Cartridge Collective’s first ebook Volume. Working plan: volumes/shooting-game.md.
The Programme
A Genre History · Volume 01
The Shooting Game
Ten Years That Built the Form, 1978–1988
From Space Invaders to R-Type — the decade in which the shooter invented every later arcade convention, in public, at twenty-five pence a go.
- Status
- Planned
- Progress
- 4 of 10 essays published
- Era
- 1978 → 1988
Editor's note
A reader's preface
The argument · chronological
The arc, year by year
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Space Invaders
Wave four onwards the four-note loop tightens to a sprint, the last two columns close on the barriers faster than the first eight, and difficulty stops being a sequence of levels and becomes a continuous accelerating function.
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Asteroids
Asteroids gives a modern player one perfect arcade grammar: five buttons, no joystick, bright vector lines, and a ship whose every burst of thrust is both escape plan and future problem.
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Galaxian
A dive-bomber peels out of formation trailing fire — the first arcade game where enemies acted instead of marched, and the clearest demonstration of why.
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Robotron: 2084
The twin-stick control is only the doorway — Robotron is a pure crisis of priorities, rescue and survive on one screen that never idles.
End of programme notes — Vol. I
The Programme