Xenon

Genre:

Action

Year:

1988

Developer:

Bitmap Brothers, The

Publisher:

Melbourne House

Perspective:

Top-down

Theme:

Sci-Fi / Futuristic, Shooter

Releases:

DOS (1988), MAME 2003 (1988), Amiga (1988), Amstrad CPC (1988), Atari ST (1988), ZX Spectrum (1988), Commodore 64 (1989)

It may sounds unbelievable, but also pure shooter games like Star Goose, Tyrian, where you just fly from side to side and shoot on everything have their story. The game Xenon is no exception. You take up the role of space pilots Darrian and one day he received a message from a remote nebula space station and he learned, that the nearby human colonies are being attacked by an alien race known as Xenites. The spaceship is controlled in four directions. To destroy land targets, the ship can be transformed into a tank at will; however, some sections cannot be successfully passed without using the tank form. Various power-ups are available to improve the craft, which you get for eliminating alien enemies. Thus, you have to deploy your vehicle / aircraft - yes, you have a machine that is able to serve as an aircraft, or transform into a tank and have to go to the rescue colony. Switching between the tank and the aircraft can be a bit challenging in the beginning, since some enemies can be only shoot down by the aircraft and some only by the tank and it will take some time to get used to do the quick switch.