Skip to main content

PlayStation Basement #3 - Xevious 3D/G+

This review was originally published on the Console Purist Facebook group on September 15th, 2018. It has been edited slightly for grammar and formatting.

Welcome back to the third issue of PlayStation Basement! I’m here every Saturday afternoon reviewing obscure, weird, and unknown games for the original PlayStation. My rating system is out of nine. 9-7 is Good, 6-4 is Neutral, and 3-1 is Bad.


For my third PlayStation Basement, I’ll be reviewing Xevious 3D/G+. What a name! Released to Japanese arcades in 1996 as Xevious 3D/G, Namco brought this to the PlayStation the next year in 1997 as a compilation. In addition to the arcade game, the PlayStation version includes three older games in the series – Xevious, Super Xevious, and Xevious Arrangement. It’s four tales of ancient alien battlin', spaceship flying shmuppin’.


The cover art of Xevious 3D/G+ is pretty cool, showing the heroic Solvalou engaged in battle. The image includes some nice blue colors and cool afterburners. The weakest point of this image is that it’s a combination of three images showing the Nazca Lines, a large metallic image, and the scene of the battle. I think it would have worked a bit better as one scene.



The graphics are pretty much what you’d expect. The three classic arcade games share a similar blocky style, Xevious and Super Xevious being the most primitive with basic levels and solid colors. Xevious Arrangement brings the graphics up a notch to a textured, 16-bit style, and Xevious 3D/G goes into the third dimension. The 3D graphics heavily utilize the same solid colors and blocky designs seen throughout the series with some nice shots thrown in that emphasize the 3D and don’t hamper gameplay, and they work here as a good example of early 3D graphics done right.



The Xevious series did not start with strong sound design. The first two games have a very basic soundtrack, just a few notes repeated over and over. The sound effects are particularly harsh in the first game as well. Xevious Arrangement goes for a much different, darker Metroid-style soundtrack and has some very nice spacey sounds with a nice degree of audible weightlessness. Xevious 3D/G has a very nice soundtrack as well, based more on techno and dance as was common in the mid-90s. The sound effects are enhanced versions that follow along the same lines as all the games here, but I actually like the design used in Xevious Arrangement the best.





Xevious is a vertical shmup with enemies appearing on two planes. All of the games here follow that design. The player’s ship Solvalou can fire a Zapper to hit aerial enemies and a Blaster for the ground-based units. It’s a system that was later used to great effect in RayForce, RayStorm, and RayCrisis. The earlier games in the Xevious series require precision, with a limited number of shots appearing on screen. Xevious Arrangement and Xevious 3D/G allow rapid fire and powerups. Xevious Arrangement allows the Zapper to be upgraded once. Xevious 3D/G, on the other hand, allows the player use of three different weapons – the standard rapid shot, a powerful laser, and a weak homing shot. It’s important to find the best weapon for your style and for the current level. Each weapon can be upgraded a number of times by collected additional icons, but you can only have one weapon equipped at one time. Finally, Xevious 3D/G also includes huge bosses, something that was barely seen in the earlier entries with their large motherships with central weak points. The bosses in Xevious 3D/G include a walker, aircraft carrier, an army of cubes, and more. The bosses are a very fun advancement to the Xevious series.



Xevious 3D/G+ is a great collection of four arcade shooters. From the early examples of Xevious and Super Xevious to the contemporary Xevious 3D/G and Xevious Arrangement, there’s a nice amount of content here that shows the progression of shooter games. While three of the games are pretty similar, the 3D action of Xevious 3D/G really shines through to make this a worthwhile collection. Unfortunately for most collectors, this collection is hard to come by, rarely appearing in the wild or online. Thankfully, it is not an expensive game when it does show itself to the wider world. I recommend trying it out if you enjoy shmups.

Xevious 3D/G+ receives a rating of 8 (Good).

Follow EfreetEater on Facebook

Labels:
Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Slightly Fabricated Story of How Nintendo Conquered America

I finished a book called Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America  at the end of February. I expected good things from it. I expected a breezy but analytical approach to Nintendo and Mario's history. I got something that sails with a heavy anchor and a damaged rudder. First things first: the cover art is pretty cool. It's minimal, but I like the blue color and the little Mario jumping above the title. It's like he can leap over any obstacle! Unfortunately, the text is not free of such things. At under 300 pages,  Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America  goes for a brief history of Nintendo through the years. Each chapter is themed around a console, peripheral, or major event. It was nice to see the whole history, from hanafuda to Wii, the latest console at the time of publishing, however, I wish that Jeff Ryan, the author, had covered a bit more topics and more thoroughly. Even adding a few pages to each chapter could have added a lot more inf...
Post a Comment
Read more

PlayStation Basement #67 - Poy Poy

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on December 7th, 2019. Hello once again, and welcome back to the PlayStation Basement. PlayStation Basement is a weekly review of games for the original PlayStation that are somewhat obscure, unusual, or unknown. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral to emphasis the review over just a number. Now, let’s go! The holidays are approaching for people all over the world, and Thanksgiving was last week in the United States. Have you visited your family, or have they visited you? Have you had friends over or gone to someone else’s house? This is the time of year for gatherings, and today’s game is the game for that. Poy Poy is a party/arena fighter released by Konami. The game came out in Japan and North America in 1997. In Japan it was known as Poitters’ Point . Europe saw Poy Poy in 1998. This title was developed by Konami subsidiary KCET who worked on many other games for the main company....
2 comments
Read more

PlayStation Basement #45 - Ballerburg: Castle Chaos

This review was originally published on the  Console Purist  Facebook group on July 6th, 2019. If you are in the United States, I’m sure you’ve heard fireworks during the last few days. We’ll be launching some things with today’s PlayStation Basement review of an odd or obscure game for the original PlayStation. Games are rated Good, Bad, or Neutral. Let’s go! Today’s game is Ballerburg: Castle Chaos . This game is a 3D reimagining of Eckhard Kruse’s 1987 artillery strategy game Ballerburg for the Atari ST. Because the original game was released into the public domain from the beginning, this 2001 version had no input from Kruse. The developers for this one were Ascaron Entertainment who also published the initial PC version in Europe in December 2001. Phoenix Games published the PlayStation version, also in Europe, in April 2003, and Mud Duck Productions published it in North America in December of the same year. Mud Duck is another budget publisher like A1 Games, ...
Post a Comment
Read more