Xenophobe (video game)
Xenophobe is a video game developed Bally Midway and released in arcades in 1987. Starbases, moons, ships, and space cities are infested with aliens, and the players have to kill the aliens before each is completely overrun. The screen is split into three horizontally-scrolling windows, one for each of up to three players, yet all players are in the same game world.
Gameplay
The goal of each level is to defeat all the aliens before time runs out. Some rooms routinely display the percentage of alien infection and time remaining until self-destruct when the level ends. Levels may contain more than one floor, and players use elevators to move between floors to defeat all of the aliens. Players can also pick up more powerful weapons and other items to help in their eradication of the aliens.The hostile aliens come in different forms. There are "Eggs". If an Egg hatches, it creates a "Critter" which can attach itself to the player and drain health. If a Critter is not killed, it eventually matures into a "Roller". Rollers are one of the tougher enemies, as they can ball themselves up and roll around while impervious to the players' guns. Rollers sometimes grow into the "Warrior" Xeno form, which attacks by leaping and requires multiple hits to kill from most weapons. Warriors are able to spit damaging acid across rooms. This acid also drips from the ceiling in some rooms. They also have a devastating leap attack that will knock down and disarm. One of the more insidious attacks in a Warrior's arsenal is its ability to disarm a player. Simply walking past a Warrior can cause the player's gun to drop to the floor. Other Xenos include "Tentacles" that randomly appear from the deck or ceiling, and trap or strangle the player respectively, and the arguably toughest enemy is a Xeno "Queen" which appears either in doorways or behind certain backgrounds and throws proto-eggs at the players and shoots hypnotic eye beams which trap players and drain their health. If the proto-egg lands on a screen with a player, it grows into another Egg, which eventually hatches into a Critter as usual. There are much larger alien carcasses the player can walk past or through but they only appear as part of the background.
The weapons a player collects are fairly diverse. In order of damage, the weapons are: punch, phaser, laser pistol, lightning rifle, gas gun, and grenades. The guns tend to trade power for range. The one exception to this is the phaser, which has medium range and very low damage. Great care has to be taken with the grenades, as they bounce off walls and doors and can hit the player who threw it, or even other players. None of the guns can hurt other players, but punching can, and makes the punched player fall down, and drop the gun he was carrying, which the attacker is then free to pick up. Whenever a player's gun is lost and destroyed, a small robot wheels into his room and dispenses a random gun for him to use. The laser pistol lends itself to a conservative play style, keeping opponents at range and moving through levels slowly while the gas gun encourages faster moving play since the player must close quickly to eliminate foes.
As players go through the various maps, they encounter various items to be picked up. Some are only for bonus points at the end of the level. Others are immediately useful to the players. Still other items are useful in the right room. For example, the tools fix the always-malfunctioning grenade dispenser, the disk allows a player to use a teleportation device, the ID tag will deactivate security obstacles and the code enables a player to set a self-destruct sequence to destroy a base instead of letting the Xenos take it over. In this case, the players receive a reduced reward compared with a victory, but if the Xenos take over, there is no reward. Items collected are counted, and bonus points awarded for each collected. Grenades carry over from level to level.
Each credit gives the player a certain amount of health, which counts down even without combat. Food and some rooms replenish a player's health. The game cycles through levels, increasing the difficulty each cycle, until all players die and no-one continues. It is entirely possible to do well enough to continue playing without adding more credits.
Characters
There are nine characters to choose from in Xenophobe, three for each joystick. The leftmost controller offers Mr. M.Brace, Dr. Kwack, and Col. Poupon. The middle controller offers Mr. Fogg, Col F. Truth, and Dr. Udderbay. The right controller offers Mr. Eeez, Dr. Zordiz, and Col. Schickn. Humans and aliens alike make up the playable characters—for instance, Dr. Kwack has a duck's head. Players are also color-coded; for instance, the left player's choices wear red shirts, middle player's yellow, right player's blue.Ports
1987's arcade version of Xenophobe was ported to many home systems. Beginning in 1988, it was released for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, Lynx, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, and Nintendo Entertainment System. The 2600 version is one of the final North American licensed titles for the system.Atari Corporation published Xenophobe for its systems. The 7800 and Atari 8-bit computer versions were developed by BlueSky Software, and the Lynx version was developed by Epyx. A port for the Atari 8-bit family of computers, similar to the Atari 7800 version, was developed for Atari Corporation in 1989, but was not published.
Sunsoft ported Xenophobe to the NES. The Commodore 64 port was done by Microplay.
Reception
Atari Lynx
In a capsule review of the Lynx version for STart, Clayton Walnum commented, "The graphics in some rooms are more detailed than in others, and in general, aren't as impressive as those in ElectroCop, a similar game. Also, the complicated controls take some getting used to." Julian Rignall reviewed the game in the January 1991 issue of CVG Magazine. He went on to say "the graphics and sound are both excellent" with "the gameplay is challenging and addictive". "A fun game which offers plenty of entertainment," giving a final rating of 79 out of 100.Les Ellis of Raze Magazine also reviewed the game for the Atari Lynx calling it an addictive game with excellent graphics, giving a score of 94%. Robert A. Jung review was published to IGN, in it he wrote that Xenophobe was "arguably more fun than its arcade inspiration." Giving a final score of 8 out of 10.