How to play Spider Fighter online
- Move the blaster: left and right arrow keys
- Fire: Space bar (press it repeatedly)
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Regular or expert game: F4 (left difficulty switch)
- Straight or guided shots: F9 (right difficulty switch)
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
The Select switch does nothing in this game. There is only one game, for one player.
Gameplay
Each wave starts with three pieces of fruit on screen and a swarm of insects led by Master Nests. A Master Nest can grab a piece of fruit and carry it off the left side of the screen. Shoot it before it gets away and it drops the fruit. Around the nests fly three other kinds of bug. Spy Pods scout for the nest and call in reinforcements. Green Widows give the nest covering fire. Stingers are the most aggressive, and they home in on your blaster.
| Insect | Points (regular game) |
|---|---|
| Green Widow | 30 |
| Spy Pod | 50 |
| Stinger | 50 |
| Master Nest | 100 |
The fruit changes as you progress: oranges first, then grapes and strawberries, and finally bananas, which come under attack from an endless series of waves. Save all three fruits in a wave and you earn an extra blaster. The game ends when all your fruit has been stolen or all your blasters are destroyed.
Difficulty switches
The left switch chooses between the regular game and the expert game. The expert game changes the speed, the firepower and the point values, and the points go up as the fruit changes: bugs are worth twice their normal value while you are protecting grapes, four times as much with strawberries and eight times as much with bananas. The right switch changes your shots. At A they fly straight up. At B they are guided and follow your blaster sideways after you fire, which helps against fast-moving targets.
Tips
- Shoot the Spy Pod first. This was the designer’s own advice. It stops the nest from calling in more bugs.
- Leave the Master Nest for last. The designer also suggested picking off the slower bugs before going for the nest, rather than letting the swarm build up while Stingers dive at you.
- Chase stolen fruit at once. A nest carrying fruit is heading for the left edge. Hit it before it leaves the screen and the fruit is saved.
- Try guided shots. If the straight shots keep missing the Stingers, switch to guided shots and steer them into the target.
History
Spider Fighter came out at about the same time as Activision’s Megamania, and it is often described as a reworking of the arcade shooter Stratovox with an insects-and-fruit theme. Reviews were mixed. Electronic Fun gave it 3 out of 4, while Electronic Games was disappointed, and several critics felt it fell short of Megamania.
Like many Activision games, it came with a high-score club. Players who scored 40,000 points or more in the regular game could send in a photo of their TV screen and receive a “Spider Fighters” emblem patch.
Similar games to play next
- Megamania – Activision’s shooter released alongside Spider Fighter
- Demon Attack – another fast fixed shooter with swooping enemies
- Centipede – more bug-blasting from the bottom of the screen
- Galaxian – enemies that break formation and dive at you
- Space Invaders – the game that started the fixed-shooter genre