Canyon Bomber is a black-and-white 1978 arcade game, developed and published by Atari. The game was rewritten in color and with a different visual style for the Atari 2600, also in 1978. The player and an opponent fly a blimp or biplane over a canyon full of numbered, circular rocks, arranged in layers. The player does not control the flight of vehicles, but only presses a button to drop bombs which destroy rocks and give points. Each rock is labeled with the points given for destroying it. As the number of rocks is reduced, it becomes harder to hit them without missing. The third time a player drops a bomb without hitting a rock, the game is over.
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Breakout but for aspiring war criminals.
Would be better if you could actually control the planes more. It becomes tedious, but never to the point where I'd call it bad.
A game about dropping bombs in a canyon -- surprise, I know. This canyon, though, is filled with stacked up point blocks, and you'll be competing with another... canyon bomber... to see who can bomb the most point blocks in the canyon. Careful though, miss 3 times and you lose instantly, giving your opponent free solo time to catch up to your score.
This would probably be more fun with more than one person but even with one person it's not that bad, it's still kinda fun. The physics of the bomb dropping is good for this era and the gameplay is tight enough. It's not a bad concept either. But like the vast majority of games of this era, even when it's pretty good, it's still not really anything to write home about.
3 - Decent: Fun but not really "good"
This would probably be more fun with more than one person but even with one person it's not that bad, it's still kinda fun. The physics of the bomb dropping is good for this era and the gameplay is tight enough. It's not a bad concept either. But like the vast majority of games of this era, even when it's pretty good, it's still not really anything to write home about.
3 - Decent: Fun but not really "good"
Canyon Bomber is upside down breakout and while I can get at least partially down with almost any kind of breakout clone, probably as an old holdover from having a dad who spent a lot of time in bars so I spent a lot of time being babysat by bartop arcade jawns in the 90s and maybe a good shrink would change that but this is America and Joe “I Would Veto Medicare For All” Biden is the nominee for the supposed good guys so haha who the fuck can ever afford a shrink, wait what was I saying oh yeah even as someone who likes simplistic breakout clones this one hovers a little too close to simplistic. And I’m grading on a hell of a scale here.
Canyon Bomber’s main problem is a lack of variety, as you not only can’t control the actual bombers but also don’t have a whole lot of variation in the canyon layout itself. This leads to a kind of funny quirk where the alternative game mode, the Sea Bomber, that they just threw on there to be able to say there were 100 games on one cartridge or whatever is actually the airquote deeper gameplay. Of course, that positive was already being overshadowed by the similar and superior Air-Sea Battle. Still a decent enough title for this early era of console gaming.
Canyon Bomber’s main problem is a lack of variety, as you not only can’t control the actual bombers but also don’t have a whole lot of variation in the canyon layout itself. This leads to a kind of funny quirk where the alternative game mode, the Sea Bomber, that they just threw on there to be able to say there were 100 games on one cartridge or whatever is actually the airquote deeper gameplay. Of course, that positive was already being overshadowed by the similar and superior Air-Sea Battle. Still a decent enough title for this early era of console gaming.