"Defender Clone" Doesn't Do it Justice
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Yes, the basics of the gameplay derive from Defender--it's a sidescrolling shmup in which you can 'flip' your ship to move and fire either right or left, and enemies approach from both sides of the screen. But Alien Abduction features trippy late-80s graphics, excellent sound and music, 30 levels, and 3 gameplay modes.

Family-Friendly Sidescroller with Cute Marsupials

Dispell is a cute classic sidescroller in which you, an apprentice wizard are attacked by a variety of demonic marsupials--whom you have to "rescue" by zapping them with your wand, than grabbing them before they hit the ground.

It's geared for kids (hence the non-violent theme), but is challenging enough (at least if you crank the difficulty up) for adult sidescroller fans, too. And there's a co-op play mode, too, so you can play with your child, if you like. Good clean fun.

Dracula Twins Is a Hoot

...says one review, and we tend to agree.

Dracula Twins is a charming little sidescroller in which you play either Drac or Dracana, the twin children of Count Dracula, it seems. Graphics are cute and cartoony--apparently, vampires are the good guys. There's a little comic-book intro (a nasty vampire-hunter has got hold of old Dad, and you have to fight your way through various environments to rescue Pater), but of course, story isn't really the point of a sidescroller.

2005 IGF Award Winner
Reinventing the Platformer with Physics

At first glance, Gish might appear to be a classic arcade-style game, something like Sonic or Mario Brothers. First glances can be deceiving: yes, this is a sidescrolling platformer, but the actual gameplay is very different, because it's based on a physics engine. Gish, the tar ball who is the title character, needs to get momentum to get up and over objects, controls how high he jumps by compressing and extending himself, can move objects by gaining momentum and running into them, walks on walls and ceilings by making himself "sticky", and so on.

Physics Sidescroller with Beautiful Czech Animation
2006 Game of the Year, Game Tunnel

In recent years, something interesting has been happening to the sidescroller--that old, even musty standard of the early game industry--in the independent game scene. Retaining the 2D sidescrolling motion and controls of the genre, clever developers have been freshening and renewing the gameplay, with the use of physics and graphic techniques like particle effects to create different and interesting puzzles and situations. Gish was perhaps the first to do so--but in Gumboy we have a beautiful and worthy successor.

Ball Labyrinth Meets Videogames

You may, from your youth, remember ball labyrinths: wood boxes with knobs on two sides you use to tilt a platform above the box, with the platform consisting of a wooden maze--with holes or slats in some areas which your ball, if you aren't careful, will fall through. You start at one location on the maze, and by tilting it carefully, try to get your ball to the exit. (The things we used to do for entertainment before videogames...)

Hazard Ball obviously owes a debt to those old puzzles; you control a ball in a maze, controlling it with the arrow keys; it has a degree of momentum, and the longer you hold a key down, the faster it goes, which is useful getting up ramps and such. Points are earned for collecting (running into) jewels and other objects, and there's the whole panoply of things you expect in straightforward videogames: gates opened with keys found elsewhere, powerups that give you special ability, hazards, moving opponents who try to damage you or knock your ball into a hole or opening into space.

Pulse-pounding Space Shooter for Serious Shmuppers

N.B.: You might prefer Jets'n'Guns Gold--$10 more, but almost double the levels and length of play of the original game.

We carry a lot of space shooters of various types, and it's easy to get blase about them sometimes--but at other times, you fire up a game and think "holy crap." Jets'n'Guns is a side-scrolling, Xevious-like game with loud, excellent music from alt-rock band Machinae Supremacy, nice eye-candy, and a huge number of upgrades for your ship, including fifty-something weapon types. It's not for the faint of heart, though; even if you crank the difficulty down, it's a tough game to beat. It's exceptionally well done, though, as the reviews bear out...

Pulse-pounding Space Shooter for Serious Shmuppers--Now Updated to "Gold"

We carry a lot of space shooters of various types, and it's easy to get blase about them sometimes--but at other times, you fire up a game and think "holy crap." Jets'n'Guns is a side-scrolling, Xevious-like game with loud, excellent music from alt-rock band Machinae Supremacy, nice eye-candy, and a huge number of upgrades for your ship, including fifty-something weapon types. It's not for the faint of heart, though; even if you crank the difficulty down, it's a tough game to beat. It's exceptionally well done, though, as the reviews bear out...

Now updated, Jets'n'Guns Gold is double the length of the original version, with 21 new levels, 17 new weapons, 7 new customizable ships, and 70 new enemies--a whole lot of gameplay for the price.

Forget that punk Ecco; in Laser Dolphin, you're a dolphin with a frickin' laser strapped to your back--a lean, mean, marine fighting machine dealing death to all sorts of evil sharks, turtles, and aliens. Or to put it another way, this is an entertaining, cheerfully off-beat sidescroller with some 70-odd levels, in which level design--ringing the changes on just about every possible problem the palette of the theme and the obstacles the game includes can offer--is a major strength.

What's your goal? Well, aliens have kidnapped the Prime Minister (of what nation it isn't clear--Oceania, perhaps; we have always been at war with the aliens). And only Laser Dolphin can save the day. Okay, its thin, but sidescrollers aren't about deep emotional story-telling, anyway. Go, Laser Dolphin, go!

What happens if you are computer science student at Stony Brook, you're a serious fan of old NES and Genesis sidescrollers, you have a somewhat twisted sense of humor, and you have way too much time on your hands? Well, what happens is something like Sludge Crawler.