How to play Crossbow online
- Light gun mode: aim with the mouse and click to shoot. The emulator stands in for Atari’s XG-1 light gun.
- Joystick mode: move the cross-hair with the arrow keys and shoot with Z
- Switch between gun and joystick: F2 (Select) on the title screen
- Start a game: F3 (Reset) or the fire button
- Pause: F4
Gameplay
The Evil Master has stolen a treasure, and a group of adventurers sets out to bring it back from his castle. You never walk with them. Your job is to watch over them as they cross each scene from left to right, and to shoot anything that attacks them. One touch from a creature and an adventurer is gone for good. When the last one falls, the game is over.
The journey starts on a map screen, where you shoot a coloured path box to choose the next stop. There are eight danger zones: the Desert, the Caverns, the Volcano, the Jungle, the Village, the River, the Drawbridge and the Castle Hall. Each has its own enemies, from scorpions and bats to coconut-throwing monkeys, alligators and a fire-breathing dragon. Some scenes also need a helping shot: knock down stalactites to fill gaps in the cave floor, shoot a resting rock to bridge the lava, or cut the drawbridge ropes to get into the castle.
You start with three adventurers. The first time the group survives a zone, a new friend joins, up to a party of eight. The Village and the Castle Hall give no new friends. After the Castle Hall comes the Evil Master himself, beaten by shooting his eyes when they glow red. Bringing your friends past him earns 250,000 bonus points, and the adventure starts again from the map.
Every creature you hit is worth points, from 500 for small targets such as ants and falling rocks up to 2,500 for an alligator at the River. A floating eye of the Evil Master appears once in every zone and is worth 5,000 points.
Tips
- Look ahead of your friends, not at them. Enemies need to be hit before they reach the group, so scan the screen around and ahead of them.
- Do the scenery jobs early. The stalactites, the resting rock and the drawbridge ropes must be shot in time, or your friends have no way across.
- Collect friends while you can. Visiting zones you have not cleared yet adds adventurers, which gives you more room for mistakes later.
- Save the Village and Castle for when your party is big. They are crowded with enemies and give nothing back.
- Watch for the Evil Master’s eye. At 5,000 points it is often the best target on the screen.
The story behind Crossbow
Exidy released Crossbow in arcades in 1983 as a light-gun game. Its twist is that you never control a hero: you protect other characters from a distance. When a coin was inserted, the arcade cabinet greeted the player with a sampled voice saying “You will die!”. The game later reached the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS through Absolute Entertainment, and Atari Corporation released versions for the Atari 2600, the Atari 8-bit computers and the 7800.
The 7800 cartridge works with Atari’s XG-1 light gun, but the manual also lets you play with a normal joystick, which makes it easy to try in an emulator.
