Old-school 1983 shmup Nova 2001 is this week’s Arcade Archives release

‘Destroy All of Crazy Robots!’

After a solid week of slugging, this week’s Arcade Archives release sees Hamster return to the well of golden age shmups, with the return’s of UPL’s 1980s space-shooter Nova 2001, now available to download on Nintendo Switch.

Originally released to arcades in 1983 — back when the idea of 2001 technology seemed like the stuff of an H.G. Wells novel — Nova 2001 puts players in the pilot seat of a small state-of-the-art spacecraft, battling it out against large waves of enemy invaders. Players can jet ‘n’ shoot in eight different directions, fighting off five forms of enemy equipped with its own unique attack formation.

Nova 2001 was intended to be an evolution of some of gaming’s earliest eight-way shmups, such as Atari classic Asteroids. Unfortunately. UPL’s shmup would be hugely eclipsed by Williams’ more ambitious and technological superior Sinistar, which launched the same year and took the arcade scene by storm. Nova 2001 wasn’t without its own charms, featuring a variety of backgrounds and fast-paced, button-bashing action, it just simply failed to match up to the frightening atmosphere and synthesized speech of the Williams classic.

You can check out the action in the video below, courtesy of YouTuber Old Classic Retro Gaming. Nova 2001 is available to download right now on Nintendo Switch, priced at around $8. It has previously been made available on PS4.