Rip Off

Gameplay

In Rip Off, the player (or two players cooperatively) defends a cluster of fuel canisters at the center of the screen. Enemy tanks enter from the edges and attempt to grab canisters and drag them off-screen. The game doesn't end when the player dies — ships have infinite lives. Instead, the game ends when all canisters have been stolen. This unique design shifted the focus from survival to protection.

Historical Significance

Rip Off was one of the earliest cooperative two-player arcade games. The innovative "defend the objective, not yourself" design was unusual for its era and presaged tower defense concepts. Tim Skelly's design demonstrated that vector games could explore novel gameplay structures beyond the shoot-everything model. It ran on Cinematronics' vector hardware platform.

Fun Facts & Legacy

The cooperative aspect was revolutionary — two players could work together simultaneously, each controlling their own ship. The game's design philosophy, where the player's own survival is secondary to protecting an objective, was highly unusual for 1980 and influenced later defensive gameplay concepts.