Mayday

Mayday is a horizontal shooter video game developed by Hoei in 1981. Hoei was a video game developer and publisher founded in 1977. The Japanese company started out as a video game company and later went into toy production. In 1982, Hoei was changed its name to Coreland and in 1989, it was acquired by Bandai. Bandai ran the company mainly as home video games publisher but the company also develops few games under its developer division called Banpresoft. In 2008 Bandai and its subdivision were merged with Namco changing the brand’s name to Bandai-Namco. After the merger, Bandai-Namco started dealing mainly on toys and other amusement games. Some of the game published by the company are Jump Bug (1981), Super Robot Taisen 64 (1999), Skydiving Extreme (2001), and Lode Runner (2000).

Mayday flying and shooter video game that’s share similar features with Defender. Defender is a horizontal shooter game developed by Williams Electronic in 1981. A player takes control of a space ship and tries to survive attacks from several waves of enemy ships. In contrast to many space shooter game, Mayday features a ship that flies horizontally from the left side of the screen to right, while simulating a scrolling background. The spaceship is armed with a weapon system which allows it to shoot horizontally and diagonally at assaulting ships.

The player’s mission is to go from one planet to another and fight wave of enemy ships. Some game stages feature submarines that emerge from the bottom of the screen and players must aim their weapons and shoot diagonally at the ship in this wave. Other stages in the game have ships flying around the field of play and players must constantly move their ships to avoid crashing into them. The third stage is a bonus round of sort, there is a wave of slow moving assaulting ships which is easier to get through.

There are cavern walls, above and below the ship and players must avoid crashing into them. Other objects to avoid at all cost during the game are the projectiles shot by any of the assaulting ships. These projectiles can destroy a player’s ship even when the shooter ship has been destroyed. There is a special feature of the game that slows the game to slow down for about 5 seconds so that a player can get through a heavy wave of assaulting ships. At the top of the screen, a player’s score is displayed and it increases each time an assaulting ship is gunned down. Instead of ships displayed as lives, there is a life meter that shows the health of the ship. The more a player’s ship takes hits or crashes into moving objects, the life meter reduces. When the life meter is empty, the player loses the game and starts from the beginning. A hexagon at the top of the screen simulates the field of play and shows how close hostiles are to the player’s ship.