Horizontal Shooter & Shoot ’em

By: ithamore

On: August 1st, 2007

Recently, I’ve been enjoying a couple of retro shmps, which play like games that could have been programmed for an esoteric PC from the 80s. Each is short, simple, and purely about gameplay. In the first one, Horizontal Shooter, you must use your colorful wake to destroy the enemy fire aimed at your passive fleet while fending off waves of ships. The second, Shoot ’em, pits you with a pair of machine guns and a grenade launcher against the relentless downpour of asteroids composed of 3D-simulating ASCII art.

I like how they embrace the style and limitations of early shooters while incorporating enough innovation to make each of them original additions to the library of retro gaming. Sure, there are several remakes I have enjoyed, but sometimes I want to play a game that teaches old school new tricks.

Horizontal Shooter:

Shoot ’em:

(Sources: the2bears for Horizontal Shooter and GameHippo for Shoot’ em)

Posted in Abstract, Action, Freeware, Shoot-em-ups, Videos, Windows

fish

holy shit!
that ASCII stuff is batshit!
its beautiful!
!
Pragma

Well, Shoot’Em certainly gets the “Best Use of an ASCII Render Mode” award for the year. Will it run in a linux shell?

I think the real magic is in the use of a good chiptune, plus sampled sound effects and a fast framerate. Delicious.
cactus

Yeah, that ASCII game looks hot. I’ll have to play it when I get the time :)
Derek

These games look great!
Ryan A

The ASCII looks extremely amazing. But I feel the gameplay is lacking quite a bit (go figure, it runs in the console) but still neat nontheless. I wonder how feasable it’d be to make a 2d scrolling shooter using the console, it looks like that game ran pretty fast :P
Neon

I dont see why everyones making such a big fuss over the ASCII one, it’s lacking what every game needs, good gameplay.
Zetetic Elench

We’re interested in it because while the gameplay is servicable but stale, the aesthetics are pretty damn refreshing. It’s just nice to look at and think of other applications for it.
Gr.Viper

If you like weird rendering modes look at this one for Quake II. :)
http://www.leweyg.com/download/SIRD/q2/index.html

I even played through a couple of levels using it. Tough, but not impossible.
Pragma

@Viper

Wow, I haven’t seen that in a while – I tried that one out years ago. It’s not impossible to play, but it’s tough since there are no colors or depth cues like shading. The worst part is that the hud is *not* stereographic, making it impossible to tell how much ammo you have while you’re playing.

It’s funny that you bring this one up since in the end it kind of imposes the same challenge as Shoot’em: try not to go cross-eyed after 15 minutes. :)
devin

for more textmode goodness you could do worse than the textmode demo contest http://taat.fi/tmdc/index.html.
Data

Horiz Shooter wins on the chip music alone
gameplay

which software app is being used to capture the gameplay videos?
http://ithamore.blogspot.com/ ithamore

Gameplay:

I used my digital camera to capture the videos, which isn’t a perfect solution. I might have to buy a commercial app, since I’ve tried some freeware and shareware apps, but none of them worked nicely: too much lag, no sound, or a complete lack of compatibility. If I can find a program that records smoothly, I’ll replace my old videos.