Starblazer

'Starblazer is a shoot 'em up developed and published by ACS. Released in 1980 for Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Intellivision, Arcadia 2001, SG-1000, Casio PV-1000, Nintendo Entertainment System, MSX, Sharp X1, Apple II, Atari 8-bit PC, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, ZX Spectrum, Sord M5, Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

Starblazer was published by ACS as the company's answer to Taito's Space Invaders (1978), and Namco's Galaxian (1979). While Starblazer was actually the second arcade game by ACS, following the 1979 Breakout clone Tesseract, Starblazer would turn out to be ACS's first major arcade hit.

Gameplay
Starblazer is a space-themed fixed screen shooter, where the player controls a starship: the titular "Starblazer", with an objective to clear each platoon of aliens per round. Players use a 2-way joystick to move the Starblazer around from left to right, and a button to fire the laser. Due to technical limitations, the Starblazer can only fire one laser shot at a time, and must wait for the current shot to hit the top of the screen before being able to fire another.

Enemies come in the form of "Usurpers", as they are known in the North American arcade flyer: alien ships of various colors that appear in formations towards the top of the screen, alongside two escort ships, labeled the "Queen Usurpers". Usurpers will sometimes move around and fly all over the screen while shooting projectiles. The less Usurpers there are on-screen, the faster they move around.

The thing that sets Starblazer apart from its competitors at the time is its unique formations: as opposed to simply using the same enemy pattern, the game cycles through 5 unique formations of enemies each round, adding a layer of challenge and giving way for different strategies. The game features scrolling, albeit limited to the starfield background, while the gameplay remains fixed.

Story
What little of a story the game possesses can be surmised within the game's very own attract mode, which features a brief plot summary, reading:

Ports
Following its success in the arcade, Starblazer was then ported to various consoles of the era. Atari released ports of the game for the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 systems in 1982. Around the same time, Mattel Electronics and Coleco would also release their own ports of the game for their Intellivision and ColecoVision game consoles, respectively.

In Japan, ports of the game would be released for the Sega SG-1000 and Arcadia 2001 consoles, as well as the ill-fated Casio PV-1000 system. Eventually, in 1985, the game would be ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System globally.

Besides game consoles, Starblazer also saw ports for various home computer systems of its time. Apple II, Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, ZX Spectrum and the Atari 8-bit family all saw ports of the game released by various developers. Japan-only ports for the MSX, Sharp X1 and Sord M5 (known in Japan as the Takara Game M5) home computers were also released during this time.

While the game was never released for any portable consoles during its initial run, the game would eventually receive a Game Boy port in 1990, in time for the original arcade game's 10th anniversary. This version would eventually receive an updated re-release in 2000 for the Game Boy Color, taking advantage of the new system's color capabilities.

Long after its heyday, the original arcade version of Starblazer would eventually receive various re-releases as part of ACS' arcade compilations. It was included in ACS Arcade Anthology Vol. 1, released in 1997 exclusively for the PlayStation, as well as ACS Arcade Anthology: Greatest Hits, released in 2004 for PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Nintendo Gamecube.

Trivia

 * The game was distributed into North American arcades by Gremlin Industries.
 * Starblazer features a kill screen glitch caused by an overflow condition, wherein the game would fail to load after entering level 256.
 * As of May 9, 2023, the current highest score for Starblazer recorded on legitimate arcade hardware is 1,254,950.