Convicts in Space

Back in the 90s, the conventional industry published a series of excellent space shooters with considerable depth of story--games like the Wing Commander series and Privateer. They seem to have gone out of fashion at retail, but if you remember them fondly, Cellblock Squadrons may be just the ticket.

Pulse-pounding Space Shooter for Serious Shmuppers

N.B.: You might prefer Jets'n'Guns Gold--$10 more, but almost double the levels and length of play of the original game.

We carry a lot of space shooters of various types, and it's easy to get blase about them sometimes--but at other times, you fire up a game and think "holy crap." Jets'n'Guns is a side-scrolling, Xevious-like game with loud, excellent music from alt-rock band Machinae Supremacy, nice eye-candy, and a huge number of upgrades for your ship, including fifty-something weapon types. It's not for the faint of heart, though; even if you crank the difficulty down, it's a tough game to beat. It's exceptionally well done, though, as the reviews bear out...

Pulse-pounding Space Shooter for Serious Shmuppers--Now Updated to "Gold"

We carry a lot of space shooters of various types, and it's easy to get blase about them sometimes--but at other times, you fire up a game and think "holy crap." Jets'n'Guns is a side-scrolling, Xevious-like game with loud, excellent music from alt-rock band Machinae Supremacy, nice eye-candy, and a huge number of upgrades for your ship, including fifty-something weapon types. It's not for the faint of heart, though; even if you crank the difficulty down, it's a tough game to beat. It's exceptionally well done, though, as the reviews bear out...

Now updated, Jets'n'Guns Gold is double the length of the original version, with 21 new levels, 17 new weapons, 7 new customizable ships, and 70 new enemies--a whole lot of gameplay for the price.

Space Shooter with Clever Increase in Challenge

Where Scavenger excels is in its difficulty system, and its level of polish. The controls are very smooth--everything is controlled with the mouse, and the levels introduce new features and problems gradually. Scavenger's difficulty system is particularly clever: rather than simply making enemies more numerous or powerful, each difficulty level ads some new feature to complicate your life. For example, at the second level, there's gravity, constantly dragging you down to the bottom of the screen, so you must be firing your jets periodically to prevent contact with lower walls (any wall contact damages your shields); at the next, you have a limited amount of fuel for each level, and have to husband it carefully. This considerably increases the game's replay value--playing it on a higher difficulty level presents new challenges, not just more stuff.

Turn Extraterrestrials Extra-Crispy

Remember the Wing Commander series? Space sims, fast action, evolving story line... How come they don't make games like that any more?

Well, turns out they do, at least in Poland. Space Interceptor really satisfies the space sim jones, features great graphics (albeit wooden voice acting), and its only flaw, really, is its short playtime. But for $10 bucks, who can complain?

Strap into one of six unique starfighters and get ready for the best space combat action to be found in this solar system: Void War. Simple, easy-to-learn controls let you focus on flying and fighting through awesome 3D battlefields. Void War is a unique blend of space-combat simulation, old-school arcade-style action, and run-and-gun thrills of first-person shooters.

Space Trading Goes Gonzo

Take an Elite-style game like Flatspace II. Set it in a cartoony universe where Zombies and Ninjas are waging an interstellar war. Tool around in a "starship" that's more like a Buick with a stardrive and lasers. Wage space battles against, among other things, space-going galleons and pterodactyls, and trade goods like cheese, paper, and kittens--no "industrial goods" or other boring stuff here. All to a loud, frenetic neopunk score--that's Ninjastarmageddon!.

As far as the gameplay goes, Ninjastarmageddon is familiar: You control a single ship, and tool around the galaxy, trading goods, fighting battles, going after pirates as a bounty-hunter, going pirate yourself, and finding and looting derelict ships.