Space MAX

When that intro fires up with those blinking pixels and synth music that sounds like it was composed on a calculator, you know right away you're in for something seriously retro. Space MAX from 1992 is a top-down shooter where you pilot a little ship across an endless scrolling arena, blasting enemy drones out of the sky.

The game is simple as a kiss. You fly forward, shoot at things trying to ram your craft, grab power-ups that drop from fallen enemies. Keyboard controls with no fancy ship tilting or special tricks — movement, fire, point and one extra button. It's not Raiden, it's not even Tyrian, it's uncomplicated and straightforward. Screen wrap when you fly off the edge and pop back on the other side — that alone saves you from frustration in the rougher stretches.

The graphics are raw as a geometry textbook. Your little ship is rendered, I'd say, minimally and the creators clearly worked up effects on a shoestring budget — the explosions are solid for the era, but the background is more functional than beautiful. The sounds are classic DOS fare, the kind that sound like they're coming through an old modem, nothing you'd frame on your wall.

Space MAX lives and breathes through its simplicity and the fact that it's not afraid to be straightforward. It doesn't hook you with a story, doesn't dazzle you with graphics, it hooks you with waves of enemies and the mounting pressure of harder and harder waves. Today it's more of a curiosity — an arcade shooter with no grand ambitions, playing its own game regardless of what the competition's doing.

If you love pure arcade shooters without frills and without pretense, Space MAX is worth a quick run in your browser without a second thought. It won't change your world, but you'll get a solid half hour out of it. No pretense, no false hope, just a ship and plenty of enemies. Exactly how a 1992 game was supposed to think.