Retro Game of the Day! Scramble

Retro Game of the Day! Scramble

Scramble, by Konami. Released in 1981 in the arcades (Stern distributed in the States) and showing up on several other systems of the day - notably the GCE Vectrex, in vector form.

Scramble is famous for so many reasons, I won't get into them all here (this is supposed to be a mini-review, after al) but what you are really looking at is the birth of the Gradius-type of games, in a very primitive form. Don't quote me on it, but I want to say it's one of the first (if not the first) sidescrolling horizontal level-based shooters.

The game puts you in a fighter, one button will bomb and the other will shoot forward. You must take out as many enemies as you can, avoid terrain collision, and (very importantly) blow up as many fuel canisters as possible to charge your rapidly-depleting reserves (I think this was also another first in this game, also notably used in Zaxxon)

A fast and difficult game, and one that actually holds up due to interesting design (though it cannot be argued, this is one frustrating game!) The game showed up on the Vectrex system as well, looking quite different but still quite playable!