Radar Scope (TRS02, rev. D)

Details

Playtime Not Played
Last Activity Never
Added 9/1/2025 15:17:52
Modified 9/2/2025 13:26:46
Completion Status Not Played
Library Playnite
Source
Platform Arcade
Release Date 11/1/1980
Community Score
Critic Score
User Score
Genre Arcade
Shooter
Developer Ikegami Tsushinki
Nintendo R&D2
Publisher Nintendo
Feature Multiplayer
Single Player
Links Community Wiki
Wikipedia
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Tag

Description

Radar Scope is a 1980 fixed shooter arcade game developed by Nintendo R&D2 and published by Nintendo. The player assumes the role of the Sonic Spaceport starship and must wipe out formations of an enemy race known as the Gamma Raiders before they destroy the player's space station. Gameplay is similar to Space Invaders and Galaxian, but set in a forced perspective angle.

Radar Scope was a commercial failure and created a financial crisis for the subsidiary Nintendo of America. Its president, Minoru Arakawa, pleaded for his father-in-law, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, to send him a new game that could convert and salvage thousands of unsold Radar Scope machines. This prompted the creation of Donkey Kong. Radar Scope is one of the first video game projects for artist Shigeru Miyamoto and for composer Hirokazu Tanaka.

Retrospectively, critics have praised Radar Scope for its gameplay and design being a unique iteration upon the Space Invaders template. One critic labeled it one of Nintendo's most important games because its commercial failure inadvertently led to the creation of Nintendo's mascot character and helped pave the way for the company's entry into the console video game market.