The game I’m going to start with will fit firmly into one of my favorite genres from my youth: side-scrolling space shooters.

My first experience with these games goes all the way back to the beginning with a game on the NES: Gradius! The player would pilot the ship through waves of enemies, pick up power ups, and destroy huge bosses.

Gradius Box Art

Over the years, this type of game advanceds along with consoles. The most famous game of this genre on the Super Nintendo was Super R-Type. Another of my favorites. I never actually played Einhänder, on PlayStation, but it looks like a lot of fun. Most recently, Resogun was released on PS-4 and I spent a lot of hours perfecting the patterns in that game to get higher multipliers and rescue all the humans.

Across all of these games, there are some common themes:

  • Weapon / Shield Power Ups
  • Overwhelming Number of Enemies
  • Dodging Projectiles

I’ll be getting deeper into game design over the coming weeks, and I will determine how to leverage these common elements to come up with something at least interesting if not entirely unique.