Xenon 2 Megablast. If you know this game, you’ll know the soundtrack. This game by The Bitmap Brothers had great title music by “Bomb The Bass”. It was a shoot ’em up released in 1989 although I didn’t play it until years later when I played it on the Atari ST and years later before I’d play it on the Amiga. The Amiga version is widely regarded as the best version and if you look around you can find the adf download fairly easily.
Hand on heart, I have to admit I didn’t like this game much. I love the genre and I’ll happily blast away at Armalyte(C64) or Raiden(Arcade) but Xenon 2 just never did it for me. I do love the soundtrack though!
Here’s a longplay of Xenon 2 in WinUAE. It’s over 48 minutes long but watch a bit of it and you’ll get a taster for the gameplay!
The Bitmap Brothers have created an updated Xenon game, Xenon 2000 but it’s Windows only so I’d love to hear from anyone who has tried it! As luck would have it, someone has created a video of the new game. It’s more a demo than anything else by the looks of things unfortunately.
So, what are your favourite shoot ’em ups? In no particular order mine would probably be:
- Armalyte
- Syndicate
- Raiden
- Quake
- Half Life
Geometry Wars Galaxies is almost there but it’s too new. I’ll have to wait a few years before I decide if it goes on the list or not!
Around the time I got my first PC, I think that it was the Bitmap Brothers that released a game called Z.
It was their first release in year IIRC but it was a major flop. I can vaguely remember playing the demo but it was similar in principle to Command and Conquer.
Command and Conquer – Red Alert actually was responsible for me ending up in hospital!
This is a game that I always wanted to try but never got a chance to play it. I got to try to find it sometime.
I LOVED xenon2! It was such a wicked game, and my brother and I played it for literally hours on end!
The tune has just really took me back! it was soooo catchy!