Bosconian

Bosconian main claim to fame was that you could move and scroll in all four directions; ie left, right, up, and down. Totaling eight, if you take into account the diagonals as well. Gameplay is minimalistic, to say the least; even for a game of this kind, but understandable since it was one of the first lot. You move around; shooting like crazy; in a big singular black space level made of a titillating star background, and populated by asteroids, mines, opposing ships, and of course; a bunch of mean green space stations. Since finding and destroying the enemy bases is the main objective of the game; there's also a radar that shows their position, otherwise you'd easily get lost. And they're not going to make taking them down that easy for you, as they're loaded with missiles and defensive cannons; six to be precise. Ammo is of course, unlimited. Luckily all you have to do then is shoot at the center, which is where the weak link of the design is located (the core reactor), and it will blow up. Easy at first, extremely difficult later on. Gameplay could've been better, not only in complexity, but ship handling as well. In fact, the most difficult part is actually controlling your ship to a fine degree point. They were kind enough though, to integrate a built-in weapon upgrade; a rear shot. So when you shoot, it does it forwards and backwards; at the same time. There are no other in-game powerups (while playing) The levels themselves are variants of the same starting one; and as you advance, you realize that is the same premise over again, but more difficult. So in summary; you basically move around in lit the same space, the only difference being the number and type of enemy units. Another neat feature at the time was the addition of short speech via digitalized voices. I'd still prefer investment in better gameplay though. When I was younger I used to play it in the (original) arcade, now that I look at it more objectively; it doesn't seem that great at all, but more plain and boring that I remember it. Yet despite it's obv flaws and unkind passing of time, it still has an overall nice mindless retro appeal, that makes it a good leisure game; to at least kill a few spare moments of the day.