Eliminator was originally developed by John M. Phillips for the Atari ST. The original authors describe their game as follows: "From underground there came a machine encircled by death, that kills but cannot be killed... The Eliminator. A war machine whose solitary quest is to eradicate all forms of life – travelling from planet to planet obliterating all in it's path. Eliminator – the ultimate in firepower. Eliminator is a progressive shoot'em'up set on a Long winding track. The objective of the game is to drive your vehicle through each stage, shooting everything in sight and negotiating/destroying obstacles." The player also has to avoid crashing into obstacles and being hit by enemy fire. In certain parts of the eight pseudo-3D levels, the player can switch to flying along a path on the ceiling. The ship's basic weapon can also be upgraded by collecting tokens in the levels. The game was ported to the Commodore Amiga by Christian Haller and Christian A. Weber. The resulting port is almost identical to the Atari ST version, except for a new Amiga intro at the beginning. Haller states that porting Eliminator to Amiga was done exceptionally quickly, as Phillips' source code was well documented and logically structured.