BiPlane was an old arcade game released by Fun Games Inc. way back in 1976.

The story

This early black and white arcade title was one of only three games put out by Fun Games Inc. before they went out of business (the other two are Tankers and BiPlane 4). A fourth game (entitled Kong) was recently discovered in PCB form, but it was never released.

The game

Each player controls a small airplane with a set of levers (this title is two player only). You must avoid each others shots, and the anti-aircraft fire which rings the outer edges of the screen.

This is your basic two player dogfight, with gameplay very similar to the airplane levels on the Atari 2600 Combat cartridge, but without the screen wrapping effect.

The Machine

The BiPlane cabinet was finished in woodgrain, and was highly decorated with dogfight scenes, and words like "Action", "Fun", and "Pow" (which were done in comic book style).

This title did not use a CPU, and is powered by a very unreliable +5 volt power supply. This can easily be replaced with a modern arcade (or even PC), power supply. Many in game setting are changed with knobs instead of switches (things like shot distance, game length, and various audio tone adjustments).

The boards for this game will plug into a Tanker cabinet with minimal modifications.

Where to play

This title has neither been emulated, nor ported to any other system. So you are going to have to find an original machine to play it on. (The airplane levels on the Atari 2600 game Combat are similar, but not exact).

I would not add this to my arcade game collection, unless it was incredibly cheap. The need for two players at once really reduces the amount of use that you would be able to get out of this game in your home.