Cabal is a 1988 shooting gallery video game developed by TAD Corporation and published in Japan by Taito, in North America by Fabtek, and in Europe by Capcom. The player controls a commando trying to destroy various enemy military bases.

The Story Behind Cabal

When converting the game to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Rare was given a Cabal cabinet but did not have access to the game's source code, so they had to play the game over and over and redraw the graphics from memory. This has the negative side effect of causing the sprites to flicker when they reach the console's limit of eight per line, but Ball, like many programmers of the era, found this an acceptable trade-off for including all the game's content, and in a 2016 interview he said he is happy with the quality of the conversion. The game was only a moderate success in arcades, and became better known for its various home ports.

is a 1988 shooting gallery video game developed by TAD Corporation and published in Japan by Taito, in North America by Fabtek, and in Europe by Capcom. Cabal was ported to multiple computers, including IBM PC compatibles, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, and Amiga. To accommodate the many layers and sprites of the arcade game, programmer Anthony Ball used a common coding trick: swapping sprites from left to right every other frame.

How Cabal Plays

The player starts with a stock of three lives and uses a gun with limitless ammunition and a fixed number of grenades to fend off enemy troops and attack the base. There are five stages with four screens each. Boss fights, however, restart from the beginning if the only remaining player dies.

The arcade version is a standard upright cabinet. When the enemy gauge is emptied, the level is successfully completed, all of the remaining buildings onscreen collapse, and the player progresses to the next stage. Cabal was somewhat innovative in that it featured a 3D perspective in which the player character was situated in the foreground with an over-the-shoulder camera view, similar to modern third-person shooters.

Why Players Still Load It Up

is a 1988 shooting gallery video game developed by TAD Corporation and published in Japan by Taito, in North America by Fabtek, and in Europe by Capcom. Cabal was ported to multiple computers, including IBM PC compatibles, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, and Amiga. When converting the game to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Rare was given a Cabal cabinet but did not have access to the game's source code, so they had to play the game over and over and redraw the graphics from memory.

To accommodate the many layers and sprites of the arcade game, programmer Anthony Ball used a common coding trick: swapping sprites from left to right every other frame. Nick Kelly of Commodore User rated Cabal seven out of ten, comparing it favorably with Gryzor (1987) and Devastators (1988). Cabal was followed in 1990 by Blood Bros. with a western theme.

Cabal — Frequently Asked Questions