107-904: Zanac ( ザナック ) is a shoot 'em up video game developed by Compile and published in Japan by Pony Canyon and in North America by FCI . It was released for the MSX computer, the Family Computer Disk System , the Nintendo Entertainment System , and for the Virtual Console . It was reworked for the MSX2 computer as Zanac EX and for the PlayStation as Zanac X Zanac . Players fly
214-581: A loss function . Variants of gradient descent are commonly used to train neural networks. Another type of local search is evolutionary computation , which aims to iteratively improve a set of candidate solutions by "mutating" and "recombining" them, selecting only the fittest to survive each generation. Distributed search processes can coordinate via swarm intelligence algorithms. Two popular swarm algorithms used in search are particle swarm optimization (inspired by bird flocking ) and ant colony optimization (inspired by ant trails ). Formal logic
321-408: A side-scrolling format. Later notable side-scrolling run and gun shooters include Namco's Rolling Thunder (1986), which added cover mechanics to the formula, and Data East's RoboCop (1988). In 1987, Konami created Contra , a side-scrolling coin-op arcade game, and later a NES game, that was particularly acclaimed for its multi-directional aiming and two-player cooperative gameplay. By
428-475: A "degree of truth" between 0 and 1. It can therefore handle propositions that are vague and partially true. Non-monotonic logics , including logic programming with negation as failure , are designed to handle default reasoning . Other specialized versions of logic have been developed to describe many complex domains. Many problems in AI (including in reasoning, planning, learning, perception, and robotics) require
535-401: A black background. It had a more interactive style of play than earlier target shooting games, with multiple enemies who responded to the player-controlled cannon's movement and fired back at the player. The game ended when the player was killed by the enemies. While earlier shooting games allowed the player to shoot at targets, Space Invaders was the first where multiple enemies fired back at
642-460: A contradiction from premises that include the negation of the problem to be solved. Inference in both Horn clause logic and first-order logic is undecidable , and therefore intractable . However, backward reasoning with Horn clauses, which underpins computation in the logic programming language Prolog , is Turing complete . Moreover, its efficiency is competitive with computation in other symbolic programming languages. Fuzzy logic assigns
749-434: A life if they get hit by an enemy or projectile. After losing a life, gameplay continues with the player reappearing on the screen and losing all previously accumulated power-ups; the player remains temporarily invincible for a moment upon reappearing on the screen. The game ends when all the player's lives have been lost or after completing the twelfth and final area. However, the player can earn 1-ups (extra lives) throughout
856-520: A life. Enemies in Zanac include meteors , various bullet-shooting enemy aircraft, bullet-resistant disks, ground turrets, and reconnaissance planes . The bosses consist of stationary fortresses consisting entirely of ground turrets. The player must destroy all these turrets within a specified time limit to score bonus points. Every stage has one or more of these stationary fortresses. In addition, large enemy ships acting as "mini-bosses" appear throughout
963-574: A lone starfighter , dubbed the AFX-6502 Zanac , through twelve levels; their goal is to destroy the System —a part-organic, part-mechanical entity bent on destroying mankind. Zanac was developed by main core developers of Compile, including Masamitsu "Moo" Niitani, Koji "Janus" Teramoto, and Takayuki "Jemini" Hirono. All of these developers went on to make other popular similarly based games such as The Guardian Legend , Blazing Lazers , and
1070-455: A lone starfighter may be able to slip through and penetrate the defenses of the System, allowing such a ship to fight its way into the heart of the System and destroy it. The AFX-6502 Zanac , the most advanced starfighter ever produced, is launched on a desperate mission to fight its way to the heart of the System and shut it down. Zanac was initially released in 1986 for the MSX computer by
1177-567: A more successful attempt to incorporate a 3D perspective into shooter games; Tempest went on to influence several later rail shooters. Sega's Zaxxon (1981) introduced isometric video game graphics to the genre. The term "shmup" is believed to have been coined in 1985 by the British Commodore 64 magazine Zzap!64 . In the July 1985 issue, the term was used by the editor Chris Anderson and reviewer Julian Rignall . 1985 saw
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#17327918320531284-577: A new level, or destroying reconnaissance planes reduces the ALC, resulting in fewer on-screen enemies. The plot of Zanac revolves around the "System"—a device figuratively similar to Pandora's box . The System was created millennia ago by an unknown alien race. It contains boundless wisdom and knowledge, as well as vast destructive potential. If properly opened it would grant access to untold wisdom and technology, but if improperly accessed it would unleash almost unlimited destruction. Mankind attempted to access
1391-429: A path to a target goal, a process called means-ends analysis . Simple exhaustive searches are rarely sufficient for most real-world problems: the search space (the number of places to search) quickly grows to astronomical numbers . The result is a search that is too slow or never completes. " Heuristics " or "rules of thumb" can help prioritize choices that are more likely to reach a goal. Adversarial search
1498-417: A rail shooter released in 1985, broke new ground graphically and its wide variety of settings across multiple levels gave players more to aim for than high scores. In 1986, Arsys Software released WiBArm , a shooter that switched between a 2D side-scrolling view in outdoor areas to a fully 3D polygonal third-person perspective inside buildings, while bosses were fought in an arena-style 2D battle, with
1605-541: A shoot 'em up, as opposed to an action-adventure game . The success of Commando and Ikari Warriors led to run and gun games becoming the dominant style of shoot 'em up during the late 1980s to early 1990s, with the term "shoot 'em up" itself becoming synonymous with "run and gun" during this period. Konami 's Green Beret (1985), known as Rush'n Attack in North America, adapted the Commando formula to
1712-453: A shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement, while others allow a broader definition including characters on foot and a variety of perspectives. The genre's roots can be traced back to earlier shooting games , including target shooting electro-mechanical games of the mid-20th-century, but did not receive a video game release until Spacewar! (1962). The shoot 'em up genre
1819-406: A steep learning curve in gameplay and difficulty level, and poor translation in the game itself and in the game's instruction manual. In addition, Weiss says that enemies in Zanac , while fearsome, "don't have much personality". Shoot %27em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a sub-genre of action games . There is no consensus as to which design elements compose
1926-526: A straight line at constant speeds. The player's character can collect " power-ups " which may afford the character's greater protection, an " extra life ", health, shield, or upgraded weaponry. Different weapons are often suited to different enemies, but these games seldom keep track of ammunition. As such, players tend to fire indiscriminately, and their weapons only damage legitimate targets. Shoot 'em ups are categorized by their design elements, particularly viewpoint and movement: Fixed shooters restrict
2033-576: A third-person view, and featured the use of force feedback , where the joystick vibrates. Over the course of the 1990s, a new subgenre of shooters evolved, known as " danmaku ( 弾幕 , "barrage") in Japan, and often referred to as "bullet hell" or "manic shooters" in English-speaking regions. These games are characterized by high numbers of enemy projectiles, often in complex "curtain fire" patterns, as well as collision boxes that are smaller than
2140-726: A tool that can be used for reasoning (using the Bayesian inference algorithm), learning (using the expectation–maximization algorithm ), planning (using decision networks ) and perception (using dynamic Bayesian networks ). Probabilistic algorithms can also be used for filtering, prediction, smoothing, and finding explanations for streams of data, thus helping perception systems analyze processes that occur over time (e.g., hidden Markov models or Kalman filters ). The simplest AI applications can be divided into two types: classifiers (e.g., "if shiny then diamond"), on one hand, and controllers (e.g., "if diamond then pick up"), on
2247-443: A unique shoot 'em up game, combining gameplay elements from games such as Xevious , especially with the extensive power-up system and vertical-scrolling gameplay that features both air and ground targets. Brett Alan Weiss of Allgame praised Zanac , calling it an extremely fast-paced shooter in which the player is almost completely surrounded by enemy ships and bullets. He praises the game for its music which seems to flow along with
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#17327918320532354-669: A wide range of techniques, including search and mathematical optimization , formal logic , artificial neural networks , and methods based on statistics , operations research , and economics . AI also draws upon psychology , linguistics , philosophy , neuroscience , and other fields. Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and the field went through multiple cycles of optimism, followed by periods of disappointment and loss of funding, known as AI winter . Funding and interest vastly increased after 2012 when deep learning outperformed previous AI techniques. This growth accelerated further after 2017 with
2461-490: A wide variety of techniques to accomplish the goals above. AI can solve many problems by intelligently searching through many possible solutions. There are two very different kinds of search used in AI: state space search and local search . State space search searches through a tree of possible states to try to find a goal state. For example, planning algorithms search through trees of goals and subgoals, attempting to find
2568-555: A wrap-around game world, unlike most later games in the genre. The scrolling helped remove design limitations associated with the screen, and it also featured a minimap radar. Scramble , released by Konami in early 1981, had continuous scrolling in a single direction and was the first side-scrolling shooter with multiple distinct levels . In the early 1980s, Japanese arcade developers began moving away from space shooters towards character action games , whereas American arcade developers continued to focus on space shooters during
2675-1060: Is a field of research in computer science that develops and studies methods and software that enable machines to perceive their environment and use learning and intelligence to take actions that maximize their chances of achieving defined goals. Such machines may be called AIs. Some high-profile applications of AI include advanced web search engines (e.g., Google Search ); recommendation systems (used by YouTube , Amazon , and Netflix ); interacting via human speech (e.g., Google Assistant , Siri , and Alexa ); autonomous vehicles (e.g., Waymo ); generative and creative tools (e.g., ChatGPT , and AI art ); and superhuman play and analysis in strategy games (e.g., chess and Go ). However, many AI applications are not perceived as AI: "A lot of cutting edge AI has filtered into general applications, often without being called AI because once something becomes useful enough and common enough it's not labeled AI anymore ." The various subfields of AI research are centered around particular goals and
2782-641: Is a body of knowledge represented in a form that can be used by a program. An ontology is the set of objects, relations, concepts, and properties used by a particular domain of knowledge. Knowledge bases need to represent things such as objects, properties, categories, and relations between objects; situations, events, states, and time; causes and effects; knowledge about knowledge (what we know about what other people know); default reasoning (things that humans assume are true until they are told differently and will remain true even when other facts are changing); and many other aspects and domains of knowledge. Among
2889-533: Is a game in which the protagonist combats a large number of enemies by shooting at them while dodging their fire. The controlling player must rely primarily on reaction times to succeed. Beyond this, critics differ on exactly which design elements constitute a shoot 'em up. Some restrict the genre to games featuring some kind of craft, using fixed or scrolling movement. Others widen the scope to include games featuring such protagonists as robots or humans on foot, as well as including games featuring "on-rails" (or "into
2996-482: Is a subgenre of shooters in which the screen becomes crowded with complex "curtain fire" enemy patterns. It is also characterized by collision boxes that are smaller than the sprites themselves, to accommodate maneuvering through these crowded firing patterns. This style of game, also known as "manic shooters" or "maniac shooters", originated in the mid-1990s as an offshoot of scrolling shooters. The DonPachi and Touhou Project series are early titles establishing
3103-459: Is an input, at least one hidden layer of nodes and an output. Each node applies a function and once the weight crosses its specified threshold, the data is transmitted to the next layer. A network is typically called a deep neural network if it has at least 2 hidden layers. Learning algorithms for neural networks use local search to choose the weights that will get the right output for each input during training. The most common training technique
3210-462: Is an interdisciplinary umbrella that comprises systems that recognize, interpret, process, or simulate human feeling, emotion, and mood . For example, some virtual assistants are programmed to speak conversationally or even to banter humorously; it makes them appear more sensitive to the emotional dynamics of human interaction, or to otherwise facilitate human–computer interaction . However, this tends to give naïve users an unrealistic conception of
3317-444: Is an unsolved problem. Knowledge representation and knowledge engineering allow AI programs to answer questions intelligently and make deductions about real-world facts. Formal knowledge representations are used in content-based indexing and retrieval, scene interpretation, clinical decision support, knowledge discovery (mining "interesting" and actionable inferences from large databases ), and other areas. A knowledge base
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3424-422: Is anything that perceives and takes actions in the world. A rational agent has goals or preferences and takes actions to make them happen. In automated planning , the agent has a specific goal. In automated decision-making , the agent has preferences—there are some situations it would prefer to be in, and some situations it is trying to avoid. The decision-making agent assigns a number to each situation (called
3531-413: Is classified based on previous experience. There are many kinds of classifiers in use. The decision tree is the simplest and most widely used symbolic machine learning algorithm. K-nearest neighbor algorithm was the most widely used analogical AI until the mid-1990s, and Kernel methods such as the support vector machine (SVM) displaced k-nearest neighbor in the 1990s. The naive Bayes classifier
3638-413: Is labelled by a solution of the problem and whose leaf nodes are labelled by premises or axioms . In the case of Horn clauses , problem-solving search can be performed by reasoning forwards from the premises or backwards from the problem. In the more general case of the clausal form of first-order logic , resolution is a single, axiom-free rule of inference, in which a problem is solved by proving
3745-477: Is notable for using a traditional fantasy setting in contrast to most shoot 'em up games filled with science fiction motifs. R-Type , an acclaimed side-scrolling shoot 'em up, was released in 1987 by Irem , employing slower paced scrolling than usual, with difficult, claustrophobic levels calling for methodical strategies. 1990's Raiden was the beginning of another acclaimed and enduring series to emerge from this period. Run and gun games became popular in
3852-400: Is reportedly the "most widely used learner" at Google, due in part to its scalability. Neural networks are also used as classifiers. An artificial neural network is based on a collection of nodes also known as artificial neurons , which loosely model the neurons in a biological brain. It is trained to recognise patterns; once trained, it can recognise those patterns in fresh data. There
3959-864: Is still a single axis of motion, making these a subset of fixed shooters. Rail shooters limit the player to moving around the screen while following a specific route; these games often feature an "into the screen" viewpoint, with which the action is seen from behind the player character , and moves "into the screen", while the player retains control over dodging. Examples include Space Harrier (1985), Captain Skyhawk (1990), Starblade (1991), Star Fox (1993), Star Wars: Rebel Assault (1993), Panzer Dragoon (1995), and Sin and Punishment (2000). Rail shooters that use light guns are called light gun shooters , such as Operation Wolf (1987), Lethal Enforcers (1992), Virtua Cop (1994), Point Blank (1994), Time Crisis (1995), The House of
4066-404: Is the process of proving a new statement ( conclusion ) from other statements that are given and assumed to be true (the premises ). Proofs can be structured as proof trees , in which nodes are labelled by sentences, and children nodes are connected to parent nodes by inference rules . Given a problem and a set of premises, problem-solving reduces to searching for a proof tree whose root node
4173-440: Is used for game-playing programs, such as chess or Go. It searches through a tree of possible moves and counter-moves, looking for a winning position. Local search uses mathematical optimization to find a solution to a problem. It begins with some form of guess and refines it incrementally. Gradient descent is a type of local search that optimizes a set of numerical parameters by incrementally adjusting them to minimize
4280-455: Is used for reasoning and knowledge representation . Formal logic comes in two main forms: propositional logic (which operates on statements that are true or false and uses logical connectives such as "and", "or", "not" and "implies") and predicate logic (which also operates on objects, predicates and relations and uses quantifiers such as " Every X is a Y " and "There are some X s that are Y s"). Deductive reasoning in logic
4387-436: Is used in AI programs that make decisions that involve other agents. Machine learning is the study of programs that can improve their performance on a given task automatically. It has been a part of AI from the beginning. There are several kinds of machine learning. Unsupervised learning analyzes a stream of data and finds patterns and makes predictions without any other guidance. Supervised learning requires labeling
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4494-905: Is when the knowledge gained from one problem is applied to a new problem. Deep learning is a type of machine learning that runs inputs through biologically inspired artificial neural networks for all of these types of learning. Computational learning theory can assess learners by computational complexity , by sample complexity (how much data is required), or by other notions of optimization . Natural language processing (NLP) allows programs to read, write and communicate in human languages such as English . Specific problems include speech recognition , speech synthesis , machine translation , information extraction , information retrieval and question answering . Early work, based on Noam Chomsky 's generative grammar and semantic networks , had difficulty with word-sense disambiguation unless restricted to small domains called " micro-worlds " (due to
4601-515: The Geometry Wars series, Space Invaders Extreme , Super Stardust HD , and Resogun . The concept of shooting games existed before video games , dating back to shooting gallery carnival games in the late 19th century and target sports such as archery , bowling and darts . Mechanical target shooting games first appeared in England 's amusement arcades around the turn of
4708-463: The Puyo Puyo series. The game is known for its intense and fast-paced gameplay, level of difficulty, and music which seems to match the pace of the game. It has been praised for its unique adaptive artificial intelligence , in which the game automatically adjusts the difficulty level according to the player's skill level, rate of fire and the ship's current defensive status/capability. In Zanac ,
4815-602: The Family Computer Disk System in Japan on November 11, 1986, and then in North America for the NES in October 1987. The NES version was later re-released for Wii 's Virtual Console service on December 3, 2007, and published by D4 Enterprise . This version is identical to the NES version released in 1987. Compile released a compilation titled Zanac X Zanac for Sony's PlayStation console in Japan on November 29, 2001, to commemorate
4922-575: The Front Line tank shooter format with unique rotary joystick controls, which they later combined with Commando -inspired run and gun gameplay to develop Ikari Warriors (1986), which further popularized run and gun shooters. Ikari Warriors also drew inspiration from the action film Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), which it was originally intended to be an adaptation of. Contemporary critics considered military themes and protagonists similar to Rambo or Schwarzenegger prerequisites for
5029-466: The Xbox 360 , PlayStation 3 and Wii online services, while in Japan arcade shoot 'em ups retain a deep-rooted niche popularity. Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved was released on Xbox Live Arcade in 2005 and in particular stood out from the various re-releases and casual games available on the service. The PC has also seen its share of dōjin shoot 'em ups like Crimzon Clover , Jamestown: Legend of
5136-520: The bar exam , SAT test, GRE test, and many other real-world applications. Machine perception is the ability to use input from sensors (such as cameras, microphones, wireless signals, active lidar , sonar, radar, and tactile sensors ) to deduce aspects of the world. Computer vision is the ability to analyze visual input. The field includes speech recognition , image classification , facial recognition , object recognition , object tracking , and robotic perception . Affective computing
5243-416: The transformer architecture , and by the early 2020s hundreds of billions of dollars were being invested in AI (known as the " AI boom "). The widespread use of AI in the 21st century exposed several unintended consequences and harms in the present and raised concerns about its risks and long-term effects in the future, prompting discussions about regulatory policies to ensure the safety and benefits of
5350-430: The vertical scrolling format later popularized by Capcom 's Commando (1985), which established the standard formula used by later run and gun games. Sega's Ninja Princess (1985), which released slightly before Commando , was a run and gun game that was distinctive for its feudal Japan setting and female ninja protagonist who throws shuriken and knives. SNK 's TNK III , released later in 1985, combined
5457-436: The " utility ") that measures how much the agent prefers it. For each possible action, it can calculate the " expected utility ": the utility of all possible outcomes of the action, weighted by the probability that the outcome will occur. It can then choose the action with the maximum expected utility. In classical planning , the agent knows exactly what the effect of any action will be. In most real-world problems, however,
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#17327918320535564-658: The 15th anniversary of the original. This compilation features an updated version of Zanac —titled Zanac Neo —and three versions of the NES version of the game, including a version featuring enhanced graphics and sound. The game features two-player cooperative gameplay as well as a remix of the game's soundtrack. A version of the game was released on the Nintendo Switch via the G-Mode Archives series in January 2021. Zanac , in retrospect, has been considered
5671-405: The 1980s. Shoot 'em ups are a subgenre of action game . These games are usually viewed from a top-down or side-view perspective , and players must use ranged weapons to take action at a distance. The player's avatar is typically a vehicle or spacecraft under constant attack. Thus, the player's goal is to shoot as quickly as possible at anything that moves or threatens them to reach the end of
5778-530: The 20th century, before appearing in America by the 1920s. Shooting gallery games eventually evolved into more sophisticated target shooting electro-mechanical games (EM games) such as Sega 's influential Periscope (1965). Shooting video games have roots in EM shooting games. Video game journalist Brian Ashcraft argues the early mainframe game Spacewar! (1962) was the first shoot 'em up video game. It
5885-511: The Dead (1996) and Elemental Gearbolt (1997). Light-gun games that are "on rails" are usually not considered to be in the shoot-em-up category, but rather their own first-person light-gun shooter category. Cute 'em ups feature brightly colored graphics depicting surreal settings and enemies. Cute 'em ups tend to have unusual, oftentimes completely bizarre opponents for the player to fight, with Twinbee and Fantasy Zone first pioneering
5992-484: The Japanese video game company Compile —the same company responsible for other games such as Blazing Lazers , Devil's Crush , and the Puyo Puyo series. Compile then re-released the game for the MSX2 computer later that same year as Zanac Ex , which featured improved graphics (with smooth scrolling) and extended music over the original MSX version. Zanac was then ported and heavily reworked again for release on
6099-506: The Lost Colony , Xenoslaive Overdrive , and the eXceed series . However, despite the genre's continued appeal to an enthusiastic niche of players, shoot 'em up developers are increasingly embattled financially by the power of home consoles and their attendant genres. Artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence ( AI ), in its broadest sense, is intelligence exhibited by machines , particularly computer systems . It
6206-448: The System and failed, causing the System to spread throughout space and to exert mass destruction on all forms of life, including the human race. Mankind then discovered how to properly access the knowledge and technology within the System, but could not shut its destructive expansion down because of its vast tactical systems. Moreover, the defenses of the System are designed around destroying and overcoming entire fleets. Mankind hopes that
6313-425: The action of the game; he calls the music "at least as close as you can get to a Zen moment while playing a shooting game on the NES". Frank Provo of GameSpot lauded Zanac for its difficulty level, its ability to handle many sprites on the screen without slowdown or other glitches, and its unique AI , which placed this game in a subgenre of its own. However, criticisms include mediocre and primitive music and sound,
6420-409: The actions of the player, such as attack pattern and skill level. The ALC increases for experts but decreases for inexperienced players. For instance, shooting the main cannon frequently, collecting power-ups, and failing to destroy bosses within the specified time limit increases the ALC, resulting in a greater number of tougher enemies appearing on-screen. However, actions such as losing lives, starting
6527-421: The agent can seek information to improve its preferences. Information value theory can be used to weigh the value of exploratory or experimental actions. The space of possible future actions and situations is typically intractably large, so the agents must take actions and evaluate situations while being uncertain of what the outcome will be. A Markov decision process has a transition model that describes
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#17327918320536634-510: The agent may not be certain about the situation they are in (it is "unknown" or "unobservable") and it may not know for certain what will happen after each possible action (it is not "deterministic"). It must choose an action by making a probabilistic guess and then reassess the situation to see if the action worked. In some problems, the agent's preferences may be uncertain, especially if there are other agents or humans involved. These can be learned (e.g., with inverse reinforcement learning ), or
6741-529: The agent to operate with incomplete or uncertain information. AI researchers have devised a number of tools to solve these problems using methods from probability theory and economics. Precise mathematical tools have been developed that analyze how an agent can make choices and plan, using decision theory , decision analysis , and information value theory . These tools include models such as Markov decision processes , dynamic decision networks , game theory and mechanism design . Bayesian networks are
6848-634: The closure of Toaplan, the following year, a number of studios formed from former Toaplan staff that would continue to develop this style, including Cave (formed by Batsugun's main creator Tsuneki Ikeda) who released 1995's seminal DonPachi , and Takumi, who would develop the GigaWing series. Bullet hell games marked another point where the shooter genre began to cater to more dedicated players. Games such as Gradius had been more difficult than Space Invaders or Xevious , but bullet hell games were yet more inward-looking and aimed at dedicated fans of
6955-648: The common sense knowledge problem ). Margaret Masterman believed that it was meaning and not grammar that was the key to understanding languages, and that thesauri and not dictionaries should be the basis of computational language structure. Modern deep learning techniques for NLP include word embedding (representing words, typically as vectors encoding their meaning), transformers (a deep learning architecture using an attention mechanism), and others. In 2019, generative pre-trained transformer (or "GPT") language models began to generate coherent text, and by 2023, these models were able to get human-level scores on
7062-629: The early 1980s, up until the end of the arcade golden age. According to Eugene Jarvis , American developers were greatly influenced by Japanese space shooters but took the genre in a different direction from the "more deterministic, scripted, pattern-type" gameplay of Japanese games, towards a more "programmer-centric design culture, emphasizing algorithmic generation of backgrounds and enemy dispatch" and "an emphasis on random-event generation, particle-effect explosions and physics" as seen in arcade games such as his own Defender and Robotron: 2084 (1982) as well as Atari's Asteroids (1979). Robotron: 2084
7169-400: The early 1990s and the popularity of 16-bit consoles , the scrolling shooter genre was overcrowded, with developers struggling to make their games stand out, with exceptions such as the inventive Gunstar Heroes (1993) by Treasure . Sega's pseudo-3D rail shooter Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom demonstrated the potential of 3D shoot 'em up gameplay in 1982. Sega's Space Harrier ,
7276-503: The emergence of one of Sega's forefront series with its game Fantasy Zone . The game received acclaim for its surreal graphics and setting and the protagonist, Opa-Opa, was for a time considered Sega's mascot . The game borrowed Defender's device of allowing the player to control the direction of flight and along with the earlier TwinBee (1985), is an early archetype of the "cute 'em up" subgenre. In 1986, Taito released KiKi KaiKai , an overhead multi-directional shooter. The game
7383-491: The fastest-paced video game genres . Large numbers of enemy characters programmed to behave in an easily predictable manner are typically featured. These enemies may behave in a certain way dependent on their type, or attack in formations that the player can learn to predict. The basic gameplay tends to be straightforward with many varieties of weapons. Shoot 'em ups rarely have realistic physics. Characters can instantly change direction with no inertia , and projectiles move in
7490-494: The first games to popularize twin-stick controls was Robotron: 2084 (1982). Space shooters are a thematic variant of involving spacecraft in outer space . Following the success of Space Invaders , space shooters were the dominant subgenre during the late 1970s to early 1980s. These games can overlap with other subgenres as well as space combat games . Tube shooters feature craft flying through an abstract tube, such as Tempest (1981) and Gyruss (1983). There
7597-416: The game by accumulating high point scores. Zanac has a continue option which allows players to restart the game from the level in which they lost all their lives. The player operates a rapid-fire main cannon, which can be upgraded by collecting power-ups found in blue boxes that periodically descend from the top of the screen. As the main cannon's power level is upgraded, the number of bullets fired from
7704-457: The game featuring a variety of weapons and equipment. In 1987, Square's 3-D WorldRunner was an early stereoscopic 3-D shooter played from a third-person perspective, followed later that year by its sequel JJ , and the following year by Space Harrier 3-D which used the SegaScope 3-D shutter glasses . That same year, Sega's Thunder Blade switched between both a top-down view and
7811-425: The game. These ships are more resistant to the player's weaponry; all bullets inflict minor damage and are repelled off the mini-bosses, which change color as they become more damaged. The distinguishing aspect of Zanac' s gameplay is its unique enemy artificial intelligence , called the "Automatic Level of Difficulty Control" or ALC. The ALC measures the System's aggressiveness and the game's difficulty depending on
7918-431: The genre looking for greater challenges. While shooter games featuring protagonists on foot largely moved to 3D-based genres, popular, long-running series such as Contra and Metal Slug continued to receive new sequels. Rail shooters have rarely been released in the new millennium, with only Rez and Panzer Dragoon Orta achieving cult recognition. In the early 2000s, the genre achieved recognition through
8025-440: The intelligence of existing computer agents. Moderate successes related to affective computing include textual sentiment analysis and, more recently, multimodal sentiment analysis , wherein AI classifies the affects displayed by a videotaped subject. A machine with artificial general intelligence should be able to solve a wide variety of problems with breadth and versatility similar to human intelligence . AI research uses
8132-537: The late 1980s and 1990s, methods were developed for dealing with uncertain or incomplete information, employing concepts from probability and economics . Many of these algorithms are insufficient for solving large reasoning problems because they experience a "combinatorial explosion": They become exponentially slower as the problems grow. Even humans rarely use the step-by-step deduction that early AI research could model. They solve most of their problems using fast, intuitive judgments. Accurate and efficient reasoning
8239-403: The level, usually with a boss battle . In some games, the player's character can withstand some damage or a single hit will result in their destruction. The main skills required in shoot 'em ups are fast reactions and memorising enemy attack patterns. Some games feature overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles and the player has to memorise their patterns to survive. These games belong to one of
8346-420: The mid-1980s. These games feature characters on foot, rather than spacecraft, and often have military themes. The origins of this type of shooter go back to Sheriff by Nintendo , released in 1979. SNK 's Sasuke vs. Commander (1980), which had relatively detailed background graphics for its time, pit a samurai against a horde of ninjas , along with boss fights . Taito's Front Line (1982) introduced
8453-439: The mid-1990s, shoot 'em ups became a niche genre based on design conventions established in the 1980s, and increasingly catered to specialist enthusiasts, particularly in Japan. " Bullet hell " games are a subgenre of shooters that features overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles , often in visually impressive formations. A "shoot 'em up", also known as a "shmup" or "STG" (the common Japanese abbreviation for "shooting games"),
8560-432: The mobile game Space Impact , which is considered one of the important games in the history of mobile games . Treasure's shoot 'em up, Radiant Silvergun (1998), introduced an element of narrative to the genre. It was critically acclaimed for its refined design, though it was not released outside Japan and remains a much sought-after collector's item. Its successor Ikaruga (2001) featured improved graphics and
8667-457: The most difficult problems in knowledge representation are the breadth of commonsense knowledge (the set of atomic facts that the average person knows is enormous); and the sub-symbolic form of most commonsense knowledge (much of what people know is not represented as "facts" or "statements" that they could express verbally). There is also the difficulty of knowledge acquisition , the problem of obtaining knowledge for AI applications. An "agent"
8774-405: The other hand. Classifiers are functions that use pattern matching to determine the closest match. They can be fine-tuned based on chosen examples using supervised learning . Each pattern (also called an " observation ") is labeled with a certain predefined class. All the observations combined with their class labels are known as a data set . When a new observation is received, that observation
8881-456: The player against multiple enemies descending from the top of the screen at a constantly increasing speed. Nishikado conceived the game by combining elements of Breakout (1976) with those of earlier target shooting games, and simple alien creatures inspired by H. G. Wells ' The War of the Worlds . The hardware was unable to render the movement of aircraft, so the game was set in space, with
8988-401: The player and enemies to a single screen, and the player primarily moves along a single axis, such as back and forth along the bottom of the screen. Examples include Space Invaders (1978), Galaxian (1979), Phoenix (1980), and Galaga (1981). In Pooyan (1982), the fixed axis of movement is vertical, along the right side of the screen. In Centipede (1980) and Gorf (1981),
9095-439: The player controls the spaceship AFX-6502 Zanac as it flies through various planets , space stations , and outer space and through an armada of enemies comprising the defenses of the game's main antagonist—the "System". The player must fight through twelve levels and destroy the System and its defenses. The objective is to shoot down enemies and projectiles and accumulate points. Players start with three lives, and they lose
9202-491: The player in a trance-like state. In trance shooters, enemy patterns usually have randomized elements, forcing the player to rely on reflexes rather than pattern memorization. Games of this type usually feature colorful, abstract visuals, and electronic music (often techno music ). Jeff Minter is commonly credited with originating the style with Tempest 2000 (1994) and subsequent games including Space Giraffe , Gridrunner++ , and Polybius (2017). Other examples include
9309-480: The player primarily moves left and right along the bottom, but several inches of vertical motion are also allowed within an invisible box. Multidirectional shooters allow 360-degree movement where the protagonist may rotate and move in any direction such as Asteroids (1979) and Mad Planets (1983). Multidirectional shooters with one joystick for movement and one joystick for firing in any direction independent of movement are called twin-stick shooters . One of
9416-415: The player's flying vehicle moving forward, at a fixed rate, through an environment. Examples are Scramble (1981), Xevious (1982), Gradius (1986), Darius (1987), R-Type (1987), Einhänder (1997). In contrast, Defender (1981) allows the player to move left or right at will. Run and gun games have protagonists that move through the world on foot and shoot attackers. Examples include
9523-549: The player. It also introduced the idea of giving the player multiple lives and popularized the concept of achieving a high score . With these elements, Space Invaders set the general template for the shoot 'em up genre. It became one of the most widely cloned shooting games, spawning more than 100 imitators with only the most minor differences (if any) from the original. Most shooting games released since then have followed its "multiple life, progressively difficult level " paradigm, according to Eugene Jarvis . Following
9630-548: The principle of bullet hells. A bullet heaven or reverse bullet hell is a subgenre characterized by the player character collecting or unlocking abilities and attacks whose visuals overlap and clutter the game screen as the game progresses. They also share a feature of many enemy characters, commonly called "hordes", walking toward the player from off-screen. This genre is generally attributed to Vampire Survivors , released in 2022. A small subgenre of shooter games that emphasizes chaotic, reflex-based gameplay designed to put
9737-411: The probability that a particular action will change the state in a particular way and a reward function that supplies the utility of each state and the cost of each action. A policy associates a decision with each possible state. The policy could be calculated (e.g., by iteration ), be heuristic , or it can be learned. Game theory describes the rational behavior of multiple interacting agents and
9844-416: The release of Konami's Gradius , which gave the player greater control over the choice of weaponry, thus introducing another element of strategy. The game also introduced the need for the player to memorise levels in order to achieve any measure of success. Gradius , with its iconic protagonist, defined the side-scrolling shoot 'em up and spawned a series spanning several sequels. The following year saw
9951-447: The screen") and "run and gun" movement. Mark Wolf restricts the definition to games featuring multiple antagonists ("'em" being short for "them"), calling games featuring one-on-one shooting "combat games". Formerly, critics described any game where the primary design element was shooting as a "shoot 'em up", but later shoot 'em ups became a specific, inward-looking genre based on design conventions established in those shooting games of
10058-590: The ship as well as their speed increases. In addition, the player operates a specialty weapon that is separate from the main cannon. There are eight different specialty weapons, each represented by differently-numbered power-ups. The player can change the type of specialty weapon equipped by collecting a differently-numbered power-up or can upgrade their current specialty weapon by collecting a numbered power-up that matches their current weapon. These weapons range from directional bullets to shields to indestructible projectiles. Players lose all accumulated power-ups if they lose
10165-421: The sprites themselves, allowing the player to fit between the narrow gaps in enemy fire. Bullet hell games were first popularized in Japanese arcades during a time when 3D games and fighting games were eclipsing other games. The flashy firing patterns were intended to grab players attention. Toaplan 's Batsugun (1993) is often considered a pivotal point in the development of this subgenre. After
10272-612: The subgenre, along with Parodius , Cotton , and Harmful Park being additional key games. Some cute 'em ups may employ overtly sexual characters and innuendo. Vertically scrolling shooters present the action from above and scroll up (or occasionally down) the screen. Horizontally scrolling shooters usually present a side-on view and scroll left to right (or less often, right to left). Isometrically scrolling shooters or isometric shooters , such as Sega 's Zaxxon (1982), use an isometric point of view . A popular implementation style of scrolling shooters has
10379-550: The success of Space Invaders , shoot 'em ups became the dominant genre for much of the golden age of arcade video games , from the late 1970s up until the early 1980s, particularly the "space shooter" subgenre. In 1979, Namco 's Galaxian —"the granddaddy of all top-down shooters", according to IGN—was released. Its use of colour graphics and individualised antagonists were considered "strong evolutionary concepts" among space ship games. In 1981 Gorf brought joystick control and (limited) vertical as well as horizontal movement to
10486-471: The technology . The general problem of simulating (or creating) intelligence has been broken into subproblems. These consist of particular traits or capabilities that researchers expect an intelligent system to display. The traits described below have received the most attention and cover the scope of AI research. Early researchers developed algorithms that imitated step-by-step reasoning that humans use when they solve puzzles or make logical deductions . By
10593-451: The training data with the expected answers, and comes in two main varieties: classification (where the program must learn to predict what category the input belongs in) and regression (where the program must deduce a numeric function based on numeric input). In reinforcement learning , the agent is rewarded for good responses and punished for bad ones. The agent learns to choose responses that are classified as "good". Transfer learning
10700-420: The use of particular tools. The traditional goals of AI research include reasoning , knowledge representation , planning , learning , natural language processing , perception, and support for robotics . General intelligence —the ability to complete any task performable by a human on an at least equal level—is among the field's long-term goals. To reach these goals, AI researchers have adapted and integrated
10807-472: The vertically scrolling, overhead view games Front Line (1982), Commando (1985), and Ikari Warriors (1986). Side-scrolling run and gun games often combine elements from platform games , such as the ability to jump: Contra (1987), Metal Slug (1996) and Cuphead (2017). Run and gun games may also use isometric viewpoints and may have multidirectional movement. Bullet hell ( 弾幕 , danmaku , literally "barrage" or "bullet curtain")
10914-545: The vertically-oriented fixed-shooter genre, while Space Invaders and Galaxian have only horizontal movement controlled by a pair of buttons. Atari 's Asteroids (1979) was a hit multi-directional shooter, taking from Spacewar! the ability for the player's ship to roam the entire screen and to rotate, move and shoot in any direction. The Space Invaders format evolved into the vertical scrolling shooter sub-genre. SNK 's debut shoot 'em up Ozma Wars (1979) featured vertical scrolling backgrounds and enemies, and it
11021-475: Was again acclaimed as one of the best games in the genre. Both Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga were later released on Xbox Live Arcade . The Touhou Project series spans 26 years and 30 games as of 2022 and was listed in the Guinness World Records in October 2010 for being the "most prolific fan-made shooter series". The genre has undergone something of a resurgence with the release of
11128-421: Was an influential game in the multi-directional shooter subgenre. Some games experimented with pseudo-3D perspectives at the time. Nintendo 's attempt at the genre, Radar Scope (1980), borrowed heavily from Space Invaders and Galaxian , but added a three-dimensional third-person perspective; the game was a commercial failure, however. Atari's Tempest (1981) was one of the earliest tube shooters and
11235-506: Was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, for the developers' amusement, and presents a space battle between two craft. It was remade four times as an arcade video game in the 1970s. Space Invaders (1978) is most frequently cited as the "first" or "original" in the genre. A seminal game created by Tomohiro Nishikado of Japan's Taito , it led to proliferation of shooter games. It pitted
11342-434: Was established by the hit arcade game Space Invaders , which popularised and set the general template for the genre in 1978, and has spawned many clones. The genre was then further developed by arcade hits such as Asteroids and Galaxian in 1979. Shoot 'em ups were popular throughout the 1980s to early 1990s, diversifying into a variety of subgenres such as scrolling shooters, run and gun games and rail shooters. In
11449-546: Was the first action game to feature a supply of energy, similar to hit points . Namco's Xevious , released in 1982, was one of the first and most influential vertical scrolling shooters. Xevious is also the first to convincingly portray dithered/shaded organic landscapes as opposed to blocks-in-space or wireframe obstacles. Side-scrolling shoot 'em ups emerged in the early 1980s. Defender , introduced by Williams Electronics in late 1980 and entering production in early 1981, allowed side-scrolling in both directions in
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