Phasor Zap

Phasor Zap is a game for the Apple II family of computers, created in 1978 by programmer Chris Oberth and published by The Elektrik Keyboard of Chicago, Illinois.[1]

Publisher(s)The Elektrik Keyboard
Programmer(s)Chris Oberth
Platform(s)Apple II
Release1978
Mode(s)Single-player

Game play

Phasor Zap presents the player with a purple-tinted starfield that represents the view from the player's spacecraft. Enemy spacecraft appear from the edges of the screen and move straight across it, and it's up to the player to use to the paddles to focus four "phasor" beams onto each ship to destroy it, earning points. The player begins with a limited amount of phasor energy, one point of which is consumed each time the player shoots. When the amount of remaining energy reaches zero, the phasor is depleted and the game is over.

When an enemy ship crosses either the vertical or horizontal center line of the screen, it fires, scoring a hit. When this happens, the word "ZAP!" briefly fills the screen. If the player hasn't already run out of phasor energy, the game will end when the enemies score 99 hits.[1][2]

The term "phasor" alludes to the phaser energy weapons used in the Star Trek science fiction series.

gollark: That might be an interesting project, I guess - securely end-to-end-encrypted communications between pocket computers or whatever.
gollark: I guess there's jnet, but I just stole rednet's store-and-forward-ish strategy for that.
gollark: Cell network? Has anyone got software for that... other than rednet?
gollark: https://pastebin.com/L0ZKLBRG
gollark: Oh, I made that ages ago.

References
  1. The Elektrik Keyboard (catalog). Chicago, Illinois: The Elektrik Keyboard. c. 1979.
  2. Chris Oberth (1978). Phasor Zap (Apple II). The Elektrik Keyboard.
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