Video Game Vintage Title: Space Lords

Space Lords

Space Lords is an arcade game released by Atari Games in 1992. It is a first-person perspective space combat video game. The gameplay allows the player to fly in any direction.

This multiplayer game provides each player with their own cabinet with two screens each and separate controls. Two cabinets can be connected by a link cable, for a total of four screens with potentially eight players. A single cabinet has a red ship on one side, and a green ship on the other. A second cabinet connected to the first has a blue ship and a yellow ship.

Space Lords Plot

n/a

Space Lords Gameplay

To play, a player starts the game as the Pilot of the ship, controlling the direction and speed at which the ship travels, and shooting the lasers and nukes directly ahead at whatever was in the center of the screen. Incoming nukes can be avoided using the "Hyperspace" control.

Another player can serve as Co-Pilot/Gunner (CPG) for each side. The CPG has a targeting reticle used to fire off-center at targets of opportunity. The targeting reticle does not remain stationary relative to the player's ship, but stationary relative to the surroundings, which means that it races to the edge of the screen as soon as the player's ship makes a turn, if the CPG does not compensate. The addition of a CPG enables the "Cloak" button on the CPG's side and adds one extra nuke and one extra hyperspace for the ship.

The game is played in an "arena". Each arena in the game is spherical, and traveling long enough in one direction brings a player back to the spot he started from. Arenas have two environmental elements: nebulae and asteroids.

Players can hide in nebulae to be undetectable on opponent players' radars. The computer-controlled ships are also be fooled by this. The player in the nebula, however, has his own radar jammed, so they can not see what was approaching (if anything), and the nebulae does not stop lasers. Also when hiding, the player is not replenishing his dwindling energy stores.

Asteroids are massive spheres of rock which stops a ship and deals damage in the process. They stop lasers (though not the blast radius of a nuke), and so are the only "cover" in the game.