Laser Gates

Laser Gates is a horizontally scrolling shooter. Players control the Dante Dart, a shape ship infiltrating the caverns of the Cryptic Computer to destroy four Failsafe Detonators. The Cryptic Computer is a peace keeping device that has gone rouge, and whose fail safe protections are now preventing the Dante Dart from shutting it down. A variety of enemies threaten the players, along with the eponymous laser gates, which come in three varieties and must be navigated through.

At the bottom of the screen are four status bars, "Score", "Energy", "Shields", and "D-Time". Energy depletes as the player uses the Dante Darts laser fire and can be replenished by collecting energy pods found throughout the cavern. "Shields" deplete every time the ship is hit but are partially replenished with every 10,000 points earned. "D-Time" depletes over time until empty, at which point the game is over.

Laser Gates was designed and programmed by Dan Oliver, who originally developed it under the title Innerspace at VentureVision. Oliver was a former developer at Games by Apollo where he developed Space Canyon. Before Apollo went bankrupt, Oliver says he left looking for somewhere with better financial compensation. He found a newspaper ad for crew looking to create a video game startup.

He joined this new Texas-based company called VentureVision, which was founded in November 1982 by Robert Hessler. For VentureVision, Oliver designed Rescue Terra I, the only game the company published before being swept away by the video game crash of 1983. According to Oliver, 20,000 Rescue Terra I cartridges were produced but only 384 were sold. Oliver's next project for the company was titled Innerspace, a sequel to Rescue Terra I that was planned for release alongside a third game in the trilogy, Solar Defense, in April 1983.

The Video Game Update called Laser Gates a "very pretty" game with challenging action. But that its inability to distinguish itself for other horizontally scrolling shooters meant it lost interest quickly. C. Meade and Jim Clark thought the game brought nothing new to the genre and wasn't worth anyone's time.

Mark Brownstein in Video Games was highly critical, complaining about the lack of novelty, the anticlimactic confrontation with the final computer, and the gauges taking up large portions of the screen. He said "this one is only for 2600 owners who want to shoot their own machines or for those crazies who must have every horizontal-scrolling shoot-up." Retrospectively, Brett Weiss said "it plays more than a little like Vanguard, but it's not as much fun."