The Adventure of the Space Ship Beagle

This short game was exhibited at the International Garden and Greenery Exposition (Expo '90) held in Osaka, Japan, in 1990. It provides a brief engaging multimedia experience on the theme of botany.

In the distant future, the planet Third has been rendered uninhabitable by an enormous meteor shower that ruined the atmosphere and rendered the air unbreathable. The space ship Beagle, named after the ship which carried Darwin on his famous naturalist exhibition, is exploring the galaxy to catalogue unique species. They discover a flower that, if brought back to Third, could remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and render it livable again. On their way back, however, ship captains Takeru and Ursula become trapped in a meteor shower that threatens to destroy their precious cargo - and them along with it. Players must defend them in a Missile Command-style minigame by shooting down every meteor before it reaches them.

Players have the option of either watching the 3-minute opening cutscene, and then playing the minigame, or skipping straight to the minigame. Players can select one of three different difficulty levels, which affects meteor patterns and movement speed. In the minigame, the Beagle is in the centre of a radar and meteors approach from all sides. Players control a crosshair using a trackball controller, and clicking button 1 fires a bomb which takes out any nearby meteors. The Beagle has two shields, so it's able to survive up to two hits without being destroyed. A round lasts 50 seconds, at the end of which the player is given a message depending on how many shields they had remaining.