Xevious

Hello g1s, let me welcome you to another wonderful edition of The MisterBo Retro Collection. Today, I'll be reviewing one of the worst retro games I've come across. This game is Xevious.

God, I wish the actual game was as exciting as the poster.

Groose's Theme -Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

God, I don't know what it is about this game but I just hate the ever living crap out of it. Sure, the game is from 1982 but that's no excuse. You have games like Galaga, Galaxian, even Space Invaders that are, in my opinion, lightyears ahead of this game in terms of fun and playability.

By no means is it the worst game in the world, but it's pretty bad. I think now is the time I delve into more detail about this game.

History:

Xevious was an arcade game released in 1982 and was developed by the video game company known as Namco. Namco was more famous back in the early '80s for creating games suchas Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaxian, and Galaga.

There's no way you can screw up Pac-Man. Right? There's no way you can screw up Pac-Man. Right?

In reality, it seemed liked Namco could do no wrong. The company innovated the video game industry by introducing RGB raster graphics in their game Galaxian, which became standard throughout the '80s.  On top of that, Namco released the most popular arcade games ever which were Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. They even did this within a span of 3 years. Truly, Namco were the king of the Golden Age of the arcade.

Namco released Xevious the same year that Ms. Pac-Man was released, so it was mainly ignored because the game just could not compare to Ms. Pac-Man's level of fun-ness.

Although the game had limited success in America, it has a huge cult following in Japan. Over the years, there has been a three-part novel written about the series called Fardraut. In more recent years, there has been a comic strip series based on Xevious made by the offset division of Namco called ShiftyLook.

Xevious is probably most famous for popularizing the vertical scrolling shooter, which is a standard that is still used in popular shoot 'em ups today.

The game has also spawned a number of sequels such as Super Xevious, Solvalou, Xevious 3D, and more recently Xevious Resurrection.

I didn't ask for this...

 Storyline:

Seriously? A storyline? For an early '80s arcade game?

Expecting a storyline from this game is like expecting to catch a shiny pokemon on your first try.
What I mean by this is that early video games like this, more often than not, will not have a given storyline. This sort of works likes catching a shiny pokemon in a pokemon game. There are a lot of them out there (them being arcade games and pokemon), but finding an early arcade game with a storyline/a shiny pokemon is something that's next to impossible.

It's probably more exciting if you find a shiny pokemon though.

God, I hope that analogy worked.

In short, There is a possibility but a small one. Xevious just happens to be one of those not-so-special arcade games that doesn't have a storyline.

Although this particular game doesn't have a story to it, a storyline has been created for the games that followed Xevious in the Xevious franchise.

Gameplay:

The gameplay is nothing very special. It's basic and there are no major flaws, but it's so average.
There are two weapons that are used through the course of the game. Your primary weapon is the standard pea shooter that is meant to destroy sky enemies. These enemies include flying robotic eyeballs...

You can also call them angry frisbees.

... and a giant octagon.

Goatse.

 As your secondary weapon, you get a bomb that you use to lob at enemy bases on the ground. An upside to this weapon is that you get a little targeting site that will tell you where the bomb will land on the ground. I can't be mad at that.

Enemy bases include pyramids, spheres, (as seen in one of the above screenshots) and the occasional moving retarded cube. These bases serve next to no purpose except to occasionly slowly lob a projectile at you. This is fairly easy at first, but get a tad bit more frequent as the game goes on.

A huge disappointment in this game is the lack of power ups. And no, I will not exclude this because this game was made before the widespread popularity of shoot 'em ups. Just a year earlier, you have Galaga and Donkey Kong that had at least on power-up. Galaga had the option where you could control two ships. Donkey Kong had the hammer that could temporarily destroy barrels.

What makes it even worse is that Galaga and Xevious use THE SAME SYSTEM BOARD!!!!1

Why some type of power-up wasn't implemented is something I'll never know.

Before I move on, I have to talk about the rotating sheets of metal.

Rectangles. How intimidating.

These godless abominations cannot be destroyed by any means. The player can only avoid these "enemies." This makes it EXTREMELY difficult to shoot any other enemies and also avoid any enemy fire. I have died MANY times because of these polished rectangular pieces of SHIT! I can't stress this enough.

Call my therapist. Tell him he is a rich man.

Bleeps and Bloops:

This has been the section I've been hoping to avoid. The music and sound effects in this game makes me feel I'm having a stroke. Let me just give you an idea of what I'm talking about.

When the game first begins, you get a catchy little tune to sort of motivate you to do well. Then comes the main music. That repetitive, droning, monotonous series of bleeps. It doesn't even qualify as music. It almost makes the player want to die so they can just make it stop.

In addition to the stage "music" are the shooting and bombing sounds. By themselves they would be tolerable,  but in comination with the "music"  it just makes it worse. I can't even stand listening to it again. I've already suffered enough while making this review. JUST LET IT END!!!!!

That's it. There is no more music thoughout the game. Just the intro and stage themes. This is a time where you can use the early arcade game excuse because not too many arcade games back then had a variety of music. But Namco couldn't even bother to make it good, hell even decent? FOR SHAME, NAMCO!!!! FOR SHAME!!!!!!!!

Overall:

There really isn't a storyline for this game and is mainly left up to the imagination of the player. There is a storyline found in later games of the series, but that wasn't done until after the original release of Xevious.
The gameplay is decent, but it's nothing groundbreaking or special. It's not broken, just average. Anyone could pick it up and play it, but the player wouldn't find anything exciting about it.

The music is GOD AWFUL! This is only worsened by the sound effects which aren't too bad by themselves, but are made worse by the unoriginal and lazily made stage "theme".

Score:

I've actually found over the course of this review that the game was not as bad as I previously thought at the beginning of this review. Don't get me wrong, I still dislike the game.

I have also learned during the course of this review that Xevious is much more appreciated than I thought. I guess I'm just not one of those people. By any chance you are one of the people who really likes this game, I guess we just have a difference of opinion.

For an overall score, 4.0/10 . A game definitely reserved for the most hardcore shoot 'em up fans and even more hardcore retro gamers.

Now that this is done, my torture has ended and I can finally die in peace.

This is MisterBo signing off. This is MisterBo signing off.