Eliminator (2 Players, set 2)

Arcade Video game published 43 years ago:

Eliminator (c) 1981 Gremlin.

Eliminator is the title of Gremlin Industries' last arcade game, released in 1981 and licensed to Sega for Japanese manufacture and distribution, It was also the only vector game Gremlin ever made, and ran on their distributing company's G80 Vector hardware which they had previously released their own Space Fury on. Additionally, Eliminator is also the only four-player vector game ever made.

It is a multi-directional shooter in which players must use four buttons to take control of their ship: two to make them rotate left and right, and two more to make them fire and accelerate. Players pilot a space ship around the playfield and must destroy alien drones. The ultimate goal is to evade and destroy the Eliminator, a huge asteroid base. The players fire causes any enemy that is struck (with the exception of the Eliminator itself) to rebound and careen off in another direction.

There is only one way to destroy the Eliminator, fire a cannon blast down the trench into its center. This can be done directly or via a ricochet. Failure to destroy the Eliminator after a preset time causes the center to activate a drone that flies out of the Eliminator to shoot down the player with a destructive energy blast. The playfield becomes enclosed in an invisible barrier that bounces shots and ships off it, thus increasing the chances of death. Once the Eliminator is destroyed, the game restarts with a tougher set of enemies. The four player version allowed four players to simultaneously make attack runs on the Eliminator while trying to evade or destroy various other opponents. In four player mode, players must also dodge other player's ships.

- TECHNICAL -

[Upright 2-Player model]

Sega G80 Vector hardware

Main CPU : Zilog Z80 (@ 4 Mhz)
Sound Chips : Discrete circuitry

Screen orientation : Horizontal
Video resolution : 224 x 256 pixels
Screen refresh : 40.00 Hz
Palette colors : 256

Players : 2
Control : 4 buttons

- TRIVIA -

Eliminator was released in Japan in December 1981 and in North America in April 1982.

Also released as :
"Eliminator [Cocktail 2-Player model]"
"Eliminator [4-Player model]".

- UPDATES -

There are two '2-player' revisions of this game:

* Set 2 : The oldest version of eliminator had small, fast and accurate firing drones. There was a 'counter' for each player that counted down from 30. The screen text is green. purple.

* Set 1 : The latest version is the most commonly found version. In this version, the drones are more colorful, larger and dumb. There are no counters, just a score for each player. The screen text is green.

- STAFF -

Designed and programmed by : Larry Clague, Mike Hendricks

- PORTS -

* HANDHELDS:
[US] Sony PSP (nov.16, 2006) "Sega Genesis Collection [Model ULUS-10192]": as an unlockable extra.
[EU] Sony PSP (feb.2, 2007) "Sega Mega Drive Collection [Model ULES-00556]": as an unlockable extra.