Targ

Targ arrived in arcades in 1980, a period when the industry was riding the wave of Space Invaders (1978) and Asteroids (1979) and players were hungry for any new twist on the shooter formula. Developed and published by Exidy — a company already known for pushing boundaries with titles like Death Race (1976) and Circus (1977) — Targ brought a top-down, maze-based vehicular combat concept to the arcade floor at a time when the genre was still being defined. The game places the player in control of a small spacecraft-like vehicle called the Wummel, navigating a grid-shaped highway maze. The objective is to destroy waves of enemy ships called Targs that travel along the same grid, while also dealing with a faster, more aggressive enemy known as the Spectar that appears periodically to hunt the player down. The maze is rendered in a clean, vector-influenced raster style, with the grid roads forming the only legal paths of travel — the player cannot cut diagonally or leave the road network, which forces deliberate, tactical movement rather than free-roaming evasion. Controls are straightforward: a four-directional joystick steers the Wummel, and a single fire button shoots forward in the direction of travel. This simplicity belies the strategic depth the maze imposes, because the player must constantly anticipate enemy movement patterns along the fixed grid corridors, plan escape routes, and decide when to be aggressive versus evasive. Enemies increase in speed and number as waves progress, and the Spectar's pursuit AI makes later stages genuinely threatening. Exidy designed the cabinet in both upright and cocktail table configurations, and the game's relatively modest hardware requirements made it an accessible purchase for operators. In its era, Targ was noted for its clean presentation and the satisfying crunch of destroying enemy vehicles, and it found a solid audience in arcades across North America. It represented Exidy's continued experimentation with vehicular and maze-based gameplay at a moment when Pac-Man (released the same year in North America) would soon redefine what maze games could be. Targ predates that cultural shift and belongs to an earlier, more abstract tradition of maze navigation rooted in pure reflex and spatial reasoning. The game's wave-based escalation and single-screen arena format were entirely in keeping with the conventions of its moment, and it delivered a focused, replayable experience that rewarded players who learned enemy patrol rhythms. While it did not achieve the cultural ubiquity of contemporaries like Pac-Man or Missile Command, Targ earned a loyal following and demonstrated that Exidy could produce commercially viable arcade titles alongside its more controversial output.