I mean the first game to use the exact formula of the player controlling a ship that orbits around a planet and shoots outwards to destroy incoming asteroids and spaceships. Search for 'Planet Defender' on Itch and you will see many games using that specific format.
Thanks for the link but I had already looked at that. I thought it would have originally been an arcade game that came some time after Asteroids (1979) since it shares a lot of the same game elements but I could not find anything.
I just realised I said from the early 1970s in my original post but I meant late 1970s to early 1980s which may have thrown you off. I've now corrected it.
Not only concept, but verbatim the name, so I think what you might see are games imitating some popular tower defense flash games from 10-20 years ago, not a game concept seen exactly like this 50 years ago.
Circling around is also in the Tempest game series. But the perspective is different.
The perspective thing is also with the Space Invaders and successors, like Galaga. You have a line and stuff comes from (a line) above. The planet defenders have a circle and stuff comes from a bigger (unseen) circle outside. Tempest has an ego perspective and you must select the correct path of incoming objects.
The select the path of incoming objects is also seen in Tapper (1983).
So, you want to know the first "deal with incoming objects on a circle" game mechanic. I am not sure, if that was used in the old arcade systems. It certainly looks, like it could have been.
I think you are right. That would explain why so many of the Planet Defender clones are of the tower defence type rather than having the player directly control one spaceship. I have just found out there is a template for the player controlled ship version of this game available for Unity, which explains why there are several identical versions on Itch from different users.
I was asking because I have made my own version in Godot styled to look like it is an early 80's arcade game (filled polygons rather than vector graphics though) as that is where the game seemed to fit best. I wanted to credit the original in my game's page but I will probably have to forget that. Anyway thanks for your help!
