A space arena, inertia that won't let you stop, and a swarm of enemies encircling you from all sides. Omega Race is the only major vector shooter ever made by Midway, and on the Commodore VIC-20 it offered unusually elegant movement in the style of a cosmic joust.
Unlike most shooters of the time, here you don't fight in an open field but in an enclosed arena bounded by walls off which you bounce. Your ship is subject to realistic inertia, so both accelerating and braking require foresight. You destroy enemy ships, avoid mines and use bounces off the walls for tactical maneuvers. This creates a brisk ballet of movement that has more in common with racing than with static shooting.
Omega Race was released by Midway in 1981 and became its only vector arcade cabinet. Vector graphics gave the game the clean, sharp lines typical of the era of games like Asteroids or Tempest. For home conversions, including the one on the VIC-20, the vector aesthetic had to be translated into raster form, but the essence of the game - the bounces and inertial movement in the arena - was preserved.
Culturally, Omega Race belongs to the titles that showed the potential of arena shooters and elaborate movement physics. The VIC-20 version was moreover supplied with an add-on controller meant to support more precise turning of the ship, which testifies to how seriously Commodore took bringing the arcade experience home.
Omega Race is proof that already at the beginning of the eighties a good game could build a simple idea - inertia and bounces - on a solid and still entertaining foundation.
Why play it: An elegant arena shooter with realistic inertia and bounces off the walls, a unique vector classic from Midway in a home rendition.
Game 2 of 9 for Commodore VIC-20
