[2] A few games, such as 1981's Vanguard, don't have a second joystick for shooting, but provide four buttons to fire in the cardinal directions.
The twin-stick control scheme was used in arcade games starting with Gun Fight in 1975, but came into prominence with the high-action Robotron: 2084 in 1982.
The ubiquity of gamepads with two thumb-controlled sticks overcame the difficulty of playing twin-stick shooters at home and eventually led to a resurgence of the genre following the release of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved in 2005.
[4] Robotron: 2084, released in 1982 during the golden age of arcade video games became the seminal example of the control scheme using two 8-way joysticks.
[5][6] Twin-stick shooter spin-offs of existing video game franchises have since been made, including Halo: Spartan Assault.