You have to thank Geometry Wars for almost single handedly reviving the 8-way shooter genre. Granted, games like Crimsonland had come out before its release, but suddenly it seems like there are a wealth of decent Robotron-likes, and I have to believe its at least in part because of Geometry Wars (which, as an aside, you can now get for PC if you run Vista. From most accounts its pretty buggy though so it may not be worth it). Anyway, today’s example is called Naac, and it’s most similar to the old arcade game SmashTV. Free, windows only, and well worth checking out if you grew up on a healthy diet of arcade games in the 80’s. Note that I had to play with the Windows Data Execution Prevention settings to get this to run. Also note that unlike most games of this type you don’t need a joypad to play – you move using the keyboard and shoot using the Mouse. It works really well.

[Originally via jayisgames.com]