Bosconian was a multi-directional shooter arcade game that was developed by Namco in 1981. It runs on Namco Galaga hardware but with a video system like that used in Rally-X.
The object of Bosconian is to score as many points as possible by destroying enemy bases and ships. The player controls a small fighter ship that can move in eight directions and can fire both forward and backward. Each level consists of a number of green space stations that must all be destroyed to advance to the next level (a semi-transparent mini-map helps identify their location). Each station consists of six cannons arranged in a hexagon, surrounding a central core. The player must either destroy all six cannons or shoot the core to destroy a station, and in later levels the core is capable of defending itself.
Throughout the game, a digitized voice alerts the player to various events:
Similar to Galaga, Bosconian "rolls over" from Level 255 to Level 0, causing the game to behave abnormally during this level. If the player can successfully complete Level 0, the game continues to Level 1 as though the player had started a new game. Also, after the first ten levels, some of the previous levels will repeat in placement of the space stations (the only differences are the direction of the opening in the stations, the number of asteroids astray in the levels, and an increase in the number of enemy ships needed to be fought off).
It was ported to several computer systems, including the Sharp X68000, MSX, Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and later appeared in several of Namco's Namco Museum compilations for PlayStation and other consoles. The game has also been seen in Jakks Pacific's TV game controllers. A home computer sequel, Bosconian '87, was released in 1987 for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. An arcade sequel of sorts called Blast Off was released in 1989 only in Japan, a vertical-scrolling shooter which had more in common gameplay-wise with Namco's own Dragon Spirit than with Bosconian.
Bosconian was the first game to include the now-standard continue screen and timer at the end of a game, giving a player who just lost his/her last life a certain number of seconds to insert more money to continue the game from the same level. The continue feature could also be disabled entirely for arcade owners who did not want it by changing a DIP Switch setting. However, there is some debate over whether Bosconian or Tempest should be credited as the first video game to introduce the concept of continuing. Tempest is the older of the two games, but it did not have a continue screen and timer. Instead, it gave the player a choice of starting levels at the beginning of the game, up to the highest level currently unlocked on the machine. If it was the same player as the previous game, then he/she could opt to "continue" by selecting the same level where the previous game ended. Any future Tempest player was also free to start a new game at the higher level, though, whereas once Bosconian's continue timer expired, the next person to play had no choice but to start over at Level 1.
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