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Planet Smashers

Planet Smashers finally delivered an original 2D Shooter to the Pro System late in its life. Your spaceship, which oddly looks like an airplane, has the grave task of defending Earth from an alien armada. Planet Smashers has some nice features like level warp codes, laser upgrades, cloaking devices, and interesting bosses. You even have the burden of defending Earth's shield from asteroids and alien ships. The back of the box boasts, "awesome sound effects", but the main laser noise is mind-numbingly irritating. After you defeat the game, you are treated to a text ending commanding you to play Alien Brigade, which makes little sense since you just defeated the alien mothership.

Year

1990

Developer

James Zalewski

Publisher

Atari Corporation

Orientation

Vertical

SCREENSHOTS

PHYSICAL

HISTORY

Planet Smashers is a 1990 vertically scrolling shooter video game developed by Datafast Computer Systems and published by Atari Corporation for the Atari 7800. Released late in the console's life cycle, it bears references to Atari's own Alien Brigade, which was developed concurrently.

Gameplay

Players control a spaceship who must pass through seven levels to stop an alien invasion. The spaceship navigates through asteroids, which can be destroyed by shooting, while also defeating alien enemies on the way. There is no visible end to every level; players must seek out colored capsules and obtain them in a certain order in order to be able to warp to the end and fight the boss enemy. Power-ups such as temporary invincibility, repaired shield and better weapons are available.

Reception

Raze magazine gave the game a 76/100 score, praising its fast-paced gameplay and simple but great graphics, but criticized its limited use of the console's sound capabilities. Atari Explorer praised the game's gameplay and excellent graphics, though the reviewer noted the gameplay was too fast-paced to its detriment.

GAMEPLAY VIDEO

ACHIEVEMENTS 1 set

Tracked by RetroAchievements and earned in an emulator that reports to it. A game tracked on more than one machine gets a set for each, because they are different lists earned on different hardware.