Xevious

Name: Xevious: The Avenger
Year: 1988
Publisher: Bandi
Developer: Namco
Genre: Shoot'em Up
Hours Played: Countless
Beaten: N/A

(Note: the official NES title of this game is "Xevious: The Avenger", but it's just a port of the original Xevious.  This kind of embellishment was a common practice for NES ports of arcade games.  It's especially odd in this case, since "Xevious" is the name of the planet, not the main character.)

Xevious is a vertical scrolling game originally released in 1982.  While it might not seem impressive at first glance, it's hard to explain just how influential it was at the time.  Although it wasn't the first vertical shooter, it was the first one to become well known, and it holds up surprisingly well.

The basic concept of Xevious is pretty easy to understand. You fly over a lush alien planet covered in forests, landing strips, and water, and try to destroy the enemy's vehicles and bases without getting destroyed yourself.  You start with the only two weapons in the game, a standard gun, and a bomb.  The gun is for airborn targets and the bomb works on land targets.  Both kind can fire back at you, and many airborne craft with attempt to ram you, as well.  Every so many levels there is a giant mothership (considered one of gaming's first bosses), which fires a barrage of bullets but can be destroyed with a single well-placed bomb.

While it all sounds simple enough, Xevious is a surprisingly difficult - and complex - game.  While most shooters of this type (Legendary Wings, 1942, etc) can be mastered with enough practice and memorization, Xevious has just enough elements of randomness to ensure that the enemy placement is never exactly the same on any two playthrus.  The result is, unlike most NES action games such as Mega Man, you'll never be able to get by simply learning the enemy patterns and reacting accordingly.  What's worse is that Xevious isn't scared to play dirty.  While enemy patterns seem fairly standard in the first few levels, as you progress, the game will throw at you everything from screen-sized multi-blasts, to heat-seeking bullets that chase you around, to enemies that fly up from the bottom of the screen (a serious violation of vertical scrolling conventions!).

Like most arcade games of it's ilk, Xevious continues indefinitely, but instead of simply repeating the same levels (a la Pac-Man), the game remixes and multiplies the enemy placement.  You know how after you beat Super Mario Bros, you get to play the game again, only all the Goombas are replaced with Buzy Beetles?  Imagine that, only instead of a congratulations screen, the game just cycles back to world 4, and for every Goomba there's now three Buzy Beetles and a Latuika.  Once you've progressed far enough, the game becomes the world's first bullet hell - I tried playing with save states, and literally reached a point I couldn't get past even while cheating.  That's my definition of a tough game.

All in all, Xevious is a well-crafted game that was ahead of it's time.  Every time you play it, it throws something new at you.  While it's considered a seminal shooter in Japan, it's never quite gained the same notoriety in America, and that's a shame; as far as endless shooters go, it doesn't get any better then this.

Graphics & Animation: 3 (Good)
Xevious does a whole lot with very little.  Using only a handful of colors and designs, the game is able to produce some pretty intricate landscapes for you to fly over - a refreshing change of pace from the endless starfields of most shmups.

Music & Sounds: 1 (Bad)
The good? The main theme does a nice job of evoking suspense.  The bad?  There's only two songs i the entire game - the main theme, and the tune that plays when you start a new life.  The music's iconic, but it gets old fast.

Controls & Level Design: 3 (Good)
The controls are very tight in this game, and the Solvalou (your ship) always goes where you want it to.  The dual-layered level design (air and ground targets, requiring two different weapons) still feels clever even thirty years later.

Story & Presentation: 1 (Bad)
There's a cool little effect in this game where, instead of announcing when you've made it to a new level, you instead fly over a large expanse of forest.  It's a cool little way of subtly letting the player know you're in new territory.  Other then that, there's not a lot of presentation to be had here.

Length & Replayabilitiy: 4 (Excellent)
This is one of the first video games I ever owned, meaning I've been playing it for about as long as I can remember, and in writing this review, I still came across new tricks and enemy types I'd never seen before.

Total: 12 (Average)