Overview

The player uses an 8-way joystick to pilot a combat aircraft called a Solvalou, which is armed with a forward-firing "zapper" for aerial targets and a "blaster" which fires an unlimited supply of air-to-surface bombs for ground targets.

There are various aerial enemy aircraft which shoot relatively slow bullets, as well as (presumably unpiloted) fast-moving projectiles and exploding black spheres. Ground enemies are a combination of stationary bases and moving vehicles, most of which also fire slow bullets. Giant floating motherships appear in certain areas; these are killed by knocking out their cores.

There are no discrete levels, rather the Solvalou continually advances over varying terrain. However, if the player dies, play continues from a set point. (i.e., there are levels but they merge into each other with areas of forest.) Nor are there "level-end boss enemies" that must be defeated to progress (other than the aforementioned motherships). As the Solvalou constantly flies forward, it is theoretically possible to advance without killing any enemies.

History

Xevious was one of the earliest vertical scrolling shooters, and greatly influenced games in this genre. The graphics were revolutionary for their time, and characters were rendered with remarkable clarity and effect through careful use of shades of gray and palette-shifting. It was one of the first games to have hidden bonuses which are not mentioned in the instructions but can be revealed by a secret maneuver. Among these was the 'special flag' which first appeared in Rally-X. In this game the flag gave the player an extra life and this feature was carried over to numerous subsequent Namco games. In 1983, the original Xevious was the first arcade game to actually have a television commercial aired for it in the U.S. Atari promoted the game with the slogan "Are you devious enough to beat Xevious?" and closed the commercial with a tagline branding it "the arcade game you can't play at home." (Note: the name is actually pronounced "ZEH-vee-us")

While it saw limited popularity in the U.S., Xevious was a huge cult hit in Japan, and to this day is considered one of the greatest videogames of all time. Popular musicians Haruomi Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra) and Keisuke Kuwata (Southern All Stars) were known to be fans of the game, and the former produced an album of music from Namco videogames, with Xevious as its centerpiece. A follow-up 12" single featured in its liner notes an entire science-fiction short story by Endoh, set in the world of Xevious, with even a rudimentary fictional language.

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