Lethal Xcess

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Lethal Xcess is a vertical scrolling shooter game. All the classic shoot 'em up features are included, much like its predecessor (Wings of Death) and the two player mode adds a little more depth to the whole gameplay. You begin your flying voyage with laser cannons shooting triangular (!) projectiles, which can be powered up or exchanged for other weapons as long as you shoot down enemy spaceships! There are seven upgrades in total, all introduced by a digitized voice (i.e. "Drone", "Wiper" etc). The game is not an easy ride and much like its predecessor, the incoming enemies are tough and fast. In fact, most of the time the gameplay area is swarmed by enemy laser shots, making you zig-zagging all the time! Throughout the game's five stages, the number of the enemy sprites gradually increases (!) while towards the end of each level there is always something...BIG waiting for you...! A good strategy is to try and pick one weapon and stick with it, since the more powerful it gets, the more effective it can be, especially on the end-level boss. Much like Wings of Death, Lethal Xcess is a very good effort in the field of shoot 'em up gaming of the past.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The STE version offers good graphics (identical to the Amiga and ST version) without any further additions. It uses interrupts to gain more colors on screen (up to 30 while the default ST/STE palette displays 16 colors on screen during gameplay), nicely detailed screens and smooth scrolling and sprite animation . The game here is using the STE-scrolling technique (sync-scrolling called on the ST hardware) developed by Eclipse Software teams and nobody would have expected that the Atari STE was capable of doing a scrolling at 50 FPS (also found on the Wings of Death title)! Soundwise, the STE version (and ST, Amiga) is awesome and continues to impress much like the previous game by offering a variety of nice music tunes along with plenty of sampled sound effects (in stereo this time), but still the Amiga version offers sound of better quality.