Ambush

Ambush (1983) is the very first game by Tecfri of Barcelona — one of the earliest attempts by Spanish engineers to break into the arcade business. It worked: the game was licensed to Nippon Amuse for the Japanese market, no small calling card at a time when Japan ruled the arcades.

You sit behind your own starfighter looking into the depth of the screen — a pseudo-3D perspective of the kind the big Japanese arcade machines would make famous a few years later. A mission has three phases. First the take-off: you roll down a runway, build up speed and pull up at the right moment. Then combat — waves of asteroids, flying saucers and formations straight out of Galaxian sweep toward you, swelling with a surprisingly smooth zoom effect. And finally the landing, comfortably the hardest part of the whole game. You can accelerate and brake at any time, an unusual piece of freedom for the era.

Judged purely as a game, it is thin. There is no destination, only survival and a score, the enemy waves soon start repeating, and the sound is almost absent — a few timid effects surface only rarely. In 1983 an enemy zooming out of the screen was a genuine technical statement; today it reads as a curiosity.

But precisely as a curiosity it earns a few minutes: it documents the moment Europe beyond the traditional powers took a swing at the arcades, and the take-off and landing give it a rhythm of its own that straight shooters of the day did not have. You can try it on oldgame.cz right in the browser, no installation needed.