#caliber .50

[arcadebroke]

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Video game wallpaper time. Today's assortment features games both legendary and deserving of more legend. No one could forget Altered Beast, which was not only a spectacle of its day in arcades but a prominent port for two separate Sega consoles; Caliber .50, as I mentioned in this post, is a quality game which in many respects exceeds the more well-known entries in its genre like Ikari Warriors and Commando; Magic Sword was one of the later-released games that I actually tried to master in the arcades; and Salamander (aka Life Force), a great game saddled with a confusing history and names.

This lot is a bittersweet one, for while more wallpapers are always nice, this will be my last set of arcade wallpapers for the foreseeable future. It isn't that there aren't more games that are deserving--Defender, Mappy, Cobra Command and others--but after 72 arcade wallpapers, I am instead moving ahead to console and computer games, of which I've already created 18 (to be posted at later times.)

As always, these are artistic representations to capture the feel of the games and don't show exact gameplay scenes. They have been added to my online gallery, but you can use the links below to get these at their full 1920x1080 resolution (with proper scanlines):

Altered Beast - Full size wallpaper Caliber .50 - Full size wallpaper Magic Sword - Full size wallpaper Salamander - Full size wallpaper

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Arcade flyer for Caliber .50 (Taito, 1989)

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The finale of Memorial Day weekend posts deals with possibly the finest run-and-gun game you may never have heard of, Seta's Caliber .50, released in 1989. If you took Ikari Warriors, Guerilla War or Heavy Barrel, vastly improved the animation, graphics and music and increased the difficulty, you would have this game.

The attract screen provides a well-done cinematic that lays out the story: in 1972, a pair of pilots were shot down in the "Far East" (read: Vietnam) and captured. As the game opens, we are told it is twenty years later (1992, three years after this game was actually released) and a mission to rescue the two P.O.W.s fails when the U.S. helicopter is blown out of the sky. The explosion, however, damages your living quarters, providing an opportunity to escape. Armed with nothing more than a machine gun you grab off the ground, you have to make your way to a secondary point for evacuation. Oh, and this time? The enemy isn't taking prisoners. Escape or die trying. With this game, the dying part is far more likely.

Your harrowing journey amounts to one large level, with no breaks or opportunities to catch your breath inbetween. It's punctuated with one-off events such as commandeering a malfunctioning plane (which can only fly in circles and shoot at the enemy until crashing), or more exotic and frankly strange occurrences, like fighting a trio of giant monkeys, which occurs roughly halfway through and is the only "boss" of any kind. Apart from the relentless onslaught of enemies that must be killed, you won't find much in the way of repetition here, which is a welcome change from other games of this ilk.

To help you attempt feebly to survive, Caliber .50 employs a strange power-up system. Killing certain enemies--as well as destroying crates--releases bullets. Your ammo is unlimited, but picking up these bullets charges up a weapons meter which, when full, changes your machine gun to a rocket launcher and then later to a flamethrower. It also provides your only meager defense--minor attacks that hit you will be blocked, at the cost of part of the meter. I suppose if you wrapped yourself in enough bullets it could serve as some kind of armor, but I'm not sure I would want to use explosive ordinance as a deflection system.

One thing that should be evident from the screens here is the graphical beauty inherent in this game. Owing to the two years of technology between this and the trio of popular overhead run-and-guns listed above (and also to a surprising effort by Seta--a minor player at best in the games industry), the game looks great in screenshots and even better in action.  Everything animates smoothly, and the details are impressive. You'll come across non-gameplay-impacting features like farm animals and turtles, which can be scared or even shot. Observe how many different death poses are on display in the final screenshot here. The soundtrack is high quality as well and takes an unusual approach: heavy on synthesizers with more of an adventurous feel than military action. The first portion of the game in particular, sounds more at place in a Vangelis concert than amidst overhead shooting.

The two drawbacks of the game are its insane difficulty and relatively short length. If you can finish this on one quarter--or even on four--I salute you. The effort pays off reasonably well, with an appropriately hectic escape battle and a cheerful (albeit brief) ending. I only ever found this in one arcade myself, but it can be emulated (as with other rotary joystick games, you'll have to work with the controls.) If you're up to the very hefty challenge, you'll find Caliber .50 to be a quality gaming experience.