![]() As with most old-school shooters, you can only fire so many shots at a time but plenty of power-ups appear throughout the game and collecting these can upgrade your weapons, increase your rate of fire, extra lives, give you bonus points (and after all, that’s what TxK is all about) and then there’s my personal favourite, the AI Droid. You start off with some limitations to your ship. Okay, it’s not quite that easy… there are a range of creatures in the tunnels, increasing in numbers and speed as you progress through the levels and while things start off at a relatively relaxed pace, it’s not long before they start to shoot back at you, and if they do reach the top of the tunnel then you’re really in trouble as they start to follow you around the rim pursuing you to your certain death… All you have to do (as if it’s really going to be that simple!) is to destroy all of them before they reach the top and then progress to the next level. at the bottom of this tunnel different creatures are heading towards you up the tunnel aiming to make their way to the top. In TxK you control a claw-like ship that rests at the top of a tunnel, each level taking the form of a different geometric shape. So that brings me onto TxK… if you’ve never played a tunnel shooter like this before, the gameplay itself is incredibly simple. That doesn’t mean that they’re not fantastic games, but it only serves to show that the 80s gameplay has stood the test of time remarkably well. As for the PS4, Resogun is little more than Defender with a makeover. ![]() For those of you old enough to remember the Amiga original, that one is truer to the arcade original version of Asteroids, whereas the PS3 and Vita versions simply added the 3D planetary model and adaped the game into a twin stick shooter instead. Super Stardust Delta is essentially an update of Asteroids. ![]() Namco themselves have revisited Pac Man several times in the home and arcades, and Atari did the same with Tempest (didn’t I say I wasn’t going to mention that one?).įor those of us with the PS Vita (and lucky enough to own a PS4), we’ve seen more than a few remakes as well. Despite being released back in 1976, Breakout still has clones being released today, albeit ones based more on Taito’s updated version Arkanoid from 1986. The true testimony to that are the seemingly never-ending number of clones, remakes and new “interpretations” of these old classics that still continue to be made decades after the release of the originals. There’s no denying that the old classics have genuinely everlasting appeal. While many people talk about how great games are today looking at titles like The Last Of Us, God Of War, Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy and so on, the old arcade classics are truly timeless. Okay, now that we have a clear understanding on what TxK is or isn’t, this game reminds me of why I love games so much and why I hold on to my gaming roots so firmly as someone who grew up playing games in the 80s. The fact that it’s a tunnel shooter that just happens to look like Tempest (as many games have before it) and has been developed by Jeff Minter and Ivan Zorzin who wrote the definitive game in the Tempest series officially for Atari with Tempest 2000 is irrelevant but you didn’t read that or were able to make the obvious connections for yourselves. It has no connection to Tempest, bears no resemblance to Tempest, isn’t a sequel to Tempest, isn’t a follow-up to Tempest, Tempest 2000, or a variation on Tempest or anything like that. I say spiritual successor to Tempest 2000 but I have to stress that TxK isn’t Tempest. Now, well over 30 years after Jeff Minter’s first game Llamasoft have moved away from a foray into iOS territory with their first game for the PS Vita, a spritual successor to their Atari Jaguar hit Tempest 2000, but could the magic still be there…? Sheep, goats, camels and other hairy animals may have been the staple content for many, but you were always guaranteed a good game. Legendary programmer Jeff Minter has been writing games since the early 80s on almost every home computer format imaginable and has been responsible for an incredible range of classic, yet somewhat surreal arcade shooters and some of the best games to grace home formats. As for the smaller publishers and developers, most of those went by the wayside many moons ago. Companies like Activision and Electronic Arts are still going but many either didn’t learn to adapt and change with the times or were swallowed up by larger companies. There aren’t many developers and publishers around today that were in business when the video games industry as we know it started back in the 80s.
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