Starblazer

Starblazer is a fixed shooter 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 and Sord M5.

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 to be created by ACS, following the 1979 shooter Tesseract, Starblazer would turn out to be ACS's first major arcade video game hit.

Gameplay
Starblazer is a space-themed fixed 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 a single laser shot on-screen, and must wait for it to hit the top before being able to fire another shot.

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 to hit the player. 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 has can be surmised within the attract mode, which features a brief summary of the scenario, reading:

Ports
Starblazer was ported to various consoles of the era. Atari released ports of the game for their Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 systems in 1982. Around the same time, Mattel Electronics and Coleco would also released their own ports for the Intellivision and ColecoVision, respectively. In Japan, ports of the game would be released for the Sega SG-1000 and Arcadia 2001 systems, as well as the ill-fated Casio PV-1000. Eventually, in 1985, the game would eventually 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 third-party developers. Japan-only ports for the MSX, Sharp X1 and Sord M5 computers were also released. While the game wasn't released for any portable consoles during its initial run, the game would eventually recieve a Game Boy port in 1990, in time for its 10th anniversary.

Long after its heyday, Starblazer would eventually received various re-releases as part of 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 has a kill screen glitch caused by an overflow condition, wherein the game would fail to load after level 256.
 * As of April 1, 2022, the current highest score for Starblazer recorded on legitimate arcade hardware is 4,206,900.