Assault: A truly unique arcade experience from the late 80s

In the late 80's arcades were already starting to die their eventual death. A large part of the reason why this was the case is because home consoles were becoming much better and it would only be a few years before there was very little difference between an arcade game and the home console version.

I didn't yet have a driving license at this point in my life but whenever we would happen upon an arcade, I would go into them and while it didn't really occur to me at the time, looking back it was evident that this industry was going to be dead soon.

However, there were a couple of games that were so unique that they couldn't possibly be replicated on a home system and Assault is one of those games that even if the home system could replicate the graphics and sound, it wouldn't be able to replicate the controls and that was what made this game so unique and one that I still remember to this day.

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Right there is the only thing you really need to know about it. It had 2 very large joystick controllers that needed to be used together for the game to work at all. You could push forward on both to move forward, back on both for the same effect (But backwards, obviously) and you could turn faster by pushing both sticks in opposite directions. If you pulled out on both sticks at the same time your tank would do a "wheelie" and you could do an area of attack "lob" of sorts to damage multiple enemies in the distance at once.

It sounds simple and perhaps stupid today, but it was pretty damn epic in 1988.

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Another really cool aspect of it was that when you turned the tank the SCREEN would rotate, not the tank and while this was a bit disorienting at first, it started to make a lot of sense as far as orienting yourself was concerned.

Looking back, this game kind of had the look and feel of a lot of later Sega Genesis (Megadrive) games, but again, if they did ever port it, a lot of the fun would have been lost on not having the unique controls. Without the dual-stick joysticks the game would lose a great deal of its appeal.

They did a pretty good job with bosses as well and you can skip ahead to 5:30 to see one of them and how they kind of force you to face them by marking off the path forward with something gigantic that isn't necessarily more difficult than regular enemies, but takes a lot more hits.

This game probably could be replicated today using modern controllers that have two sticks but I think that it is just one of those things that would destroy my fond memories of the arcade cabinet if I were to play it.

The crazy thing about this game is that it was coin operated and it had 11 stages. This is just nuts for an arcade game but I suppose it was designed to be something that you would need to put a few quarters in to get the full experience. Me and my super-nerdy high school friend both loved this game, but were unwilling to spend the, what was probably $5 or so in order to make it to the end.

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As was common with most arcade games at the time, the screen was taller than it was wide and that monster screen was CRT (cathode ray tube) and probably weighed 100 lbs. Part of the reason why arcades were dying a slow death at this point in history was because individual cabinets would sell for thousands of dollars each and without the droves of people going to the arcades with pockets full of quarters there was a better-than-average chance that someone who purchased one of these cabinets was going to lose money on it.

Designed by Namco and originally launched in Japan, the arcade culture lived on for years longer over there than it did here in USA and they released a second game called Assault Plus which I have never played.

Of all the arcade games that I ever played this is one the really lives on in my memories for being truly unique and at least until the late 90's when Assault was released on a PS compilation disk called Namco Museum. I never knew it existed because by that time in my life I was wrapped up in college, drinking, and girls :P

I can only think of two other games that captured my attention as much as this and they are Gauntlet and Cyberball. Both of these games were also released on home consoles but they just couldn't capture that arcade experience on the home systems.