Omega Race
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Omega Race was an arcade video game released in 1981 by Midway. More than 35,000 machines were created, with the average machine taking in about $181.00 per week in 1982. It was often one of the top ten money-making arcade machines in any given week around that time period.
Taking place in the year 2003, the game involves using a spaceship to destroy enemy droid ships. The player's ship is controlled using a spinner to rotate the ship's direction, a button for thrusting, and a button for firing lasers. The enemies that the player must destroy or avoid are drone ships, commander ships, two types of space mines, and shooting star ships. Extra ships were usually awarded at 40,000 and 100,000 points, but this default setting could be changed by the machine's owner. The gameplay has been compared to Asteroids in that the game uses black and white vector graphics (the only vector game that Midway ever created) and the ship is moved using a thrust button. Unlike Asteroids, the ship wasn't allowed to warp to the other side of the screen; it would bounce off of an invisible barrier on the edges of the screen that would briefly appear when something hit it.
In 1982 the editors of Consumer Guide magazine published a book entitled How To Win At Video Games; it featured detailed strategies for 9 of the most popular arcade games of the time, such as Pac Man, Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Qix, and others. Omega Race was chosen as one of those 9 games, mostly due to its approachability; "any unskilled player can pop a quarter into the machine and stay up there for up to 20,000 points," quotes the book.
Versions of the game were released for some of the popular home video game consoles of the early and mid 80's, including the Atari 2600 and Colecovision. However, when Midway released its three Arcade Treasures collections for the XBox, Playstation 2, and other home gaming consoles manufactured in the new millennium, Omega Race was absent from them, while many of the less popular Midway games of the early 80's were included.
Anyone who wishes to legally play an exact replica of the game on their home computer can do so by obtaining a licensed game ROM and installing the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) or a similar arcade game emulator, although illegal unlicensed ROMs can often be found on the Internet. Java applets of the game can sometimes be found at various webites, although the game is often not emulated accurately and the legality of these applets is sometimes in question.
