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22-671: The player controls a small craft, navigating it through a series of winding caverns and tunnels while shooting or avoiding obstacles. The caverns scroll from the bottom of the screen to the top at a fixed speed , so the player must always move forward. The obstacles filling the tunnels are mostly the eponymous "creatures" and appear as simple icons like smiley faces, floppy diskettes, birds, eyes, apples, bunches of grapes, Pac-Man ghosts, baseball hats, turrets, etc. Many of these objects are animated, but they do not actually move about. The player's craft fires bolts of energy simultaneously in three directions (left, right and forward) that destroy

44-584: A BS in Mathematics. Whitehead worked for Atari, Inc. in the late 1970s developing games for the Video Computer System (later renamed to the Atari 2600 ). He developed several games, including a VCS implementation of chess , a feat many other programmers considered impossible for the system. He and his co-workers David Crane , Larry Kaplan , and Alan Miller became informally known as

66-411: A VCS development system with an integrated debugger and minicomputer -hosted assembler . It was used for most of Activision's VCS titles. He also developed a "venetian blinds" animation technique: an algorithm that horizontally reused and vertically interlaced sprites several times while rendering each frame, to give the illusion that the system had more than the maximum number of sprites allowed by

88-433: Is a fixed-shooter that vertically scrolls as a transition between stages and then continuously scrolls during a docking sequence. In 1981, Sega 's arcade scrolling shooters Borderline and Space Odyssey , as well as TOSE 's Vanguard , have both horizontally and vertically scrolling segments—even diagonal scrolling in the case of the latter. Three purely vertical scrolling shooters were released that year:

110-510: Is a vertical-only scrolling racing game, but in color. One of the first non-driving vertically scrolling games was Atari Football (1978). Scrolling prevents the entire field from having to fit on the screen at once. Another early concept that leaned on vertical scrolling is skiing. Street Racer (1977), one of the launch titles for the Atari VCS , includes a slalom game in which the gates move down an otherwise empty playfield to give

132-399: Is an American video game designer and programmer . While working for Atari, Inc. he wrote two of the nine Atari Video Computer System launch titles: Blackjack and Star Ship . After leaving Atari, he cofounded third party video game developer Activision , then Accolade . He left the video game industry in the mid-1980s. Whitehead attended San Jose State University and received

154-481: Is destroyed if it strikes any object or the cavern wall; a new one can be put back into play at any position on the screen. The game ends when the last craft is destroyed or when the player beats the final challenge. The game's introduction promises that "the end battle will be a surprise that no one can miss." Softline noted Cavern Creatures ' resemblance to the Atari 8-bit game Caverns of Mars and called

176-476: The 1966 film ) was also published for the 2600 in 1982. A similar concept was used in Taito's 1983 Bio Attack arcade game. Xevious -esque vertically scrolling shooters rapidly appeared in the following years: Konami's Mega Zone (1983), Capcom's Vulgus (1984), Exed Exes (1985), Terra Cresta (1985), and TwinBee (1985). Capcom's 1942 (1984) added floating power-ups and end-of-level bosses to

198-437: The video game industry for good. Whitehead left in order to "give back to God and spend time with 'the fam'". After leaving Accolade, Whitehead says he helped with "low income families, getting non-profit religious start-ups going, [and] spending time in the garden." In a 2005 interview, Whitehead said of the contemporary state of the industry: Too dark and derivative for my taste. The console and computer gaming business

220-482: The "Gang of Four", a group of developers who felt inadequately compensated for their work despite being collectively responsible for 60 percent of the company's profits from VCS cartridge sales. Whitehead is sometimes credited as co-author, together with the rest of the Gang of Four, of the operating system for the Atari 400/800 computers . It has been however clarified both by Al Miller and by Whitehead himself that he

242-420: The bottom to the top) to create the illusion that the player character is moving in the game world. Continuous vertical scrolling is designed to suggest the appearance of constant forward motion, such as driving. The game sets a pace for play, and the player must react quickly to the changing environment. In the 1970s, most vertically scrolling games involved driving. The first vertically scrolling video game

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264-408: The creatures but consume the ship's energy, tracked by a green bar at the bottom of the screen. Energy is replenished by shooting occasional "tanks" on the tunnel walls. Special objects in the caverns include indestructible Rubik's cube -like boxes that can be shot to gain extra points, indestructible wriggling snakes (one of the cavern's few mobile opponents), and pulsing energy barriers. The craft

286-419: The game is so-so." This scrolling shooter article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Vertically scrolling video game A vertically scrolling video game or vertical scroller is a video game in which the player views the field of play principally from a top-down perspective , while the background scrolls from the top of the screen to the bottom (or, less often, from

308-412: The graphics "top-notch" and "wonderful". The magazine concluded that it "combines the best action of maze games with the excitement and challenge of the arcade". Computer Gaming World wrote, "This is a case of 'The box artwork has little to do with the game'. The 'creatures' in this game are an assortment of symbols...but not the green meany on the box cover," and also "The underground city looks nice,

330-418: The ground vehicle based Strategy X ( Konami , arcade), Red Clash ( Tehkan , arcade), and Atari 8-bit computer game Caverns of Mars . Caverns of Mars follows the visual style and some of the gameplay of the horizontally-scrolling Scramble arcade game released earlier in the year. The Atari 8-bit computers have hardware support for vertical, as well as horizontal, smooth scrolling. Caverns of Mars

352-466: The hardware. In 1984, he and other founders of Activision became disillusioned with their company. Their stock had dwindled in value and morale was low. They thought that diversification to the home computer market — such as with the Commodore 64 — was the key to success. He left Activision with Alan Miller (another co-founder of Activision), and they founded Accolade . Soon after, Whitehead left

374-458: The impression of vertical scrolling. Magnavox published Alpine Skiing! in 1979 for their Odyssey² game console. In 1980, the same year Activision published Bob Whitehead 's Skiing for the Atari 2600, Mattel published a different slalom game, also called Skiing , for their Intellivision console. In 1981 Taito published Alpine Ski , an arcade video game with three modes of play. The 1980 Nichibutsu arcade game Crazy Climber has

396-421: The player scaling a vertically scrolling skyscraper. Data East 's 1981 arcade Flash Boy was released in two versions: a side-scrolling version and a vertical scrolling version. 1979's Galaxian from Namco is a fixed shooter played over a starfield background which gives the impression of vertical movement. The same is true of Ozma Wars from later the same year. The 1981 arcade game Pleiads

418-471: The standard formula. Taito's mostly vertical Front Line (1982) focuses on on-foot combat, where the player can shoot, throw grenades, and climb in and out of tanks while moving deeper into enemy territory. The game seemingly had little influence until three years later when Commando (1985) implemented a similar formula, followed by the even more comparable Ikari Warriors in 1986. Bob Whitehead Robert A. Whitehead (born November 1, 1953)

440-465: Was Taito 's Speed Race , released in November 1974. Atari 's Hi-way was released eleven months later in 1975. Rapidly there were driving games that combined vertical, horizontal, and even diagonal scrolling, making the vertical-only distinction less important. Both Atari's Super Bug (1977) and Fire Truck (1978) feature driving with multidirectional scrolling. Sega 's Monaco GP (1979)

462-479: Was cloned for the Apple II as Cavern Creatures (1983). In 1982, Namco 's Xevious established the template for many vertically scrolling shooters to come: a ship flying over a landscape with both air and ground targets. That same year, Carol Shaw 's River Raid was published, a highly rated vertically scrolling shooter for the Atari 2600. The less successful vertical scroller Fantastic Voyage (based on

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484-572: Was not involved in the OS development, although he took part in developing applications for the computers. Eventually the Gang of Four, disgruntled by the management's decline to provide more recognition and fair compensation to the developers, decided to leave Atari and start their own business. Whitehead together with Miller, Crane and Kaplan co-founded Activision , the first third-party video game developer, in October 1979. There, with others, he created

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