No, this is not Brad McQuaid’s failure of epic proportions Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, GameTap doesn’t have that. Instead, they have the 1981 side scroller Vanguard. Perhaps Mr. McQuaid’s game would have done better had he not lifted his title from a previous game.
Vanguard is… fairly awful. Its typical, side scrolling and shooting while avoiding stuff. The game has one minor twist in that its not all side scrolling. It is also diagonal scrolling and top scrolling. As you progress through the level, sometime it changes direction. And then at the end of each level, it stops scrolling so you can fight the boss. The controls are as you would expect, using a dual stick game pad the left stick is movement and the right stick is shooting. Oh, because you can shoot in 4 directions. If you do decide to play the game, I give this advice: Ignore the North, South, East, West options for firing, instead use North-East, North-West, South-East and South-West. Hitting these will fire two directions at once (North-East will first North AND East). Seeing as your goal is to kill everything, there is never a reason for you to not be firing in two directions at once.
All in all, the game is a bore, and I found myself thinking that I’d rather be playing Defender. However, I did find the game to be more fun when instead of being some valiant soldier fighting for survival I imagined myself as the invading force. This was made easier through the sections where you are blowing up alien houses, people and their pets, none of which fire back at you. To paraphrase a film that does not deserve the indignity of being associated with this game or its review: Anyone that runs is an alien hostile! Anyone that stands still is a well trained alien hostile!
… and… I’m out.