Sky Kid

Sky Kid is a horizontal scrolling shooter arcade game, that was released by Namco, in 1985. The game is actually represented by a trio of titles - including the original, and two later revisions of the same game. The original game was the last game to be released on on the Pac-Land hardware (a Motorola M6809 and a Hitachi HD-63701, run at 1.536 MHz) - but was also the first game from the company to allow two players to play simultaneously. In that following year, Namco redesigned the game using their then-new System 86 hardware (two Motorola M6809s and one Hitachi HD-63701 running at 1.536 MHz) and released it as Sky Kid Deluxe. This version contained all the elements from the original, and introduced new characters, along with four new missions inserted among the original twenty-one. That same year, Namco developed a version of Sky Kid for the Famicom, that was very similar to, but slightly different from, the originals. This version was brought back into the arcades, under the name of Vs. Super Sky Kid (sometimes referred as Vs. Sky Kid, or Super Sky Kid) utilizing Nintendo's Vs. System arcade hardware (and four other games ran on this hardware).

All three games are fundamentally the same. Both players are piloting biplanes, in a First World War-era battle. They both have two abilities at their disposal. They can fire a gun with an unlimited amount of ammo (but a limited range), and they can perform a loop that makes them temporarily invulnerable. Their goal is to travel across the terrain, dodging all attacks that come from the air as well as from the ground, collect a bomb that is planted somewhere along the ground, and drop it on the mission target to destroy it. Some missions contain multiple bombs and targets - many missions also contain hidden Namco items (such as Pac-Man, Inky, the Special Flag, and a Pooka), and bonus point opportunities.

The Famicom version of the game was converted for play outside Japan by SunSoft. This conversion was also converted for play on the Game Boy and contained in the compilation Namco Gallery Vol. 3. Among the three versions of the game, only the original arcade version has been commonly included in Namco's various compilation titles. Sky Kid Deluxe has only been released in one compilation that was only released in Japan, Namco Collection Vol. 1 for Microsoft Windows (not to be confused with Namco Classics Collection Volume 1, which was released ten years after the original Sky Kid game).

Differences in Sky Kid Deluxe

 * 1) Sky Kid Deluxe was the first game to run on Namco's then-new System 86 hardware, which used a 512-colour palette (as opposed to the 256-colour palette of the Pac-Land hardware - it was not modified for 2048 colours).
 * 2) The color of the sky is no longer only light blue, but a range of different colors, including blues, grays, and reds.
 * 3) Four new missions (numbered X1 through X4) - have been inserted, between the twenty-one original missions.
 * 4) Snow falls from the sky (only in missions X1 and X3) - which scrolls with the two Sky Kids as they fly to the left.
 * 5) Several new enemies and mission targets have been introduced (one of which cannot be killed by any means).
 * 6) Instead of only one background music track produced by a PSG source, Deluxe has two tracks produced by an FM sound source (a Yamaha YM-2151, running at 3.57958 MHz; it was the first game from Namco to use one).