Scramble

Origins[]

Scramble is an arcade game released in February 1981, developed by Konami and distributed in North America by Stern Electronics.[1] It is a scrolling shooter that puts the player in a series of areas with different landscapes to navigate through. The player's jet can fire up to four missiles to the right side of the screen and drop up to two bombs at a time at ground targets. The player needs to avoid being hit by various obstacles and keep an eye on their fuel level in order to get as far as possible into the game.

Game modes support solitary and two players alternating turns. It was ported to the Vectrex in 1982 by GCE, plus it spawned a sequel of Super Cobra, which had four more areas than Scramble and a much higher difficulty level.

Gameplay[]

Player(s) control a ship that must infiltrate the five levels of the Scramble system and destroy the Base in the sixth.

The first level has the player over a hilly terrain. Players must dodge or destroy enemy missiles shot from the ground, along with Mystery bases and fuel tanks that will increase the player's fuel level.

The second level is inside a cavern, with the same targets of bases, rockets and fuel tanks that are found on the ground from the first level, although there is also a cavern ceiling and swarms of enemy U. F. O.s to contend with.

The player exits the cavern and is assaulted by a storm of flamoids in the third level. The flamoids are fast and indestructible and must be dodged; the same ground targets from the first two levels are also present as the player ducks for cover in these low-lying areas. The fourth level flies the player over a large metropolis. Missiles fire at the player from the tops of buildings and there are the usual ground targets present as well. The fifth level sends the player into tunnels, which can be difficult to navigate through and the only targets this time around are fuel tanks.

The final level pits the player on an attack run on the Base in a deep valley; after the destruction of the Base, the player begins again on the first level, which fuel is consumed faster and the rockets take off at a closer angle towards the player's ship.

Scoring[]

Flying--10 points per second
Missile--50 points on ground, 80 in air
Fuel tank--150 points
Mystery base--200 points
U. F. O.--100 points
Enemy base--850 points
Bonus ship--10,000 points

Legacy[]

Scramble was the first horizontal shoot-em-up to gain significant popularity and is seen as a predecessor to Konami's Gradius. In fact, Konami has occasionally canonized Scramble as an entry in the Gradius series, such as in the Gradius Galaxies opening sequence and the Gradius V DVD. They later went back on it in the guidebook of the Gradius Collection for PlayStation Portable, where it is listed as part of Konami's "Shooting History" instead of the "Gradius History."

It was also one of the most bootlegged arcade games of the early 80s. Scramble entirely lacked copy protection, and its relatively simple arcade board (two Zilog Z80s and two AY-3-8910 sound processors) made it possible to port Scramble to most contemporary arcade systems, such as the Namco Galaxian arcade board. Inversely, it was also possible to port most other arcade games to Scramble's arcade board.

Ports and Other Versions[]

Three arcade versions of Scramble are known to exist: The Japanese version by Konami and two international releases by Stern Electronics. The first Stern version is mostly identical to the Konami version, with some graphical changes, including a complete redesign of the Base and the removal of Konami’s name from a building. The second revision, however, has some significant differences. While the first two versions barely have an attract mode demo, the third version has a rough, but substantial demo. Some maps were modified to add, remove or change certain enemies. This is because the fuel consumption was sped up in the revision, with the fuel consumption in the first loop being comparable to that of the third loop in other versions. The second version also changes the Base stage, which initially had a base so low in a pit that it all but requires the player to sacrifice a ship to destroy it. The second Stern version raises the pit to where the ship can escape.

Despite its influence, Scramble received just 2 official contemporary ports, with Parker Bros. deciding to pass it over in favor of Super Cobra. Those ports were for the Vectrex and the Tomy Tutor

Most of the differences are minor with the Vectrex port, such as a slight bomb trajectory difference and that the majority of the graphics are in vector for the Vectrex version (along with there being no color). There are three skill levels to choose from; the higher the starting level, the faster the fuel consumption, the launched rockets will aim for the player's ship, the U. F. O.s travel faster and the caverns are tighter in game three. The U. F. O.s in level two are proportionally bigger and slower than the arcade version, thus being easier to hit, the Mystery bases score values are always 200 points, rather than being random on the original, there is a section in the fifth area where the player's bombs will pass through a cavern wall, which didn't happen with the original version. This version is based on Stern's second revision with the wider elevated pit in the base.

Since the 1990s, Konami has re-released the game a number of times, starting with the Konami Arcade Classics compilation for the PlayStation, which was a direct emulation of the arcade version. Other direct emulations of Scramble were released on the following compilations/series

Oretachi Gesen Zoku, a budget line of classic arcade games released by Hamster Corporation for the PlayStation 2. This version came with a bonus DVD featuring a superplay of the game.
Konami Classics Series: Arcade Hits, a DS compilation
Game Room, a now-defunct service for the Xbox 360 and Windows
Xbox Live Arcade for Xbox 360
Arcade Archives for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch
Konami Anniversary Collection: Arcade Classics for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and Windows 10 (This version is identical to the Arcade Archives version.

There are two additional ports of note. The game was ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2002 as part of Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced. This is not a direct emulation, but a faithful port of the game. If you input the Konami Code, you can unlock an enhanced version of the game with in-game music, updated graphics and two additional ships.

The other port is on the similarly titled Konami Collector's Series: TV Arcade Advanced, a plug-and-play console released by Majesco in 2004. The version of Scramble here is notable in that it is based on Nintendo Entertainment System hardware, despite the game never initially releasing on the platform.

Links[]

Stage Select review (8/10)

This article uses material from the Scramble Vectrex Wikia article and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.