Xenon

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Human colonies are under attack by a mysterious and violent alien species called "The Xenites" (probably originating from planet Xenon). You're an elite pilot named Darrian and it's time to take action, defend your colony and engage the attackers in a battle with your secret weapon (an armored tank that can transform into a mighty aircraft! This transformation is quite unique for its time but it seems that it's effecting the gameplay quite a bit, as the game is an arcade shooter and when transforming (from air to ground) it slows down the action; a fact that can sometimes become frustrating. The transformation between these two different vehicles can be triggered almost at any time of the game (except during the mid and the end of any level boss sections). Along the way there are several power ups available to collect, necessary to destroy particular enemy structures or even battleships (plus the intelligent bosses at the end of each level.)

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The DOS-based version supports CGA (4 colors), EGA (16 colors) and Tandy (16 colors) depending on your set up. As in all versions, graphics look pretty nice for its time with wonderfully drawn sprites and enemy installations. Although the backgrounds look quite similar throughout the game occasionally changing colors and their textures being mostly tiles, the enemy ground installations give this metal-like sense with nice shadows (mainly using dithering) while the sprites are nicely detailed. Check the screenshots below running in EGA mode. Everything moves fast (especially when airborne) and pretty smooth too. Note that, at the beginning of each sector there is a digitized face of Bitmap Brothers' Eric Matthews that tells the sector number, but with no sampled-speech here (only in the Amiga and ST versions).
As far as the sound, unfortunately the DOS-based version does not support any AdLib sound hardware, rather than simple PC-speaker spot effects, and unfortunately missing the wonderful atmospheric tunes composed by David Whittaker.