Xevious nes cartridge
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The music is the same annoying ringing tone played over and over, and gives you an urging feeling that something is always about to happen - it eventually does, in the form of an utter death blow fired by an enemy craft. It's clear from screenshots, for instance, that the graphics appear to have only 3 colors: green, orange and blue. However, Xevious falls short in all the other aspects that make a shooter great. It certainly delivers in the basic aspects of a decent shmup: smooth scrolling, well implemented collision detection and fierce difficulty. There's no denying that this game hasn't aged well at all. There are 4 huge boss bases (the Andor Genesis) spread out in the first loop - they cause the scrolling to stop for a while, giving you the chance to bomb them amidst relentless incoming fire.
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I read that these secrets supposedly extend to hidden towers, but I could never find any of these while playing the NES game. As you fly over forests, lagoons and enemy bases, all you can count on are the same basic weaponry, for Xevious has absolutely no power-ups! The only icons you're bound to collect are the hidden flags that can be uncovered with your bombs and are worth 1.000 points and an extra life. Ground targets can be flown over with no harm, and most airborne enemies will leave the screen if you don't kill them. Besides being able to fire a main shot, the player can also hit ground targets with bombs that can be aimed with the aid of a crosshair. It was the first of its kind, and it boasted great new features at the time of its release. Xevious is heralded as an absolute classic, in the sense that it started the vertical scrolling shooter genre. It's also important to mention that all areas overlap vertically in a single giant map (that can be seen here). In fact, if you're not paying attention you won't even notice you've looped the game. After the 16th area the game gets back to the 7th (the one with the rotating ground turrets in the beginning) and loops forever in this fashion, with no special ending screen whatsoever. These areas are separated by a dense dark green forest, in a total of 16. It surely seems to go on and on randomly, but as you play it repeatedly and get hold of the patterns not only you get better, but you also realize there's a defined set of stages/areas to overcome.
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Now what most people don't know, including myself until very recently, is that this game actually loops. The "special choice" I had for weeks now was the NES port of Xevious. That's when I'll pull out the "special choice": a game to be played with no specific purpose other than relax and not focus too much on the much desired 1CC. Nonetheless it can happen that a particular game decides to give me a serious beating, in a situation that not rarely leads to stress. Generally I'll have 3 or 4 different games at hand for instant play - games remain inserted in the consoles themselves and boxes are displayed on my rack to remind me how long it's taking me to win them.
#Xevious nes cartridge plus
Xevious ports fairly smoothly to the Nintendo Entertainment System - the music sounds fine, though the sound effects aren't as rich whether it's a plus or not, the simple music cuts out when certain sound effects are playing, just like the coin-op original. But in 1982 arcades, it was quite an impressive sight to see roads and hills of the world below in a space shoot-'em-up, rather than the customary empty or sparsely star-speckled vacuum of space. This is something we take for granted today, and it could be taken for granted on the 8-bit Famicom, so this port didn't push the hardware too seriously. Xevious' biggest innovation at the time of its release was its newfangled graphics hardware that allowed display of a detailed scrolling background independent of the sprites, on a separate plane that created a convincing illusion of above-the-ground depth.