Laser Blast
Laser Blast |
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Like Skiing, Laser Blast also was a scrolling game-but the screen scrolls horizontally. The player controls a spaceship at the top left of the screen. The object is to shoot your lasers and destroy the three base cannons that are at the bottom of the screen. Not an easy task, because they are firing laser blasts up, trying to destroy your ship. If you can avoid their shots and blast all three bases, the screen will scroll to the right and you will approach three more cannons. As you succeed, the base cannons fire at quicker speeds.
When asked about the inspiration behind Laser Blast, programmer David Crane replied: "It was the creation of a particular type of display that made possible what previously was not possible-the laser. At that time, things shot distinct shots across the screen, like the ball in Pong. I took one of the discrete dot objects, extended it, and moved it across the screen. Eventually, I used this 'laser' to create the vine in Pitfall!. At the time, space games such as Space Invaders and Missile Command were very popular in the arcades. I don't know if I consciously noticed or not, but most of the games had the player defending his own planet. I wanted to have the player trying to reclaim his planet from invaders."
Crane also programmed a feature where after a game was over, the player could start a new game by simply pressing the fire button. With Laser Blast, Activision offered two high score patches: one for reaching 100,000 points and the other for reaching one million (at which point the score turned to all exclamation points). Activision apparently received many letters from people who had sworn they had reached the required score, but accidentally pressed the fire button on the joystick before they could take a picture of the screen. The folks at Activision usually sent a patch regardless. Crane added, "The one thing I regret is not taking it out of this game."
Federation of Laser Blasters: a score of 100,000 points.
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