Written by Welcome back to our occasional series about some of the original video games that
Space Panic Flyer
entertained us when we were growing up in the early days of the amusement arcade. The subject of this article is of some personal resonance for me – it’s possibly the first arcade game I ever played (by which I mean put money into in a public place) and I was really good at it.
Space Panic was released in 1980 and for many it was the first platform game. Donkey Kong fans may claim otherwise, citing the lack of jumping ability for the main character, but we can ignore that pedantry and say that Space Panic was the forerunner of the genre, even if others ay disagree.
It was designed by Universal, a company which had been involved with video games since the very beginning and which later went on to release Mr. Do and Lady Bug in the 1980s. Universal is now known as Aruze.
So the game then; as stated it was the first platformer and it also provided the games industry with a new ability – the main character could dig holes. Digging holes for things to fall into became quite popular for a time as Space Panic’s influence took hold. In Space Panic, the idea on each level is for the our hero to dig holes for marauding aliens to fall into. He must then fill the hole up while the alien is grimly clinging to the inside. Wait too long and it will climb out again and resume it’s mission.
To make things more difficult, each level had to be completed in a certain amount of time or you would run out of oxygen. Later levels would also require you to dig holes on platforms directly above each other – the aliens would only perish if they fell through two in one go.
Space Panic influenced several games over the next few years and many manufacturers ported the game into their own consoles. Panik! was the last descendent released in 1986 for the Commodore 16, BBC Micro, Acorn Electron and the Atari 8-bit.