Xenon 2 CDTV

[Shatterhand]

I never understood why the Amiga world loves so much Xenon 2. After reading all the hype about it, I got it and just scratched my head... the game has a boring level design, its slow and choppy, has an unbalanced weapon system, using autofire nearly breaks the game, etc etc. I could never understand why the game is so loved, even more considering when the game was released we already had at least Battle Squadron and Hybris for the system.

One of the things that makes the game so slow and jerky seems to be the old "lazy Atari ST port" syndrome the game has... from what I understand, the game is redrawing all the screen all the time and probably using the CPU for this (like lots of ST ports), and this makes the framerate suffer.

Then I came across the CDTV version on a Youtube video.

[ Show youtube player ]

Is the CDTV version THIS fast? From what I understand, the CDTV is just an A500 with CD-Rom and remote control. I noticed this game has a "CDTV Programming" credit, which leads me to believe this was actually recoded for the CDTV ... and maybe using properly the Amiga hardware features ?

Is the CDTV version really that fast? From this video the game goes from "pile of poo" to "Something that maybe could be mildy enjoyable" in my rating.

[Retro-Nerd]

No, it's only a fast video, or accelerated CPU settings in WinUAE. The game was crap from the beginning. Battle Squadron was released at the same time and destroyed it in nearly every aspect.

[Amiga1992]

Never trust Youtube videos of Amiga footage, probably 90% of the times it's emulator capture with improper settings.

[Cylon]

You probably missed the full CD quality soundtrack, which blasts you away with proper speakers connected.
The sound adds a lot to to a mediocre game imho.

[Retro-Nerd]

Which was the first thing i'd turned down. Didn't help though. An awful designed and technically very lousy (well a straight ST port as mentioned before). Some nice bitmap brothers style graphics, that's all.

[DamienD]

Well personally for me; I'd seen the graphics / ratings in various magazines and thought "Wow!!! I need this"

...then I got the game from a "game pirate" in Sydney.

The "Bomb the Bass" soundtrack was very cool but then after playing the game; hmmm, average...

Anyway; nostalgia really and at the time on home computers there weren't too many games with as polished graphics.

[Cylon]

When i first played this game, i did not know anything about ST ports or anything (good) about STs at all.
So it was a CD shooter game with a bombastic soundtrack.

[Shatterhand]

Originally Posted by Akira

Never trust Youtube videos of Amiga footage, probably 90% of the times it's emulator capture with improper settings.

That's why I asked here, I thought it could be just emulator configured wrongly. (While coding Quasarius I was really annoyed with how different the game ran on Winuae and on real HW, until I noticed I had to properly configure Winuae too....).. but it would have been really cool if the game was actually properly recoded on CDTV to use the amiga features and then this made the game be really fast.

I really think Bitmap Brothers games to be way overrated. They look great but usually play like shit. Speedball 2 and The Chaos Engine are awesome games. Everything else is just.. bleh. Xenon 2 is really awful, it's probably their worst game (even the first one is way better than this... though the 16 bits versions suffer from some really dodgy collision issues... I actually believe the Atari ST was the base version of the game, but the Spectrum/MSX version is IMO the most playable of all of them, even with monochromatic graphics and less weapon power-ups)

[Retro-Nerd]

It's actually programmed by "The Assembly Line" not from the Bitmaps. Gods, Cadaver and Speedball 1 were good too, besides their top games Speedball 2 and Chaos Engine.

[Marcuz]

I actually like the game, not for nostalgia reasons, even if it's the first game I ever played on Amiga:

I like that it's slow and not a bullet hell, and I like that at first try (tries) if you choose the wrong paths in the mazes, you get blocked and have to backtrack (or try again); and that if you buy the wrong weapons at the shop, you'll get mauled.

It adds a layer of strategy to the experience.

I also love the graphic, and the projectiles, that to me are better than the colorful ones from other games.

There are two things that I don't like: the fact that you cannot "get back" to the sell part of the shop once you access the buy part: it's too easy to make mistakes there, specially if you press too quickly the fire button, which is set on the "exit" link; and I don't like the last level, which is too chaotic to navigate: I never finished that without cheating.

But I arrived to the start of it with a Tac-2 joystick with no autofire, which is in itself a feat!

[Shatterhand]

There's one thing to me that also weighs on why I never enjoyed Xenon 2.

I came to Amiga from MSX. I was playing the likes of

Space Manbow:
[ Show youtube player ]

and

Aleste 2:
[ Show youtube player ]


Those games are fast ,smooth, full of action, with incredible level design.

Then comes Xenon 2 which is boring, slow and jerky. Makes no sense. I thought Xenon 2 was so bad I thought I had got a Beta version, incomplete version or something, I couldn't believe that pile of crap was "THE BEST VERTICAL SHOOTER ON AMIGA".

[Seiya]

maybe it won't be the best vertical shooter for Amiga, but it has nice colorful graphics, big sprites.
You have to think that it was relased in 1989 and apart Battle Squadron there aren't games that have this type of graphics and sounds.

[Retro-Nerd]

Hybris was released in 1988. Maybe not the greatest graphics. But it has a way better gameplay/game mechanics.

[Shatterhand]

I really find funny that I see Amiga users trying to defend even the Mega-Drive version of Xenon 2.

On Mega-Drive the game loses the only good thing it has on Amiga - the Soundtrack sounds horrendous on that system.

And then when the Mega-Drive version was released, this was already out:

[ Show youtube player ]

I mean.. come on... compare to this:

[ Show youtube player ]

If you saw both games back in 1990, what would you be playing?

[NorthWay]

Could possibly use an AGA hack to separate the layers to speed it up. Not saying it would be easy to do.

[Retro-Nerd]

No, this would require a proper rewrite for the Amiga custom chips. Not that CPU+framebuffer to Amiga 1:1 shit.

[Dunny]

I loved Xenon 2 - Having come from a Speccy, I picked up Amiga Format issue 3 and tried the demo. It was the first shooter I ever played on the Amiga and it just blew me away. It was a few years later that I got the full game though. And I loved it just as much when I did get the full thing.

There were better shooters though. Hybris was one (didn't like the sequel much) that I found later on when going through a tonne of copied disks I'd had stored away in a drawer, along with quite a few others. But I always had a soft spot for Xenon 2.

[ReadOnlyCat]

Meow!

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I really find funny that I see Amiga users trying to defend even the Mega-Drive version of Xenon 2.

I have also been "mysterified" by this phenomenon since I first played it when it was released. After playing Hybris, and even Sidewinder (an early budget title!) there was no way I could enjoy this slow, badly designed shooter. True, it is beautiful even if it uses only two color tones (blue, orange) but what is the point since the game is not enjoyable? I played it about 30 minutes and probably never booted it again for all the reasons you mentioned.

What surprised me the most was the contrast between the reviews in magazines, they clearly did not judge it objectively so one has to wonder what exactly clouded their judgment so badly.

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

And then when the Mega-Drive version was released, this was already out:
[ Show youtube player ]
I mean.. come on... compare to this:
[ Show youtube player ]
If you saw both games back in 1990, what would you be playing?

Yup. the game makes even less sense on the MegaDrive than on the Amiga since the gap between it and other good shooters is even larger.

Originally Posted by NorthWay

Could possibly use an AGA hack to separate the layers to speed it up. Not saying it would be easy to do.

Well, actually it could run smoothly on a stock ECS as well if it was properly coded. It doesn't display more than 16 colors so it could use the Dual Playfield mode and lose very few details. Since it only displays small enemies overall and not many of them moreover it should not be that slow when properly taking advantage of hardware scrolling and the blitter.

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

No, this would require a proper rewrite for the Amiga custom chips. Not that CPU+framebuffer to Amiga 1:1 shit.

Yup, this would be quite a rework. And the game would still suck, it just would not be slow anymore.

Originally Posted by Dunny

I loved Xenon 2 - Having come from a Speccy, I picked up Amiga Format issue 3 and tried the demo. It was the first shooter I ever played on the Amiga and it just blew me away. It was a few years later that I got the full game though. And I loved it just as much when I did get the full thing.

There were better shooters though. Hybris was one (didn't like the sequel much) that I found later on when going through a tonne of copied disks I'd had stored away in a drawer, along with quite a few others. But I always had a soft spot for Xenon 2.

Ah, the power of first impressions.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Ah, the power of first impressions.

Indeed. I also loved Shadow of the Beast - my first big box purchase purely based on hype... Oh, I see its flaws now but back then my teenaged self just sat there drinking in the sensory overload.

[Amiga1992]

Running smooth or not, the truth is, this game plays like poo.

Every time a game like this is criticized I see people coming into defense mode with arguments like: "it sounded great" or "graphics were cool", but I can never understand those comments, because for nice graphics and cool sound, watch a demo. Games need to have gameplay as their #1 priority. Everything on top just adds nicely, but if the game plays poorly, the old adage of "you can't polish a turd" immediately comes to mind.
There's also the evident fact that people let the rose tinted glasses cloud their adult vision with the fond memories that were had in earlier days of computing.

Sure, maybe it wowed our ears when you booted it and the Bomb The Bass track comes up (usually the part I left the game at, never to be played: the intro screen), and the graphics do have that particular, well polished style, but that's all. But even the Amiga at the time, as mentioned, had far superior shmups, like the infinitely more playable Hybris which is even earlier than Xenon 2, or Battle Squadron which looks AND plays well.
When you play Xenon 2 and you see that they did things like allowing this damn ship to move the scroll BACKWARDS, you realize, the Bitmap Bros. had no idea how to make a shmup. It makes me quite glad they didn't attempt to make another one.

Speedball 2 is another game I wanted to love so much, and did play a lot with friends when young, but as I grew older, realized how terrible many gameplay elements are like the controls, and have sadly abandoned it.

Anyway, I understand we all have really fond memories of the Amiga and all, but I think we should be fairer to the whole library of Amiga games after all this time! GAmes like Xenon 2 need less praise, they just make the platform look really bad. I mean, I can't stop laughing at seeing Xenon 2 and MUSHA Aleste side by side.