Shooting Arcade

Shooting Arcade is one of only two 2600 games to use the light gun (Sentinel was the other), but was never released. This is a shame because Shooting Arcade is a creative light gun target game similar to the Point Blank series, and would have been unique among 2600 games. Interestingly it appears that Shooting Arcade was not developed in the US, but rather in Mexico by a company called Heuristica. How Axlon was invovled is unknown, but they may have simply sub-contracted the game out to Heuristica instead of doing it themselves.

Shooting Arcade is really made up of six different scenes that are put together in different orders depending on the level you've selected. Each scene has its own unique theme, rules, and objective, making Shooting Arcade essentially six games in one. Depending on which skill level you choose, the scene's attributes change to make it more or less difficult and the timer at the bottom of the screen counts down more or less quickly. The status bar at the top of the screen shows the number of shots you have left, your current difficulty level, and the number of targets left. You start each level out with a limited amount of ammunition depending on the difficulty level (40, 10, 5, 2, or 1). You can continue from the last screen you completed an infinite amount of times by simply pressing the reset button. This is a handy feature as the game get very hard at the later levels...

Generally, you can review the controls (keyboard) setting during each game in the screen before it starts. Use the arrow keys and “Z”, “X”, “A”, “S”, “Q”, “E” buttons to play, or customize yourself with your gamepad or keyboard.