Over 20 years ago...
Early spring 1983, I walked into a downtown Geneva amusement arcade (one of my after school hang-outs) and then...I saw for the first time what must be the greatest video game ever made...
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What is so special about this game ?
I consider it to be the grandfather of all the shmups, (SHoot eM UP gameS):http://www.shmups.com
When it appeared, it was radically different from the other games available:
- excellent graphics and sound
- many different landscapes
- 32 different enemies withh different movements
- the player-controlled ship can move in all directions
- one of the first games to have hidden bonuses
- one of the first games to have an "easter egg"
- one of the first games to use pre-rendered graphics
- one of the first vertical scolling shooters with both land and air targets
The Xevious Story
Evezoo End (his real name is Masanobu ENDOH), a talented game designer, programmed XEVIOUS. Mr.ENDOH was unhappy with the settings of previous games in which all the ennemies are vivible and just wait to be shot at, so he wrote a background story for a game.The specifications of the different ennemy weapons were set forth in detail, as well as the reasons for the war. Every character in the game had it's own name and translation, for example "XEVIOUS" means "the forth planet".
See what I mean by radically different ?
Remember Galaga ? And how about Galaxian ?
Well, Xevious appeared in the arcades three years later and used the same box with the same buttons... But what a difference !