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Game info |
| | Xenon 2 Megablast | | Genre | Action Shooter | Developer | The Assembly Line | Publisher | Image Works | Released | 1990 | Rating
| Graphics: | 7.0 | Sound: | 7.0 | Gameplay: | 8.0 | Overall: | 7.0 |
| Reviewed by | ndial | Xenon 2: Megablast is the sequel to the great Xenon and was originally designed by The Bitmap Brothers (although coded by The Assembly Line) for the Amiga and Atari ST computers in 1989. The game was later converted to the PC (MS-DOS), Sharp X68000, Acorn Archimedes and gaming consoles like the Sega Master System and Sega Mega Drive. Although its good visuals and super sound the game is widely regarded as one of the most difficult shoot 'em up ever appeared on the Amiga and Atari ST gaming era of the 90s. |
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Review |
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STORY / GAMEPLAY Xenon 2: Megablast continues the battle straight after the original Xenon wars. The Xenites had no option except of retreating and regrouping but they are threatening to disrupt the dedicated balance of time. They have returned with a plan to wipe out the player's history by planting four bombs in space-time areas. It is up to you to blast your way through five levels, eradicating the incoming Xenite forces. Each level depicts a different time zone of the Earth's evolution and the Xenites have squadrons in each of the zones which, if you fail to eliminate, will irrevocably alter the mankind history! The enemies are mostly nondescript organic creatures, plants, bacteria-like life forms, while the final levels feature robotic, mechanical enemies and a variety of artificial hostile entities. The unique feature of this game is the capability of moving your ship downwards (!), scrolling the whole level at the bottom! The game relies heavily on power-ups that can be gained by shooting special containers. When a wave of enemies is destroyed, it leaves credits in a bubble shape that can be used later at a shop to buy (or sell) more fire-power, energy etc. Each shop appears almost in the middle of each level and at the end it. Unlike the one we controlled on the original Xenon, the Xenon 2 spaceship cannot transform into a tank but it houses more slots for extra weapons. Although Xenon 2 is a well polished shoot 'em up, the action seems too frantic at times and the gameplay becomes rather frustrating since there are a few flaws especially with the game's collision detection but these cons are thoroughly trounced by the simple experience of it. Xenon 2: Megablast, like the original Xenon, is tough but it plays extremely well, and knocks back many contenders to its throne, straight out of the skies! GRAPHICS / SOUND The DOS VGA version has similar colors (up to 16) to the original versions (Amiga and ST) but some details are missing, especially at the backdrops while the screen scrolls good. At the end of each level there's a cool looking guard waiting! The game features a David Whittaker version of Bomb The Bass' Megablast - Hip Hop on Precinct 13 Mix music but although it supports Soundblaster hardware it cannot reproduce the awesome quality of the Amiga original. During gameplay there are several SFX like explosions, laser-firing etc, but not sampled as on the Amiga original. | |
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Hardware information |
| PC (ms-dos based)CPU: Various processors from Intel,AMD, Cyrix, varying from 4.77Mhz (Intel 8088) to 200Mhz (Pentium MMX) and up to 1995 (available on this site) MEMORY: 640Kb to 32MB RAM (typical up to 1996) GRAPHICS: VGA standard palette has 256 colors and supports: 640x480 (16 colors or monochrome), 640x350 in 16 colors (EGA compatability mode), 320x200 (16 or 256 colors). Later models (SVGA) featured 18bit color palette (262,144-color) or 24bit (16Milion colors), various graphics chips supporting hardware acceleration mainly for 3D-based graphics routines. SOUND: 8 to 16 bit sound cards: Ad-Lib featuring Yamaha YMF262 supporting FM synthesis and (OPL3) and 12-bit digital PCM stereo, Sound Blaster and compatibles supporting Dynamic Wavetable Synthesis, 16-bit CD-quality digital audio sampling, internal memory up to 4MB audio channels varying from 8 to 64! etc. Other notable sound hardware is the release of Gravis Ultrasound with outstanding features!
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| CGA: 16-color palette (4 on-screen) | | EGA: 64-color palette (16 on-screen) | | VGA: 256-color palette (256 on-screen) | |
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