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One thing that really made
Xevious
stand out from all the other arcade games
was the scrolling background map. Wow ! Forets, rivers, lakes, roads,
buildings... A whole new world ! Almost all the other games had a
simple geometric
backgrounds, and quite a few had just a uniform black colour.
The Xevious background is in fact one single map (1024 pixels wide by
2048 pixels high). This large map is broken up into 16 different areas
(224 pixels by 2048 pixels), and the visible scrolling window is 224
pixels wide by 288 pixels high. These 16 areas overlap, but each area
has a different set of "ground targets". For instance, areas #2 and #8
cover just about the same part of the main map, but they do not show
the same objects.
The "ground targets" will allways appear at the same place in a
particular area. Some of them may then start moving (tanks), but they
will start out from the same place. The hidden targets (bonus flags or
sol citadels) are also allways located at the same place.
The game starts out by scrolling through each area, and at the end of
area n° 16 it cycles back to area n° 7. All areas start and end
with a
stretch of forest which means that the joint between two different
backgroung areas is not
visible. The overall effect is that of an everchanging landscape.
These maps come from the NAMCO archives at http://max89.hp.infoseek.co.jp/namco/.
The
maps
will be mirrired here mainly because I do not know how long
they will stay up and I cannot get in touch with webmaster...
The MAME arcade emulator can play
copies of the original Xevious rom, and people have been using it to
produce maps of the different levels.
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