Crossbow (Exidy, 1983)

[brain galacki]

DON'T SHOOT YOUR FRIENDS:
welcome to the rarest game in the Dumb Records arcade now:

Crossbow is a video game released in arcades by Exidy in 1983.[1] It was later published by Absolute Entertainment for the Commodore 64 and MS-DOS, and by Atari Corporation for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, and Atari 8-bit family starting in 1987.[2] The game is controlled via a positional gun that resembles a full-sized crossbow.

The player protects a band of adventurers from afar by shooting objects that threaten them. The adventurers enter from the left-hand side of the screen and attempt to cross the screen unharmed. If the player helps them reach the opposite side of the screen safely, the adventurers survive to the next scenario, and new adventurers are occasionally granted between scenarios.

In addition to the obstacles, the adventurers are vulnerable to the player's shots. The first time the player shoots an adventurer, an on-screen message is shown: "DON'T SHOOT YOUR FRIENDS!" Thereafter, shooting an adventurer will cause him/her to emit a cry of pain, and to walk at a slower pace the rest of the way. A second shot will kill the adventurer.

Scenarios are chosen by shooting a destination on a map screen, which include: town, desert, volcano, cave, bridge, jungle, and castle. The goal is to reach the final scenario, past the castle, in which the player confronts the Master of Darkness, who presumably created the dangers in the game. Defeating the Master of Darkness requires shooting him in the eyes when they turn red (and deadly). The player is treated to a brief congratulation and a challenge to defeat the Master of Darkness again, "IF YOU DARE". Following this screen the player starts over with however many adventurers survived the confrontation.

[somejabroni]

Finally I can live out my Medieval Scottish fantasy

[brain galacki]

Making that post made me discover this History of Arcade Game Documentaries Youtube channel, wow I have subscribed now!

www.youtube.com/channel/UCCkuHXWWyw-3KXKIHyc88oA/videos

[loglad]

I got #16th today. this is fun but hard.

[jeffradon2000]

My highest so far is #7, after I kept going back and forth between the 2 beginning stages, and then advanced forward, and then went back to the beginning some more. Not on purpose of course but I have a feeling this is what you do to get a high score... I haven't yet memorized the optimum path through the game. I can say after playing a stage enough times you can start to predict where to shoot and it's not so hard. Good thing our machine is free play.

I have yet to beat the castle stage, that's a hard one for sure. Also volcano is pretty tough and for some reason the friends get stuck for a bit toward the end of the ice cave stage for some reason. I'm wondering if that's a setting I can change as that makes no sense.

Also for anyone who has played it enough times have probably noticed the screen width problem. I'm trying to figure out how to fix that. Otherwise the picture is really nice on this machine which is not easy to come by with old arcade monitors.

[brain galacki]

Here we are, day #4 of having CROSSBOW (1983) in the arcade and my high score is 182,500 (high score #12)

Anyone who has played this game a few times now probably has wondered how you know which color path goes where... tonight I found out that taking the green path every time takes you in one big circle around the volcano (but you never actually play the volcano level).

We could probably pretty easily draw out a map or guide on which path leads where after each level... or something like that is probably already out there on the internet but I would rather us do as a nice little forum project...

[brain galacki]

Okay... coming to a better understanding on what paths lead where the more times I play this game...

Obviously we all know that at the beginning:
RED PATH goes to the haunted city and GREEN PATH goes to the desert.

as I said in my last post, choosing the green path every time takes you in one big circle around the volcano.

Adding a couple of levels what I know to this list:

AFTER THE DESERT:
RED PATH takes you to the haunted city and GREEN PATH takes you to the ice cave

AFTER THE HAUNTED CITY:
RED PATH takes you to the volcano and GREEN PATH takes you to the bridge.

then I don't know everything after that but I DO now now that after the jungle level:
RED PATH takes you to the CASTLE

[buffaaron420]

May 6, 2021 22:16:35 GMT -6 brain galacki said:

Okay... coming to a better understanding on what paths lead where the more times I play this game...

Obviously we all know that at the beginning:
RED PATH goes to the haunted city and GREEN PATH goes to the desert.

as I said in my last post, choosing the green path every time takes you in one big circle around the volcano.

Adding a couple of levels what I know to this list:

AFTER THE DESERT:
RED PATH takes you to the haunted city and GREEN PATH takes you to the ice cave

AFTER THE HAUNTED CITY:
RED PATH takes you to the volcano and GREEN PATH takes you to the bridge.

then I don't know everything after that but I DO now now that after the jungle level:
RED PATH takes you to the CASTLE

Kind of hard to visualize.... can you please draw a map for me? 

[brain galacki]

yes, indeed... here I have drawn a map to a pen pal to better explain (please excuse the mick jagger as the volcano cave, this was a penpal of a rolling stones record) (of course most of the arrows on this map is incomplete and I need to work on completing)



Zack, please put completing some of the missing arrows this map towards the top of your list tomorrow

[somejabroni]

This is very helpful I got past the ice cave and to the jungle and was lost. The apes who live there were no help. I'll be sure to let them know that I have a map next time.

[brain galacki]

LAST NIGHT I DISCOVERED THAT THE QUICKEST PATH TO THE CASTLE IS:

(START) ---> DESERT ---> ICE CAVE ---> CASTLE

NEW MAP COMING SOON!!!

[brain galacki]

good morning forum, I bet you did not know that I have been quietly working on completing a good crossbow map. this is my secret map, make sure it never leaves the forum. As you can see I still have some work to do on this, such as where arrows lead to from the volcano.

I also have never beaten the castle level still (very hard) or gotten to the secret room in the bottom corner.

[jeffradon2000]

Looks very good

[brain galacki]

Okay so today while I was working at my store and playing arcade I found a few more paths...

I BEAT the castle for the first time. the trick is to get those guys *bam* bam* bam* real quick as they pop up before they can even shoot the arrows. then the pterydactyl pops out from the other end and there's no way you can deal with that while you are still shooting the guys so you have to let that pterydactyl kill one of your friends (just a sacrifice you have to make). then eventually the door opens.

After I beat the Castle you choose between the red, green and blue paths again. I picked the BLUE path and it took me to the JUNGLE.  !!!!

[jeffradon2000]

whoops, well one of the paths will take you to the secret room, better luck next time. You have gone farther than I have at this point