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Caleb13

Looking for 2D arcade shooter from early 1990s

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Since I got a really fast answer in my previous thread, I'd like to ask about another old game that bugged me for a long time. This one is 2D scrolling shooter (like Duke Nukem 2) with mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements from early 1990s (I think). I played it only a few times, because it was an expensive arcade, but here is what I remember:

 

-It had pretty good graphics for the time, I think it was SVGA.

-Your character wears a spacesuit-like armor, and base weapon shoots red projectiles similar to Star Wars blasters.

-You can pick up stronger weapons from the world. One particularly stuck in my memory: your character shoots 3 (or maybe more) projectiles at once from his entire height. I think it was a large white projectile from the body and two smaller red projectiles from head and legs.

-The enemies are varied, but some of them have spacesuit like you and I think there were some living skeletons.

-Many enemies have lightsaber-like brightly colored swords that can kill you in one hit.

 

Thanks!

Edited by Caleb13

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3 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

Since I got a really fast answer in my previous thread, I'd like to ask about another old game that bugged me for a long time. This one is 2D scrolling shooter (like Duke Nukem 2) with mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements from early 1990s (I think). I played it only a few times, because it was an expensive arcade, but here is what I remember:

 

-It had pretty good graphics for the time, I think it was SVGA.

-Your character wears a spacesuit-like armor, and base weapon shoots red projectiles similar to Star Wars blasters.

-You can pick up stronger weapons from the world. One particularly stuck in my memory: your character shoots 3 (or maybe more) projectiles at once from his entire height. I think it was a large white projectile from the body and two smaller red projectiles from head and legs.

-The enemies are varied, but some of them have spacesuit like you and I think there were some living skeletons.

-Many enemies have lightsaber-like brightly colored swords that can kill you in one hit.

 

Thanks!

First thing that comes to mind is Biomenace:

 

 

 

Its not quite like your description but it has some elements of what you mention.

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You mention "expensive Arcade", is this an Arcade game then? That opens the options up quite a bit and unfortunately I can't really say I know a game with the features you mentioned.

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I'm thinking it might've been Turrican or Turrican 2.

 

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Turrican wasn't an Arcade game, though. Maybe it's Psycho-Nics Oscar, which is an Arcade game:

 

 

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Yes, it was a paid arcade game, or coin-op game. It was 3 times more expensive than any other arcade I've played at the time, but of course that means nothing today.

 

Unfortunately, it's not Biomenace, Psycho-Nics Oscar or any from the Turrican/Super Turrican series, I watched their gameplay on YT. Specifically, these games have no enemies with lightsaber swords, if I remember correctly, they were one of the base enemies in the first or second level of "my" game. I even watched videos from other games made by Manfred Trenz up to 2000, but none of them is it. I've never played arcades after 1997 since I had PC.

Edited by Caleb13

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Yes, and it was quite an unusual scheme for a 2D platformer (and still is).

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14 minutes ago, dr_st said:

Yes, and it was quite an unusual scheme for a 2D platformer (and still is).

And its such a shame, 2D shooters deserve more love...

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I'm really not sure what it could be. Just throwing things out here now. Was it maybe an entry in the Strider series?

 

striderjudjek.png

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I think I found it. Solar Warrior / Xain'd Sleena.

 

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Holy shit, Solar Warrior is it! Thanks a lot, man! It's much older than I expected, but I was hardly a gaming expert back then.

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15 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

Holy shit, Solar Warrior is it! Thanks a lot, man! It's much older than I expected, but I was hardly a gaming expert back then.

It's not surprising you thought it was from the 90's, considering it's age it looks damn good - most games from 1986 have way more limited colors by comparison!

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17 hours ago, Caleb13 said:

Holy shit, Solar Warrior is it! Thanks a lot, man! It's much older than I expected, but I was hardly a gaming expert back then.

No problem, glad I could help solve the mystery. I actually found the answer here: https://community.eurogamer.net/thread/157205

I was sure Turrican had an arcade release, but after Boris said it wasn't I did a little bit of digging. Turns out I was wrong, but at least it led me in the right direction. So thank Boris as well.

 

I've never played it, but yeah, it has pretty darn good graphics for 1986, although there's some serious slowdown at times, and the audio seems to cut out. I'm wondering if that's an issue with MAME, or whatever emulator they're using, or if the game was always like that even in the arcade. Either way, glad I could help. And judging by the comments on the videos, you weren't the only person who forgot what it was called.

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12 hours ago, Jello said:

although there's some serious slowdown at times, and the audio seems to cut out. I'm wondering if that's an issue with MAME, or whatever emulator they're using, or if the game was always like that even in the arcade.

Reportedly, the slowdowns happened even on the arcade and other games by the developer were plagued by it, too. MAME in particular emulates the games on hardware level (down to individual signals running between emulated chips), so if it's there in MAME, then it almost certainly worked like that in the real world.

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1 hour ago, Caleb13 said:

Reportedly, the slowdowns happened even on the arcade and other games by the developer were plagued by it, too. MAME in particular emulates the games on hardware level (down to individual signals running between emulated chips), so if it's there in MAME, then it almost certainly worked like that in the real world.

Yeah, I always thought MAME emulation was pretty accurate. I haven't used it much, except for Metal Slug, but it seemed to be spot on. It seems like, as expensive as arcade machines are, they could've given it a bit more memory so the game didn't stutter. But memory was extremely expensive back then. Hell, in 1994 my Mom got an additional 4 Mb of RAM for our old Tandy 486, for the low, low price of $400.

 

At least I could play Doom 2 without having to choose between playing on low resolution with sound on, or high resolution with sound off. And I didn't have to boot directly to DOS anymore. Totally worth it.

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