Matt's Review:

Every gamer has -- at some point I'm sure -- played a scrolling shooter. Even today, when they are few and far between, it's a popular image to appear in the minds eye of anyone who hears the words video (or computer) game uttered. 1985 saw the release of one such game – a scrolling shooter by the name of Xevious.

One notable difference with this game is its use of ground targets. The action in this game isn't restricted to space alone, but takes place over lakes and trees. As well as an assortment of flying disks to contend with, the player also has to take out land-based targets with a carefully timed missile. Some of these fire back, some move around, and some do nothing at all. The player has to recognize each at a glance and pick their targets carefully, as any stray blow from an enemy means instantly losing a life.

Every so often your little, vulnerable ship comes across a huge mothership as well, and the game becomes even more frantic as players attempt to dodge the ships fire power. There’s no end to the shooting either, as the game simply gets harder and harder without an end-of-game scenario. It becomes a case of getting a little further each time, or beating your high score. Fortunate then, that this re-issue features a high score save so players no longer have to worry about memorising those long numbers or keeping stray bits of paper lying around.

And, thankfully, I get to say that this is most definitely, the first time you can own this on GBA. For anyone who was an ardent fan of this game then, this is clearly a good buy, providing you have no quibble with the price.

---

Stephen's Take:

Xevious is one of the first scrolling top down shooters to hit arcades, and it was definitely the first one to have you shoot targets on the ground and in the air. Released in the early eighties, this game was a huge arcade hit. Naturally it spanned a port to one of the most popular gaming machines at the time; the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

The Classic NES version is very close to the arcade original. The actual playfield in the game was widened to fill the entire screen. Other things to not is that sometimes the game gets bogged down with slodwon, and flicker, but besides these points I just mentioned, it is as close to the arcade original as was possible for the time.

You, and only you are up against a relentless alien threat, you use your ship's forward weapon system to destroy aerial targets, and as mentioned earlier you can also release a bomb to destroy ground targets. The way this works is simple; a cross hair is located a couple spaces in front of your ship, then you zero in on your target. Timing is important though, but once you get the hang of it, taking out ground based targets is easily accomplished. This dual plane combat becomes very addicting, and trust me you will be so happy when slowdown happens, because it will most likely HELP you. Slowdown use to be your friend in the shooter genre of gaming, and not sommething that most people openly criticized, funny how thing change.

One thing that Xevious has over it's original is the box art for the Classic Nes vesion is closer to the arcade original. I say this because I feel people who buy these games have a deep fondness for classic gaming, and in my opinion will appreciate this little detail. Also this is the first time Xevious has been ported to the GBA, so there you have another good selling point for Namco's classic shooter.

This shooter I feel never got the respect that it deserved, more people remember Galaga, or Gradius than Xevious, and that is a shame. Now that it has been released for the Gameboy Advance as part of the Classic NES series, I hope it gains more popularity. Even today I can play Xevious and still be entertained, and that is something considering the game just hit its twenty-year age mark.