Game of the Day - The End

 The End.  Not the Burt Reynolds movie, but an old school vert shooter from Konami (and Stern - but not exactly - I'll get to that).  The End has typical old school play in some ways, Galaxian/Phoenician type enemies come your way and try to blast you.  You have three shields made of blocks to hide behind.  BUT, the enemies don't fly off the bottom of the screen, instead they steal the blocks from your shields, bring them to the top of the screen and start reassembling them.

The most interesting thing about The End is there are two distinct and different ways to lose.  The normal way is to lose three ships to enemy fire.  The other more interesting way is that as the enemies steal your blocks, they reassemble them on their end and if they spell the word "END" - the game is over.  Bizarre, but cool.

So you could play for a while, battle the dudes, not lose any of your ships to enemy fire, but eventually the game will end when enough of your blocks are stolen and the bastards spell out "END" (not "The End").  Also, the little nasties are really hard to hit - they twitch continuously back and forth and hide behind your shields on the way down to dismantle them.  Very Very Very Challenging (no commas!).

Now, for the bonus Stern version of the game.  For some weird reason, the Stern version has slightly diff graphics and flight patterns, but most importantly has the blocks BELOW you, not ABOVE you - thus, they aren't shields at all and you can't hide behind them.  It makes it a completely diff game.  In the Konami game, you hide behind the shields darting out here and there to try to take out the enemy, but they are hard to hit because of those same shields blocking your shot.  In the Stern version, the blocks are below you so the shooting is a free for all with no shields.  The enemies are easier to hit, but so are you.  I like the Konami version better, more tactical.