FixEight

FixEight is a 1992 arcade machine by Toaplan, the studio that was effectively writing the textbook on Japanese shooters at the time. This is not a conventional vertical shmup with a ship, though. FixEight is a top-down action game in which you run around on foot, shoot in every direction and fight through waves of enemies — its closest relative is Toaplan's own earlier Out Zone.

The title refers to the eight playable characters. Each carries a different weapon with a different personality: one fires a narrow, heavy beam, another a wide spread, a third trades range for area damage. Your choice therefore changes the shape of the whole run — a short-range gun forces you to push forward, a spread gun rewards backing off and clearing space. Weapons level up through pickups and drop a level when you are hit, so progress is a constant struggle to keep your firepower from sliding back to the starting popgun.

The game is hard, as most Toaplan games are. Enemies appear from every side including behind you, bullets travel fast, and the screen fills quickly. Learning it means learning layouts rather than having fast fingers. The co-op is worth noting: almost no other Toaplan game of the era let three people play at once.

Today FixEight is mainly for genre fans. It is less polished than Out Zone, the difficulty is unfair in places, and the pace never lets up. But if you like top-down run and gun and do not mind dying, you get a fast, loud and surprisingly varied game that squeezes more out of its eight characters than it needed to.

On oldgame.cz FixEight starts directly in your browser, with no download and no installation.