[The posts for this month are reposts from the site www.honotogroabemo.org, on which a host of hirsute individuals including yours truly would grow beards to raise money for breast cancer research. The site is defunct, but I thought I’d resurrect the game-related posts. This was originally posted on 2011-11-28.]

(Two steps to a Long Island iced tea…)

I also had to get back to work today and I wasn’t quite ready. Time for a drink, I think. Or perhaps a mixture?

Game Two for yesterday is the arcade game Zaxxon, released by Sega in 1982. Zaxxon is notable for two reasons: 1) it was the first isometric game (also known as axonometric projection, hence the name) and 2) it was one of the first games with shadows. The overall effect is nicely 3D, and it stood out greatly against the 2D games of the time (Battlezone excepted). My main memories of the game was that it was so different it was difficult to line up your ship to take shots and avoid things, even with the shadow, so I didn’t play it that much. Now that isometric is more common it might be easier.

One fact I was not aware of is that there was a Zaxxon board game as well, published by Milton Bradley. It does not receive good reviews on BoardGameGeek.