Xybots - Arcade

How... do you pronounce that?

Take 2 players, drop them into a maze filled with increasingly more difficult layouts and monsters/robots and make it part Third Person Shooter and you've effectively got yourself Xybots.

It's quite a bit daunting at the start

In taking from possibly the idea of Gauntlet but giving us an "in maze" view rather than the typical top-down view, Xybots not only takes the approach of giving us warning messages the first time anything new happens, much like in Gauntlet, but it also lets us see the action happening in the playing field. The view itself is split up into 3 parts. One screen for player 1, one screen for player 2 and the rest of the screen, which is the upper half, is dedicated to stats, layouts and the map for both players.

And then the difficulty kicks in

Play takes place for Xybots in the same arena for each player. As the players move and progress through the maze, they'll gradually map the maze out from their views. Sometimes players start together, sometimes they don't but they ideally have to find the same exit (and there's warps to other levels too). This leads to possible routes of attack where players can flank and ambush enemies that have specifically-directional shields. In other cases this isn't a good idea as the game may flag up that shooting each other will hurt and most hits take 10% of your ever-fading life bar.

Maps and sensors, though costly, will save a lot of time.

Yep, Xybots is one of those countdown games where the longer you take, the less health you'll have in the next round and such. However the game is unique with its control system in that not only do you navigate with the joystick to move forwards, backwards, sidestepping left and right, but turning is done by twisting the top of the control to turn 90 degrees either left or right depending upon the direction turned. If you're not aware the game can do this, you'll find several first few maps that have you running sideways down a corridor until you either learn it, get killed or miraculously get to the end of the corridor while being shot at.

Some enemies have shields, some fire back. Beware those that have both functions.

Enemies are the rather non-descript entities ranging from spaceships that pick up items and move them around, including coins which are used to buy things at the end of levels, health, keys, weapons and so on. Large robots that move and shoot at you while taking several hits to be killed fully, smaller robots that take similar hits but can selectively use shields to block and fire, insect looking things that move almost erratically and hammer the player with a huge level of shots while they themselves can only be shot at JUST the right time. Every now and then you get to meet a Master Xybot which needs to be shot repeatedly in key places to succeed and losing will knock you back some 10 or so levels. Sounds very fair to me.

Each new event gets a lovely little (annoying) message about it!

Speaking of sounds, the music in the game takes a very lacklustre approach and while it doesn't overwhelm the ambience of the game, there's plenty of room for extra that could be better used to build upon the mechanics of the game. While the sounds are the usual bleep and bloops we've come to expect from this time period, it's interesting to behold the digitised speech mechanic within the game. Otherwise it's clear that most of the focus has gone into the graphics of the game and the gameplay.

And there's bosses too... Good luck.

It's a fun game initially though the first few levels are a little too gradual on the difficulty curve while later levels will ramp it up to becoming a vertical way that eventually flexes back upon itself. Stick to it a little and have someone competent playing alongside you and you'll do well to enjoy this game.

Berzerk - Arcade

Sorry, there is no title screen for this game. Here's an empty highscore table instead.

A game steeped in infamy, a game that is responsible for at least one person dying, a game that features possibly the happiest nemesis you will ever encounter. I am talking about of course, Berzerk. A game possibly made famous because of the associated death but also having a level of uniqueness to it that other games back in 1980 didn't quite have.

Robots!

Berzerk has you, as a happily animated little green character, running around a maze while either trying to shoot or avoid robots. A group of rather vocal robots that will happily announce their intentions to "Stop the intruder" or "Kill the humanoid" and various other insults that run along the lines of indicating that you are indeed a card-carrying member of some poultry based organisation. While you're running around, you can either leave by one of the doorways at the edge of the screen or go for the bonus points and try to kill every single robot in the room before Evil Otto turns up to shepherd you out of the arena. Or kill you.

There's Otto, he's killed 2 people already, you might be next.

Mazes are a rather unassuming group in that the maze is usually randomly generated upon death/starting over and each maze has usually, 4 exits. However, if you entered into the maze from one direction, you cannot leave in that direction as there'll be a door there. Touching or brushing against any of the walls of the maze or locked doors, much in the same way as touching a robot or being shot, or getting caught by Evil Otto, will kill you. In a lovely display of flashy colours for your little humanoid.

Whoo! Lots of red robots!

Where the difficulties stand within the game, as also are the predictable nature of the AI, is that your shooting can only be done in 8 directions and in the direction in which you're moving at the time of firing the shot off. At the same time as this, if an enemy robot has line of sight on you and there's room in the maze for a shot, it WILL fire at you, even if it means hitting the walls. While your character shoots directly from their hand rather than the middle of where their bounding boxes are located, so your attacks will invariably be inaccurate, initially.

Cyan robots! They shoot MORE bullets!

Robots themselves come in multiple flavours. The brown/yellow ones just idle around getting shot by the player. The red ones will take it in turns to fire a shot at you before someone picks the bullet up and fires another shot like some artillery based game of hot-potato. While the blue robots will have 2 bullets they share in which to try and terminate your existence. They do manage to do it surprisingly quickly for simplified artificial intelligence.

Fight, or run off. If you run, you'll be called a "chicken".

But that's not to say that combat on that level is the only choice available to the player. You could for example, get the robots to shoot each other, how you go about doing that is down to you but it can happen. Also, any exploding robot is deadly to everything, yourself AND other robots so you could try chain-linking some deaths together.

Redraw lines, repeat until brain seeps out of eyesockets and slithers off in shame.

 

As fun and quick as the game is, with some fantastic voice effects and quite an extensive vocabulary for the game itself, it falls into that old arcade adage of mindless repetition. Each level varies by a small amount of differentiation and ultimately, it gets dull quickly as you run through similar levels while occasionally being caught up by the ever-present Evil Otto. The shock and awe factor of 2 people having died while playing or shortly after playing, wears off quickly and you realise that death CAN COME as the game attempts to bore you to death. Avoid it or take a look for the sake of the infamy, but realise you're looking not because it's recommended as a good game, but because it's the "killer" game.

Super Probotector/Contra 3: The Alien Wars

And so it begins, on the SNES!

I do have a rather fond relationship with the Probotector/Contra series of games, to a point. That point being this game in particular in which having played the first and second game in the series, then getting a SNES and seeing "Super Probotector" (an odd thing to name all games "super" just because it's on the Super Nintendo, causes a problem when you already called it Super on the NES... Right? SUPER Mario brothers...) and seeing the 8bit classic, favourite and challenge of a console brought to the 16bit era and sitting back and going "....wow..." having spent the first few minutes of the game running through a war-torn city, jumping into a tank, taking out barricades, tanks, being hit with an airstrike, somersaulting over fireballs and eruptions before fighting a giant mutant tortoise. FOR THE FIRST LEVEL.

The dynamic ways in which you'll have to fight enemies, are numerous.

It runs the same format as the other games before it have. You've yourself and maybe a second player, running from left to right with your guns, killing everything that moves and trying to get to the end where you can kill a boss. (usually... this game does mix it up a little). Accompanying this is your new abilities to climb walls, hang from ceilings and supports and now have the ability to select different weapons or fire both at once in a "web of death" spiralling move. You can also carry bombs that wipe out most enemies and do some damage to bosses too.

Because being stalked into the stratosphere wasn't scary enough, bring the spiked walls.

First thing you'll notice is that the graphics are stunning. There's no two ways about that one and the detail and focus on the 16-bit version here is mind-blowing, especially if you've not seen the games after this point. Destroyed cities look like truly dilapidated remnants of once former glorious locations, industrial landscapes as far as the eye can see, deserts within acres of canyons while riding a hover bike through along a fully maintained single road... Ok lost the plot a little on that one. But every single enemy, from standard alien creature up to giant flying armada space boss, looks stunning. The detail has been lavished on in every regard.

"I felt like such a twat when I turned around and saw what really scared them away..."

The gameplay hasn't suffered either. It's fast, it's fluid, your character runs and jumps as smoothly as the best of them and the added collar/shoulder buttons help with the standing still and shooting in all directions function while the jump and shoot are nicely placed as per muscle memory would accept while the switch and bomb buttons are added on and tend to be less used than the others anyway. (Unless you've an auto fire joypad, then it's double gun time!... yes I did do that back in the early 90's). If you die in this game it's for one of two reasons, either you've faced off against an enemy you've never met before or you didn't react in time. The controls are too solid for that to be the error here.

Once again, the computer can do something more cool than I can.

Musically and sound-effects wise, the game is fairly crisp, making good use of the onboard sound capabilities of the Super Nintendo, giving us heart-pounding beats and music filled with adrenaline to the point it'll be dripping from your ears while the shouts, screams, explosions and gunfire is almost constant but never quite enough to overpower the musical ensemble. Though some of the compositions rely on bridges that are dependent upon the character reaching a certain point in the level and it's not quite so smooth in such a transition.

Post-Air-Strike stance.

The multiplayer still holds the same issues that the first games did. If one person tries to make a huge jump that's beyond what you can manage if the screen doesn't scroll, and the other player doesn't jump... Then it's a quick trip to fuck-you town, population YOU.

First boss, suffering from Ectopia cordis (go look it up)

The game will overwhelm you at first, there's just SO much going on in each level, even the top-down levels where your view changes to a birds-eye-view of the battle, the shoulder buttons used to turn left and right and the d-pad to run around, jumping now makes you duck under bullets and some of the weapons take on different properties, the laser in particular is now a short range constant stream rather than the high powered beam weapon it was in the previous level.

Mode 7 used wonderfully here to show level 2. Though you really need to see it in action.

Your power ups range from the mundane but useful machinegun (of which you have anyway), crush gun that's short range but explodes powerfully, the flamethrower that acts like an actual flame thrower, homing bullets that do exactly what you'd expect; builds a house. No. The spread/scatter gun making it's almost trademark appearance and the laser. Bombs that will stop most bullets and small enemies and will also damage larger ones and the occasional Barrier that will give you a colour-coded shield that lets you know when it'll run out.

Level 1 and I get a tank, sadly not much else later on.

Throw in 3 difficulties of varying toughness, including the Hard Mode being the ONLY way to get the True Final Boss (a brain in an armoured suit that chases you up a pit while you're helicoptering out). Some obstacles also become invincible, some bosses speed up or hit in different movements, some enemies will now attack rather than sit in the background. There's a BIG jump from Normal to Hard mode that you will not see from Easy to Normal. In fact, with the Easy mode, you'll wonder why you even bothered, especially when most bosses are rather idle during the fights, the last boss has the 4 easiest options when fighting and you can likely outrun bullets. While conversely for hard mode, you'll be shot faster than you can say "what bulle...?", the last boss hammers you with every option and tends to favour even the grey snake special (you'll dread it when you see it) and then suits up for a final fight afterwards, and the giant turtle on level is invincible save for the heart (you can't break other bits of it).

The video game equivilient of "I'm a huge TIT", with guns.

It's a good example of how to do a strong, solid, run-n-gunner. Learn from it.