Cabal

Cabal is an action shooter released in 1988 by the Japanese studio TAD Corporation, which quickly became synonymous with hectic arcade afternoons in gaming halls. The player controls a soldier crouched at the bottom of the screen while waves of enemies, tanks, and helicopters approach from above. The joystick moves the character sideways, one button ducks behind barrels and crates, and a second button fires and throws grenades at fortified positions, towers, and other targets that gradually appear on the scrolling battlefield.

The game's charm lies in combining a side view of the character with a top-down view of the battlefield, letting the player watch incoming bullets and falling enemies in an almost comic-book style, with hits accompanied by oversized explosions and animated debris. Cabal kicked off a small subgenre of shooting action games in which the hero constantly ducks for cover and pops back out – a few years later titles like NAM-1975 and Wild Guns followed in its footsteps. The difficulty rises steeply and coins disappear quickly, which was desirable for arcade operators, but that's exactly why players remember the tense battles over their last life and the effort to rack up as many points as possible before running out of lives.

The game was ported to home platforms by a number of publishers, including versions for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Amiga, each with its own adjusted controls without the arcade gun and with slightly different difficulty. Even today, Cabal is valued for its straightforward, arcade-style adrenaline and striking graphics, which make it a pillar of late-1980s arcade hall entertainment and a reminder of a time when a few buttons and a joystick were enough for perfect fun.

Why play it: Cabal offers pure arcade, tense shooting with a striking visual style that defined an entire subgenre.