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General Analysis

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Andres Saladrigas edited this page Mar 11, 2018 · 52 revisions

Genre

Andro Dunos is a shoot'em up, which means that it involves constant movement and fast-paced action. The player must advance through different scenarios while firing at enemies and dodging obstacles. It requires high reflexes and hand-eye coordination, as the number of foes can result overwhelming at times, even with the power-ups that you can acquire along the levels that upgrade your combat capacities.

Genre History

The origins of the Shoot'em up genre dates back to 1962 with Spacewar!. the game was developed by Steve Russell and other MIT students in a PDP-1. It was eventually released on arcades in the 70s.

Spacewars!

Spacewars!

Later on, games like Space Invaders (1978) and Asteroids (1979) became viral popularizing the genre. By the 80s and the 90s this genre became popular encouraging developers to create a huge variety of shoot'em up games, specially in Japan.

Space Invaders

Space Invaders arcade

Similar Games

The genre was very popular at the time. Some similar games were:

  • Asteroids (1979)

Arcade Asteroids

  • Space Invaders (1978)

Space Invaders image

  • Salamander (1986)

Salamander

  • Gradius (1985)

Gradious

  • R-Type (1987)

R-Type

  • Last resort (1992)

Last Resort

  • X-Multiply (1989)

X-Multiply

  • Tengai (1996)

Tengai

Market positioning

As we know, the videogame industry started with Atari by Nolan Bushnell in 1972. When Andro Dunos was launched in 1992, shoot'em up games were really popular. Arcades were popular at the time. compared with home consoles specs, arcades where far more powerful, which leads to beter graphics, sounds and more complex games. Andro Dunos was originally realeased for the arcade machines, but was later on published in the NEO_GEO home console system. Sadly the Console didnt sell too mucho because of the price. Various versions of the game were released in different versions and places. Some versions were:

  • Europe MVS vr.1
  • Europe MVS vr.2
  • US MVS vr.1
  • US MVS vr.2
  • Asia MVS vr.1
  • Japan MVS vr.1
  • Japan MVS vr.2
  • Japan MVS vr.3
  • NEO_MVS
  • Japanese Hotels

Technical profile

The Neo Geo

Andro Dunos was developed for both MVS and AES versions of the NeoGeo, which is an Arcade machine developed by SNK. Shortly after the release of the Arcade cabinets, SNK developed the Neo Geo home console Neo Geo AES. It's important to note that the NeoGeo MVS (Multi Video System) was the Arcade version and that the NeoGeo AES (Advanced Entertainment System) was a console to play at home those games that were made for the NeoGeo Arcades.

The Neo Geo has a 16 bit architecture, both in the Arcade and home console versions. As the console version of the Neo Geo had almost the same hardware as the Arcade version, the console had the same capacity as many other Arcade cabinets in the market, making the Neo Geo the most powerful (and expensive) console of its generation.

Technical Specs

As we will be making a tribute of the Andro Dunos Arcade version, here are the hardware specifications of the Neo geo MVS.

Neo Geo MVS Arcade cabinet top

CPU: Motorola 680000

  • Bit instructions: 16/32 bits
  • Clockrate: 12MHz

Coprocessor: 8-bit Zilog-80A

  • Clockrate: 2.5MHz

RAM:

  • Total RAM: 84 KB
    • Main VRAM: 64 KB
    • Pallette Memory: 16 KB
    • Fast Video sprite RAM: 4 KB

Sound chip: Yamaha YM2610

  • Number of channels: 15
  • Master clock: 8MHz

Display: Horizontal

  • Resolution: 320 x 224 pixels
  • Aspect ratio: 4:3
  • Maximum number of sprites on screen: 380
  • Screen refresh rate: 59.1856060 Hz
  • Color pallette: 65,536 colors

Controls:

  • Maximum number of players: 2
  • Gameplay: Joint screen
  • Stick: 8-way
  • Buttons per player: 4 (A,B,C,D)

Neo Geo MVS controls

Interesting facts:

  • Andro Dunos is one of the smallest games in terms of memory (thirty-four megabits only)
  • Andro Dunos is by far the tinyest shooting game ever made for the system of SNK.

History of the game

Andro Dunos was developed by Japanese software company Visco Corporation and published in 1992 by SNK Corporation. Visco was founded by Tetsuo Akiyama in 1982. The company originally developed various games for Arcade machines developed by Taito and other platforms such as NES, Nintendo 64 or NeoGeo. Nowadays Visco manufactures gambling electronic devices such as Slot machines.

Andro Dunos was released both for the Neo Geo MVS (Arcade version) on 15/6/1992 and the Neo Geo AES (home console version) on 17/7/1992. The game was released at the same time both in Japan and USA. For more info about MVS and AES, check the technical profile point of this Wiki page.

Original Development Team

  • Producer: Tetsuo Akyiama
  • Director: Don Gabacho
  • Assistant Director:Keisuke Usami
  • Programmer: R.Mutoh,Danna City
  • Character design: Yuji Masuda, Tel.Y Yasushi
  • Sound Composer: Ken'ichi Kamio

Version of release: 7.17.92

Date of Release: July 17, 1992.

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