Space Duel
| Space Duel | |
|---|---|
 American arcade flyer for Space Duel | |
| Developer(s) | Atari Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Atari Inc. |
| Distributor(s) | Atari Inc. |
| Designer(s) | Rick Maurer, Owen Rubin, Steve Calfee, Dave Sheppard |
| Platform(s) | Arcade game |
| Release date(s) | 1982 |
| Genre(s) | Multi-directional shooter |
| Cabinet | standard, cocktail |
| CPU | 6502 |
| Sound | POKEY x 2 |
| Display | Color Vector |
Space Duel is an arcade game released in 1982 by Atari Inc. It is a direct descendant of the original Asteroids, with asteroids replaced by colorful geometric shapes like cubes, diamonds, and spinning pinwheels. Space Duel is the first and only multi-player vector game by Atari. When Asteroids Deluxe did not sell well, this game was taken off the shelf and released to moderate success.
The player has five buttons: two to rotate the ship left or right, one to shoot, one to activate the thruster, and one for force field. Shooting all objects on the screen completes a level. Space Duel, Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe and Gravitar all used similar 5-button controlling system.
Legacy
Space Duel is included within the Atari Anthology for Windows, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 and the PlayStation version of Atari Anniversary Edition. A port of Space Duel was released on the Atari Flashback 2, reproducing only the single-player mode. Space Duel was made available on Microsoft's Game Room service for its Xbox 360 console and for Windows-based PCs in May 2010.
David Plummer holds the official world record for this game with a maximum 623,720 points.[1]
In popular culture
A Space Duel cabinet is featured on the album cover for The Who's It's Hard.
References
External links
- Space Duel at the Killer List of Videogames
- Space Duel at the Arcade History database
- Owen Rubin's (the creator's) home page