Release date(s) JP: October 1992 Initial release date October 1992 Publisher Namco | Arcade system Namco NA-1 Developer Namco Platform Arcade game | |
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Composer(s) Shinji Hosoe
Takayuki Aihara Genre(s) Vertical scrolling shooter Mode(s) 2 players can play simultaneously Cabinet Upright, cabaret, and cocktail Similar Jane's F/A‑18, Ard Core: For Answer, Ard Core 4, Digital Combat Simulator, Ridge Racer | ||
Fighter & Attacker, originally titled F/A (エフ/エイ, Efu/Ei) in Japan, is a vertical scrolling shooter arcade game, which was released by Namco in 1992. The game runs on Namco NA-1 hardware, was the first game on this hardware to be released outside Japan (Bakuretsu Quiz Ma-Q Dai Bōken was the first overall) and is the only game from the company that showed the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screen in its attract sequence with vertical orientation (the two titles that displayed it previously, Tank Force and Steel Gunner 2, both displayed it with horizontal orientation).
Gameplay
Players must take control of two of sixteen different aircraft, all of which have different firing and bombing patterns. Unlike many other vertical scrolling shooters where players have a set amount of lives (like Namco's own Xevious), both players' chosen aircraft only have one life, with an energy bar (marked "ARMOR") at the bottom of the screen, which immediately ends the game for that player if depleted. However, players can earn extra energy by reaching certain scores - and if the arcade's operator has set the "CONTINUE" setting in the game's options menu to "ON", they will be able to continue by inserting another coin within ten seconds of their energy bar becoming depleted, giving them the opportunity to select a different plane if they did not get very far with the one they had originally chosen.
The selectable aircraft are based on a number of real-life fighters, including the Japanese F-15J and F-4EJ, the American YF-23A, F-16 AFTI, YF-22A, F-14D, A-6E, F/A-18E (for which the game was originally named), X-29, A-10A and F-117A, the Swedish JA-37, the British GR.5 and MRCA IDS, and the French ACM and MIR 2000)
As with The Return of Ishtar, all six World Stadium games, and Cosmo Gang the Video, two players can play on one credit. However, unlike Cosmo Gang the Video and Bakuretsu Quiz, both players' scores are not combined.