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Baraduke cover

1985 · Namco · Arcade · Science

Baraduke

Baraduke is an action game released by Namco (Bandai Namco Entertainment) in 1985.

Released
1 July 1985
Platforms
ArcadeNintendo SwitchPlayStation 4Sharp X68000Wii
Genres
ArcadeScienceShoot 'em upShooter
Developers
Namco
Publishers
Namco
Modes
Single-player
Perspective
Third personSide view
Themes
ActionScience fiction
Country
Japan
Age ratings
CERO A
Languages
English

About

Baraduke, released as Alien Sector in North America, is a 1985 run and gun video game developed and published by Namco for arcades. A home version was published for the X68000 in 1995.

Keywords

  • gravity
  • shoot 'em up
  • minigames
  • run and gun
  • female protagonist
  • side-scrolling
  • boss fight
  • digital distribution
  • plot twist
  • wii virtual console

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

The player takes control of a spacewoman in a biohazard suit. Player 1 is Kissy and Player 2 is Takky. They must clear eight worlds of increasing difficulty (each one is composed of five regular floors and one boss floor) by using their wave guns to destroy all the enemies populating them. They must also save the one-eyed Paccets for extra points and the chance to earn another shield in the end-of-floor bonus games.

On each floor there are a certain number of enemies known as Octy, which will leave power-up capsules behind when defeated. Defeating all the Octy on the current floor will open up a pipe at the bottom of the floor, and the player will have to find and enter it in order to proceed to the next one. The boss floors feature a giant enemy (a Blue Worm in Worlds 1, 3, 5 and 7, a Turning Eye in Worlds 2, 4 and 6, and the Octy King himself in World 8) who must be killed in order to proceed to the next world.

Reception

In Japan, Game Machine listed Baraduke on their September 1, 1985 issue as being the fifteenth most-successful table arcade unit of the month.

Clare Edgeley of Computer and Video Games reviewed the arcade game in October 1985. She said there was "not much in the way of graphics [or] story line", but "there's plenty of blasting material." She called it a "reasonably fast, mildly addictive" game, but said it "hasn't got the qualities to take it into the top ten arcade games."

Legacy

In 1995, ten years after its original arcade release, it was ported to the X68000, and was also included in the fifth volume of the Namco Museum series on the PlayStation. It was re-released on Namco Museum Virtual Arcade on the Xbox 360 in 2008, the Wii's Virtual Console in 2009 as well as by Hamster Corporation through their Arcade Archives series for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in November 2022.

A sequel titled Baraduke II was released in 1988 only in Japan.

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
Arcade25 May 1985Japan · Worldwide 1 August 1985
Sharp X6800026 May 1995Japan
Wii13 October 2009Japan

Editions and related releases

Included in
Namco Museum Vol. 5Pac-Man's Pixel BashNamco Museum Virtual Arcade
Ported as
Arcade Archives: Baraduke

Games like this

Collections4 collections

Publishers

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.