Blast Off is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game

Arcade game

An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...

 that was released by Namco

Namco

is a Japanese corporation best known as a former video game developer and publisher. Following a merger with Bandai in September 2005, the two companies' game production assets were spun off into Namco Bandai Games on March 31, 2006. Namco Ltd. was re-established to continue domestic operation of...

 in 1989 only in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. It is the sequel to Bosconian

Bosconian

is a free-roaming multi-directional scrolling shooter arcade game that was developed by Namco and released in 1981. In contrast to the more linear shooter games of its time, Bosconian allows the player's ship to freely move across open space that scrolls in all directions. The game also features a...

, which was released 8 years earlier.

Description

In Blast Off, the player controls a ship, facing the top of the screen, that can move freely while the background scrolls down, bringing enemies in to view. The player may destroy enemies for points.

There are two buttons used. One is used to fire circular lasers, while the second button is used to change the ship's firing pattern. The patterns are:

• Red: two lasers in a spiral pattern
• Blue: one laser straight ahead, one behind
• Yellow: one laser straight ahead, one left, and one right
• Green: two lasers diagonally forward (one to the left and one to the right), and one straight behind.

By holding down the button, the ship will fire more powerful, spherical lasers.

Even though the game is the sequel to Bosconian (which used a synthesized voice saying "Blast off!" at the beginning of every round), Blast Off had more in common gameplay-wise with Namco's own Dragon Spirit

Dragon Spirit

Dragon Spirit is a 1987 vertical scrolling shooter arcade game released by Namco and Atari Games . It runs on Namco System 1 hardware, and was later ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Amstrad CPC, Commodore Amiga, Commodore 64, DOS, Atari ST, Sharp X68000, TurboGrafx-16 and ZX Spectrum...

than with Bosconian. This is especially noticeable in the 3rd area of every world, where the player's ship becomes enormous. Despite the gameplay differences, the connection with Bosconian was emphasized in the marketing of the game, with the hexagonal space stations from Bosconian appearing in the title of the game cabinet and in Namco's press literature, and also making appearances in the game itself. The game is also worth noting for its use of Engrish

Engrish

refers to unusual forms of English language usage by native speakers of some East Asian languages. The term itself relates to Japanese speakers' tendency to inadvertently substitute the English phonemes "R" and "L" for one another, because the Japanese language has one alveolar consonant in place...

 phrases, such as "To push start only 1 player button", "Go next", "Congraturations" and "Entry your name".

The game ran on Namco System 1

Namco System 1

The Namco System 1 arcade system board was first used by Namco in April 1987 and was a major enhancement to the previous Namco System 86 arcade system board. Due to its release date, it was originally called Namco System 87 according to the Namco Museum series.Yokai Douchuuki was the first game to...

hardware.