well as causing players to accidentally flip
9900-409: The ships does not change the direction of their motion, though the ships can rotate at a constant rate without inertia . Each player controls one of the ships and must attempt to shoot down the other ship while avoiding a collision with the star or the opposing ship. Flying near the star can provide a gravity assist to the player at the risk of misjudging the trajectory and falling into the star. If
10010-472: The sprites themselves, allowing the player to fit between the narrow gaps in enemy fire. Bullet hell games were first popularized in Japanese arcades during a time when 3D games and fighting games were eclipsing other games. The flashy firing patterns were intended to grab players attention. Toaplan 's Batsugun (1993) is often considered a pivotal point in the development of this subgenre. After
10120-524: The stories would make a good basis for the program. "His heroes had a strong tendency to get pursued by the villain across the galaxy and have to invent their way out of their problem while they were being pursued. That sort of action was the thing that suggested Spacewar! . He had some very glowing descriptions of spaceship encounters and space fleet maneuvers." Other influences cited by fellow programmer Martin Graetz include E. E. Smith's Skylark novels and Japanese pulp fiction tokusatsu movies . For
10230-451: The structures or making TNT explode. Since it is a side-scrolling video game , pigs who have gone out the screen can no longer be eliminated. The player can use the user's Facebook friends unlocked characters or randomly generated characters to assist in a level for a limited time. The EggSpark has crashed into the surface of Piggy Island, cyberforming the Birds and Pigs and turning them into
10340-612: The subgenre, along with Parodius , Cotton , and Harmful Park being additional key games. Some cute 'em ups may employ overtly sexual characters and innuendo. Vertically scrolling shooters present the action from above and scroll up (or occasionally down) the screen. Horizontally scrolling shooters usually present a side-on view and scroll left to right (or less often, right to left). Isometrically scrolling shooters or isometric shooters , such as Sega 's Zaxxon (1982), use an isometric point of view . A popular implementation style of scrolling shooters has
10450-550: The success of Space Invaders , shoot 'em ups became the dominant genre for much of the golden age of arcade video games , from the late 1970s up until the early 1980s, particularly the "space shooter" subgenre. In 1979, Namco 's Galaxian —"the granddaddy of all top-down shooters", according to IGN—was released. Its use of colour graphics and individualised antagonists were considered "strong evolutionary concepts" among space ship games. In 1981 Gorf brought joystick control and (limited) vertical as well as horizontal movement to
10560-472: The vertically scrolling, overhead view games Front Line (1982), Commando (1985), and Ikari Warriors (1986). Side-scrolling run and gun games often combine elements from platform games , such as the ability to jump: Contra (1987), Metal Slug (1996) and Cuphead (2017). Run and gun games may also use isometric viewpoints and may have multidirectional movement. Bullet hell ( 弾幕 , danmaku , literally "barrage" or "bullet curtain")
10670-545: The vertically-oriented fixed-shooter genre, while Space Invaders and Galaxian have only horizontal movement controlled by a pair of buttons. Atari 's Asteroids (1979) was a hit multi-directional shooter, taking from Spacewar! the ability for the player's ship to roam the entire screen and to rotate, move and shoot in any direction. The Space Invaders format evolved into the vertical scrolling shooter sub-genre. SNK 's debut shoot 'em up Ozma Wars (1979) featured vertical scrolling backgrounds and enemies, and it
10780-515: Was again acclaimed as one of the best games in the genre. Both Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga were later released on Xbox Live Arcade . The Touhou Project series spans 26 years and 30 games as of 2022 and was listed in the Guinness World Records in October 2010 for being the "most prolific fan-made shooter series". The genre has undergone something of a resurgence with the release of
10890-421: Was an influential game in the multi-directional shooter subgenre. Some games experimented with pseudo-3D perspectives at the time. Nintendo 's attempt at the genre, Radar Scope (1980), borrowed heavily from Space Invaders and Galaxian , but added a three-dimensional third-person perspective; the game was a commercial failure, however. Atari's Tempest (1981) was one of the earliest tube shooters and
11000-431: Was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, for the developers' amusement, and presents a space battle between two craft. It was remade four times as an arcade video game in the 1970s. Space Invaders (1978) is most frequently cited as the "first" or "original" in the genre. A seminal game created by Tomohiro Nishikado of Japan's Taito , it led to proliferation of shooter games. It pitted
11110-418: Was extremely popular in the small programming community in the 1960s and was widely recreated on other minicomputer and mainframe computers of the time before migrating to early microcomputer systems in the 1970s. Just as it was during development, the game was in the public domain and the code was available to anyone with access to it or who contacted Russell; no attempt was made to sell it commercially, as
11220-558: Was installed in the " kludge room" on the 2nd floor of Building 26, the location of the MIT Electrical Engineering Department. The PDP-1 was to complement the older TX-0, and like it had a punched tape reader and writer, and additionally accepted input from a panel of switches and could output to a cathode-ray tube (CRT) display. Over the summer before its arrival a group of students and university employees had been pondering ideas for programs that would demonstrate
11330-441: Was named to a list of the ten most important video games in history, the so-called game canon , which were proposed to be archived in the Library of Congress . The Library of Congress took up this video game preservation proposal and began with the games from this list. In 2018, it was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame by The Strong and the International Center for the History of Electronic Games . Also in 2018,
11440-453: Was only after 1967 that computers hooked up to monitors or terminals capable of playing Spacewar! began to proliferate, allowing the game to reach a wider audience and influence later video game designers—by 1971, it is estimated that there were over 1000 computers with monitors, rather than a few dozen. It is around this time that the majority of the game variants were created for various computer systems, such as later PDP systems, and in 1972
11550-462: Was released for Android on October 30, 2014. The release includes related licensed merchandise and a toy line from Hasbro. The goal is to survive through the run, shooting at pigs, structures, and other targets as well as transforming into various types of vehicles (which all stay at ground level), since failure to survive results in no pigs popped and that character losing all health . Pigs can be eliminated by shooting directly at them or by destroying
11660-450: Was reportedly used as a smoke test by DEC technicians on new PDP-1 systems before shipping because it was the only available program that exercised every aspect of the hardware. Although the game was widespread for the era, it was still very limited in its direct reach: while less expensive than most mainframe computers, the PDP-1 was priced at US$ 120,000 (equivalent to about $ 1,209,000 in 2023) and only 53 were ever sold, most without
11770-404: Was shooting as a "shoot 'em up", but later shoot 'em ups became a specific, inward-looking genre based on design conventions established in those shooting games of the 1980s. Shoot 'em ups are a subgenre of action game . These games are usually viewed from a top-down or side-view perspective , and players must use ranged weapons to take action at a distance. The player's avatar is typically
11880-546: Was the first action game to feature a supply of energy, similar to hit points . Namco's Xevious , released in 1982, was one of the first and most influential vertical scrolling shooters. Xevious is also the first to convincingly portray dithered/shaded organic landscapes as opposed to blocks-in-space or wireframe obstacles. Side-scrolling shoot 'em ups emerged in the early 1980s. Defender , introduced by Williams Electronics in late 1980 and entering production in early 1981, allowed side-scrolling in both directions in
11990-439: Was the logical choice to create the game, however, and began pressuring him to program it. In response, Russell began providing various excuses as to why he could not do so. One of these was the lack of a trigonometric function routine needed to calculate the trajectories of the spacecraft. This prompted Alan Kotok of the TMRC to call DEC, who informed him that they had such a routine already written. Kotok drove to DEC to pick up
12100-531: Was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . After its initial creation, Spacewar! was expanded further by other students and employees of universities in the area, including Dan Edwards and Peter Samson . It was also spread to many of the few dozen installations of the PDP-1 computer, making Spacewar! the first known video game to be played at multiple computer installations. The game features two spaceships , "the needle" and "the wedge", engaged in
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