Swoop over mountains in our homage to Jaleco’s shooter. Mark Vanstone has the code in the latest issue of Wireframe magazine, out now.
Taking the shooting action of Galaxian from a few years earlier, Japanese developer Jaleco released Exerion in 1983. What helped Exerion stand out from other shoot-’em-ups of the period, though, was its pseudo-3D background, which used both a scrolling landscape and moving background elements to create the illusion of depth. This was quite an achievement considering the hardware of the day, and it’s still an eye-catching effect even now.
Exerion’s pseudo-3D effect helped the game stand out from the crowd of other shooters packed into arcades at the time.
Three main elements
To recreate Exerion’s scrolling in Pygame Zero, we need to break the effect down into three main elements. The first is the scrolling stripes that form the landscape’s base layer. These are followed by the elements that roll over … // Read more: original article.
