Get fresh with aliens...
Producer: Melbourne House
Trendy Blasting: £7.95
Author: Jason Cowling (Lothlorien), music adapted by Tiny Williams from a ditty by David Whittaker
Life is so strange at times. There I was watching Saturday morning TV - Get Stale or something, and suddenly this megagame called Xenon came on. Strange name for a game, I thought, sounds like a trendy disco (ie not Nick's).
So what's strange, you ask. Well, one moment I was sitting on the sofa, scoffing beans on toast. Then, before you could say 'Gaz Top needs a haircut' (or 'Wet Wet Wet video' -Ed), I was at the controls of a jet fighter.
The in-built radio crackled into life. 'You've been given a dangerous mission'said a familiar voice - it was Mike Smith! 'Okay Smiffy, what've I got to do, find out what a Production Manager does?' I anxiously enquired.
'No, not quite that bad,' replied Smiffy. 'You'll have to fly through four vertically-scrolling, alien-infested levels.'
Sounds familiar, I thought.
'There are many different types of enemy,' continued Smiffy, 'some in the air and some on the ground. To shoot ground-based aliens you can transform your fighter into a hover-ship. But whatever form you're in, getting hit by enemies or their bullets reduces your fuel - run out and you're dead. Then there are the really large aliens - two in each level - which must be shot dozens of times to be destroyed.'
'But if this mission is so tough, why have I only got a poxy little gun?'
'Luckily for you, when some aliens are shot, they leave behind extra weapons and fuel capsules. Easy peasy. See you fora drink later, and just one little tip - don't try landing near any trees.'
So, after saying a quick prayer to the PM (Production Manager), zoomed over the smooth-scrolling landscape. Well-drawn alien ships darted around the screen, and it took a lot of skill to reach the really large motherships. Unfortunately, these took a long time to destroy, and interrupted the otherwise enjoyable action. But most amazing was the 128K sound-much better than Radio 1. What a great, challenging shoot-'em-up.
PHIL [85%]
THE ESSENTIALS
Joysticks: Cursor, Kempston, Sinclair
Graphics: smooth-scrolling shaded landscape
Sound: superb in-game 128K tune and some good blasting effects
Options: definable keys
Xenon is a jolly good blast if I was going to be an overcritical pain (some would say that's nothing new) then I could say lots of nasty things about unoriginality. Probably the single most impressive feature is the excellent 128K sound - there's a really thumping tune which isn't interrupted at all by gunfire FX. Graphics are almost as impressive, monochromatic, but really well-detailed and scrolling incredibly smoothly even with lots of onscreen action and the aforementioned mass of musical magnificence (phew!). All in all, a worthy buy; a tape containing several trillion years of alien killing fun.
MIKE [88%]
There is no doubt that Xenon is a quality product, the graphics are very good and the 128K tune is amazingly close to the ST's. Gameplay isn't bad either, although the switching between aircraft and hover-ship doesn't add that much to the shoot-'em-up genre. So why isn't it a Smash? The main problem is the game's toughness, Level Three in particular is absolutely maddening, and killing the big aliens takes ages. All the levels look great, though, and once multiloaded in you can play a level as often as you want without going back to Level One. If you fancy a really hard challenge this is probably what you need.
MARK [80%]
Mastertronic Plus
£2.99
Manic vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up with loads of levels and billions of attackers. Collect power pills to improve your ship's capabilities. Great presentation but the gameplay's looking a bit old now.
Melbourne House
£7.95
Reviewer: David Wilson
Coo! Xenon. This of course is a game about that spanky Richard Branson nightclub in London's glitzy West End, where we had the YS Xmas party. (No it's not idiot. It's Xenon the Melbourne House game, and unlike Xenon the Xmas party, it's a goodie! Now get on with it! Ed)
Okay then Xenons a storming shoot 'em up, which involves you moving up a vertically rolling scrolling hi-tech landscape, blasting ground defences and aliens until you meet up with the inevitable Big Meanie. But Xenon's not your normal run of the mill shoot 'em up. Oh no missis, 'cos you can change your vehicle mode from jet fighter to armoured tank thing, the former being the safest and most manoeuverable means of transport, but the latter being the necessary mode for destroying batches of wibbly aliens. Also you get the special treat of taking on TWO big meanies per level! and they are well hard! (Ooer!) This is a dangerous chore, so why do it? I hear you cry. Well if you wipe out a whole caboodle of fat ladybird lookalikes for example, an icon appears, and if you don't, then, er, it doesn't. One icon boosts your energy, others alter your firepower. You can also get a brillo bubble, instead of an icon, on some screens, which will follow you about and fire simultaneously.
Xenon is a bit spooky in some ways, in that I actually got the impression that it became easier the further I got! I mean it s a lot easier to survive if your flying machine has super spanky fire power and the aforementioned brillo bubble, which you can put into use against the meanie! So persevere on the first levels... they are possible to get through even when you're in that crap tank thingy! Oh!... and while I'm having a moan, it is a little annoying that when you've finished the level, you take on the meanie with depleted energy, and if you get killed you have to go all the way back to the start! Ho-hum!
Still this having been said, Xenon is a reet gradely (as they say up North) space shoot 'em up and a well tasty conversion that's worth the eight squidlies that those nice people at Melbourne House want you to shell out for it. It's addictive and pitched at a nice level of difficulty to keep you struggling. It boasts smooth graphics and nice sound especially on the 128K format It's a shame about the single colour screens, but with all the other excitement crammed into this little number, it's forgivable.
If this type of game is your space thermos of Rosie Lee then strap yourself to your Spectrum don your crash helmet, and prepare to blast your way through the alien hordes!!
RICH PELLEY and JON PILLAR - as nice of couple of young chaps as you could ever hope to meet. So we locked them up in the...
BARGAIN BASEMENT
Melbourne House
£7.95
Reviewer: Rich Pelley
Mmm, this is the second Mastertronic offering of the month and - spook! - it's just as much a corker as the first. (Actually, there's another couple of Virgin re-releases over the page as well, Gemini Wing and Double Dragon - you can either buy all four games separately under the Mastertronic label or in one big box as a barg pack. Well, I thought it was interesting anyway.)
Okay, down to business. Captain Xod is in a bit of a pickle because his spaceship has just broken down right over the other end of the Federation sector. In other words, it's just another excuse for a vertically-scrolling multi-level action-packed shoot-'em-up. Huh!
Graphic-wise things are excellent - detailed and, if a little monochrome, still pretty spanky. There are loads of different baddies to kill - they either move around on the surface or fly above it, so for this reason you can swop between two different ships. One goes along the floor and one flies - you have to work out which ship kills what. At the end of the level there's a mega-nasty which (naturally) you have to kill in order to carry on. Oh, and there're loads of add-ons including strange ball things which follow you about and fire for you.
And that's just Level One - Level Two is completely different! Ifs grrrr-eeaaat!
And as the four moons of Kiri eclipsed themselves, Commander Skybuckski of the 4th Space Commandos Platoon put on his oxy-helmet and boarded his X-tie-wingcruiser and set off to do battle with evil wherever it may be found.
Got that? Well, that's the sort of atmosphere you need to imagine for playing Xenon: all high-tech gleaming superstructures and cold-blooded alien fighter-pilo's. A kind of Very Last Starfighter.
If you've got a mate with an ST, he's probably been boring you stupid with stories of how fab Xenon is on his machine. Well, now it's payback time 'cos the Spec version is every bit as good.
It's a top-bottom progressive shoot-out (like so many others) but you can alternate between a flying ship and a hover-craft thing, allowing you to combat airborne aliens and gun installations and ground-based trundley-aliens respectively.
For the most part, it's best to stay in the air, since you can move about more quickly and you won't be hampered by the bugs on the ground. As you make your way up through the level, the most common adversaries are rotating gun-turrets which continually fire in your direction. You have to blow these away pretty swiftly if you're going to get anywhere.
Without too much trouble you'll be able to make your way to the end of the level, only to face - ark? - the big beastie!
You can only combat BB in your hovercraft and so your movement speed is greatly restricted. He moves in a set pattern around the screen - to one side and down, to the other side and down, then back to the middle and down. He fires batches of four or five shots while descending upon you. You encounter this bad guy twice on each level, once at about half-way through and once at the end. He gets tougher and faster and fires more each time. By his visitation on Level Three, it's real terror-time.
Personally, and for the little it's worth. I think these boys are far too hard. After working your way through a tricky and frenetic level, to have your energy mercilessly sapped by an apparently invincible foe is more than a little disheartening. Since it's not possible to use any weapons you may have picked up along the way, I think these stages are simply too tough.
Extra weapons? Yes indeed. After taking out a pack of aliens (either walkers or flyers) a bonus token usually appears. They'll give you extra fuel or a special invincibility weapon in the first stages. From sector two onwards there are more exciting things to collect. You can get multiple direction cannon, firing out in eight tangents and there's an armoured sphere which follows your ship, firing when you fire and demolishing the bad guys.
On top of all this you can exchange your rapid-fire machine-gun for a laser beam which continues to travel even after blowing away a bad guy.
The graphics are fantastic. Although there was no way you could have hoped the bas-relief landscapes could have been copied from the ST original, it still looks very high-tech and shiny. It's similar to the Uridium style. Although the aliens are actually quite small and maybe not that impressive at first, they're all animated and scuttle around in interesting movement patterns. The scroll is smooth, but not flawless. When an alien buys it, he blows up in a plume of nuke-smoke - great!
Further into the game you'll come across gun emplacements hidden in the walls and maze-like structures which you have to negotiate with a great deal of care.
Xenon just gels better and better. Apart from the end-of-level monsters which are too hard! (Shut up about that and tell them about the sound - GT) The 128K sound has to be heard to be believed. There's continual music playing, astoundingly growly sound effect and explosions and even a new tune when you come to the end of level monster - which is too hard (Aaaarh! - GT).
Even if you're thoroughly hacked off with space shoot-outs, Xenon is a must-buy game. Not only is it a very faithful conversion, but all the factors still work well on the Spec. Marvellous.
Label: Melbourne House
Author: Lothlorien
Price: £7.95
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas
SUPER GAME GUIDE
Look, over there, through that swirling cloud of strange mist... No, it can't be, but it is! SU's guide to the game-greats of yester-year. Yes indeedy there have been some good 'uns on the market in the last few years so now's the time to start polishing up on your collection if you've missed out on any of these fabbo titles. Mark Patterson, who's been in the business since before he was born and who has written not just for SU but also for Amiga, ST, PC and Console mages gives us an extra critical run down of the best...
XENON
Label: Virgin
Memory: 48K
Price: £3.99 Tape
Reviewer: Mark Patterson
The Bitmaps' first shoot 'em up is an awesome vertically scrolling affair. You control a rock-hard ground-attack tank which, at the flick of a button, turns into an even harder space-craft Unbelievable it may be but each vehicle has to be employed at certain times during the game, and it's down to you to work out when is best to change.
This game is tough, with fuel limits to keep track of. power-ups to collect and some stupendously powerful bosses to deal with. A classic game.
Label: Virgin
Price: £2.99 Cass 48K
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins
An SU Classic on its first appearance, Xenon continues to hold its head, its tentacles and indeed its entire slimy body high in the air despite many efforts to outdo it by competitors. When Xenon appeared on 16-bit machines (and for that matter as a coin-op), it was widely assumed it wouldn't be possible to transfer its graphic polish and busy gameplay to 8-bit machines.
Well, it was almost true - the Commodore 64 version was plop! But, to give you even more of a reason to jubilate, the Spectrum version was fab, and is still well worth seeking out. It's like this; vertical scroller, pick-up-weapons, multi-form ship, hit M to change from an eight-directional land-crawling tank to a high-flying aircraft. On the 16-bit versions you did this by wiggling the joystick, and it's a pity you can't do this on the Spectrum, because having to hit key M while you're fighting off deathtanks is a wee bit distracting. You wiggle your way between rotating gun placements, fly over metallic wails and fight off flights of alien ships, but at the middle and end of each level there's a stinking challenge in the form of a giant land-crawler which has to be hit in the mouth hundreds of times before you see it off. These nasties are so difficult that you may never get through Xenon without cheating, so depending on your persistence this could be a good investment or frustrating stinker. Extra weapons like armour, homing missiles, lasers, side lasers, wing weapons and rotating balls (pardon?), as well as extra fuel, can be picked up by collecting power puts from clobbered craft. With sixteen zones to complete, divided into four levels. Xenon should keep you occupied until at least Christmas 2016, so slither out and buy it at once.
Label: Mastertronic Plus
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £2.99
Program By: Bitmap Brothers
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins
We said it before and we'll say it again now - Xenon IS a classic shoot-'em-up, well worth its SU Classic status, and though it has now been compiled, cover-mounted and collated almost out of existence, if there's anyone left who doesn't have it, then they must have taken an overdose of penicillin 'cos it's the most contagious game in existence, and they should catch it this time around.
Great 128K music and sound effects accompany this vertically-scrolling fight-feast, as you steer a two-mode fighter over metallic landscapes. Switching from ground-attack to airborne modes using the space-bar, you shoot anything that moves as you flit freely around the smooth-scrolling screen.
There are four sectors, each divided into four zones, and each decked out with rotating gun turrets, ladybird-like ground craft, laser emplacements, and, at the end of each level, an enormous sentinel. These are not your everyday Mothercare bouncers - they're terrifically hard to kill, and you won't have the help of your special weapons such as wing-shooters, side-shooters, armour, lasers, homing missiles and revolving balls, which you collect along the way by picking up icons.
Bar displays show your fuel level, speed and energy status, but despite the claims that this is the 'thinking man shoot-'em-up', you can turn your brain off and just use your reflex shooting skills. Reach out with your feelings and blast em to bits.
ANDREA'S COMMENT:
Blast, maim, splaa-booom! I even broke two fingernails in my first game and still thought it was worth the suffering. A classic blast from the past.
Label: Tronix
Memory: 48K/128K
Price: £3.99
Reviewer: Garth Sumpter
King of the crawling armoured thingies, Xenon has been popular for a long time and although it may have been put to one side at this stage in some people's collections, it will certainly never be forgotten.
A true monster bash, Xenon involves devastating all comers in a large, vertically scrolling world with a powerful transformer tank capable of transmuting from hell on wheels to hell on wings, taking to the skies and picking off targets from above.
Playability is incredible but although it's Xenon's strongest point, it is also it's weakest 'cos it can actually be too difficult to finish the game without a cheat. However, it contains so much action that it doesn't really get frustrating... you can literally spend hours at the Xenon and not notice the time fly by.
Graphics are detailed but not over stunning and the sound is really rather good but as you destroy the seemingly infinite string of gun emplacements, battle tanks and alien ships in the demon world of Xenon you'll wonder why you haven't already fallen for this superb shoot 'em up.
ALAN: What a blast! One of the first of the Bitmaps' new age games, Xenon promises to thrill.
Melbourne House, £9.99cs £14.99dk
Amiga version reviewed Issue 7 - rating 869
The game that made the Bitmap Bros famous makes it onto the 8-bit machines. The graphics are as good as you could expect from a Spectrum, and though all the extra weapons aren't there, the gameplay is. A great conversion of a good shoot-em-up.
Mastertronic
Spectrum £2.99
It's you against the rest of the universe in this vertical scrolling blaster. The graphics and sound are quite neat, and the game is very playable indeed, if a tad tough. Overall, a very good blast, and well worth shelling out for.
Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.95
Remember when Xenon came out on the ST? With a score of 85% we reckoned it was the most challenging shoot-'em-up to date and a near-perfect arcade conversion to boot. Now the Spectrum version has arrived and it's as well implemented as its predecessors, pushing the Speccy into territories hitherto the domain of 16-bit owners.
The gameplay remains exactly the same as before, with the player controlling a spacecraft which can transform into a hover-ship to take out groundbased aliens when required. Over a horizontally scrolling, beautifully designed landscape, the objective is to destroy as many of the irksome Xenite craft and ground installations, picking up icons left in their wake. There are 16 levels in all to complete, and at the end of each a massive mother-alien needs despatching before progressing to the next level.
This game just oozes addictivity and the combination of blasting and building your ship to near-awesome proportions as in Nemesis keeps you coming back time and time again. On the minus side the Spectrum version is if anything, a little too hard. On later levels proves a real pain.
128K owners are in for a musical treat - you'll be hard pushed to tell the difference between it and that on the ST. But for everyone it's a remarkable conversion. Animation is smooth, the number of aliens awesome, the alien-blasting linger-breaking.
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