Fire One

Fire One is a first-person perspective action game, where the player’s objective to sink the opponent’s fleet of submarines and ships. This game was published in 1979 by Exidy, one of the biggest developers of arcade video games in the 70’s and 80’s. The company was owned by the founder, Pete Kauffman before he died in 2015. In 1983, Exidy innovated the notable Crossbow game, which was the first of its kind in the arcade game scene. The company was also the first to incorporate digitized sound into their video games. Other game titles similar to Fire One created by the same company are Crash, Star Fire, Top Gunner, Destruction Derby, and Death Race.

Most action arcade games are predominantly shooter games and titles in this category are either set in space or on land. Fire One is an arcade shooter game that features watercrafts as shooter vessels. The battlefield can be seen through a 2-D scrolling visual, simulating a periscope view, which allows you to get a proper look of the enemy ships and torpedoes approaching your fleet on a screen divided into three parts. The entire battlefield (both above and below the sea) including all warships can be seen in the uppermost section, the middle part shows reserve weapons, and the third section displays the periscope view. You are armed with 8 torpedoes at the start of each level, once you fire one of them they take some time to get charged before they can be used again. When the tube is ready to launch, a full bar turns from red to blue and a yellow coloured torpedo reappears in the middle screen.

An interesting feature allows your submarine to go into stealth mode by diving deep under the sea when you press the dive button. Your sub will no longer be seen on the third part of the screen, which means your opponent will not be able to see you or predict your next move. However, your moves are limited while hiding at the bottom of the sea. When either yours or the enemy’s fleet is destroyed, the game ends and another level starts with each parties starting again with 8 full torpedoes. To extend gameplay in each timed level, extra coins have to be inserted. Points are calculated based on how many ships are sunk and each level gets more complicated as you progress. Two players can play simultaneously against each other or one player can play against the computer. The original ‘coin-op’ arcade cabinet is divided into two parts to accommodate two players.

Fire One has all it takes to qualify as a good arcade game but cannot be said to be among the best of its kind. During the course of the game, the screen shows a lot of activities, too much actually. Although the developer’s aim is to show more than one view of the game, it can be a little bit too distracting keeping track of vessels when all the three parts of the screen are being monitored. Both the sonar and scrolling viewpoint is unnecessary because once the game commences, you will barely be able to focus on anything other than firing weapons and protecting your fleet of subs from getting hit. The graphic fairly good, the good thing is it comes in contrasting colour which allows easy identification of all components in the screen. If you are looking for a challenging video game with little or no noise, then this naval-themed arcade game one is for you.