Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neither

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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by louisg »

system11 wrote:The Amiga version is by far the best version of a pretty mediocre game, it's the original version. Megadrive being at least the same type of CPU is closest.
X68000 one was very well done (as far as Xenon 2 goes at any rate)
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

Stewart Green, one of the coders for the Sega Master System port, provided some insight on its development replying to a YouTube review on st1ka's retro corner:

https://youtu.be/c3dgZHEZZM0
Spoiler
"I was the programmer on this version - so thanks for the review, I loved programming this. The position of enemies, movement paths, and sizes are all accurate to the original game design - so actually it was an amazing feat of the 8 bit Master system, glad you apprreciate it. I guess you don't know the hardware of the master system, so I will explain a little, which I hope then you understand just how difficult programming in those days was, and 'making the graphics smaller'was NOT an option. We had to use hardware sprites and there was not enough to even draw the spaceship let alone all the enemies and the bullets and their bullets and the animating side graphics and the scores and explosions! there is a heck of a lot going on in this game. We had to write a custom sprite handler just to manage all that was happening, it re-designed the sprites as they were being displayed, so we could -reuse the same hardware sprites again later down the screen for another graphic. We had to calculate when the TV had stopped 'printing each scan line' of the TV screen and -recode the graphic in the short time we had while the cathode ray moved back to start the next scan line of the TV! this was critical timing work, calculatingthe speed of every single instruction of code to save every last T state! Fortunately, the hardware allowed us to reuse the sprites as mirrored sprites, so a left wing and left side of the ship can be mirrored to become versions for the right side and wing of the space ship, you will see that the balls are actually the same 1/4 of a circle, mirrored to the right then flipped and re-used for the bottom half. Our ship had to be made from 8 pixels wide graphics, so it had to be 4 sprites wide (16 pixels) if it was not then it would not work flipped and we could not have rotated the graphics - actually the same with all the enemies. In short the only way to make this smaller would have been to 'HALF' all the graphics sizes - this would have been a far easier task for my the programmer - less work, less technical challenge, but with everything only appearing 1/4 of the size (half height and width) then the game would have looked pretty awful - as you say one of the biggest appeals of this game was the graphics and fast but 'diddy' version would have had far more complaints from the public."
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by StrzxgvNuvWvfld »

papa_november wrote:Xenon 2 is mostly loved because the people who played it the most didn't have access to anything better.
It's aged terribly (the Amiga version runs at 17fps and even the initially great music gets annoying when it's just looping over and over and over!), but at the time even magazines like Mean Machines, that were reviewing the best PC Engine and Megadrive games, gave it a pretty good review.
system11 wrote:The Amiga version is by far the best version of a pretty mediocre game, it's the original version. Megadrive being at least the same type of CPU is closest.
I can't find a source for this, but I'm almost certain it was written for the ST and ported to the Amiga later on (like many games of the time).
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by it290 »

I actually think Xenon 1 is a significantly better game than Xenon 2—still crappy, but at least it has the transforming vehicle mechanic and a good (albeit unfair) challenge level, plus a certain minimalistic charm. The second game doesn't even seem like part of the same series. That said, I imagine the CD32 version is probably the definitive one?
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Sly Cherry Chunks »

StrzxgvNuvWvfld wrote:I can't find a source for this, but I'm almost certain it was written for the ST and ported to the Amiga later on (like many games of the time).
Heres your source.

Xenon II is a great game. When I got into emulation, having spent a long time away from the Amiga - this game was easily to most exiting to re-learn. One of the few I couldn't beat as a kid. Loops 2 and 3 have increased enemy hp. I've never been on loop 4.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by MJR »

Xenon and Xenon 2, were, at the times of their release, the best looking and most arcade-like shooters available for (an european) home computer.
First Xenon was even developed as an arcade game first. While most of the criticisms pointed here are pretty much true (awful hit detection, bad frame rate), the game is nowhere near unplayable, it is just played in very different way to the shmups we know now. It is slow paced, you need to do the back-pedalling a lot (push down at the bottom of the screen and it will scroll back), and you need to memorize which weapons to buy.

What Xenon 2 had, compared to the competition at the time, was beautifully pixelated graphics, some quite imaginative multi-part bosses, some well thought attack patterns (in regards to the play style you were expected to do) and enemies with custom behaviour, good shop system and multi-layered parallax scrolling. Production values were through the roof. There was time and effort spent on it, and I do argue that at the time of it's release, it was more impressive to many kids than many coin-ops at the time. Frame rate of course sucked, but we didn't understand those intricacies as kids. It's only afterwards when we have noticed that the game has not aged so well.

Still Xenon 2 is better than many other amiga shmups. If you want to try real trash with pretty graphics and high production values, try Project X. That is truly mind-numbing dull shooter with zero thought spent on enemy attack patterns or.. anything at all.

Shooters on amiga that still have stood the test of time are Starray, excellent defender clone with solid 50fps frame rate, and Apidya (though I personally feel it's realistic insect/garden theme is really underwhelming and waste of good tech), Hybris and Battle Squadron. They are still quite fun.

Best Bitmap Brothers game is easily Chaos Engine, I can agree with that. Speedball 2 is also great, and I love Cadaver as well. Xenon 2 was great for it's time, but can't hold a candle against today's standards.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

MJR wrote:and I do argue that at the time of it's release, it was more impressive to many kids than many coin-ops at the time.
That's exaggerating things a bit, perhaps. in October 1989, even British players had been exposed already to stuff like Vulcan Venture... Although yes, from the visual / artistic side of things, the brothers were quick to catch up with the best Japan had to offer (R-Type remaining the main inspiration I guess)
MJR wrote:Shooters on amiga that still have stood the test of time are Starray, excellent defender clone with solid 50fps frame rate, and Apidya (though I personally feel it's realistic insect/garden theme is really underwhelming and waste of good tech), Hybris and Battle Squadron. They are still quite fun.
Don't forget Datastorm for gameplay, and Agony for overall artistic achievements / production values.
it290 wrote:I imagine the CD32 version is probably the definitive one?
There is no CD32 version, but a CDTV one. Not sure if it's among the compatible ones unfortunately.

Anyway, I resurrected the topic with a focus on the SMS port. :wink:
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by MJR »

Turrican wrote:
That's exaggerating things a bit, perhaps. in October 1989, even British players had been exposed already to stuff like Vulcan Venture... Although yes, from the visual / artistic side of things, the brothers were quick to catch up with the best Japan had to offer (R-Type remaining the main inspiration I guess)
That's like, dude, your opinion ;) Vulcan Venture is far better game, but when I saw it in 1990 it didn't explode my head like Xenon 2 did. Then again, VV / Gradius 2 was designed as "gameplay first", as it should be, while Xenon 2 was designed to roll as huge detailed graphics as possible on amiga. And that was all we cared about as kids. IDK know about you, but we certainly were graphics whores. I think the first time when I truly felt Xenon 2 was surpassed was when I saw Truxton.
Turrican wrote:Don't forget Datastorm for gameplay, and Agony for overall artistic achievements / production values.
Nah.. I did not mention them because those two are not my favourites.. I did play datastorm a LOT back in the day, and it is very playable, but I never liked the graphics and the framerate is not doing it justice. I prefer Starray. But I do recognize Datastorm as classic. As for Agony.. meh. It's an euroshmup in the worst sense, all style and no substance. Gameplay is sub-par and I don't like the low-color sprites much either. Lovely atmosphere and nice animated sea though.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

MJR wrote:I think the first time when I truly felt Xenon 2 was surpassed was when I saw Truxton.
"I think the first time when I truly felt Xenon 2 (Oct 1989) was surpassed was when I saw Truxton (Oct 1988)". Fixed for you :P
MJR wrote:As for Agony.. meh. It's an euroshmup in the worst sense, all style and no substance. Gameplay is sub-par and I don't like the low-color sprites much either. Lovely atmosphere and nice animated sea though.
But isn't this very valid criticism exactly the one that can be made for Xenon 2?
MJR wrote:Best Bitmap Brothers game is easily Chaos Engine, I can agree with that. Speedball 2 is also great, and I love Cadaver as well. Xenon 2 was great for it's time, but can't hold a candle against today's standards.
It's important to notice however that Xenon 2 isn't listed in databases such as Hall of Light as a Bitmap Brothers game proper, since it technically was designed by them but actually coded by The Assembly Line.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by MJR »

Turrican wrote:
MJR wrote:I think the first time when I truly felt Xenon 2 was surpassed was when I saw Truxton.
"I think the first time when I truly felt Xenon 2 (Oct 1989) was surpassed was when I saw Truxton (Oct 1988)". Fixed for you :P
MJR wrote:As for Agony.. meh. It's an euroshmup in the worst sense, all style and no substance. Gameplay is sub-par and I don't like the low-color sprites much either. Lovely atmosphere and nice animated sea though.
But isn't this very valid criticism exactly the one that can be made for Xenon 2?
MJR wrote:Best Bitmap Brothers game is easily Chaos Engine, I can agree with that. Speedball 2 is also great, and I love Cadaver as well. Xenon 2 was great for it's time, but can't hold a candle against today's standards.
It's important to notice however that Xenon 2 isn't listed in databases such as Hall of Light as a Bitmap Brothers game proper, since it technically was designed by them but actually coded by The Assembly Line.
Truxton first arrived on our little town on 1990.. so hope you can forgive me for thinking it was "after" Xenon 2. My point was.. At the time I got it, it was better than any coin op I had seen myself back in the day.

Agony and Xenon 2 are world's apart when it comes to quality in game design, even if both can't compete with japanese coinops shmups. You can't see the difference? Seriously? Do I need to write an essay, like I did for one poor soul who could not understand my argument why Project X was trash? :) Please spare that from me, you don't have to agree with me anyway, I am fine if you don't. I am not even sure what are we arguing about.

I know that Xenon 2 was coded by assembly line. However, it does not make it any less bitmap game. Even in the history of the Bitmap Brothers book, it is recognized as one of the key titles in their history. I think the work was outsourced because their programmers were already busy with Cadaver and Speedball 2 at the time. The way I see it, Hall of light is not recognized as any "authority" as the matter, not any more than wikipedia would be, the book is closest to the "official" knowledge base about Bitmap Brothers as you can get. But you can disagree with that as well if you like, though I am not sure what difference it would make.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

MJR wrote:I know that Xenon 2 was coded by assembly line. However, it does not make it any less bitmap game. Even in the history of the Bitmap Brothers book, it is recognized as one of the key titles in their history. I think the work was outsourced because their programmers were already busy with Cadaver and Speedball 2 at the time. The way I see it, Hall of light is not recognized as any "authority" as the matter, not any more than wikipedia would be, the book is closest to the "official" knowledge base about Bitmap Brothers as you can get. But you can disagree with that as well if you like, though I am not sure what difference it would make.
Are you talking about the ROM book by Duncan Harris? My name is in that book for a minuscule contribution, you know. Hall of Light doesn't invent anything, the clear split between the designing part and the coding part of the game are clearly stated in the game's intro. It's true that it doesn't make it any less a BB game, but it's right to see the extent of their work. You know, the Xenon 2 chapter in the book is spot on in treating the game exactly as the sensation it was. The chapter opens with Tim Simenon, Bomb the Bass and John Carpenter. It then delves into the japanese arcade inspirations, overcoming the hardware limits of the time, and also finding the correct cover illustration to distance the sensational new thing from the crowd of airbrushed space vessels of the time. In other words, most of the chapter is about the novelty of the music choice, Mark Coleman splendid tapestry of pixelart (surely the most enduring part of the package), and the novelty of a snappy cover illustration. The book's author is the first to treat the game from the "design" standpoint.
MJR wrote:Agony and Xenon 2 are world's apart when it comes to quality in game design, even if both can't compete with japanese coinops shmups. You can't see the difference? Seriously?
Sure I see it, and I agree they're worlds apart, but the main criticism can be applied to both easily. And also the appreciation of both stands on the same basis: that the artistic merits largely made them relevant, instead of the gameplay ones. In fact, one could argue that for what Agony loses in the comparison in gameplay terms, it gains in purely artistic ones. Let's not forget that Xenon 2 has the music approach of an Atari 2600 game (a single track for the whole experience), while Agony can boast a whole symphonic suite created by a pool of the best Amiga musicians of the time...
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

Back on topic... Let's forget about Bitmap Brothers / Assembly Line for a minute and talk instead of the real stars of this thread: the people who handled the ports back in the day.


SMS version: Sean Cross, Stewart Green (program) + Melissa Dadzis, Alan Tomkins (graphics)

The approach seems to be that of the technical marvel for the platform, although by Green's own admission (see post above), an approach that relied completely on getting the code run without sacrifying any of the visual flair. Certainly not one pleasant experience in gameplay terms... I wasn't able to find a video longplay but I highly suspect it to be truncated as much as the MD one if not more.

Megadrive version: Delvin Sorrell (program) + John Phillips (music)

This notoriously has the reputation of a lazy job. Cutting out the last world due to rom space especially sucks (although yeah... if one had to cut content, I guess the last world is clearly the less visually arresting of the bunch). The Megadrive with its sprite capabilites would have really benefited from a souped up, "deluxe" version of the game, but clearly those were different times. The question here is just how much it sucks. Is it the worst euroshmup on the system, or just the second worst? As much as I like Battle Squadron, I guess that port's problems are more glaring and more game-breaking than the absence of the last two stages here...

Gameboy version: Teeny Weeny Games

Err, yeah... a bit of effort here from what I can see on youtube: everything is horribly scaled down and the ship sprite is godawful (something which admittedly anyone who has first hand experience with the original dot matrix gb screen will understand to be a negligible problem), but they made Colin's mug full screen, and the game retains all the worlds. (update: with initial difficulty selector, cash bubbles, and all the stages in their entirety, this one is a much better effort than the Master System one)

DOS version: ???

Not sure who handled this one, but with the background parallax removed and the ...err... aural qualities typical of DOS back then, I'd say it manages to do the game a bigger disservice than even the gameboy version...

Amiga version: Bitmap Brothers / Assembly Line

although considered the best one, I list it here just as a reminder than this one too, is basically a port from ST. Sure, a souped up port (with digitized speech in the music track) handled in-house by the same coders and released simultaneously...
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Herr Schatten »

Regarding Steward Green‘s YT comment: Maybe it‘s been too long and he doesn‘t remember the project all that clearly anymore, but what he says about the SMS hardware is pretty much all wrong.

When he says that there were not enough sprites he probably means that there‘s not enough video memory to hold all animation frames of all objects at the same time. That‘s a given on pretty much all consoles of the 8 and 16 bit era, and re-loading select sprite tiles on the fly is a common technique used in all games except maybe a few of the most simplistic ones. It‘s not some kind of special trick. The multiplexing he seems to describe wouldn‘t work on the SMS (like it would on a C64, for example), the only place where it could work is reusing the sprites of the score display for the energy bar.

The SMS hardware has absolute no way of flipping sprites. It can only flip background tiles. (On the NES it‘s the other way round.) It can‘t rotate them either.

I haven‘t checked, but from the comment it seems like he uses the sprite table in 8x8 mode instead of the much more suitable 8x16 mode, which would explain running out of space in the sprite table fast.

It seems to me that a lot of the difficulties porting Xenon II came from not really understanding the hardware, thus not using it to its fullest potential.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

The SMS must had been in a difficult market position to imagine any of these ports more than an afterthought. The first Speedball curiously was ported as well, without the league option, and with results probably inferior to the NES Klashball version...

Of the three Master System conversions probably only Speedball II shows some effort. Still, seeing how close the SMS was able to replicate Mark Coleman's graphics, one wonders if a demake of Gods would have worked, a bit like Tecmagik's Shadow of the Beast..
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Herr Schatten »

I have no doubt an SMS version of Gods would have been feasible. As a game it‘s not much more taxing than something like Wonderboy III - The Dragon‘s Trap. In fact, back when I was still working in mobile games development we did official ports of Gods to J2ME cellphones, some of which had extremely poor tiny screens. I must admit that the rest of the hardware was quite a bit more advanced than the SMS, though. Sadly, these completed ports never saw the light of day, as the company folded before the release. I think I still have the scaled down and cleaned up spritesheets and tilesets somewhere on my HD.

Replicating Coleman‘s graphics with the Master System‘s restricted palette would have been a challenge. Coleman liked to use pairs of complementary color ramps (like greenish-reddish, blueish-brownish, etc.) so he could create a third, neutral shade by dithering them, thus creating the illusion of much more colorful graphics than they actually are. On the Master System, colors would probably be too saturated and pixels too big for that trick to work. It should be perfectly possible on a Game Gear, though.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by gray117 »

If you love the master system it's r-type as the no brainer... But it's on everything else too.

Now if it's 8 bit shmup joy you're after, forget all this and go to pc engine.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by MameHaze »

Xenon / Xenon 2 is one of those games that contributed greatly to me hating the genre for many years as it received good reviews, but in reality seemed to have nothing at all going for it.

Due to the good reviews I thought it must be representative of the genre, not that the reviews had been paid for or whatever the case more likely was.

IMHO it's one of the titles that helped destroy the commercial viability of the genre, people bought it, tried to like it because the reviews were good, but ultimately looked at other genres after that.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by glide »

Xenon 2 DOS version was the first shmup I ever played in the early 90s and is still one of my favorites. I don't understand all the negative comments. Sure the Genesis version is awful, the Amiga version is by far the best. What I love about Xenon 2 is the organic theme and the enemies are so well designed and original, more so than any other shmup I've played. It's not too hard and it's a perfect game for those new to shmups (or for people like me who just suck at them lol). I don't think it aged that badly, sure the graphics are not Toaplan quality but for a 1989 game the graphics are quite good.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

Perikles wrote:I cannot comment on the Master System version, but I'll take a wild guess and speculate that it's equally as terrible as the MD version. Horrendous frame rate, atrocious hit detection, godawful flickering (especially if you use external autofire/mash the shot button - you can buy autofire in the shop, but you're still better off doing it manually or with external autofire :roll:)
Sly Cherry Chunks wrote:The slow bullets and low frame rate make it annoyingly difficult without autofire. This also means that a fire-every-frame autofire will create the illusion of an unmoving wall of bullets stuck to the front of your ship.
Regarding autofire, I think external autofire disrupts the one instance where the designers had actually given a bit of thought to the in-game powerups. You see, you can buy the autofire at the shop and buying it twice does improve the fire rate. It is, unfortunately, not a one-time purchase, but something you're immediately stripped off as soon as you lose a life.
Seeing that most of the buyable weapons in the shop are conceived as permanent upgrades (you can add several pods and not lose them even if a life is lost), the choice of forcing the player to either 1LC the game or spend credits on autofire again at every shop occasion, is definitely a bad choice in game design, but nonetheless a choice that someone consciously took.
External hardware autofire is therefore not just hideous to look at (as Sly Cherry Chunks points out), but also removes one tiny layer of subtleness from the game.

I know this is bordering on masochism, but I had another spin at these ports and the Master System one is downright atrocious, and barely qualifies as port: stage segments and bosses are all shuffled over, and more than half of the weapons seem to have been eliminated. The choice to make your ship (110% area hitbox) vulnerable to stage backgrounds is also criminal. The ROM is 256kb, much less than the original two floppies, and the port came almost one year before the megadrive one, but still... a complete disaster.

The Megadrive port by Delvin Sorrell (any relationship with Chris Sorrell of Robocod's fame?) is an entirely different beast, since it's pretty faithful... for the 2/3 they were able to snuck into the cartridge, that is. By the way, I wonder if the difficulty setting in the option menu is basically a selector for loops...

Anyway, the Delvin Sorrell ported code must have been met with satisfaction, as s/he was also responsible for the ultimate release of the game, the Commodore CDTV port. And it's an interesting case study for the "multimedia age" of early nineties. Nothing in the gameplay was added, but the package was embellished with a hints and tips section (in line with the "encyclopedia" vocation of the CDTV I guess), voice dubbing for the shopkeeper, a "sound assign mode" in which finally you can play each stage with a different musical track (all remixes of "Megablast", mind you); 13 or 14 redbook audio tracks from a live recording; and a digital slideshow / presentation of the Bitmap Brothers, Tim Simenon and the other audio performers involved.

In a brief time they had passed from 2x 700k floppies to 512k of the expensive megadrive ROM (so they cut one third of the game without blinking), to finally... 650 and more megabytes of space on CDTV. It's rather telling that they didn't touch a thing in terms of gameplay: not an extra stage nor an additional weapon, they just prettied-up the experience with largely forgettable stuff.

Since they treated it ultimately as an audiovisual experience rather than a game, I suppose watching this longplay of the CDTV version is more than apt. Unfortunately, not even Richard Joseph's involvement can rescue the dance selection of audio muzak. The novelty of the explosive title track fades all too quickly with this pejorative iteration... Among the tracks is Betty Boo "Doin' the Do" which the Bitmap had already used for their bizarre Magic Pockets platformer.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Bishamon »

glide wrote:Xenon 2 DOS version was the first shmup I ever played in the early 90s and is still one of my favorites. I don't understand all the negative comments.
I remember getting Xenon 2 for the PC (DOS) back in '89, and I was disappointed, but given that one of my local arcades had Truxton in '88 (and a friend and I had played it a LOT), the bar had been set pretty high.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

Well, since this has become de facto the official Xenon 2 thread on the forum, it may be worth to add that the story of its ports doesn't end in the nineties...

Curiously enough, in 2016 a semi-official version (officially authorized by Mike Montgomery, that is) has been released, in limited quantities and with full box regalia for the... Atari Jaguar.

The release was quite anticipated on the AtariAge forums. It seems to have met the praise of collectors. It also comes with a new soundtrack (something that even the X68000 version did in 1991. Evidently the "single track or FX" was immediately perceived as the greatest Achilles' heel of the package).

Interview with Gary Taylor, the coder, at Arcade Attack.

Youtube footage

I searched the forums and no one around these parts seem to have noticed this release. Speaks volume about the reputation this game has earned in this circle...
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Bishamon »

Turrican wrote:Well, since this has become de facto the official Xenon 2 thread on the forum, it may be worth to add that the story of its ports doesn't end in the nineties...

Curiously enough, in 2016 a semi-official version (officially authorized by Mike Montgomery, that is) has been released, in limited quantities and with full box regalia for the... Atari Jaguar.
That's pretty cool! It's so strange watching footage of the game with the extra parallax background layer; having only ever played the PC/DOS version, it completely changes the look of the game (for the better).
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by guigui »

I cleared Xenon 2 countless times on the Sega Megadrive back in the mid 90's, found memories. I did love the shop system and blowing blinking stuff at low speed.

Never understood the en though, with that single white diamond, then the game starting again with no change at all ?
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

guigui wrote:Never understood the en though, with that single white diamond, then the game starting again with no change at all ?
That's supposed to be British humour, not unlike the one from 2000AD comics. Instead of long winded ending messages about the triumph of good over evil (winks winks, German Manfred Trenz's ears might be whistling now), the shopkeeper just asks the gamer if the experience was good enough for him/her, and then shuts the TV (the white dot. Difficult to explain this in the LCD/LED/OLED age). About the looping, that is now considered by some one of the more acute ideas that the Brothers put on the table when it came to homage the Japanese arcade they loved.

...I know that it may well seem that I'm just refusing the thread to let go, but it suddenly dawned on me that Xenon 2 is thirty years now. And you know... Reading the enthusiasts Jaguar owners at AtariAge, and the jaded professional shmuppers here, you get the impression of a polarized, controversial legacy. A bit like R-Type Final, if you want: supporters and detractors just can't seem to be able to stop arguing over it.
Last edited by Turrican on Sat Aug 17, 2019 3:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Sly Cherry Chunks »

Happy 30th Xenon II: Megablast!

Was the white dot supposed to be an old style TV turning off or a TV network shutting down? I think that reference is before even my time!
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by MJR »

Sly Cherry Chunks wrote:Happy 30th Xenon II: Megablast!

Was the white dot supposed to be an old style TV turning off or a TV network shutting down? I think that reference is before even my time!
Old TV turning off, like 80's tv. late Sony Trinitrons wont do that kind of thing :3

I will keep regarding Xenon 2 very highly as a Bitmap Brothers product and as a product of it's time, when compared against what we saw coming out at the time.
There are shortcomings ofc, like too big hitbox, lack of "popcorn" enemies and bad framerate, but there is also the unparalleled attention to detail and imagination that only Bitmap Brothers could deliver back in the day. I loved the joke item "bitmap shades" in the last level, if you bought it, the whole level was bit darker, like you watched it through sunglasses.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Austin »

Turrican wrote:Curiously enough, in 2016 a semi-official version (officially authorized by Mike Montgomery, that is) has been released, in limited quantities and with full box regalia for the... Atari Jaguar.
Yep! I actually bought a copy of this when it came out. Later sold it when I picked up a lot of Atari ST disks and Xenon 2 was in it. The Jaguar version is basically a port of the ST game and is pretty much identical as far as I can tell, aside from the new music track that plays during the game.

The main fellow at Reboot (CyranoJ on the AA forums) has been doing loads of ST ports, some packaged up and sold like Xenon 2. R-Type was given a port a couple of years ago too (and maybe even R-Type II? It's been a while since I checked), though I'd argue those games weren't amazing ports on the ST to begin with (the first one was playable, at least).

As far as Xenon 2 itself, I do enjoy the ST version. The console ports on the other hand seem to be lacking in one way or another. The SMS version in particular just seems like one of those many, many examples on the system where the devs were clearly biting off way more than they could chew with the port. It's something that really shouldn't even exist on the system, but it does, and it really isn't great.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Turrican »

Austin wrote:The SMS version in particular just seems like one of those many, many examples on the system where the devs were clearly biting off way more than they could chew with the port. It's something that really shouldn't even exist on the system, but it does, and it really isn't great.
That's almost a trademark of the SMS. Due to its late positioning in the market, but high success in Europe and Brazil, the eight bit Z80A of Sega got a sleeve of really thin-stretched conversions from 16-bit native hits.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by it290 »

With some notable exceptions, e.g. Dynamite Headdy.
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Re: Xenon 2 Megablast - Mega Drive vs. Master system or Neit

Post by Despatche »

Absolute trash, almost on the level of Arbalester and Meta Fox. The X68000 version is technically the best, and only because of its unique soundtrack that is significantly better than the single licensed song of other versions. This is despite the X68000 version not running right due to not accounting for PAL-to-NTSC; the game's basically worthless anyway, so it really doesn't matter. The idea that the same people behind this game are the same people behind things like Speedball, Gods, and The Chaos Engine will confuse me until the end of my days.

Xenon 2 is a techdemo, and a very poor one.
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