Starship 1 (Arcade Review)

January 15, 2026 by 1 Comment

Starship 1
Platform: Arcade
Released July, 1977*
Designed by Steve Mayer, Dave Shepperd and Dennis Koble
Developed by Atari
Originally Utilized Yoke and Thruster Controls
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED (?)

*The Killer List of Video Games and other sources list 1976 as the date, but GameFAQs and Wikipedia list a July, 1977 release date so that’s what I went with. This is another game meant to be a bonus review for Atari 50: The Definitive Review – Part Two but since that might take a while to finish, I’m posting them separately. Besides, these games deserve to stand on their own.

So why am I reviewing Starship 1? Well, I saw the Japanese flyer for it in Atari 50 and my jaw literally dropped.

That is so f*cking cool looking, isn’t it? How can you not geek-out over that? It’s just so COOL! I can’t imagine how exciting it must have been to see that in an arcade in 1977. How could anyone pass up a chance to try it? Frankly, I’m stunned this isn’t considered a legendary game based on the cabinet alone. Yet, I’d never really heard of Starship 1 before seeing that flyer in Atari 50. That seems like an ominous sign that the game isn’t very good, right? Well, spoiler: Starship 1 actually isn’t a bad little game at all. It’s a little game for sure and one that I couldn’t put too much time into due to epilepsy concerns, but I enjoyed my time with it. So why the hell didn’t they include Starship 1 in Atari 50? It can’t just be because of the controller, right? They included steering wheel-based games like Fire Truck, Sprint 8, and Super Bug. There has to be a reason. Then I saw it in action.

Oh. Yeah, now I get it. Fun fact: Apparently Starship 1 is the owner of the first “easter egg” (cheat code) in gaming history, though my father and I spent the better part of a half-hour trying to get it to work and couldn’t.

Yep, you’re shooting down ships that look exactly like the Enterprise from Star Trek, which was the inspiration for the game. And Starship 1 isn’t being coy about it, either. There’s also ships that look kind of like Klingon Birds of Prey plus the game literally mentions “The Federation.” It’s a reminder that Starship 1 was made in the wild west days of arcades, where Atari had the chutzpah to ride the wave of Jaws popularity with a game called Shark Jaws, with “Shark” in teeny tiny barely visible letters and “Jaws” in gigantic, all-encompassing letters. By the way, I intended to review Shark Jaws for Atari 50’s bonus reviews and couldn’t get it working, and it likely cannot work on MAME at all. There’s so many games that have no widespread presence for people like me that are interested in gaming history. It’s insane that in 2026, you can’t just play any old 50 year old game from the comfort of your home, even if you’re willing to pay for the privilege. And people used to think the Disney Vault was a nightmare. Yeesh.

My father said “it’s amazing Atari didn’t get sued over this.” Indeed.

Anyway, unlike a lot of coin-ops, you can’t “win” at Starship 1. You’re paying a quarter for an immersive 60 second experience of getting to pilot the not-Enterprise, shooting at four types of baddies while dodging their blasts that look like little circles of static. The standard Enterprise-style spaceships score 50 points. These weird looking space cats score 100 points, while the fast moving saucers score 200 points. The Birds of Prey are rare enough that we didn’t encounter them EVERY game, but when you do manage to see them and shoot them down, they score a whopping 500 points. There’s an impressive-for-its-time sense of size and scale thanks to the sprites getting larger as they get closer to the screen. The effect looks similar to Wolfenstein 3D a full fifteen years before that came out. There’s no animation to the sprites besides the scaling-up, but it’s still impressive given the era and limitations. After sixty seconds are up, the game is over regardless of how well you played. If there’s a way to continue on, we never found it. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to? Start over and go for a higher score. That’s the point.

I get why they skipped this for legal reasons, but there’s also a lot of features that, simply put, can’t carry over.

Starship 1 isn’t a particularly difficult game, hence the strict 60 second timer. It’s one of the first games that was meant to be an experience more than a test. “It’s the Star Trek Experience before that was a thing,” my father said, though he never saw this game either. The actual coin-op used a state of the art yoke for analog controls with a thruster for speed. Starship 1 was also one of the first cabinets to use what’s called the “pepper’s ghost” effect to create the illusion that the image was floating in space. By having the monitor lay horizontally in the cabinet and using a mirror that’s half-silvered, it creates a convincing illusion of an image floating in the air. You’ve certainly seen it before, as it’s the same trick that was used by Atari in Asteroids, Taito in Space Invaders, and the famous Sega laserdisc game Time Traveler, not to mention all the “holographic” ghosts in the Haunted Mansion ride’s ballroom scene are really the world’s biggest use of the effect (though that record might have since fallen).

It almost looks like Nyan Cat, doesn’t it?

So, playing this on MAME or as a hypothetical Atari 50 release means losing a lot of the charm, and this on a game that relies a lot on charm. Again, I can’t imagine how exciting it must have been to see that in an arcade in 1977. I wouldn’t be around for another twelve years, but if I ever see this at a gaming museum, this is on my “must play” list because what I got out of this review is but a fraction of the intended Starship 1 experience. But ignoring all of that, there actually is still some satisfying gameplay to be had. Not a lot, obviously, but this is one of the rare historical curios that retains some satisfaction thanks to a well-designed primary weapon. Hitting your shots is exhilarating, period. I didn’t expect that.

I have no idea what that’s supposed to be. According to a video I found, on MAME planets show up a lot more frequently than they do on a real machine. Another example of “the charm is lost.”

So a home release of Starship 1 makes little sense because this was promising you that, for your quarter, you were going to get an experience unlike any other available in arcades. Except, well, I kinda liked playing this. So did my father. As limited and stripped of its selling points as it was, playing this with a PS5 controller with no holographic effect, hey, it controls great, the shooting is satisfying enough, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome. If anything, I think the game is a little too generous with the photon torpedo. When time is up, your score is your score and if you want to go again, you have to pony-up. “You having fun?” I asked my father, and he stared at the screen and said “yeah. You?” I nodded and said “yeah. Huh. Who’d have thought?” I get why, for legal reasons, they probably thought including this was a bad idea. But Starship 1 was a revolutionary first-person game worthy of historic consideration, both for its contributions to the first person shooter genre AND on its gameplay merits in the 2020s as a scoring-rush style mini-game. I guess the phasers must be set to “stun” because I’m stunned this got a YES!
Verdict: YES!
If you’re interested in the history of actual Star Trek video games, one of my best friends in the whole world, author Mat Bradley-Tschirgi, wrote a book on them! Star Trek Video Games: An Unofficial Guide to the Final Frontier is a fun coffee table-style read and, at the time of this review’s publication, you can get it on Amazon for 58% off! It’s also available on Kindle but, like, come on! It’s a coffee table book! You want to own THE BOOK, and $16.59, it’s a steal, folks! I’m not a paid shill, just a big fan.

If you got to play a real version of Starship 1, I want to read about it in the comments! Come on, arcade goers of the 1970s and 1980s! I need to live vicariously through you!

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Super Contra (Arcade Review)

October 23, 2024 by 10 Comments

Super Contra
Platform: Arcade
Released January 28, 1988
Directed by Hideyuki Tsujimoto
Developed by Konami
Included in Contra Anniversary Collection
Sold Separately via Arcade Archives

Well, it looks the part. But, it doesn’t do a good job of playing the part. At least on a full-time basis.

I get it now. I get why Super Contra didn’t reach the legendary status the original did, and I get it before I even reach the NES game. It’s not the Konami code. It really is the top-down sections. In what has to be one of the most historically bad decisions in game design history, Contra’s sequel, released just under a  year after the original, dropped the third person base segments and replaced them with generic top-down sections. What a stupid move. War-themed action games were smoking hot in gaming at the time, but there were a LOT of top-down shooting games that feel exactly the same as Super Contra’s top-down levels, surrendering the original game’s uniqueness.

Real subtle, guys.

I assume that’s why they used third person areas instead of top-down in the first place. How do you stand out in a crowded field in 1987? Mix genres. Side scrollers are popular, and top-down shooters are. Why not do both? Great idea, but top-down is too commonplace, from Front Line to Commando to Ikari Warriors. Hell, Ikari Warriors’ sequel, Victory Road, came out in 1986. You don’t want people to think you’re playing follow the leader with SNK or Capcom, do you? So instead, you mix a side-scroller with unique third-person levels that shift the focus from run & gun platforming to intense bullet-dodging in a tight space, but in a way that retains the acrobatic movement and jumping from the side-scrolling levels. Neat. Novel. Original. Tantalizing. And ALL YOURS. Now you’re the one doing the innovating! Anyone that follows is eating your dust, not the other way around. So, why move away from that? I honestly don’t know. Maybe they got bad focus testing or early reviews specifically on the third-person stages. I hope that’s not it. If you’re a game critic or participated in a focus group and sh*t on the base levels in Contra, thanks so much for ruining the sequel. You’re a bad person, and you’re going to gaming hell, where you will be forced to play Super Contra. I kid, because it’s Konami’s fault. What a truly stupid decision.

Okay, this IS kind of funny. See the two probes with the electricity running between them? They don’t kill you, or damage you, or anything. They do nothing. You stand right over them. Not even the energy hurts you. Cutting Room Floor, aka my favorite gaming site in the whole wide world, generously describes this as an “oversight.” Yes. Yes, “oversight.” I don’t think they just forgot to program that as a lethal element. It feels like an adjustment made by play testers, because I genuinely think if they hadn’t done this, Super Contra’s reputation would have gone from “meh” to outright scathing on account of extreme difficulty. There’s just not enough room to fight it without those being nerfed. Once again, the coin-op feels like it fails to make the best use of the vertical screen.

And it’s not like the top-down sections of Super Contra stand out in any way. They’re short, unmemorable, and generic. When Super Contra drifts aimlessly away from its bread & butter, hell, it could be ANY top-down game. The level design is so basic that, all by itself, it turns Contra as a franchise from coattail wearer to coattail rider. Like the previous game has to catch up to sh*t like Ikari Warriors. I’m not slamming Ikari Warriors. I’m saying Konami had a good thing going and threw the brakes on for no good reason. Those top-down levels feel like you’re running through hollow boxes and only occasionally have to change directions, but otherwise, they make for boring set-pieces. It doesn’t matter if you’re fighting aliens. They don’t feel alien. It’s especially jarring because the side-scrolling levels do a good job of that even when things like a normal helicopter shows up that you have to blow up. At only five levels, the game is pitifully small, but only three of those levels offer the type of action that feels like the sequel you want Super Contra to be. The word “super” was overused in gaming, probably thanks in large part to Super Mario Bros. In the case of Super Contra, it does such a bad job of feeling like an evolution of the Contra concept that calling it “super” feels like a lie. It also doesn’t help that this is also the owner of the first bad level in Contra. Or, more accurately, the first bad side-scrolling level. This level:

You can’t see it, but that guy is shooting me.

Hey, let’s make visibility a major challenge factor! Trees in the foreground that block your view. What a desperate move for a game that feels like, after a solid first level, it just lost faith in the formula. The first level is rock-solid. The fourth level is rock-solid. Levels 2, 3, and 5 stink. Super Contra is just fundamentally not fun 60% of the time. It’s not even the case of the NES version out-classing it (though that’s absolutely the case yet again). On its own, the set-pieces are much less memorable. The bosses are. The level design feels uninspired and arbitrary. I literally can’t believe Electronic Gaming Monthly named this the 9th greatest arcade game of all time. Apparently they did in 1997. So.. what you’re telling me is they only played 9 arcade games, right? Was the first Contra one of them? Because I’d rather play that. Nothing blocks me from seeing bullets in that game, and there’s no dull, far-too-basic top-down sections in that one. Was it a typo? Did they mean Contra? Because this is a cookie cutter action game that briefly becomes a Contra sequel. But it doesn’t last. EDIT: Come to think of it, it doesn’t have as much jumping as the first game did. Even the side-scrolling stages usually only offer one path and no options or flexibility.

Okay, FINE, the last boss is pretty damn cool looking. But, the giant heart was unforgettable. I’m not sure I’ll remember this next week. I’ve beaten this before.. sober.. and for the life of me I couldn’t remember what the hell the last boss was. Also, the game ends on the lame-ass top down sections. So deflating.

Easily the most fascinating aspect of the arcade version of Super Contra is that, completely unprompted, it feels like a game that’s grasping at straws. As if it’s some kind of knock-off game instead of the sequel to a bonafide milestone in gaming. I’ve never seen anything like this, but actually, it totally makes perfect sense. They didn’t wait long enough to make a sequel, and since this came out a month before the NES/Famicom Contra released, they had no way of knowing what Contra was about to become. Hell, they didn’t even know that after it came out. Contra on the NES did good, but it wasn’t even one of the seventy-five NES/Famicom games verified to have sold a million units. That’s something even I didn’t realize when I wrote the previous reviews: at the time, Contra was something of a cult hit, not a hit-hit. I assumed it was a massive hit, but Konami alone had at least six NES/Famicom games outsell it. At least, and likely even a couple more. Contra was a sleeper that, in the decades since, woke up as a giant. But that took time. And that’s why Super Contra turned out so bland. Konami didn’t have enough time to observe the type of reaction and feedback Contra, as a coin-op or a home game, would have. You need that to make a GREAT sequel. All sequels are fan service, after all.

It’s a f’n vertical screen, and they still screwed up everything. Look at this! THE SCORE COVERS THE BOSS! Did you guys even care? This isn’t a nit-picky thing. It’s immersion you’re messing up. In an action game, if you don’t have immersion, you don’t have sh*t!

It’s taken three decades and a lot of historical reevaluations for NES Contra to reach the phase it’s at, where it’s mostly agreed upon that it’s one of the greatest video games of all-time. As recently as Contra Anniversary Collection five years ago, which is when I REALLY got into the original games, I didn’t realize what it accomplished. I just thought it was a really fun game. Safe bet Konami had no idea what they had either. It happens in gaming more than you would think. Namco didn’t realize what made Pac-Man work. Super Pac-Man and Pac & Pal proved that. Super Contra proves Konami didn’t have a clue either. Unlike the original, this can’t even fall back on “it’s only bad in comparison to the superior NES game.” I don’t think it’s actually a well-made game in general. This feels even more cramped than the first coin-op Contra. And, just like the first coin-op, that squeeze doesn’t come with a sense of tension. The jumping is not as good as before. You can’t even jump over a gun you don’t want, and there’s no jumping in the top-down sections. That button is used for the one screen-clearing bomb they give you per stage. Bosses and “event” enemies are spongy now, too, a genuine first for the franchise since the MSX game technically came after this. The only legit positive is the machine gun now fires rockets as bullets. Hey, that’s cool, but this is just not as fun as its own game or as a sequel. Super Contra is mostly boring, and that’s where it’s stuck, forever. At least we’ll always have the NES version.
Verdict: NO!

SoCalledSuperPART OF THE CONTRA REVIEW SERIES!
IGC Review of Contra (Arcade)
IGC Review of Contra (NES)
IGC Review of Contra (MSX)
IGC Review of Super C (NES)

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