Caliber 50 (Ver. 1.01)

Arcade Video game kit published 35 years ago:

Cal.50 - Caliber Fifty (c) 1989 Romstar.

Caliber Fifty is a multi-directional scrolling shoot-em-up for one or two players taking on the roles of captured US pilots who have been taken prisoner during the Vietnam war in 1972. The pilots must escape the prison compound by battling enemy soldiers and vehicles, including tanks planes and helicopters.

The game is very similar in play to SNK's Ikari and Heavy Barrel games, with players able to fully rotate their on-screen characters to fire and move in all directions. Players are initially armed with a machine gun and limited number of grenades but power-ups - including a rocket launcher, a flamethrower and grenades - can be found in the destructible wooden crates that litter the stages.

Enemy vehicles such as a plane can also be commandeered and the stages take place both above ground in the Vietnamese jungles and below ground in hidden tunnels. Caliber Fifty is a quite short but very challenging game, with constantly spawning enemies attacking from all sides.

- TECHNICAL -

Game ID : UH

Main CPU : Motorola 68000 (@ 8 Mhz), M65C02 (@ 2 Mhz)
Sound Chips : X1-010 (@ 16 Mhz)

Screen orientation : Vertical
Video resolution : 240 x 384 pixels
Screen refresh : 60.00 Hz
Palette colors : 512

Players : 2
Control : dial
Buttons : 2

- TRIVIA -

Released in September 1989 in the USA.

All the speech in the game are the voice of Jun Aida.

- STAFF -

Produced by : Jun Fujimoto
Directed by : Noboru Miyamari
Screen play by : Noboru Miyamari
Based on the Novels by Viet Nam 1972.
Art direction : Mitsuhiro Takeda
Music direction : Tak Suzuki (Goblin Sound)
Original music composers (Goblin Sound) : Hiroshi Taguchi, Tak Suzuki, Zero Yotsumoto
Sound effects editor : Noboru Miyanari
Sound mixer / editor : Tak Suzuki (Goblin Sound)
Sound programmer : Noboru Miyanari
Titles : Mitsuhiro Takeda
Hardware designer : Nobuyuki Nonaka
Custom chip designed by Digital Magic Lab.
Programmer : Noboru Miyanari
Character designers : Mitsuhiro Takeda, Asako Kumura, Miyuki Kasajima
Background designer : Tomokazu Sunaga
Special effects : KII System
Controller designers : Yoshikazu Ikegai
Assemblers : Akihiro Aranaga, Toshio Sasho and many others
Marketing : Tohru Ishikawa, Yasuhiro Ota
Parts department : Mikio Harada, Masayuki Iwata
Graphic tools designed by : Hiroyuki Watanabe
Development system designed by : Keiji Ishikawa

- PORTS -

* CONSOLES: