Levels were cleared when all enemy bases were destroyed. This is measured by the condition alert also displayed on the right side of the screen.įlying off the "edge" of the map would only wrap the player around to the other side. The game isn't timed, but it will become more aggressive if the player takes too long on a level. Destroying all of the ships in a formation awards bonus points. By destroying the lead ship, the formation will break apart. The enemy will occasionally launch formation attacks with a lead ship. Movement was restricted to eight directions and the player had no control over the ship's speed. Bonus lives are awarded at set score milestones (such as at 10000 points). One hit from either an enemy bullet or a collision will kill the player. The player's ship fires from the front and back simultaneously and is always fixed in the center of the screen. Bosconian was also one of the first arcade games to use a digitized voice, which serves to cue players that either their spaceship was taking off, enemy spaceships are attacking, enemy spy ships are sighted, enemy spaceship formations are spotted, or when enemy spaceships are going berserk (when the condition indicator goes red). This option could be disabled by arcade operators via a DIP switch setting. These versions were all developed and published by Mastertronic.Īlthough Bosconian was not as popular as other multi-directional space shooters (such as Sinistar), Bosconian was the first arcade game to include a standard continue system, which allowed players to continue right where they left off once they are out of lives (by putting more credits into the machine). 1 for the PlayStation, Namco Museum: 50th Anniversary for the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube, Namco Museum: Battle Collection for the PSP, Namco Museum: Virtual Arcade for the Xbox 360, and Namco Museum Megamix for the Wii.īosconian also received a pseudo-sequel, Bosconian '87, on the Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The original arcade release was also released in certain Namco Museum compilations, namely Namco Museum Vol. Most of these ports were published by Midway. The game was also ported to several home computer systems, including the MSX, Sharp X68000, Sharp X1, and NEC PC-6001. The objective for the player is to destroy enemy space stations positioned somewhere in the level (with guns that fire both forwards and backwards at the same time) while avoiding asteroids, stationary mines, swarms of enemy spaceships, and enemy missiles. The player pilots a spaceship that is fixed in the center of the screen, moving across a scrolling starfield in one of eight directions. Any future Tempest player was also free to start a new game at the higher level, though, whereas once Bosconian's continue timer expired, the next person to play had no choice but to start over at Level 1.Bosconian is an arcade multi-directional space shooter developed and released by Namco into arcades in 1981. If it was the same player as the previous game, then he/she could opt to 'continue' by selecting the same level where the previous game ended. Instead, it gave the player a choice of starting levels at the beginning of the game, up to the highest level currently unlocked on the machine. Tempest is the older of the two games, but it did not have a continue screen and timer. However, there is some debate over whether Bosconian or Tempest should be credited as the first video game to introduce the concept of continuing. The continue feature could also be disabled entirely for arcade owners who did not want it by changing a DIP Switch setting. Bosconian was the first game to include the now-standard continue screen and timer at the end of a game, giving a player who just lost his/her last life a certain number of seconds to insert more money to continue the game from the same level.
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