Bosconian

Bosconian is a multi-directional shooter arcade game that was released by Namco in 1981. After Namco succeeded in improving Rally-X with the release of New Rally-X, Namco investigated what other forms of gameplay could be developed to exploit the hardware that New Rally-X ran on. The result was Bosconian.

The focus of Bosconian is to fly around through space in search of large green enemy bases, and blow them up. You pilot a ship that can fire in two directions; in front and behind. But the enemy doesn't simply let you destroy their valuable stations. They send a variety of ships at you, some in formations, in an attempt to stop you from succeeding at your one man mission.

The most notable feature of the arcade is its use of digitized voice samples, which Namco first developed for the game King and Balloon. Despite being picked up by Midway Games for distribution in American, Bosconian never developed a large following outside of Japan. As a result, the only home conversions that it saw were for popular Japanese home computers like the MSX and the Sharp X68000 (which received an altered, graphically enhanced version of the game).

A sequel to this game named Blast Off was released in 1989 in Japan. It was a vertical scrolling shooter, and had more in common with Namco's Dragon Spirit than with its predecessor. The story of Bosconian is followed up by Namco's Famicom entry Star Luster which has completely different game play, but takes place several hundred years after the Bosconian Wars took place.

Story
How the Bosconian Wars started, no one knows. The Federal Council suffered massive losses to the Bosconian enemy's seemingly impenetrable enemy base fortress. But the Federal Council's luck was about to change. A daring plan to send a spy in among the Bosconians finally paid off. The building plans for the enemy bases were finally revealed. The Council set about constructing a prototype Star Fighter, armed with the capability to exploit the enemy bases' weaknesses. With only so much material, and so little time, they could only prepare a few of these precious ships. In order to attract a little attention as possible, they would go in one at a time, and try to launch a strike against the enemy base in each sector of space before the enemy could realize what was happening and retaliate. The Bosconian War was about the close...

Gameplay summary

 * You pilot a Star Fighter that can fly in eight directions, and fires simultaneously in two; in front and behind.
 * Each stage contains a number of Enemy Bases that are visible on the radar alongside the right-hand side of the screen.
 * In order to advance to the next stage, all Enemy Bases must be destroyed, either by hitting all six domes on the outside, or by blowing up the core.
 * The Enemy Bases will defend themselves with shots, and later on, missiles. In addition enemy craft will come along to destroy your Star Fighter.
 * You lose one Star Fighter if it collides with an enemy, asteroid, or space mine, or if it is hit by an enemy shot.
 * The combat computer will alert you to an enemy presence, or if you've been detected by a spy ship.