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)

Galaga: Demons of Death

Name: Galaga: Demons of Death
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 "Galaga: Demons of Death", but it's just a port of the original Galaga.  This kind of embellishment was a common practice for NES ports of arcade games, as developers wanted to distract consumers from the fact that they were paying for a game from 1981)

In 1978, Taito released Space Invaders, revolutionizing the video game world with the first game where you shot at things that shot back.  In 1979, Namco released Galaxian, which mimicked the Space Invaders formula but added a feature where enemies could capture players' ships.  Then in 1981, Namco perfected the formula with Galaga.

Space Invaders seems to be the better remembered game (even those who have never played a video game have heard of Space Invaders), but Galaga is the game (along with Pac-Man) that sit in the corner of every pizzeria in America, and for good reason. For those that have never played either game, the concept of Space Invaders is simple: an alien warfleet marches back and forth across the top of the screen, and you steer a spaceship back and forth across the bottom of the screen, firing at the enemy and avoiding return fire.  Galaga takes this concept and expands upon it in every way: enemies (which are now bugs instead of spaceships) fly in at the beginning of each level (instead of just appearing in formation) and periodically dive-bomb you; extra points are awarded for killing ships in  mid-flight.  Enemies will occasionally mutate mid-level, turning into more powerful bugs that are worth more points but revert back if you don't kill them in time.  Like Galaxian, command ships have the ability to "capture" your ship; reclaiming it gives you a double ship with double firepower (making it the shoot'em up genre's first power-up), but it's a difficult technique to pull off and can result in wasting an extra life.  Every third level is a bonus round, in which enemies fly through but never take formation or open fire, and you have limited time to hit as many as possible.

All in all, Galaga was a groundbreaking game and remains fun to this day; it can still be found wherever arcade games are featured (usually sharing a cabinet with Pac-Man), and I always put in a quarter or two whenever I come across it.  That being said, I never would have shelled out fifty bucks for this, not in 1988 and not now.  Even back then, Namco and Bandi could have easily fit this on a cartridge alongside Pac-Man or Xevious (like Nintendo did with Donkey Kong Classics), making it a great value for your buck; instead, they released a full-price game in which you've seen everything the game has to offer after five minutes.

Graphics & Animation: 2 (Average)
The graphics in Galaga are bright and crisp; the bugs are well-animated as they cavort across the screen. However, other then the bug mutations, which add a little variety to the proceedings, you've seen everything Galaga has to offer in the graphics department after level one.

Music & Sounds: 2 (Average)
The starting music in Galaga is iconic and memerable; it's also the only song in the game.  The sound effects are authentic and sastisfying; once again, everything here is solid, there's just not a lot of it.

Controls & Level Design: 2 (Average)
The most important thing about controls in a video game is that it should always feel like your fault when you're killed, and that's definitely the case here; you've never lose a life due to irresponsible or intuitive controls.  The minimal power-ups (there's only one, and you have to fight to get it) make the game feel more about skill then luck or hording power-ups.  It does possess the early shoot'em up cliche of having a "safe spot" - hang out in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, and the enemies will almost never touch you.  Whether this is a flaw or a crucial part of the strategy is a matter of debate.

Story & Presentation: 1 (Bad)
The presentation here is good enough - the game definitely feels like it's taking place in space - but the story is non exsistance.  Outside of the manual, there's absoltuely no context for why you're shooting insects in outer space - I don't even technically know that they're alien bugs, I just assumed.  A text crawl with a couple of sentences of information at the start of the game would have went a long way to giving some context to the proceedings.

Length & Replayabilitiy: 1 (Bad)
As I keep stressing, Galaga is a a great game - there's just not a lot to it.  Like Pac-Man, it's a blast in the arcade, but at home in front of your TV there's not much incentive to pick this over Mario or Zelda.

Total: 8 (Average)