Overview of scroller shooters for the NES game console (Famicom)

What it is?

Surrounded by countless enemies, in the form of mutated hypertrophied cosmic insects, continuously moving forward and bravely gnawing their way through them with lasers, rockets and machine guns, the fighter rushes through the airless space. Gathering all kinds of bonuses in the form of additional missiles or lives, he is preparing for a meeting with the boss, although he can do without him in order to find well-deserved rest at his base at the end of the level, replenish ammunition, repair, improve existing equipment or acquire new ones - and back to battle!

And so, 999 times, if the developers of the game did not take pity on the player and did not make the number of levels at least an order of magnitude smaller, with minor, often changes in the background and a variety of enemies to be destroyed by the brave spaceman (scuba diver, combat robot, etc.).
If you see something similar on the screen, then this is a pronounced arcade scroller. "Arcade" means that the gameplay is simplified to the limit (hit-and-run) and elementary controls, and the "scroller" is a continuously moving screen, without the ability to slow down and at least a little reflection on what is happening. Scrollers are divided into vertical and horizontal, in the first case, the movement occurs from bottom to top, and in the second, respectively, from left to right, although it can from right to left in Arab games). The action of the scroller can occur in any scenery - it can even be a miner, making his way to the surface of the earth from a piled mine, the main thing is the constant movement of the screen. In most cases, the object we control can move freely in all directions, shoot with various ammunition, collect bonuses, evade obstacles and ... like everything). The actions of enemies are also not too diverse - they can be conditionally divided into 3 types:

• Enemies appear at the edge of the screen farthest from us and without changing the trajectory of movement, pass through the entire screen, possibly shooting something
• Enemies appear at the edge of the screen farthest from us and move to the opposite edge of the screen, changing the trajectory of movement according to some simple algorithm (zigzag, oblique or in a spiral)
• Enemies appear at the far edge of the screen and move randomly, such enemies most often do not disappear until you kill them

At the end of the level, the boss can wait for us - especially the "fat" and unpleasant opponent, who has unique weapons - but this is not necessary. By the way, in some cases, with the appearance of a “static” boss, for example, a ground battery of howitzers, the screen may stop moving and you will have to show miracles of resourcefulness. Additional information displayed on the screen is usually the number of lives, points scored and the type of weapon currently selected. It is also possible to have an indicator in the form of a progress bar of life and / or energy.

Most scrollers were produced for game consoles (Atari, NES, SEGA, etc.) and arcade machines. The peak of their popularity occurs in the mid-nineties of the last century. New games of this genre can now be found only in browser flash options. Among the relatively modern ones, one can distinguish Jets'n'Guns (2004), released under the PS and the Touhou Project. But now we are only interested in toys released under the NES platform (aka Famicon, aka Dendy).

1942

So, let's start with the first, in my opinion, worthy of mention game, namely, "1942", released in 1984 by Capcom for arcade machines. Later it was ported to a number of other platforms, including NES in 1985. The game takes place, as you might guess by its name, during the Second World War. The plot is very simple - when flying an American fighter you must fly to Tokyo, simultaneously destroying the entire Japanese military fleet. Some types of aircraft in the game have real prototypes, for example, a fighter, under the player’s control it is “Lockheed P-38 Lightning”, and among enemy aircraft silhouettes of such machines as “Mitsubishi A6M Zero” and “Kawasaki Ki-61” are guessed.
"1942" is a classic "vertical" scroller. Each level begins with the fact that you take off from the deck of an aircraft carrier and you are immediately attacked by a host of Japanese kamikaze, for the destruction of which points are awarded to you. Scoring a certain amount of points you get an extra life. And destroying a complete set from a flock of planes moving along a complex trajectory, you will receive one of the bonuses in the form of weapon amplification or an additional airplane accompanying us, which also shoots at enemies. The number of cartridges for a machine gun is unlimited, unlike the “superweapon”, using which, you destroy all enemies on the screen in one fell swoop. And the plane also has the ability to make a “dead loop”, which is rarely found in games of this genre, thereby temporarily escaping from the enemy’s strike.

Enemy aircraft also do not differ in the variety of appearance and behavior - I have noticed no more than ten modifications of them. Music, if you can call it that, and other sound effects are clearly not up to par, and after the first few levels I want to turn off the sound altogether. However, all these minuses are very striking after almost three decades after the release of this game, and for its time it was a real hit! In total, about 1.2 million copies of all three parts of the 1942 Series franchise were sold. This, of course, is not such an outstanding result as, for example, the game Super Mario bros - about 40 million copies were sold, but also very good for the gaming industry. Among all the franchises of the Capcom corporation itself, “1942” takes an honorable fourteenth place, naturally giving way to such monsters,
Oh yes, the game has a cooperative mode with a partner, which is certainly a big plus for games of this genre.

In order to be able to compare all the games under consideration at the end of the article, I have introduced 4 criteria for evaluating them using a 5-point system, where 5 is super cool and 1 is completely sucks.
I will evaluate, so do not rely on objectivity). So, the criteria will be as follows:

• 1) Management
• 2) Graphics
• 3) Sound
• 4) difficulty passing
• 5) The plot

The fourth point requires a little explanation - it will not be the absolute complexity of the game that will be evaluated, that is, the five will receive not a completely impenetrable game, but how to say it ... balanced. Too simple a game will not have time to captivate the player and after the first passage it will most likely be “put on the shelf”, and too complex will scare the player away with its obstruction and will also be quickly abandoned. Therefore, in the game balance, as elsewhere, the golden mean “steers” - the difficulty gradually increases from level to level, making peak-like jumps during a meeting with level bosses. The last levels should be more difficult in order for the person who completed the game to feel moral satisfaction from successfully overcoming difficulties.

In order not to repeat each time and list these points, I will simply write 5 numbers, each of which is an estimate of 1,2,3,4 and 5 points, respectively. The game "1942" receives from me the following ratings: 3, 3, 2, 2, 1.

Macross

Some games are gaining popularity not only because of their exceptional gaming qualities, such as addictive gameplay or stunning graphics, but also because they were based on the famous movie, animated series or comic strip. It seems to me that such games include my next preparation - “The Super Dimension Fortress Macross”. This game is based on the popular anime in the “fur” genre - Macross, better known as Robotech. To tell you the truth, in the game from the anime itself a little is taken: the recognizable outlines of the VF-1 fighter, some ships of the warring Earthlings of the Zentredi race and the cosmic landscape. But again, we will make a discount for the year the game appeared - 1985, and the developer’s capabilities limited by the console parameters. Although true fans of this animated series had enough of this.

To reduce the number of letters in this text, I will simply call it “Macross” below. The game was developed and published by Namco
in 1985 for the Famicom platform (NES). I could not find the sales data, but, apparently, no more than 100,000 copies were sold. The most famous series belonging to the Namco pen include the Tekken Series, Ace Combat Series.
Macross is a horizontally oriented scroller with Valkyrie (aka VF-1) in the title role. The fighter that we have to control has three configurations: the classic fighter, the so-called GERWALK (Ground Effective Reinforcement of Winged Armament with Locomotive Knee-joint) - an airplane with arms and legs, to be simpler, and a humanoid robot. In each of the three configurations, the management style changes. In the first case, forward movement along the screen is accelerated to a maximum, but maneuvering along the vertical axis becomes problematic, in the latter case, we move slowly, but in return we get over-maneuverability. Switching between configurations occurs instantly, which allows you to demonstrate the miracles of piloting. In service, we have a laser gun with an “infinite” ammunition and limited unguided missiles. As adversaries, we also expect well-recognized combat units of aliens. This is for the most part “Reguld” and as mini-bosses of the “Glaug” and “Queadluun-Rau” levels. Starting from the second level, the path of our Valkyrie will also be blocked by minefields, and by collecting circles with the macro emblem and different letters, you can restore health, get an extra 5000 points or replenish stock of missiles. At the end of each level there is a boss - it is always the middle command battleship Zentredi. Dodging or destroying all the laser turrets on his case, we get inside, where we complete the rout of the cosmic giant of the enemy in 45 seconds allotted for this. During the destruction of the core of the battleship reactor, our fighter will be attacked by its own core defense, at this point it is better to be in the GERWALK configuration. As in the previous game, the scenery from level to level does not change much, the number of all kinds of adversaries just increases and at a certain moment they fill the entire screen. Game Over). But seriously, I could not find data on the number of levels, as well as go through it myself.

The eight-bit cover of the song “Shao Pai Long” (“Little White Dragon”), which was played in the multimedia by one of the main characters, sounds unobtrusively as the soundtrack. Other sound special effects in the game are also not annoying, so she will get a higher score on the audio series than “1942”;). Unfortunately, the game mode for two players is not provided, so you can compete with a friend only in person - by the number of points earned ... well, or levels completed.
Ratings for "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross": 5, 3, 3, 1, 1.

Crisis force

This game was released exclusively for Famicom consoles in 1991, when consoles of the next generation ruled the ball - Nintendo was born into a more advanced game system - SNES. But the owners of the NES and Dendy consoles (its pirated version), of course, were also able to enjoy the truly masterpiece of Konami Corporation, which, in my opinion, always produced only high-quality products. So, meet “Crisis Force” - in my opinion one of the best representatives of the genre on NES. This is not to say that the game has become innovative, the same vertical scroll-shooter, the same principles as in all such games, let’s fly and shoot. But! workmanship is completely different. Graphics, music, diverse gameplay, all kinds of “lotions” in the form of destructible terrain, extraordinary opponents ... in this game we even see the “settings” option,

The plot of the game is not trivial for scrollers - seven evil gods who destroyed the Atlantean civilization ten thousand years ago and again woke up and pull their dirty hands to Japan in particular and the entire civilized world in general. And they can be stopped by brother and sister - Asuka and Maya - the heirs of the ancient civilization of people, found by a couple of archaeologists during their research on a desert island in an ancient artifact seventeen years ago.

The game has only seven levels, each of which ends with a unique boss, but each of them has its own chip. There are no identical players both in the background and in the opponents - game designers did their best. We will be met by aliens of completely different shapes, colors and manners of warfare, but the combat vehicle under our control is also not easy). We can take three types of configurations, on which it will depend on how we destroy enemies - the number, the appearance and direction of the fired shells changes, as well as the appearance of the fighter in this case. Enumerating all enemies, bonuses, and tactics is not part of the task of this article, because it is a review all the same, and the game is very difficult - you can write only about it and exceed all reasonable limits on the number of words, so let's move on to statistics and estimates.

Konami has produced so many awesome franchises that even with all its coolness, Crisis Force doesn’t even make it into the top 50 of this sales corporation. “PES series”, “Metal Gear Series”, “Castlevenia Series” - against their background, “Crisis Force” certainly does not look like a mega-monster. Nevertheless, it seems to me a cool game. And yes, you can play it together! Grades? Mmm ... all fives).

Epilogue

In a first approximation, it seems to me that there is no evolution as such in the scroller genre for Nes / Famicom consoles. If you remove the brackets of graphics and sound, which of course are a pleasant component of the game, but do not completely define it, then companies that match the love of creating the game will receive a competitive product, and companies like “Toei Animation” will create Baltron’s brand, and it does not really depend on the year of manufacture).