Xenophobe

Xenophobe is a run and gun arcade game, that was released by Bally Midway in 1987; it runs on the company's MCR-68 hardware and was the first game to ever have its monitor split into three sections (one for each player). The players must use three 8-way joysticks (with three buttons), to take control for three of nine characters - Mr. M. Brace, Col. Poupon, Dr. Kwack (1P), Col. F. Truth, Mr. Fogg, Dr. Udderbay (2P) and Dr. Zordirz, Mr. Eeez and Col. Schickn (3P), who are all on a mission to eliminate as many Ridley Scott-inspired aliens as possible before their energies (or the current starbase's self-destruct timer) run out. When the game idea was initially conceived by Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman, they had envisaged it with an Indiana Jones-like tomb-raiding theme; however, when Howard Shere was assigned to be programmer, his love of science fiction meant that it underwent a transformation into an Aliens spoof. Also, because it earned a substantial amount of money during the first week of testing, Shere was taken off the game, to work on a pinball project; his replacement, Gary Oglesby, came up with the name, which is described upon the title screen as: "one who has a deathly fear of anything alien". However, the production scheduling was pushed ahead - and as a result, there are several items in the game that players may pick up, but do not appear to serve any purpose (much like several items in Namco's The Return of Ishtar, which had been released in that previous year).