War of the Worlds (arcade game)
Encyclopedia
War of the Worlds was a monochrome vector arcade game created by Tim Skelly
of Cinematronics
in 1982.
The game was basically a shooting game where the player controls a tank object at the bottom of the screen and shoots towards the top of the screen at descending Tripods robots in a first person perspective. The player only has movement, cannon fire and shields to protect them from the Tripods' lasers. It is believed to be based on the H.G.Wells story of the same name.
The game was developed as a 3D version of Space Invaders but overcame the poor reception it received at the 1982 AMOA show. It was never put into wide production and a little less than ten actual units were made. Though different, the game was deemed too easy by some and games that are too easy do not receive much play. In addition to that the hardware was not fast enough to run the graphics at a good rate. The game experienced lags that made its control somewhat difficult and not exciting to play.
On an interesting note, the game while it debuted on black and white vector monitors, was actually written for a color vector monitor.
Tim Skelly
Tim Skelly is an arcade game designer and programmer who worked for Cinematronics from 1978 until 1981. He designed a series of pure action games using black and white vector graphics...
of Cinematronics
Cinematronics
Cinematronics Incorporated was a pioneering arcade game developer that had its heyday in the era of vector display games. While other companies released games based on raster displays, early in their history, Cinematronics and Atari released vector-display games, which offered a distinctive look...
in 1982.
The game was basically a shooting game where the player controls a tank object at the bottom of the screen and shoots towards the top of the screen at descending Tripods robots in a first person perspective. The player only has movement, cannon fire and shields to protect them from the Tripods' lasers. It is believed to be based on the H.G.Wells story of the same name.
The game was developed as a 3D version of Space Invaders but overcame the poor reception it received at the 1982 AMOA show. It was never put into wide production and a little less than ten actual units were made. Though different, the game was deemed too easy by some and games that are too easy do not receive much play. In addition to that the hardware was not fast enough to run the graphics at a good rate. The game experienced lags that made its control somewhat difficult and not exciting to play.
On an interesting note, the game while it debuted on black and white vector monitors, was actually written for a color vector monitor.