Beamrider

Beamrider is a fixed shooter written for the Intellivision by David Rolfe and published by Activision in 1983.[2] The game was ported to the Atari 2600 (with a slightly reduced feature set), Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit family, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and MSX.

Beamrider
Intellivision cover art
Developer(s)Action Graphics[1]
Atari 2600
Cheshire Engineering[1]
Publisher(s)Activision
Designer(s)David Rolfe[2]
Platform(s)Intellivision, Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, MSX, ZX Spectrum
ReleaseIntellivision
Atari 2600
Atari 5200
Genre(s)Fixed shooter
Mode(s)Single-player

Gameplay

Beamrider takes place above Earth's atmosphere, where a large alien shield called the Restrictor Shield surrounds the Earth. The player's objective is to clear the Shield's 99 sectors of alien craft while piloting the Beamrider ship. The Beamrider is equipped with a short-range laser lariat and a limited supply of torpedoes. The player is given three at the start of each sector.

To clear a sector, fifteen enemy ships must be destroyed. A "Sentinel ship" will then appear, which can be destroyed using a torpedo (if any remain) for bonus points. Some enemy ships can only be destroyed with torpedoes, and some must simply be dodged. Occasionally during a sector, "Yellow Rejuvenators" (extra lives) appear. They can be picked up for an extra ship, but if they are shot they will transform into ship-damaging debris.

Activision offered a Beamrider patch to players who could get to Sector 14 with 40,000 points and sent in a screenshot of their accomplishment.[1]

Reception

The Deseret News in 1984 gave the ColecoVision version of Beamrider three stars, describing it as "basically a slide-and-shoot space game."[3]

A reviewer for Your Commodore described the Commodore 64 version of the game as "a really good, wholesome arcade zapping game."[4]

gollark: Higher "variance" as the cool kids say.
gollark: Intelligence is actually a useful metric because you can vaguely measure it and it isn't binary like self awareness.
gollark: Great!
gollark: Okay, define self aware and list things which are and are not that.
gollark: And list some things which are sentient and aren't.

See also

References
  1. "Beamrider Atari 2600 manual". archive.org. Activision. 1983.
  2. Hague, James. "The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers".
  3. Holyoak, Craig (1984-05-30). "Here are ColecoVision's jewels". Deseret News. pp. 4 WV. Retrieved 10 January 2015.
  4. https://archive.org/stream/02-your-commodore-magazine/Your_Commodore_Issue_02_1984_Nov#page/n31/mode/2up
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