Pleiades (video game)

Did You Know?

• Pleiades is included in the Tecmo Hit Parade collection for the PlayStation 2, which contains seven classic arcade games from the publisher's past.
• The game also appears in the eleven-game compilation Tecmo Classic Arcade for the Xbox.
• Pleiades appears in the 1983 horror film Nightmares, in the vignette 'Bishop of Battle', and has a cameo in the 1984 Coen Brothers film Blood Simple.

Gameplay

Pleiades is a multi-stage space shoot 'em up where enemy ships fly at the player in waves, similar to Galaxian and Phoenix. Ships emerge from a mothership at the top of the screen and swoop downward in patterns that players must anticipate while shooting and avoiding destruction. The game contains four stages. In the first stage, the Earth space ship defends a space station from Martian invaders that can transform from flying invaders into walking invaders who build walls across the Earth city; these barriers must be destroyed. After stage one, the Earth space ship flies to the top of the screen to prepare for stage two. Stage two requires the player to encounter eight space monsters, each needing a direct hit on center to be destroyed. In stage three, invaders emerge from a space ship at the top and swoop down in sweeping attacks. The final wave has the player navigate through parked spaceships to dock on a landing pad as the screen scrolls downward, with extra points available by collecting flags while moving toward the landing corridor.