This feels extremely competent, especially for a same-year port back in 1986. The NES doesn't quite replicate the sense of depth the arcade has (probably some parallax scrolling trick), but it does a masterful job on copying the wide-horizontal-plane shooting action and manages it without huge graphical cutbacks. This is definitely a shooter "of its era", but it comes across as a fairly good one and an extremely good port. I'm also reminded how absolutely all over the place arcade technology was in the 1980s. You have titles like this that the NES can take a fair shake at porting the same year, and you have Space Harrier and Afterburner also releasing in 1986 and 1987 with graphics so crazy that it will take home consoles 10 years to successfully replicate them. I'm sure it all comes down to budget in the end -- this game is probably made on a decent arcade board, but one that costs much less to produce than some of the arcade's heaviest hitters of the era. Just like now, there were indies and there were "AAA" games and a pretty wide spectrum between them for games to fall on.
I was having trouble thinking of the right word for this game and I think "competent" may be the best description I've seen yet. It's not breaking any new ground and certainly doesn't hold a candle to other shmups that came out within the same decade but it falls in that not bad/not great category. The NES port is pretty solid and it's very of its time but nothing that would get looked back at fondly outside of people who had it in their personal collection back then. That's a great way to put it with the indie games of their time. It's easy to lose that perspective years later when everything gets put into neat little categories like 2nd Gen Shooters and 3rd Gen Platformers without taking into consideration if the developer was a small little company or a major player like Konami or Sega. Even the Famicom/NES itself is so wild within the scope of 80s technology in general. I've been recording a lot lately for this series and it's crazy to go from Chack N Pop and BurgerTime to Bonk's Adventure.
While not a great looking port the NES does a good job on its own. Looks pretty darn good for an NES game. Winner: Arcade Never heard of this game but it looks pretty good for a vert scroller! Shmups are never easy to pick up and play. Nice job as always buddy!
Thanks my friend! This one in particular is really not the type to pick up and play. I always hope I can go at least 30 seconds straight without dying for the sake of footage lol! I'm not sure about the arcade but the NES game only came out in Japan so that may be why you never heard of it. I certainly hadn't until putting the list together for this series.
Hold select on player 2, and press start on player 1. It's an invincibility cheat I'm only mentioning because the game is just a 3 level collection of evil bastard ways to murder the player and completely miss the point of Xevious. For example, wouldn't it be fun if you only bombed the power-ups and nothing else? Or if your sluggish sprite was forced into tight spaces with faster kazikami enemies? How about a temporary shield that disables your guns? I gotta say, I was in awe (and maybe a bit disappointed, given this game's reputation) that you survived what it threw at you in both sides of the head to head. Those were some Jedi skills. Also, I mentioned the cheat code because the Famicom didn't have a player 2 select button at the time. And that last little middle finger sums up this game's legacy. Besides being mostly forgotten, or used to put Xevious into a historical context. In Japan, at least, Namco's game was inspiring clones for years. And at least one God awful CG movie that almost instantly became lost media.
Hahaha that invisibility cheat really is a screw you isn't it? Yeah this game was super hard but not in a fun way, I hate games where your plane or ship is too sluggish to dodge and having tons of little things coming at you can make it infuriating. But considering I played Cobra Command on the NES a couple of days ago this is actually not as bad as I thought when it comes to control of your plane. Also, I'm glad I'm not the only one who was picking up major Xevious vibes. I don't really like Xevious but so far there have been 2 clones in this series that are worse and we're only on the "A"s.
Nice video, good comparison. Doesn't look like a bad port, I'd play the arcade if I had the choice but I think if you're into these types of games the NES looks like a fun, little port.
Thanks my friend! It's a pretty good port but I think the game overall is kinda lame. It may have been ok for its time but it's another shooter that didn't age particularly well. Of course that's coming from someone who really started shooters in the SNES/Genesis generation so going back to something like this is a little hard sometimes.
@@RetroComparisons I see. I had to LOL@ the "the game overall is kinda lame" part lmao 🤣 I don't know why that struck me funny 😅 I love your honesty.👍🏼
It's different developers but in 6 months without these games fresh in my mind if you showed me this and B-Wings back to back I probably wouldn't be able to tell you which one was which. I guess they're that generic.
@@RetroComparisons yeah, I guess. And that's why we're in love with games like Salamander, Gradus III and Thunder Force IV - they were WAY MORE than just shmups...!^^)
I'm not at all familiar with this one. The NES port has definitely taken some cuts in detail versus the arcade version. The arcade is certainly the winner in graphics and sound. But, even with the cut in tile detail, the NES version seems to be a fairly decent port. That said, there's nothing really the jumps out and says 'great game' here...seems kind of bland to me.
As per usual my thoughts on this pretty much align with yours exactly. The NES version did a good job keeping the feel of the arcade but it's a pretty lame game overall, at least by today's standards or honestly even by the standards of a few years after this came out.
