Flower

Flower is a vertically scrolling space shooter released in 1986 by Komax. In the game layers control a spaceship and need to defend against a wide variety of attacking flowers; power-ups can be acquired by shooting certain flower formations and comets to add lasers, missiles, or increased speed to the player's ship.

Flower takes place in space where players control a spaceship capable of flying anywhere on the screen. The ship can be facing one of two directions; if located on the bottom half of the screen, it will face and fire upwards and when moved to the top half of the screen it flips direction to face and fire down. Similar to many space shooters, there are numerous opponents that appear (sometimes individually, sometimes in a large squadron) and attack the player; the goal is to shoot opponents to earn points while avoiding being destroyed. To fit the theme indicated by the game title, almost all of the opponents encountered resemble different types of flowers.

Several types of power ups can be acquired throughout the game; from time to time, a formation of daisies appears or a comet will fly across the screen. Shooting one of the daisies within the formation or destroying the comet releases one of several power ups; if the players picks it up, one of the following abilities is acquired depending on the color of the power up:

• Orange: Speed up for 30 seconds.
• Purple: Missiles (15 shots).
• Green: Laser canons (30 shots).
• Red: Cutter. Giant blades that inflict a large amount of damage.
• Blue: Support (up to 3). Provides an additional "ghost ship" which mirrors the player's movements to provide additional firepower.

Players begin the game with a limited number of spaceships; a ship is lost anytime it crashes into one of the flowers or is hit by their attacks. Additional ships can be earned for crossing point thresholds, and the game ends when players have no spaceships remaining.