Xenon 2 Megablast

Title		Xenon 2 Megablast
Company		Bitmap Brothers
Game Type	Shoot-em-up
Players		1
Compatibility	All
Submission	William Palmer

Review
Well the foremost thing I remember about this game is that I didn't get
very far on it.  Which is quite annoying for someone who played games to
death. I still sometimes stay up till the early hour to do "the next bit".
But Xenon 2 was different because it should have got easier as the game
went on due to the stupid amounts of firepower you collected on the way
through. But I couldn't stop myself being shot by some equally nasty
aliens or crashing into the scenery avoiding such things. The thing that
most sticks in my mind was the opening music, which was an adaptation of
the "Megablast" by Bomb The Base.  It was an arse kicker of a track that
gave you some idea of the speed, thrill and general pumping gameplay to
come.  And come it did. It started the standard way, crap craft with crap
weapons with aliens that all followed each other.  This allowed you to get
to grips with the controls, it looked like a standard 2D vertically
scrolling shooter but it had few extra nice touches. The first thing to
notice was the screen had a little "give", you were not being pushed by
the screen moving downwards, you could pull back on the joystick and the
screen would allow you to retract your steps atleast for a bit.  Knowing
this, you could employ a little strategy, and survive long enough to get
blown up by the really big aliens. Also the graphics were top notch, the
craft gleamed, the enemy was menacing and those power-ups .....well, what
can I say?
When plugged into a hi-fi  with the sound turned up to eleven the red
button was pushed and the ear melting sound was enough to remove your
fillings. The pace of the game was phenomenal, no sooner had you started
than your heart was pounding, your joystick was groaning and there were
stupid angst ridden faces all over the shop.  This was plus and a minus,
from my recollections it was so frantic that the average game player would
progress some way, but inevitably end up biting the big one without so much
as a save game option.  This meant returning to the beginning of that
level (once all the lives had been used up) and starting again only to
croak somewhere near to where you always did.  Still a great game, it
rocked and moved at a thousand miles an hour with a fat beat sound track
that suited it down to the ground.

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