Re-inventing the 2D shooter

Remember the glory days of arcade gaming?  Solo creators, abstract graphics (exactly what is the Tempest "claw" supposed to look like?), and innovative game-play.  Hardware was too primitive to do anything flashy, so designers had to innovate deeply in order to make engaging games.  Inspired by this heritage, I recently coded-up a novel 2D shooter called <A HREF="http://transcend.sf.net">Transcend</A>.  The graphics stretch the limit of what is possible with a 2D filled vector engine, and the game-play is unique (for example, to power-up your projectiles, you must construct a music collage).  Along with trying to make a playable game, I was also thinking about Transcend as a work visual and auditory art---the result can be viewed as a kind of interactive sculpture.
