Classic of the Month - Truxton

Manufacturer:	Toaplan
Genre:	Shoot 'em up
Board:	Toaplan 68000/Z80-based hardware
Year:	1988

I ended last year with a classic shmup, Lifeforce, so, when it came time to decide what game to cover for January's classic, I found myself thinking about other brilliant, but perhaps lesser known shoot 'em ups.  So for the coming months, I'm going to discuss some of my favourites, starting with Truxton by Toaplan.

I first saw Truxton in a Computer & Video Games annual from 1989.  Now I've always been a fan of shoot 'em ups, but the screenshots for Truxton blew me away, especially the ones that showed the Borogo fighter shooting great arcs of lightning at the enemy Gidans.  I finally got to try it at The Mint in Great Yarmouth several years later and playing it was even better.  It quickly became my favourite shoot 'em up after R-Type, but unlike Irem's classic, I was rubbish at Truxton.  Unfortunately, as amazing as the power-ups look, they take a long time to acquire and are actually severely under-powered.  There are still enemies you can kill with one shot, but there are also lots of enemies that take dozens of shots to kill; playing Truxton is hard work, even by arcade shmup standards.

Truxton is also noteable for having a playfield that extends beyond the edges of the screen.  It really pays to move as far left and right as you can as frequently as you can, because you never know if there's an power-up waiting out of sight.  Something my teenage self did not realise is that Truxton is not a stages game, as most arcade games of that era were.  Truxton is one long, continuous level, that takes about 40 mins to complete - if you're good.  As far as I know, in this regard, Truxton is unique and well worthy of being this month's classic.

YouTube user MamePlayer has uploaded a 3-part play through. Below is the 1st part.

Here's an interesting side note: when Toaplan folded in 1994, a bunch of the dev team went on to form a new company called Computer Art Visual Entertainment, better known as Cave, makers of bullet hell shooters such as DonPachi, Progear and Death Smiles.  Their pedigree certainly shows.

MTW

What does 1UP mean?

These days, video games require gigabytes of storage and hundreds of megabytes of memory to run, but in the early days of arcade games, memory was limited to just a few kilobytes. In fact, this post needs more memory than Breakout or Asteroids needed altogether. So, programmers had to be frugal with naming conventions and rather than displaying 'Player 1' and 'Player 2' on the screen, they would simply put '1UP' and '2UP'.

The term first appearing on pin games in the early 70s. As video games developed the term started being used in multiplayer games, with '1UP' and '2UP' written next to each player's score. Over time, the term was also used to represent collectibles that would increase the player's lives.

But why 'Up'? Most arcade historians believe it was short hand for 'Player 1, step-up', since there was often only room (and indeed controls) for one player at a time.

In the year 20XX

Happy New Year fellow arcade throwbacks and coin-up cohorts, welcome to 2011, a year which-according to pretty much every sci-fi book and film--is THE FUTURE!  However, in games, another year is frequently quoted as being the future and that is 20XX.  Now I'm not exactly sure when 20XX takes place, other than some time between now and 2100, but what I do know is some of the things arcade games have taught me to expect:

According to Irem's vertically scrolling shmup Image Fight, in the year 20XX the moon will explode into four massive meteors, destroying the military bases on it.  This vile act will be perpatrated by aliens from the Boondoggle Galaxy. The bastards!

And it isn't just arcade games.  Perhaps the most famous game set in 20XX is Capcom's Mega Man, but more recently retro platformer Super Meat Boy is also set in that same year.  As fun as these games can be, I'm still a little worried about what it will mean for the average Joe on the street.  From exploding moons to foetuses in giant robot suits, it really doesn't look good.

But that's not going to stop Arcade Throwback from rabbiting on about old coin-op games.  For the new year I want to do more features and more monthly posts, including a new glossary of arcade terms and a look at sequels that somehow slipped under the radar.  All this and more, right here on Aaaarcade Throwback!

MTW