114-466: Galaxian is a 1979 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Namco . The player assumes control of the Galaxip starfighter in its mission to protect Earth from waves of aliens. Gameplay involves destroying each formation of aliens, who dive down towards the player in an attempt to hit them. Designed by company engineer Kazunori Sawano, Galaxian was Namco's answer to Space Invaders ,
228-419: A bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame . Modern video cards contain framebuffer circuitry in their cores. This circuitry converts an in-memory bitmap into a video signal that can be displayed on a computer monitor. In computing , a screen buffer is a part of computer memory used by a computer application for
342-434: A graphics library such as OpenGL or Direct3D which interfaces with the graphics driver to translate received commands to instructions for the accelerator's graphics processing unit (GPU). The GPU uses those instructions to compute the rasterized results and the results are bit blitted to the framebuffer. The framebuffer's signal is then produced in combination with built-in video overlay devices (usually used to produce
456-408: 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
570-431: 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
684-471: 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
798-528: A 4096 display in 1950. A color scanned display was implemented in the late 1960s, called the Brookhaven RAster Display (BRAD), which used a drum memory and a television monitor. In 1969, A. Michael Noll of Bell Labs implemented a scanned display with a frame buffer, using magnetic-core memory . Later on, the Bell Labs system was expanded to display an image with a color depth of three bits on
912-416: A 50 MHz printed circuit board . Following the commercial failure of Radar Scope , the game's arcade hardware was converted for use with Donkey Kong , which became a major arcade hit. Home systems at the time were not powerful enough to handle an accurate port of Donkey Kong , so Nintendo wanted to create a system that allowed a fully accurate conversion of Donkey Kong to be played in homes, leading to
1026-401: 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
1140-464: A boon for graphics researchers who did not have the resources to build their own framebuffer. The New York Institute of Technology would later create the first 24-bit color system using three of the Evans & Sutherland framebuffers. Each framebuffer was connected to an RGB color output (one for red, one for green and one for blue), with a Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 11/04 minicomputer controlling
1254-424: A higher quality than on home computers. Framebuffers used in personal and home computing often had sets of defined modes under which the framebuffer can operate. These modes reconfigure the hardware to output different resolutions, color depths, memory layouts and refresh rate timings. In the world of Unix machines and operating systems, such conveniences were usually eschewed in favor of directly manipulating
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#17330861335161368-464: A historically important game for the industry. In 2021, The Guardian listed Galaxian as the greatest video game of the 1970s . In 1996, GamesMaster ranked the arcade version 63 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time." Home versions and ports of the game received mixed responses by platforms. Video magazine in 1982 reviewed the Astrocade version of Galaxian (named Galactic Invasion ), noting that
1482-555: 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
1596-417: 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
1710-411: A rectangle of swatches): In some designs it was also possible to write data to the lookup table (or switch between existing palettes) on the fly, allowing dividing the picture into horizontal bars with their own palette and thus render an image that had a far wider palette. For example, viewing an outdoor shot photograph, the picture could be divided into four bars, the top one with emphasis on sky tones,
1824-529: 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
1938-505: A similar space shooter released the previous year by rival developer Taito . Space Invaders was a sensation in Japan, and Namco wanted a game that could compete against it. Sawano strove to make the game simplistic and easy to understand. He was inspired by the cinematic space combat scenes in Star Wars , with enemies originally being in the shape of the film's TIE Fighters . Galaxian is one of
2052-520: A stand-alone Mini-Arcade tabletop version of Galaxian in 1981, which, along with Pac-Man , Donkey Kong , and Frogger , sold three million units combined. Entex released a handheld electronic game called Galaxian 2 in 1981. The game is called Galaxian 2 because it has a two-player mode. It is not a sequel, as there is no Entex Galaxian . Galaxian was released by Namco in Japan on September 15, 1979. Following its large success, Namco approached Midway Manufacturing in terms of releasing
2166-407: A standard color TV monitor. In the early 1970s, the development of MOS memory ( metal–oxide–semiconductor memory) integrated-circuit chips, particularly high-density DRAM (dynamic random-access memory ) chips with at least 1 kb memory, made it practical to create, for the first time, a digital memory system with framebuffers capable of holding a standard video image. This led to
2280-526: 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
2394-424: A technique known generally as double buffering or more specifically as page flipping , the framebuffer uses half of its memory to display the current frame. While that memory is being displayed, the other half of memory is filled with data for the next frame. Once the secondary buffer is filled, the framebuffer is instructed to display the secondary buffer instead. The primary buffer becomes the secondary buffer, and
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#17330861335162508-516: 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
2622-671: A tilemap hardware model, which created a set of 8x8 pixel tiles – this reduced processing and memory requirements up to 64 times, compared to the framebuffer model used in Space Invaders . The game's hardware was also capable of features such as multi-color sprites , sprite animation, and scrolling , though the game remained a fixed shooter with a scrolling effect only used for the starfield background. Atari, Inc. published ports of Galaxian for its own systems— Atari 8-bit computers , Atari 2600 , Atari 5200 — in 1982–3, three or more years after Galaxian appeared in arcades and
2736-487: 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
2850-555: 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
2964-486: A year or more after Galaga . Additional ports were published under the Atarisoft label: Apple II , ColecoVision , Commodore 64 , VIC-20 , IBM PC , and ZX Spectrum . Ports from other companies were sold for MSX (Europe and Japan only), NEC PC-8801 , Famicom (Japan only), and Sharp X1 . A Bally Astrocade version was published as Galaxian , but the name was later changed to Galactic Invasion . Coleco released
3078-482: 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
3192-439: Is included in numerous Namco compilations . Galaxian is a space-themed fixed shooter . The player controls a starship called the "Galaxip", the objective being to clear each round of aliens. The enemies appear in formation towards the top of the screen, with two escort ships, labeled the "Galaxian Flagship" or "Galboss". Enemies will make a divebomb towards the bottom of the screen while shooting projectiles in an attempt to hit
3306-477: 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
3420-859: 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
3534-407: Is that a full range of colors cannot be produced. The solution to this problem was indexed color , which adds a lookup table to the framebuffer. Each color stored in framebuffer memory acts as a color index. The lookup table serves as a palette with a limited number of different colors, while the rest is used as an index table. Here is a typical indexed 256-color image and its own palette (shown as
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3648-584: The Galaga 30th Anniversary Collection , released in commemoration of the event by Namco Bandai . Super Impulse also released a stand-alone Tiny Arcade version of Galaxian . The Galaxian world record has been the focus of many competitive gamers since its release. The most famous Galaxian rivalry has been between British player Gary Whelan and American Perry Rodgers, who faced off at Apollo Amusements in Pompano Beach, Florida , USA, on 6–9 April 2006. Whelan held
3762-503: 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
3876-569: 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
3990-462: 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
4104-430: 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
4218-498: 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
4332-409: The 1980s. SGI , Sun Microsystems , HP , DEC and IBM all released framebuffers for their workstation computers in this period. These framebuffers were usually of a much higher quality than could be found in most home computers, and were regularly used in television, printing, computer modeling and 3D graphics. Framebuffers were also used by Sega for its high-end arcade boards , which were also of
4446-522: 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
4560-507: 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
4674-486: The LCD must digitally sample the display signal (thereby emulating an electron beam), any signal that is out of range cannot be physically displayed on the monitor. Framebuffers have traditionally supported a wide variety of color modes. Due to the expense of memory, most early framebuffers used 1-bit (2 colors per pixel), 2-bit (4 colors), 4-bit (16 colors) or 8-bit (256 colors) color depths. The problem with such small color depths
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4788-469: 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. Framebuffer A framebuffer ( frame buffer , or sometimes framestore ) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing
4902-517: The SuperPaint system to produce a wide variety of colors outside the range of the limited 8-bit data it contained. This scheme would later become commonplace in computer framebuffers. In 1974, Evans & Sutherland released the first commercial framebuffer, the Picture System, costing about $ 15,000. It was capable of producing resolutions of up to 512 by 512 pixels in 8-bit grayscale , and became
5016-573: The X Virtual Framebuffer ( Xvfb ). Xvfb was added to the X Window System distribution to provide a method for running X without a graphical framebuffer. The Linux framebuffer device was developed to abstract the physical method for accessing the underlying framebuffer into a guaranteed memory map that is easy for programs to access. This increases portability, as programs are not required to deal with systems that have disjointed memory maps or require bank switching . A frame buffer may be designed with enough memory to store two frames worth of video data. In
5130-629: 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
5244-512: The core gameplay. The 2005 PlayStation Portable compilation Namco Museum Battle Collection includes a remake of Galaga titled Galaga Arrangement , having no relation to the one featured in Namco Classic Collection Vol. 1 . This game was later ported to iOS devices in 2009, renamed Galaga Remix . In 2008, Namco Bandai Games released a downloadable game for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 , Galaga Legions – this game
5358-462: The development of the SuperPaint system by Richard Shoup at Xerox PARC in 1972. Shoup was able to use the SuperPaint framebuffer to create an early digital video-capture system. By synchronizing the output signal to the input signal, Shoup was able to overwrite each pixel of data as it shifted in. Shoup also experimented with modifying the output signal using color tables. These color tables allowed
5472-456: The development of the Famicom. Galaxian spawned a long series of sequels and spin-offs for multiple game platforms, including arcade hardware and home video game systems. The first of these, Galaga , was released in 1981, usurping the original in popularity as one of the greatest video games of all time , becoming a popular game during the golden age of arcade video games in North America. It
5586-489: The development team made the number of enemies on-screen the same and gradually increased the difficulty as the player progresses, becoming more noticeable in later stages. The enemies themselves were designed to have a personality of their own, programmed to monitor the player's movements and make attacks based on them - early in development, Sawano had envisioned the enemies to resemble TIE Fighters from Star Wars . To save up on hardware memory and processing, programmers created
5700-455: The display. Color values are commonly stored in 1-bit binary (monochrome), 4-bit palettized , 8-bit palettized, 16-bit high color and 24-bit true color formats. An additional alpha channel is sometimes used to retain information about pixel transparency. The total amount of memory required for the framebuffer depends on the resolution of the output signal, and on the color depth or palette size. Computer researchers had long discussed
5814-629: 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
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#17330861335165928-544: The early 1980s; Game Machine reported that it was still performing well as late as August 1983. In the United States, Galaxian was also the second highest-grossing arcade game of 1980, below Asteroids , according to Play Meter and Cash Box . Galaxian had sold 40,000 arcade units in the United States by 1981, and 50,000 units in the US as of 1982. Critics applauded the game's use of true color graphics and for improving
6042-400: 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 ,
6156-503: 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
6270-403: The feeling of a space battle, specifically with the game's sound effects. Several back-and-forth sound effects were made, many being rejected by Sawano for not matching his vision. The game was Namco's first arcade game to be composed with a synthesizer. Game balance was an important part of the game, as Sawano did not want to make the game suddenly spike in difficulty with no build-up or warning;
6384-494: 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
6498-434: The first video games to feature RGB color graphics and the first ever to use a tile-based hardware system, which was capable of animated multi-color sprites as well as scrolling , though the latter was limited to the starfield background while the game itself remained a fixed shooter. Galaxian was Namco's first major arcade video game hit. It was the second highest-grossing arcade video game of 1979 and 1980 in Japan and
6612-470: The formula established in Space Invaders . The April 5, 1980 issue of Cashbox noted of the game's colorful and attractive cabinet design, while the April 26 issue called it an "earthshaking hit", referring to it as a true followup to Space Invaders . In a 2007 retrospective review, Sir Clive of Eurogamer labeled it a masterpiece, praising its "beautifully drawn" game graphics, intense gameplay, and for being
6726-444: The framebuffer during the scan, creating a set of discrete picture elements, i.e. pixels. Framebuffers differ significantly from the vector displays that were common prior to the advent of raster graphics (and, consequently, to the concept of a framebuffer). With a vector display, only the vertices of the graphics primitives are stored. The electron beam of the output display is then commanded to move from vertex to vertex, tracing
6840-558: The framebuffer. This is commonly called graphics acceleration . Common graphics drawing commands (many of them geometric) are sent to the graphics accelerator in their raw form. The accelerator then rasterizes the results of the command to the framebuffer. This method frees the CPU to do other work. Early accelerators focused on improving the performance of 2D GUI systems. While retaining these 2D capabilities, most modern accelerators focus on producing 3D imagery in real time. A common design uses
6954-466: The game at a trade exhibit in November 1979, followed by a wide release for North America in early 1980 – this move helped strengthen Midway and challenged Atari's leadership in the market. To help keep up demand for the game in Japan, Namco licensed the game to other companies for manufacturing cabinets, including Taito and Irem . Galaxian was a critical and commercial success upon release. In Japan, it
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#17330861335167068-452: 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
7182-498: The game lasted six months, Sawano had made several ideas half a year before production began. Sawano and his team set out to make a game anybody could play, using a "simple is best" motto during production – this helped trim away large-scale ideas in favor of a game that could loop endlessly and be able to use only two enemy types. Alongside Space Invaders , a large portion of the game was inspired by Star Wars , specifically its large-scale space battles. Sawano had wanted to replicate
7296-399: The game overseas. Midway, who had previously lost their license with Taito due to the success of Space Invaders in the west, was in the midst of trying to find a new partner for releasing games. After Namco showed Midway the game on October 17, 1979, Midway was interested in the game's unique features and wanted to acquire the rights to the game. They agreed to the deal and Midway introduced
7410-425: The game progresses alongside the number of shots that the enemies fire. Rounds are indicated by small flags at the bottom of the screen. The game's attract mode featured a slim scenario, reading "WE ARE THE GALAXIANS. MISSION: DESTROY ALIENS". Galaxian was designed by Kazunori Sawano, who had previously worked on many of Namco's electro-mechanical shooting gallery arcade games, notably Shoot Away (1977). Early in
7524-407: The game's development, Taito had released Space Invaders in Japan, which swept the country by storm and helped turn the video game industry into a highly-profitable business. To help capitalize on the game's success, Namco president Masaya Nakamura ordered Sawano to make the best "post-Invaders" game they could, which put a vast amount of pressure on the development team. Although development of
7638-431: 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
7752-626: The graphics as fast although flickery. Softline in 1983 criticized the Atari 8-bit version of the game, stating that "this game becomes tedious very quickly". The Galaxian arcade hardware had a significant influence on the hardware design of Nintendo 's later arcade and console systems, including the arcade hardware for Radar Scope (1980) and Donkey Kong (1981) as well as the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System . According to Nintendo R&D2 lead engineer Masayuki Uemura , Galaxian replaced
7866-472: The graphics were inferior to the coin-op and PC versions, but praising the play-action as "magnificent" compared to other console versions. The Astrocade version was later awarded a Certificate of Merit for "Best Arcade-to-Home Video Game Translation" at the 4th annual Arkie Awards . Home Computing Weekly in 1983 gave the Spectrum version of Galaxian 3/5 stars describing it as a well-written version and praising
7980-477: The hardware settings. This manipulation was far more flexible in that any resolution, color depth and refresh rate was attainable – limited only by the memory available to the framebuffer. An unfortunate side-effect of this method was that the display device could be driven beyond its capabilities. In some cases, this resulted in hardware damage to the display. More commonly, it simply produced garbled and unusable output. Modern CRT monitors fix this problem through
8094-472: The home computers of the late 1970s to contain low-color-depth framebuffers. Today, nearly all computers with graphical capabilities utilize a framebuffer for generating the video signal. Amiga computers, created in the 1980s, featured special design attention to graphics performance and included a unique Hold-And-Modify framebuffer capable of displaying 4096 colors. Framebuffers also became popular in high-end workstations and arcade system boards throughout
8208-459: The introduction of protection circuitry. When the display mode is changed, the monitor attempts to obtain a signal lock on the new refresh frequency. If the monitor is unable to obtain a signal lock, or if the signal is outside the range of its design limitations, the monitor will ignore the framebuffer signal and possibly present the user with an error message. LCD monitors tend to contain similar protection circuitry, but for different reasons. Since
8322-412: The market for graphics accelerators for x86-based systems is dominated by Nvidia (acquired 3dfx in 2002), AMD (who acquired ATI in 2006), and Intel . With a framebuffer, the electron beam (if the display technology uses one) is commanded to perform a raster scan , the way a television renders a broadcast signal. The color information for each point thus displayed on the screen is pulled directly from
8436-484: The methods used to access memory. Some of the most common are: The framebuffer organization may be packed pixel or planar . The framebuffer may be all points addressable or have restrictions on how it can be updated. Video cards always have a certain amount of RAM. A small portion of this RAM is where the bitmap of image data is "buffered" for display. The term frame buffer is thus often used interchangeably when referring to this RAM. The CPU sends image updates to
8550-420: 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
8664-411: 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
8778-432: 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
8892-454: The more intensive bitmap rendering system of Space Invaders with a hardware sprite rendering system that animated sprites over a scrolling background, allowing more detailed graphics, faster gameplay and a scrolling animated starfield background. This provided the basis for Nintendo's Radar Scope arcade hardware, which improved on Galaxian with technology such as high-speed emitter-coupled logic integrated circuit chips and memory on
9006-581: The mouse cursor without modifying the framebuffer's data) and any final special effects that are produced by modifying the output signal. An example of such final special effects was the spatial anti-aliasing technique used by the 3dfx Voodoo cards. These cards add a slight blur to the output signal that makes aliasing of the rasterized graphics much less obvious. At one time there were many manufacturers of graphics accelerators, including: 3dfx Interactive ; ATI ; Hercules ; Trident ; Nvidia ; Radius ; S3 Graphics ; SiS and Silicon Graphics . As of 2015
9120-402: The next with foliage tones, the next with skin and clothing tones, and the bottom one with ground colors. This required each palette to have overlapping colors, but carefully done, allowed great flexibility. While framebuffers are commonly accessed via a memory mapping directly to the CPU memory space, this is not the only method by which they may be accessed. Framebuffers have varied widely in
9234-452: 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
9348-401: 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),
9462-574: 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
9576-491: 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
9690-480: 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
9804-415: 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
9918-549: 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
10032-432: The player. The Galaxip can only fire a single shot at a time, and the player must wait for it to either hit an enemy or the top of the screen before being able to fire another, due to limitations of the hardware. Flagships will make a divebomb with two red escort ships - shooting all three of these will award the player bonus points, with extra points awarded to the destruction of the flagship. Enemy movement will increase as
10146-548: 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
10260-416: 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
10374-401: The representation of the content to be shown on the computer display . The screen buffer may also be called the video buffer , the regeneration buffer , or regen buffer for short. Screen buffers should be distinguished from video memory . To this end, the term off-screen buffer is also used. The information in the buffer typically consists of color values for every pixel to be shown on
10488-423: 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
10602-502: The second highest-grossing of 1980 in the United States, where it became one of the best-selling arcade games of all time with 50,000 arcade units sold by 1982. The game was celebrated for its gameplay and use of true color graphics. In retrospect, it has gained fame for its historical importance and technological accomplishments. Its success led to several sequels and reimaginings, most notably Galaga , which surpassed it in popularity. Galaxian has also been ported to many home systems and
10716-416: The secondary buffer becomes the primary. This switch is often done after the vertical blanking interval to avoid screen tearing where half the old frame and half the new frame is shown together. Page flipping has become a standard technique used by PC game programmers . As the demand for better graphics increased, hardware manufacturers created a way to decrease the amount of CPU time required to fill
10830-472: 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
10944-612: 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
11058-550: 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
11172-538: The theoretical advantages of a framebuffer but were unable to produce a machine with sufficient memory at an economically practicable cost. In 1947, the Manchester Baby computer used a Williams tube , later the Williams-Kilburn tube, to store 1024 bits on a cathode-ray tube (CRT) memory and displayed on a second CRT. Other research labs were exploring these techniques with MIT Lincoln Laboratory achieving
11286-634: The three devices as one. In 1975, the UK company Quantel produced the first commercial full-color broadcast framebuffer, the Quantel DFS 3000. It was first used in TV coverage of the 1976 Montreal Olympics to generate a picture-in-picture inset of the Olympic flaming torch while the rest of the picture featured the runner entering the stadium. The rapid improvement of integrated-circuit technology made it possible for many of
11400-472: 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")
11514-545: 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
11628-514: The video card. The video processor on the card forms a picture of the screen image and stores it in the frame buffer as a large bitmap in RAM. The bitmap in RAM is used by the card to continually refresh the screen image. Many systems attempt to emulate the function of a framebuffer device, often for reasons of compatibility. The two most common virtual framebuffers are the Linux framebuffer device (fbdev) and
11742-659: The world record with 1,114,550 points, until beaten by newcomer Aart van Vliet, of the Netherlands, who scored 1,653,270 points on 27 May 2009 at the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire , USA. The record has since been raised to 2,010,000 points, set on 20 May 2016 by David Lyne and verified by Twin Galaxies on 28 May 2016. Fixed shooter Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are
11856-511: Was a rail shooter where up to 28 players used lightguns to shoot down enemies and projectiles. A smaller version for arcades was released in 1992, followed by a 1996 PlayStation release in Japan and Europe. In 1995, an arcade remake of Galaga was released for the Namco Classic Collection Vol. 1 compilation, Galaga Arrangement . This game added two-player co-operative play and boss fights, alongside new enemy and weapon types. It
11970-515: 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
12084-421: 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
12198-496: 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
12312-455: Was followed by Gaplus in 1984, which added power-up items and juggling-based bonus stages. Galaga '88 was released in 1987, published in North America by Atari Games , which featured branching level paths, new enemy types and multiple endings. In 1990, Namco produced a theme-park attraction based on the series, Galaxian3: Project Dragoon . Originally presented at Expo '90 and moved to Namco's Wonder Eggs theme park two years later, it
12426-455: Was instead a twin-stick shooter game with score attack modes and multiple stages. It was followed by a 2011 sequel, Galaga Legions DX , branded under the now-defunct Namco Generations label. Galaxian is included in the Namco Museum series of collections across several platforms. Galaxian and Galaga were bundled together for a Game Boy release as Arcade Classic 3 . Galaxian
12540-460: Was ported to the Xbox , PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2002 as part of the compilation disk Namco Museum . A Japan-only medal game spin-off, Galaxian Fever , was released in 2000 as part of Namco's Shooting Medal series. The following year, Hasbro Interactive released Galaga: Destination Earth for the PlayStation and Game Boy Color , adding side-scrolling and third-person stages to
12654-522: Was released on Microsoft Windows in 1995 as part of Microsoft Return of Arcade . The game was also released as part of the Pac-Man's Arcade Party 30th Anniversary arcade machine. The game has also been seen in Jakks Pacific 's " Plug It In & Play " TV game controllers. Galaxian , along with Galaga , Gaplus , and Galaga '88 , was " redesigned and modernized " for an iPhone app compilation called
12768-404: 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
12882-546: 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
12996-433: Was the second highest-earning arcade game of 1979 , below Space Invaders . The following year, Galaxian outperformed Pac-Man for a while, before the year ended with Galaxian again being the second highest-earning arcade game of 1980 , below Pac-Man . Galaxian was later the 18th highest-grossing arcade video game of 1981 , tied with Defender and Turbo . The game continued to see success in Japan throughout
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