Phoenix

Phoenix on Atari 2600

I recently visited the local arcade for the first time in about a year, and they had a machine I'd never seen before: Phoenix. Turns out this game was really popular in 1980, and it saved Centuri's bacon and helped them turn a profit. It's a sort of mashup of Galaga and Space Invaders, with a boss battle each five levels... meaning a giant UFO fills the screen and you have to pummel it. This was one of the earliest instances of the now ubiquitous shmup end-level boss.

NOBODY touched this machine but me, and I was all over it. I got a high score which I won't repeat here because it was still pitifully low, so I'm not sure if it had recently been reset or if nobody plays it. The controls are a little different because instead of a joystick, you have a right and left pushbutton, and you can shoot or, for a limited time, have a shield that absorbs bullets.

The graphics on this thing cracked me up, because the birds have these little :) and :o faces. I haven't emulated the arcade yet so check out King of Grabs. The graphics are wonderfully bright and fun.

ANYWAY, I quickly learned this game has not been ported to the systems I usually emulate, which may be partly why I never heard of it before. The only official port is the Atari 2600 version, which is not as cute. This sent me on a Phoenix discovery tour, where I dug up a few homebrews, but that is another post for another day.