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Index › 1980s › Rear Guard
Rear Guard cover art

Rear Guard

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Rear Guard

A horizontal scrolling shoot'em up written by John Anderson and published by Adventure International for various 8-bit platforms.

Year
1982
Developer
Adventure International
Publisher
Adventure International
Players
2P
Orientation
Horizontal

SCREENSHOTS

HISTORY

Rear Guard is a horizontally scrolling shooter written for Atari 8-bit computers and published in December 1981 by Adventure International. Neil Larimer created the game with assistance from Sparky Starks. It was ported to the Apple II, TRS-80, and TRS-80 Color Computer.

Reception

The game sold 3,400 copies by June 1982, appearing on Computer Gaming World's list of top sellers. David H. Ahl of Creative Computing Video & Arcade Games said in 1983 that "to maintain your sanity, a joystick is necessary" for the Apple version of Rear Guard. He concluded that it was "a fast-moving colorful game that brings Defender home to the Apple".

In March 1983 Rear Guard won Softline's Dog of the Year award "for badness in computer games", Atari division, based on reader submissions. The magazine reported that although the Apple version was "just fine", "According to the ballots, Rear Guard [for the Atari] was bad beyond belief.".

GAMEPLAY VIDEO

RELEASES 4 systems

System
Platform
Year
Notes
APL2
Apple II
1982
Original release
TRS80
TRS-80
1982
Original release
A8BIT
Atari 8-bit
1982
Original release
COCO
TRS-80 Color Computer
1983

PHYSICAL RELEASES 1 box

Rear Guard box art, TRS-80
TRS80 TRS-80

GAME DATA

Orientation
Horizontal
Players
2

SOURCES

Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
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