fixed shooter
Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs
) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of charact ...
written by Mark Riley for the
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE ...
and published in 1982 by
Datasoft
Datasoft, Inc. (also written as DataSoft and Data Soft) was a software developer and publisher for home computers founded in 1980 by Pat Ketchum and based out of Chatsworth, California. Datasoft primarily published video games, including home port ...
. It was later released under Datasoft's Gentry Software budget label as ''Target Practice''. It was ported to the
TRS-80 Color Computer
The RadioShack TRS-80 Color Computer, later marketed as the Tandy Color Computer and sometimes nicknamed the CoCo, is a line of home computers developed and sold by Tandy Corporation. Despite sharing a name with the earlier TRS-80, the Color Co ...
by James Garon and released as ''Shooting Gallery''. The game is similar to the 1980 Sega arcade game ''
Carnival
Carnival is a Catholic Christian festive season that occurs before the liturgical season of Lent. The main events typically occur during February or early March, during the period historically known as Shrovetide (or Pre-Lent). Carnival ...
''.
Gameplay
''Shooting Arcade'' is based on an amusement park shooting gallery. The player controls a pistol which moves along the bottom of the screen. Targets moving right and left appear in six rows before the player, and the goal of the game is to shoot them all down before the player runs out of bullets. The directions in which the rows of targets move alternate from row to row. The targets move off one edge of the screen and reappear on the other edge. Each target has a different point value and some also have special features: the diamonds give an extra bullet when hit, the bull's eyes change the direction targets are moving and the frowning faces cause an extra rabbit to appear making the player waste an additional bullet.
Once the player has cleared all the targets, a large brown bear appears. Each time the player hits the bear he is awarded with 50 points. If the player is unable to hit the bear it moves off the screen and the next round starts.
Reception
David Plotkin writing for '' SoftSide'' called ''Shooting Arcade'' "the finest implementation I've seen of a shooting gallery for the Atari. This program exhibits the DataSoft hallmarks of fine color and music, as well as excellent animation."
* ''Shooting Arcade'' at Atari Mania
*{{Internet Archive game, id=a8b_Shooting_Arcade_1982_Datasoft_US_k_file Review in
Compute!
''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET c ...