Cabal (video game)
A 1988 shooting gallery game ported to many home systems.
Cabal is a 1988 shooting gallery video game developed by TAD Corporation. It was published in Japan by Taito, in North America by Fabtek, and in Europe by Capcom. The game became better known for its various home ports than for its moderate arcade success.
Quick Facts
- Composer
- NES; David Wise
- Platforms
- Arcade
- Amiga
- Amstrad CPC
- Atari ST
- Commodore 64
- ZX Spectrum
- MS-DOS
- NES
- Genre
- Shooting gallery
- Modes
- Single-player, multiplayer
Facts from the source article.
Gameplay
Cabal offers one-player and two-player modes. Each player controls an unnamed commando tasked with destroying enemy military bases across five stages, each containing four screens. The player begins with three lives, a limitless supply of gun ammunition, and a fixed number of grenades. The commando is viewed from behind and starts behind a protective wall that can be damaged and shattered by enemy fire. To survive, the player must avoid enemy bullets by running left or right, hiding behind cover, or performing a dodge-roll. An enemy gauge at the bottom of the screen depletes as foes are destroyed and certain structures collapse. When the gauge empties, the level is completed and all remaining buildings collapse. If a player dies, they are revived at the cost of one life, or the game ends if no lives remain; boss fights restart from the beginning if the only remaining player dies. Power-ups released from destroyed objects may grant special weapons like a fast-firing machine gun or an automatic shotgun, extra grenades, or additional points. The arcade version uses a trackball for movement and aiming; dodge-rolling is performed by pushing the trackball to maximum speed.
Ports
Cabal was ported to IBM PC compatibles, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, and Amiga. A Nintendo Entertainment System version was developed by Rare. A version for the Atari Lynx was previewed and slated for April 1992 publication by Fabtek but was never released. Rare created the NES conversion without access to the source code, relying on repeated play of an arcade cabinet and redrawing graphics from memory. Programmer Anthony Ball used a sprite-swapping trick to handle the arcade game's many layers and sprites, which caused flickering when the console's limit of eight sprites per line was reached.
Reception
In Japan, Game Machine ranked Cabal as the eighth top-grossing table arcade cabinet for October 1988. Clare Edgeley from Computer and Video Games praised the arcade version, likening it to Operation Wolf and Combat School. Nick Kelly of Commodore User gave it a seven out of ten, drawing comparisons to Gryzor and Devastators. Meanwhile, Crash readers voted the ZX Spectrum version’s advertisement the year’s best.
More in Taito Games of the 1980s
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