Exerion

A nice vertical shooter for SEGA's SG-1000. Shows the great graphics programmers could squeeze out of an 8 bit processor and so little memory. An attractive, varied landscape with mountains, buildings, trees, (well, okay, only one of the above at a time) and the like scrolls toward you, away from a horizon. Enemies fall from the sky above toward the surface - if they touch it and escape, you loose points. (when was the last time you played videogames for points?) you have two weapons to shoot them with - bullets and 'heat seeking' missiles. You can fire bullets non stop, but missiles cost you points. Like all classic shooters, however, this game is endless - you just keep shooting, and enemies just keep coming. This is a slight annoyance to a person like me who was raised trying to 'beat' games. but overall, an excellent cart. Find a rom on the internet and play. you'll be suprised what a 4mhz processor
can do.

Like so many games in that era, it's based on two 8 bit Z80's clocked at 4 MHz.

The SEGA SG-1000 -cart, mentioned in another writeup is a (not so faithful) conversion of the game, there were also conversions for the NES and MSX systems.

The two weapons in the arcade version are 'slow' double shot bullets (infinite ammo) and a 'very fast' gun (limited charge, recharges with every double shot kill).

The world of Exerion is a pseudo-3D world, the background reacting on your movement. The movement of your ship was made difficult by implementing inertia. Pretty amazing graphics with lots of details. The enemies were quite smart too, sometimes cheating by reappearing from the bottom or the sides of the screen.

It's emulated by MAME, very playable, but the colors are wrong ;-)