''Rosen's Brigade'' (shown on the loading screen without the apostrophe) is a horizontally

scrolling shooter Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs) are a subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character m ...

written by Ron Rosen for

Atari 8-bit computers The Atari 8-bit computers, formally launched as the Atari Home Computer System, are a series of home computers introduced by Atari, Inc., in 1979 with the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The architecture is designed around the 8-bit MOS Technology 650 ...

and published in 1983 by Gentry Software, a budget label of

Datasoft Datasoft, Inc. (also written as DataSoft) was a software developer and publisher for home computers founded in 1980 by Pat Ketchum and based out of Chatsworth, Los Angeles, Chatsworth, California. Datasoft primarily published video games, includi ...

. The player flies a

fighter jet Fighter aircraft (early on also ''pursuit aircraft'') are military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat. In military conflict, the role of fighter aircraft is to establish air superiority of the battlespace. Domination of the a ...

over a landscape, rescuing paratroopers falling from the top of the screen and shooting enemy air and ground vehicles. This is one of two games from Datasoft where the designer's name is part of the title. The other is ''

O'Riley's Mine ''O'Riley's Mine'' is an action game designed by Mark Riley and published in 1983 by Datasoft for Atari 8-bit computers. The game was ported to the Apple II by Larry Lewis and Commodore 64 by Al Rubin. Both ports were also released in 1983. Ga ...

'' by Mark Riley.

Gameplay

The player flies a fighter jet left and right over a horizontally scrolling landscape of desert terrain and water. Shooting and destroying all enemy forces ends the level. Initially the attackers are planes and helicopters, then tanks appear on the ground and ships in the water.

Parachutists Parachuting and skydiving are methods of descending from a high point in an atmosphere to the ground or ocean surface with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or multiple parachutes. For hu ...

(the term used in the manual) fall from the top of the screen and can be rescued for points by flying over them. A

mini-map A mini-map or minimap is a miniature map HUD (video games), HUD element that is often placed at a screen corner in video games to help players in orienting themselves within the game world. They are often only a small portion of the screen and mu ...

shows the entire play area. Unlike similar scrolling shooters, such as '' Defender'' and its many clones, when the plane moves vertically it points in the direction of motion instead of remaining parallel to the ground.

Reception

A 1984 review in ''Video Games'' magazine concluded, "Although ''Rosen's Brigade'' isn't going to be an earthshaker, it's a fun game with rapidly increasing difficulty levels. And it is rather habit forming." Doug Stead, writing for ''ROM'' magazine, was enthusiastic about the controls and explosion effects, but found the scoring to be unbalanced. He wrote: He also experienced some technical problems, such as the game slowing down and even locking up after a while.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite book , title=Rosen's Brigade Manual , date=1983 , publisher=Gentry Software , url=https://archive.org/details/rosens-brigade-gentry-software , via=archive.org {{cite web, title=The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers, url=https://dadgum.com/giantlist/, last1=Hague, first1=James {{cite web , title=Rosen's Brigade , url=http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-rosen-s-brigade_4445.html , website=Atari Mania {{cite magazine , last1=Brownstein , first1=Mark , title=Computer Corner: Rosen's Brigade , magazine=Video Games , date=February 1984 , volume=2 , issue=5 , page=61 , url=https://archive.org/details/Video_Games_Volume_2_Number_05_1984-02_Pumpkin_Press_US/page/n59/mode/2up {{cite magazine , last1=Stead , first1=Doug , title=Game Reviews: Rosen's Brigade , magazine=ROM , date=February 1984 , volume=1 , issue=14 , pages=49–50 , url=https://archive.org/details/ROM_Magazine_v1i4/page/n49/mode/2up 1983 video games Atari 8-bit computer games Atari 8-bit computer-only games Horizontally scrolling shooters Datasoft games

Gameplay

Reception

See also

References