Space Arcade Game

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History of Space Arcade Games

Space shooter genre is more commonly known as 'shoot them up', is one of the most common and well-known genres in the history of games. It was an absolute hit when it first appeared and it is still often seen among the developments of many large and indie modern companies.

The first ever 'shoot them up' game to appear was Spacewar, where a combat between two spaceships was featured. Despite not having those elements that define a space shooter for us today, it was the one game that began the video game space era in the 1980s.

This lead to the next game "on the line", which was already directly related to the space 'shoot them up' and is by far is more often considered to be the first one in the genre.

With this game, the space shooter genre came into existence, as it featured most of the elements that we regard to be a definition for it today, such as, a player-controlled aircraft and a large number of shooting enemies.

However, it did not have the all-so-important vertical scrolling, which came by later with Galaxian in 1979 – an arcade game, the sequel of which (called Galaga) is widely-known and incredibly popular.

The genre of arcade space shooters also introduced a new genre - 'bullet hell', where the enemies would shoot a huge amount of projectiles and the player would have to rely more on dodging than shooting.

Among the mentioned classical space shooters, there are many other widely-known and memorable games, such as Defender, Phoenix, Raiden and others.

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