The Tail of Beta Lyrae
The Tail of Beta Lyrae is a horizontally scrolling shooter for the Atari 8-bit family published in 1983 by Datamost. It was designed and implemented by Philip Price with music by Gary Gilbertson. Price and Gilbertson later collaborated on the Alternate Reality games.[1]
| The Tail of Beta Lyrae | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Philip Price |
| Publisher(s) | Datamost |
| Designer(s) | Philip Price |
| Composer(s) | Gary Gilbertson |
| Platform(s) | Atari 8-bit |
| Release | 1983 |
| Genre(s) | Scrolling shooter |
Plot
The Tail of Beta Lyrae puts the player in the role of "a wing commander assigned to the Beta Quadrant." Alien forces have occupied the mining colonies in the asteroid fields of the Beta Lyrae binary star system. The player pilots a fighter through the fields, destroying the alien invaders and their installations.
Gameplay
As the landscape scrolls past, the player uses a joystick to move the ship around the screen, avoiding attacks from laser and missile emplacements and destroying buildings, power generators, vessels and alien miners. The landscape and configuration of objects is generated pseudo-randomly. Objects within the levels may change after the user has owned the game for a certain amount of time.
Development
Philip Price stated that the "tail" in the game's name "came from a play on telling a tale and the setting of a binary star system which only had fragments of rock orbiting it because of the tidal forces brought on by the two suns; these fragments are the tail of the system's creation." [1]
See also
References
- Hague, James (1997). "Halcyon Days: Interviews with Classic Computer and Video Game Programmers". dadgum.com.