''Depthcharge'' is a single-player arcade game released in 1977 by

Gremlin Industries Gremlin Industries was an American arcade game manufacturer active from 1971 to 1983, based in San Diego, California. Following its acquisition by Sega in 1978, the company was known as Sega/Gremlin or Gremlin/Sega. The company's name was subs ...

. The game, which uses a black-and-white CRT display, presents the player with a cut-away view of a section of ocean, on the surface of which is a destroyer with

submarines A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely ...

passing beneath it. The player drops

depth charges A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon. It is intended to destroy a submarine by being dropped into the water nearby and detonating, subjecting the target to a powerful and destructive hydraulic shock. Most depth charges use ...

(up to six at a time) to destroy the submarines and moves the ship back and forth in order to avoid the submarines' mines. Up to four submarines may be present at any given time, each of which bears a score for destroying it that increases with its depth.

Legacy

Arcade clones

* ''Depthbomb'' (ディプスボンブ) ( Sega, 1978) * ''Sub Hunter'' (サブハンター) (

Taito is a Japanese company that specializes in video games, toys, arcade cabinets and game centers, based in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The company was founded by Michael Kogan in 1953 as the importing vodka, vending machines and jukeboxes into Japan. It ...

) * ''Submarine'' (サブマリン) (

Data East , also abbreviated as DECO, was a Japanese video game, pinball and electronic engineering company. The company was in operation from 1976 to 2003, and released 150 video game titles. Its main headquarters were located in Suginami, Tokyo. The A ...

) * '' Deep Scan'' ( Sega, 1979)

Home clones

* ''

Depth Charge A depth charge is an anti-submarine warfare (ASW) weapon. It is intended to destroy a submarine by being dropped into the water nearby and detonating, subjecting the target to a powerful and destructive hydraulic shock. Most depth charges use ...

'' (

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-mold ...

, 1978) * ''Depthcharge'' ( Commodore 64, 1983) * ''Sub Chase'' (

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

, 1983) * ''Submarine'' (

, 1984) * ''Depth Charge'' (

, 1984) * ''Sub Hunt'' ( Commodore 64, 1984) * ''Depth Charge'' (

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

, 1984),

text-based game A text game or text-based game is an electronic game that uses a text-based user interface, that is, the user interface employs a set of encodable characters, such as ASCII, instead of bitmap or vector graphics. All text-based games have ...

* ''Sub Attack'' ( Commodore 64, 1985) * ''Depthcharge'' (

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

, 1994)

Notes

References

* 1977 video games Arcade video games Gremlin Industries games Video games developed in the United States {{Arcade-stub