History VideoGame / Walker1993

''Walker'' is a horizontal scrolling ShootEmUp by DMA Design (now Rockstar North), published in 1993 for UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}} by Creator/{{Psygnosis}}, where the player pilots a [[WalkingTank giant walking tank]] armed with twin machine guns, which is dropped into historical battlefields where the contemporary forces throw everything they have at it.

* AfterTheEnd -- The second stage, Los Angeles 2019, is happening during the "Judgement Day", as it was later called by its survivors. If that sounds a lot like the {{backstory}} of ''Franchise/{{Terminator}}'', then the appearance of troops with laser rifles and robots looking just like the "Hunter-Killer Tanks" will also be familiar.
* AllThereInTheManual -- The game manual contains the entire {{backstory}}, along with many detailed sketches of the Walker. The sketches differ in details from each other and from the game sprite--they're explained as rough engineering sketches found in a capsule and drawings made by an eyewitness. Notably, the design notes state that the emergency escape mechanism likely never made it to production units, which is contradicted by the ending.
* AttackItsWeakpoint -- Goes both ways: the boss enemies can only be damaged by shooting specific parts of their armor, often in correct order, while enemy troops will often try to attach a bomb to the Walker's only weak spot, its protruding heat sink.
* BottomlessMagazines -- It's a design point for the Walker to be self-contained, though the details of how it keeps its machine guns supplied with ammo is [[HandWave left unexplained]].
* {{Checkpoint}} -- At the midpoint of each stage. Also has the benefit of regenerating the player's shields.
* ChickenWalker -- The machine controlled by the player uses this configuration. It even has very bird-like "feet" and its head resembles a bird skull.
* CriticalExistenceFailure -- The player's machine works perfectly... until enemy attacks tear through the entire shield and the entire armor, at which point the Walker explodes violently, [[SmolderingShoes leaving only its feet behind]].
* CrosshairAware -- Some areas of the Berlin level are initially empty but for you and a flashing crosshair on the ground, which warns you that the Luftwaffe are about to bomb the whole area. In the Los Angeles level, enemy suicide bombers will run from your crosshair if targeted.
* DeflectorShields -- The Walker is equipped with these. With typical NintendoHard stinginess, they only regenerate at the stage's midpoint and between levels.
* EarnYourHappyEnding -- Subverted. The player needs to choose the arcade mode and beat all four levels to finally see the ending, but the fate of the protagonist remains unclear.
* EasyModeMockery -- Beating the stage two boss on the easier difficulty results in a game over screen showing a destroyed Walker, captioned "Now try arcade mode!".

* FeaturelessProtagonist -- Played with: nothing is known about the Walker pilot, other than the fact that's he's definitely male. However, those lucky enough to have a machine with more than a megabyte of RAM could hear him frequently taunting his enemies, so he's not a HeroicMime and he does have some personality.
* GainaxEnding -- The ending cutscene shows the Walker's head detaching itself from the main body and powering a "warp drive" in an attempt to escape a thermonuclear bomb, as the final boss explodes. The animation presented from the cockpit view shows the gigantic explosion [[OutrunTheFireball coming closer and closer]] while the head flies through the ruined landscape. The cutscene ends with a flash just as the explosion reaches the escape pod, leaving the pilot's survival ambiguous.
* {{Gorn}} -- The intro cutscene has a soldier getting gunned down in a fountain of blood. It gets worse, despite the enemy soldiers being composed out of only handful of pixels, thanks to detailed animations and the sheer amount of {{Mooks}} to gun down. (This was the same studio who made ''VideoGame/{{Lemmings}}''; they could pack a lot of graphic violence into 8x8 pixels.) Bonus points for allowing the player to simply stomp the enemy soldiers, leaving suggestive pools of red behind.
* HumongousMecha
* ItsUpToYou -- The Walker is the last surviving machine of its type, and you won't see anything else that isn't hostile.
* JustPlaneWrong -- The American fighters attacking the Walker in Berlin level are not only able to drop an enormous bomb payload, far too large for this type of plane, but even several paratroopers in one flight.
* {{Qurac}} -- The "Middle East" stage.
* NextSundayAD -- The game doesn't come out and say that the Middle East level is Iraq during [[UsefulNotes/GulfWar Operation Desert Storm]], but sets the time as "Tonight".
* NintendoHard -- The Arcade difficulty. For starters, you now fight two of each stage one and stage two boss... at once.
* SceneryGorn -- WWII-era Berlin and UsefulNotes/GulfWar-era "[[{{Qurac}} somewhere in the Middle East]]" have been reduced to rubble by warfare, 2019 LA is a post-apocalyptic wreck, and 2420 has a background of [[MegaCity huge buildings]] of a CrystalSpiresAndTogas future, smashed up and pocked with damage.
* SchizoTech --

* TimeyWimeyBall -- Both sides of the conflict use TimeTravel to [[TemporalParadox wipe each other from history]]. However, the final result is left rather ambiguous and how even one Walker unit could survive despite its factory being destroyed beforehand is not explained.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential -- When the player does enough damage to an enemy helicopter, he may choose to stop firing and watch the pilot desperately struggle with his crippled machine. Eventually, the helicopter will come down and explode, sending the screaming pilot in the air.
* WalkingTank
* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld -- A stage one recurring enemy is a zeppelin so large, we only ever see a part of its bottom, apparently armoured well enough to withstand continuous fire from the Walker's guns. It does eventually go out with a huge bang.

** The future enemies are armed with [[FrickingLaserBeams laser weapons]] in 2019 and [[RayGun God knows what]] in 2420, which makes it odd that the Walker, from further ahead than either of them, is armed with old-fashioned machine-guns.