Goldrunner
| Goldrunner | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Microdeal |
| Director(s) | Steve Bak & Pete Lyon |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64 |
| Release date(s) |
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| Genre(s) | Shoot 'em up |
| Mode(s) | single-player, multi-player (alternating) |
Goldrunner is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up developed by Microdeal in 1987 by Steve Bak, Pete Lyon and Rob Hubbard, who made the music. The game was originally developed for the Atari ST and ported to Amiga and Commodore 64. Goldrunner is one of the great classics on the Atari ST, especially for its spectacular audiovisual achievements at its time.
Gameplay
It is a freely vertically scrolling shooter game where it is possible to fly back and forth as in the seminal Defender. The player is steering a golden (hence the title) spaceship equipped with two laser cannons, which is hovering over huge spaceships whose ground-structures he has to destroy. The ship has a speed booster to accelerate.
Visuals
This shoot 'em up features an extremely fast and fluid vertical scrolling, which was seldom achieved on Atari 520/1040 ST hardware, as it did not support hardware-based soft-scrolling. The distinct graphical style of the game added to its popularity.
Music and soundeffects
The then famous Commodore 64 composer Rob Hubbard made the music of the game. The theme melody is taken from the game Human race (4th part). There are digitized voice samples mixed into the music, like the famous "Welcome to Goldrunner!".
See also
- Goldrunner II (1988), programmed by Alex Herbert and John Dower.