Guardian 2 1990Steve Evans of Hi-Tec coded Guardian 2: Revenge of the Mutants for the C64 in 1990. Guardian 2 is a solid shooter, but it came out too late in the C64’s life-cycle.Turrican 1990Manfred Trenz of Rainbow Arts coded Turrican for the C64 in 1990. Turrican 2 of 1991 was also coded by Trenz (of Factor 5). Graphics by Andreas Escher.Amiga Super-scrollersLike the C64 before it, the Amiga was also notable for its super-smooth hardware screen-scrolling, but the Amiga took super-scrolling to the next level via Holger Schmidt’s Turrican 2 of 1991 and Andrew Braybrook’s Uridium 2 of 1993 as well as via Bernhard Braun’s Mega Typoon of 1996 and Level One Entertainment’s Apano Sin of 2000.It goes without saying that the Amiga hosted the best Western 16 bit micro super-scrollers.Datastorm Amiga 1989: Blow ’em to Bits!Shifting around 128 simultaneous objects while maintaining super-smooth scrolling, Datastorm is a king-tier Defender clone that came out on the Amiga in 1989. Datastorm is really well presented: it tells you everything you need to know about the game — in-game.Datastorm programmed by Søren Grønbech.Turrican Games Amiga 1990-93In terms of taking advantage of the Amiga’s custom chipset, Factor 5’s Turrican run and gun games are first-class. The Turrican games were designed by Manfred Trenz, coded by Holger Schmidt and composed by Chris Hülsbeck.Turrican and Turrican 2 also came out on the Atari ST. And while weaker than the Amiga versions in terms of audio-visuals, they were still great.Turrican (1990, Manfred Trenz, Holger Schmidt): Ported from the C64 original by Factor 5.Turrican 2 (1991, Holger Schmidt, Factor 5): An Amiga-first & an Amiga-best.Turrican 3 (1993, Peter Thierolf, Factor 5): Ported from the Sega Genesis original by Kaiko. Playing Turrican 2 in 1990 on an Amiga was like playing an arcade game: fast and smooth multi-directional parallax hardware scrolling at 50 FPS; big 360° rotating gun; epic arsenal; horizontally-scrolling shoot ’em up segments; better music than most coinops.Turrican 3 was good when it came out three years later, but it did not have anywhere near the impact on Amigans that Turrican and its sequel had. In fact, I can safely say that Tarzan-Turrican was a downgrade.Uridium 2 Amiga 1993Andrew Braybrook’s Uridium 2 of 1993 is one of the most technically impressive shoot ’em ups on the Amiga: Uridium 2 is the Amiga’s preeminent super-scroller.While its pixel art is not on the level of Xenon 2 or Apidya, its parallax scrolling is much faster and its gameplay is more dynamic due to the sudden changes in direction. Uridium also employs an impressive logo-plasma which no screencap can do justice.Uridium Weapons System (Pick-ups): Shield, Bomb, Torpedo, Chaser Drone, Cyclone Spiralling Laser, Ionizer, Twin Laser Stream, Twin Plasma Stream, Scatter Laser Bolts.Overkill Amiga 1993Vision Software Inc.’s Overkill AGA of 1993 is another Defender clone. Overkill features silky-smooth 50 FPS screen-scrolling and sprite-shifting. The way one enters the next level is also inventive (via rotating galaxy-map).Blastar Amiga 1993: Sheer Exhilaration & FirepowerCore Design coded the multi-directional Blastar in 1993 for the Amiga. Blastar features smooth 8-way scrolling and sprite rotation, big bosses and an upgradeable weapons system. The player’s spaceship is rotatated à la Stardust (see above), but Blastar also scrolls the playfield in the direction the spaceship is heading.Blastar coded by Tim Swann.Defender Amiga 1994Giles F. McArdell of Ratsoft cloned Williams’ Defender coinop of 1981 to Amiga in 1994.Tubular Worlds Amiga 1994: Battle 16 WarlordsNeither the OCS/ECS or AGA versions of Tubular Worlds on the Amiga (1994) are as good as the MS-DOS version, but they are still excellent. Oddly, TW Amiga noticeably reduces vertical pixels by 30-odd during boss battles. In fact, the AGA version reduces them on some normal levels as well.Mega Typhoon Amiga 1996Mega Typhoon was coded by Bernhard Braun of Nordlicht for ECS/OCS Amigas in 1996. Mega Typhoon is one of the most advanced Amiga shoot ’em ups in terms of 2D graphics coding; and its audio-visuals are raw and gritty.Mega Typhoon shifts around up to one hundred 16-color objects (bobs and sprites) simultaneously while maintaining 50 FPS — and yet it runs on an Amiga 500 with 1 meg RAM.Mega Typoon is a super-scroller.If Mega Typhoon came out just a few years earlier, it would have taken the Amiga gaming world by storm.Mega Typhoon Weapons System (Pick-ups & Power-ups):Spread Shot (S), Sinus Laser (L), Homing Missiles (H), Power Missiles (M)Smart Bomb (B), Get Full Weapon (P), Extra LifeApano Sin Amiga 2000Developed by Level One Entertainment in 2000, Apano Sin is a bi-directional vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up that runs on Amiga 500s with 1 meg of RAM. Apano Sin is another technically impressive shoot ’em up that came out post-prime Amiga.Apano Sin programmed by Alex Piko and Alexander Eberl.Atari ST Super-scrollersBeing basically a 16 bit ZX Spectrum the Atari ST did not host many ST-original super-scrollers. However, Goldrunner was a surprise and there were good ports of the Turrican games.Goldrunner Atari ST 1987Microdeal’s Goldrunner of 1987 is another great shooter to grace the Atari ST.Running on an 8 MHz Atari ST with as little as 256 kbytes RAM, Goldrunner features:Super-smooth, super-fast vertical scrolling2-way variable-rate vertical scrollingDestructible terrain / Proper tiled playing fieldTight controls / Mouse or joystick controlWell-chosen color paletteSampled speech / Good chip-tune musicWhat more could Atari ST owners ask for in 1987?IBM PC MS-DOS Super-scrollersDefender IBM PC 1983The legendary Williams Defender coinop of 1981 was ported to i808x by AtariSoft in 1983 in 4-color CGA 320×200. A bi-directional horizontally-scrolling shoot ’em up, Defender’s 60 kbytes executable requires an IBM PC compatible with 128 kbytes RAM.Defender supports 8-way movement and 3-button joystick or keyboard controls. It also supports the holding-down of two joystick buttons to execute the hyperspace jump.Obvious audio-visual downgrade aside, the port’s gameplay differs somewhat from the coinop as well. For example, the port features only one simultaneous abduction, no friendly fire and more generous point-rewards.The variable-rate line-draw scrolling of the terrain is about as smooth as can be expected on i808x; that is, nowhere near the silky-smooth scrolling of the arcade-machine. That said, you can’t ask for much more in 1983 on i808x..Uridium IBM PC 1988Converted by John Friedman & Joe Hellesen in 1988 to i808x CGA/EGA from Andrew Braybrook of Graftgold’s 1987 Commodore 64 original, the Defender-like Uridium was the first super-scroller on IBM PC.Requiring 384 kbytes RAM, Uridium runs from a 126 kbyte executable. See that Uridium logo below? It’s a full-screen scroller. 🙂 Tubular Worlds IBM PC 1994Developed by Creative Game Design in 1994 for MS-DOS and Amiga, Tubular Worlds is a slick multi-directional auto-scroller (primarily scrolls horizontally). Tubular Worlds features super-smooth screen-scrolling and sprite-shifting as well as big, multi-screen bosses.Tubular Worlds programmed by Andreas Scholl.