Horizon

1985 was a dark time for arcades, as the crash had happened a few years earlier due to everyone's favorite nonthreatening alien, ET, starring in a horrible atari 2600 game which, along with a few other factors, collapsed the industry. The home market was pretty much dead until the NES came along, and while arcades kept chugging along, they didn't produce the hits that they used to, and inspiration seemed to run dry. A few classics did come from this year, such as Gauntlet and Space Harrier, but most titles seemed to languish in obscurity, such as the subject of today's post.

Horizon was somewhat based on the classic Irem title Moon Patrol, and in fact comes from the same company. Moon Patrol has appeared in a few classics collections, but doesn't have the fame or notoriety of, say, Donkey Kong or Galaga. It's like the 1910 Fruitgum Company to Pac-Man's Beach Boys. Horizon is even more obscure. It adds quicker play and an extra dimension to Moon Patrol, and takes away the jump button. Instead, you transition between 3 layers of play, shooting alien drones on all three lines, grabbing fuel and avoiding obstacles. The game scales and plays smoothly, and must have looked great at the time, with snes-level 3d effects, but gets repetitive fast. Horizon is not really an amazing improvement on Moon Patrol, as it lacks variety in both landscapes and powerups . Ultimately, Horizon is fun to play for a few minutes, but doesn't really have any lasting appeal.

Mystic Marathon

Ever had the desire to race troll dolls against eachother through blacklight posterish landscapes, all with the power of 1983-era technology? Well, even if you don't, Mystic Marathon still exists, so deal with it, bitch. In Mystic Marathon, you play as Benkin, a balding, elderly troll, who has to show those young whippersnappers that you've still got it. The game is shown through a slowly left to right scrolling setup, as you have to leap, swim and shortcut through the race course in order to get ahead and break free of the pack. Though the game looks interesting and stands out in a flood of maze games and space shooters, there's a good reason that we never got a revival of the game, such as Super Mystic Marathon, or Mystic Marathon 3D. The game is clunky and slow, with too much time spent falling over, getting hit by apples, and slowly paddling thru the three mile island-flavored water surrounding the islands.

Sky Skipper

Though Nintendo is not afraid to rehash its past with remakes and virtual console releases of old games, such as otherwise forgotten titles like Clu Clu Land and Urban Champions, much of their earlier arcade input remains completely neglected. One of these forgotten games is Sky Skipper, an interesting airplane shooter that bears some resemblance to the dos classic Sopwith, and the nes title Sky Kid, though Sky Skipper preceded both of them. In Sky Skipper, you star as a nameless pilot who must rescue anthropomorphic playing card royalty from the machinations of evil Donkey Kong clones who have somehow transported themselves back in time. You do this by stunning the Donkey Kong clones with your bombs, and picking up the grateful cards while the evil monkeys are stunned. This is easier said than done though, as you have to aim accurately, avoid the monkeys' projectiles, and make sure to refuel gently and safely. Sometimes this feels like rubbing your stomach while patting your head, but the controls, though they have a steep learning curve, never let you down once you learn them, and the uniqueness of the design keeps you playing.



Sky Kid only came out in japanese arcades, though it did get a downgraded atari 2600 port in America. The port doesn't play horribly, but the blocky graphics ruin much of the game's charm, and the lack of a horizontally scrolling play field and only one donkey kong per screen means that the gameplay is also completely simplified. Nintendo didn't even attempt to port the game to the NES, probably because the scrolling in both directions would have been too much for early famicom/nes carts to handle. While Sky Skipper is not a great lost classic, it is a small gem from Nintendo's oft-forgotten arcade era, and hopefully it'll get a virtual console or wiiware release at some point in the future.

Ladybug and Twin Brats

Ladybug was an interesting maze chase game that added new wrinkles to the old pac-formula. While you still had to collect all the dots to progress to the next stage, you beat the enemies through more indirect methods. Using flipping doors which changed the path of the maze, you could redirect them into deadly skulls, and also box them in. While it's a little bit unwieldy, with practice the game is fun to play, unlike many of the other maze games.(I'm looking at you, Money Money!)




Many, many years later, a rightfully obscure company called Elettronica produced a risque rip-off called Twin Brats. The game remains virtually the same, except for a few glaring aesthetic changes. You control a baby, presumably one of the titular twin brats, through a series of ever-changing mazes, fending off enemies and yes, collecting dots. The enemies, instead of being other bugs, are random clipart monsters, such as evil mushroom people and purple blobs, and your baby dies with an annoying zoom and a crying sound effect almost as bad as baby mario's yowls. The music, being midis of random public domain tunes, isn't that great to start with, but it restarts every time you pick up a dot, creating a maddening, frustrating cacophony. Now, when I described the game as risque earlier on, I was not referring to disturbing pedophilic undertones related to the main heroes. Luckily, we get naked ladies instead of naked babies. Naked, mid-90s, vga graphics-filtered ladies, though, and only every second level. As seen below, in between we can only gaze through a highly censored screen, hoping to catch a glimpse of the poorly-blown up jpeg beneath.

Money Money

Money Money, a game by the mysteriously obscure company "Zaccariah", opens with a strangled voice saying "You can go and look for money" in all the digital veracity that 1982 could provide. The game that follows is a maze chase game designed by a five year old with severe learning disabilities. As a white-hatted criminal, you go and look for money, through city streets, on top of skyscrapers, and even in the middle of a raging river, all while trying to outrun the police, who you can temporarily stun but never kill. The pseudo-isometric controls are confusing and atrocious, the graphics look like said 5 year old's doodlings, and the poorly sampled voice clips sound bad even for the era.

Guided Missile

Guided Missile, a 1977 black and white game from Midway, is one of the most soothing visions of nuclear annihilation ever. One button, or two buttons if you're playing with two players. No landscape, or civilians to accidentally hit, just a never ending succession of targets in the form of tanks, helicopters, and somewhat incongruously, submarines. They smoothly drift by, never attacking you, as you time your missile strikes, gracefully launching your projectiles and watching them slowly arc towards the target, where they gently explode. The graphics are simple, and the game ends when your time runs out. You can extend your time through shooting accurately, but there is no grand succession, no bigger and bigger enemies to shoot. And there is also no working sound. Not much to it, but a good game for those cold nuclear winters, when you're trapped in the bunker again.

Snap Jack

If Hunter S. Thompson decided to adapt the Herbie movie series into an arcade game on the Sinclair Spectrum palette, the result would be Snap Jack. In this bizarre Universal title, you play as a bucktoothed vw buggy trekking through a hideous flourescent neon landscape filled with monsters, trying to feed yourself dots ala pac man. If you eat enough dots, you will get a power pill that turns you into a freaky snapjawed creature, and allows you to eat everyone else in a vicious fight for survival. At the end of the level, you launch yourself off a ramp, and get points for how far you go. The gameplay is intriguing, sort of a cross between pac-man and scramble, but altogether awkward and unpleasant, and the graphics will give you a dreadful headache.