
	Platform Arcade Genre Shoot 'em Up Publisher Capcom Developer Capcom Released 1984
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Vulgus

Everyone has to start somewhere when going into game development, and for Capcom, they opted to put out a nice little space shoot 'em up for the arcades when they made the transition into creating video games. This first entry into the market was a very simple shooter called Vulgus that had players piloting a tiny, little ship, and just shooting up whatever scrolled down the screen at them.

The whole point of the game was to survive as long as possible, and rack up the best high score that one could. The background of the game would simply scroll between a backdrop of a planet, then outer space, and continue this pattern while getting increasingly difficult until the player had run out of lives (they had three of them). All the while, players would shoot up incoming weapons, either with their ship's guns, which had an unlimited supply of ammunition, or with bombs, which the ship had a limited number of, but could be replenished by flying over little "Pow" icons that would float down the screen from time to time.

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Looking at Vulgus, it's a noticeable improvement over many games in the genre that proceeded it, and marks a time when one could see generational improvements in games as the likes of older titles like Galaga and Galaxian were being supplanted by the likes of Vulgus and Xevious. While the game was a vertical-scrolling shooter, it was unique in that the screen could

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also scroll a bit to the left and right if players moved far enough in those directions, making it feel like Vulgus was slightly less on the rails than many other games in the genre.

Over the years, Vulgus has received a few nods as being Capcom's first game, and it's "Pow" icon has gone on to appear in countless other games from the publisher. There was a time when Capcom was looking to rerelease the game on the NES, but that plan was scrapped, and we didn't see Vulgus make its way to consoles until it was included in one of the publisher's classic gaming compilations. In 2001, however, Capcom decided to release Vulgus as freeware on the PC and PDAs, so now just about anyone can play the game if they like.

Mr. Nash

June 23, 2010