This was a very cheap game, but an improvement, as it wasn't just some ultraprimitive algorithm, but opened the possibilities on something long and complex.
Sure, it was primitive, but you were a SPACESHIP! Sure, it was a 1-screen game, but you could leave the screen and come back on the other side!
You could even warp!
And yes, technicaly you were shooting the same objects, and went for a highscore, but finaly the "enemy" came in different colours, and they always blew into smaller enemies! It really opened the way.
Being primitive also comes with certain advantages:
- easy to understand how to play
- easy to filter out any bugs. Of course "bugs" practicaly never appeared in these game. Sometimes the stuff did not load, but that was it.