Space shooters dominated the arcades after Space Invaders created thousands of addicts in 1978. The next few years saw a multitude of variations on the theme adding new mechanics and improving on the graphics and one such title released in 1980 was Phoenix. You piloted a spaceship and had to destroy alien birds that flew around the screen in formation. The big difference with Phoenix was the introduction of boss levels where you had to destroy an alien piloted mothership.

Phoenix really mixed up the game-play and made the shooter action a bit more engaging for people well accustomed to arcade shoot ‘em ups. The game was split into rounds with five stages and the first featured waves of murderous birds firing missiles and dive bombing you. You controlled a ship at the bottom of the screen and could move left or right to avoid incoming fire and let go with rockets to take out the enemy. The developers, Amstar, added a force field mechanic so you could press the shield button and enjoy a few seconds of invulnerability. While the shield was up any birds that collided with you would die. The shield had a recharge which meant you had to wait a few seconds after using it before you could use it again.

Things got interesting when you reached the third stage and were faced with a number of eggs which hatched into alien birds. You could only kill these ones by hitting them square in the belly, too far right or left and they’d only lose a wing. The second stage was basically a repeat of the first and the same could be said about the fourth which repeated the third. The final stage, the fifth, was the big boss stage where the mother ship came down. It fired waves of the smaller birds at you and the object was to destroy the shield protecting the alien in the middle and then score a direct hit to win. If you managed to destroy the mother ship then the entire five stage process repeated, but with a higher difficulty level, in an endless cycle until you were beaten or gave up.

It was released in a stand up cabinet and as a cocktail table and you could play 2 player but it was turn about. The simple controls were left, right, force field and fire. It was one of the first full colour games and the addictive game-play made it a popular title.

Although it may have looked a lot like Space Invaders it really did bring several new ideas to the table. The erratic movement of the birds made the challenge a lot tougher and the force field mechanic was a nice foil to the potential frustration caused by the birds trying to collide with you. The varied levels with different threats was a big improvement on a simple upwards sliding difficulty curve and the boss levels were soon to become standard fare in gaming generally.

It was heavily ripped off with loads of clones but there was also an official sequel called Pleiads. The US publisher, Centuri went out of business in the videogames crash of the 80’s and Japanese publisher Taito now own the worldwide rights.