Xenon 2 Megablast Longplay (Amiga) [50 FPS]
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- Опубликовано: 19 авг 2024
- Developed by The Assembly Line/The Bitmap Brothers and published by Image Works in 1989.
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Following their defeat at your hands at the conclusion of the original Xenon, the Xenites are back and this time they're angry. In fact, they're so angry that they've only gone and planted time-bombs in an attempt to disrupt the fabric of time and space itself. Only you and your heavily-armed attack vessel, the Megablast, can hope to prevail against the Xenite threat and ensure humankind's continued safety.
Xenon 2 is the highly successful and much-lauded sequel to what was a fairly average vertical shoot 'em up, and is regarded as another true Amiga classic.
The game itself is a fairly straightforward shoot 'em up this time around. The transformation between aerial and ground combat vehicles has been ditched, simplifying the game design. However, don't be fooled into thinking that "simple" means easy, because this is easily one of the hardest and most frenetic shmups on the Amiga.
The game hurls numerous waves of strange, bio-organic Xenite foes at you, which you must attempt to dispatch as quickly as possible. The enemies move extremely quickly and their attack paths can cover the entire screen; while some enemies do fire projectiles, it's far more important avoid colliding with them.
Holding down the fire button fires your ship's weapons, but the rate of fire is painfully slow unless you buy the rapid fire power-up from the shop. You can fire more quickly by repeatedly tapping the the fir button, but this becomes tiring very quickly; I must confess that I resorted to using an auto-fire joystick to prevent my fingers from dropping off. Even with the auto-fire enabled, the game is still rock solid.
Destroying all enemies in an attack wave releases special credit bubbles. Grabbing these adds to the amount of cash that you can spend on ship upgrades in the shop. The bubbles don't hang about and will quickly disappear from the screen if not collected in time.
Perhaps one of the more unconventional features of the game is that each stage features branching paths that require you to fly through narrow, rocky channels. Some of these routes lead to dead ends, where you will need to pull back on the joystick to engage your reverse thrusters and navigate your way out. Fortunately, your ship doesn't take damage when colliding with the scenery, although this is small blessing as trying to avoid oncoming enemies and projectiles is difficult.
As with other Bitmap Brothers games, there is a comprehensive upgrade system, which allows you to equip all manner of upgrades, extra weapons and power-ups to your ship. Although upgrades can occasionally be collected from capsules in each level, you'll acquire the majority of your hardware from the shop. Upon entering, the surly alien vendor will allow you to sell upgrades that you no longer want, as well as purchase new equipment using the cash you managed to collect during the level. The interface for the buying and selling is pretty slick and easy to navigate. Once transactions are complete, you'll be booted back into the vacuum of space, ready to continue the fight.
Aesthetically, the game features some fantastically pretty graphics, courtesy of Mark Coleman. The graphics and design certainly feel ahead of their time, especially considering the game was released in 1989.
Probably the most iconic feature of the game is the music, which begins playing from the off. The track in question is Megablast (Hip Hop on Precinct 13) by Bomb The Bass, albeit reworked to fit into the game. I suspect that the track is much more famous for being the soundtrack to Xenon 2 than as part of the album for which it was originally written.
The only real problem with the game lies in a misjudged difficulty level. Whereas most games have a difficulty curve that eases you into the game and gets progressively more challenging, here the opposite is true. The game treads a very fine line between fun and frustration, with more than an occasional lurch towards the latter.
All of the Bitmap's games were tough, but their later releases increasingly struck the correct balance between difficulty and accessibility as they became more accomplished with each successive release.
For me, Xenon 2 is flawed classic, but a classic nonetheless.
#retrogaming
![Shadow of the Beast Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/y9BltSvKMlQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![Shadow of the Beast Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](/img/tr.png)
![Moonstone: A Hard Days Knight Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RuqpISemjeQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![Xenon 2 Megablast - full game [PC]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/u_7lqoz0GoQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![Shadow of the Beast II Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]](/img/1.gif)
30 years after and the music still rocks!!!
Yes it does
I still humble the PC speaker from day to day.
Bomb The Bass
@@sejobl its John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 score, which BTB also sampled.
@@willbox8802 incorrect, it’s btb megablast, which sampled John Carpenter
How many hours of my childhood here... And now a 36 guy watching again 1 more hour. ... Thanks!
The enemy designs in this game are phenomenal, especially the bosses.
Just found this....after 30 years of singing this song in my head and years of searching.....im so happy right now 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Hahhaha totally same here 😂
Search for: assault on presinct 13 1976 soundtrack. It's the original john carpenter soundtrack of his movie.
When I showed this to friends who played games on a PC at the time their jaw dropped !!! The Amiga was WAY ahead of it's time !!! I learned how to sample on it and created my first remixes.
It was mindblowing. There will never be anything as good as the Amiga.
Are y'still makin' remixes?
@@TheLambdaTeam Yep !
I had an MSX before I owned an Amiga. And what I most missed on the "Transition" was good shoot'em ups.
I saw Xenon 2 being overly hyped on magazines, I got it (pirated, as every Amiga game existed here in Brazil), and I honestly thought it was a leaked beta or something, because there was no way that horrid, jerky mess was getting the ratings it got on magazines.
Xenon 2 was a good game only if you didn't know any better. If you had access to an arcade place or had any home gaming system that had japanese games on it, you knew it was shit right from the first 30 seconds of playing it.
Music is obviously awesome except by the fact it's the same song playing over and over.
What I find to be even more weird is that the Amiga already had Hybris and Battle Squadron by then, both games are INSANELY superior to Xenon 2
When I got my hands on Xenon 2 I could already play Truxton on my Dad's house who owned a Japanese imported Mega-Drive back then and just a few months later we had MUSHA.... and I had Aleste, Zanac EX, Laydock 2 and other much superior shoot'em ups on the MSX before.
Xenon 2 was crap the day it was released, and I will never understand all the hype around it, except by "British gamers didn't know any better"
@@rafaellima83 - you're right, compared to the games you mentioned, Xenon 2 is horrible. But compared to most Amiga games, Xenon 2 was superior because, well, most Amiga games looked decent and sounded great... but played badly. The best game I ever played on the Amiga was Speedball 2.
Nevertheless, I still enjoyed Xenon 2, although I found it a bit on the easy side as I was already used to bullet hell games at that point, and Xenon 2 is like 'easy mode' compared to the Raiden games. "Gods", also by the Bitmap Brothers, was another easy game. Each game took me a week to beat.
Bitmap Bros' graphics were so characteristic and unique...
You can recognize the exact same arty mark (both assets and animations) in the so underratted rts Z (the first).
But shitty music, SFX and gameplay. Boring game. And what a shitty ending...oh my....
@@MrLaurizioTerrible attempt at trolling.
@@V3nom7 z was an amazing game.
Bitmap Bros were the gods of great Amiga games (pun intended :))
I love how the shopkeeper listens to the song over his headphones as well, and then stops it as the player enters his shop :DD @ 13:57
And then BAM back into the hard groove at 14:24
Ohmygod i think i never noticed this XD that's a great little detail. They even included a little hand animation , that's cute 😄
The music is so awesome, even the alien shopkeeper can't help but listen to it 🤣
This takes me back, I could get thru most of this on one life back in the day...I played it so much..
Watched the whole thing. I was in love with this game in the late 80s/early 90s and played it to death. Well done for getting through it without losing any lives. A phenomenal title, and great to see it again in its entirety.
Glad you enjoyed it - it's on my list for a 1440p QHD remake!
I was in love with this game. I feel you experienced it..
still impressed by the graphics and the animation ! that was amazing to do something like this by the time. I play it on PC, the "organic" background was missing on PC version.
The PC was still behind the Amiga at this point, especially in the audio department.
Assault on Precinct 13!! Great movie and great track.
The Amiga was an absolute unit of a machine back then. Get ready player one!
Versions for Amiga and Atari St act as slowed by 50%. See versions on Archimedes and Sharp X68000
I played this game for many years in PC. However I allways had the impression that the credits you didn't spend in one stage wouldn't carry over the next one.
Finally I saw the final of this nightmare game.
Haha me2
Power to the Amiga, i need to say too Atari Respect to both i'm 42
Versions for Amiga and Atari St act as slowed by 50%. See versions on Archimedes and Sharp X68000
The Commodora Amiga. What a machine it was! 14 bit sound with just an 8 bit sound chip.
The Bitmap brothers, then Psynosis for games...outstanding.
Remember this beast of a game very fondly. Ahhhh childhood…
I was there when it came out 👊🏻 brilliant music even now in 2021
I had this game in a floppy disk.....
What a wonderful days......
Just bought the new A500 Mini and can't wait... this is one of the first games I will be loading up...
Holy crap i totally forgot about the hours and hours i have been grinding this game as a boy. but as soon as i tuned in i knew exactly what kind of alien bug would be comin which way up next. I even remember how i would quit and start over again back then if i missed one of the "bubbles" in an early stage. how much i hated these guys that were overlaying themselves upon each others....thats so weird.... what a timewarp. thanks alot
Once I got to level 4 with the bees, I could technically grab unlimited cash.
The game had a glitch too: if y'collected too much monies, the counter would overflow and it'd be back at zero...hated it!
Pure childhood memories here including playing the theme tune on the keyboard😊
I remember the alien in the shop was named Crispin and his shop was known as Crispin's Swop Shop.
The Wikipedia article says the name of the shop was "Colin's Bargain Basement". I wonder what that's about?
Was Colin
Hahahaha you're right! And he sounded like he was gargling vomit when he talked.
Yeah it was Crispin for me too. I was on the PC, so I wonder if it was a difference when it was ported
DUDE you totally just rekindled flashbacks to my childhood. This was my all out favorite game on the Amiga 500. THANK YOU!!
Thank you! i've been looking for this game everywhere!
Its exactly as I remembered it when I was a kid.
Some of the best hours spent on my Amiga
"Give me the cash!" Hahaha, what an ill-mannered store guy ;D.
This was an áwesome game on the Amiga! OP, i recall, once i was on level 3, i had a level 2 Laster on L2, and 2 upgraded cannonds on L1 and R1 as well, a l3 dualshot, l3 sideshot, and a l1 drone to buy once i entered stage 4: You've been missing out a lot! (PS, in stage 4, The Butterflye's can be camp/farmed if you stick in a ledge. you can cash a lot. and buy a 2nd Laser, ánd enough powerups to get all of your sides level 3, my best rounds is all that and a level 2 Drone on my tail. almost 'Full Super Nashwan Power!" to start with on stage 5, but stage 5 is really INSANE!!!...
Gotta love the attack of the killer tomatoes 😂
I played the crap out of this back in the day and r type.. happy days
Bitmap brothers made some great games. Gods, magic pockets, chaos engine and others
I have the Amiga version sat right here and give it a blast every now and again. But, I'd love to see some kind of remastered version for modern consoles and PC. I agree with a few of the other comments here Re the in game music, I have to say that the CD TV version/remix is worth a look and listen too. Cracking game.
Bitmap Brothers announced a sequel a long time ago (c.; 2002) and there is a download for it but as far as I know it was never released. www.bitmap-brothers.co.uk/features/xenon2000/index.htm
I remember playing this. I kinda was good at this, also Golden Axe was one of my favorites
Still can remember the intro 👍👍👍
You got my blood pumping. Thanks, I needed that.
The hitboxes for the enemies were so small... even with the insane autofire they slip between shots
If I'm honest, it was never the Bitmap's best game; cool visuals and music, but gameplay was too hard in my opinion.
Yeah, I can relate... just like my feelings for Magic Pockets.
So yeah. Basically by 34.20 I knew you’d win the game by looking at the firepower on the screen. Holy shit! There’s bullets flying eveywhere.
Music is phenomenal!
So to those DJs that think you're the greatest
Just stop look and listen 'cause you haven't heard the lastest
Don't touch that dial
That's over nine, zero point thirty hours
There have been mixes and dance tracks
Put together in the past
But none can outrun or equal
The power of Megablast
Oh yeah, check this out
Is that him? Could I be right?
Could that be Kid, uh Dyn-o-mite
Say turn it up
Say turn it up
Say turn it up
Play for the, play for the, play for the Hip-Hop
Ah dyn-o-mite
All that scratching is making me itch
Play, kick it
Check this out
Well how about cutting that reefer
Oh yeah
All that scratching is making me itch
That's over nine, zero point thirty hours
All together now
(Oh my God)
It's a Megablast
It's the real blast, it's the real blast
We give it the name a Megablast (it's the real blast)
It's the real blast known to gonna last
We give it the name a Megablast
Dyn-o-mite
Could I be right?
Could that be Kid, uh Dyn-o-mite
my childhood is in this
I'm 51 and this makes me feel like I'm 17 again.
Best game ever
Wow, this game was one of my favorites. And ofc NFS. Nice!
I first played this on my mate's Amiga back in the day and almost cried when I finally got it on my Atari ST and the music wasn't the same........ :(
Did the exact opposite! Played it on my friends Atari ST and I really liked it (graphics, gameplay and music) and later got it for my Amiga expecting it would utilise my Amiga fully... but it did not, it was pretty much exactly the same. So I bow to Atari (programming that game) that time and the Amiga version was probably pretty much a straight copy...
Yep - ST doesn't have the same hardware
@@alexanderwingeskog758 the game soundtrack is so much better on the amiga. That high pitch shouting sound is ridiculous on the ST, seriously.
Versions for Amiga and Atari St act as slowed by 50%. See versions on Archimedes and Sharp X68000
You needed Atari STE to match Amiga’s sound in Xenon (look for videos on YT).
This and Tetris are the first two games I played on PC in the early 90s :D
Zipstik joystick in black n yellow were da bomb for playing this game
Pity that the audio was all screwed up in this game. Shooting the guns cut out most of the music channels.
Epic and quick ending ... Colin just says ... Turn off your TV set ! ... than stare at a White Dot for 3 seconds.
I came here to compare the Amiga sound vs the PC sound. Stayed for the sound. :)
Awesome tune and game!!! 🎮
My first ever video game !!
Esa musiquita me da justo en el cuore!
This needs to be brought back immediately
Невозможно так быстро нажимать на пробел, это читерское прохождение. А игруха epic
4:18 I hear the main theme of assault on precinct 13.
Killer soundtrack!
Assault on presinct 13 1976.
my childhood :)
1992, PC version, 8 years old, my trypophobia was awakened.
Still remember places to hide. After that game my "space tap" skill was unimaganable =)
Shopkeeper sounds like my stomach after breakfast.
I used to play the hell out of this on SMS. Probably would have finished it if I had an autofire controller/cheat XD
I came to see the final boss..
Very similar game to Terra Cresta (which also had an amazing soundtrack)
Nothing looked as good as a bitmap brothers title
Thanks for the memorise, loved this game.
If only they'd release these old amiga, bitmap brothers and sensible software etc classics as bundles on the modern platfotm stores like you cna get the old arcade and neo geo games etc.
That was awesome play bro.
I loved this for the polished graphics back in the day and it still looks impressive but I was really irritated by the sfx clumsily cutting off the WRONG part of the music. I've never liked any of David Whittaker's stuff anyway, but could he have at least kept the drum beat constant and shared the 'melody channels' with the sound effects? Richard Joseph would have easily managed a better attempt. Poor even for '89.
Superb 👍
Yes Colin, it was good enough for me. My favorite game until Ghost of Tsushima.
Music is the best in the world! Hundred times I tried to pass it in 1990-1992 on PC 286! but.. It seems it was some software mistake on 35:30. I didn't see bombs - they were not visible and my ship exploded... It was a hard game )))
I even damaged the spacebar button )))
Worst ending ever. Back in the day i thought my game crashed. But no. That's the ending.
Esa musica despierta fibras dormidas en mi
hated the bad collision detection....kept me frustrated, but liked the concept a lot, the design etc
The first time I used auto fire on a joystick!
the music cutting out in games really put me off back when i played it.
Quite how they f****d this game up on the Megadrive I'll never know. The Amiga version still stands as the best version of this game. Sticks too your ship like Sharon to Darren :p
The mega drive verson is not a bad port.
The game is shit on Amiga and also shit on Mega-Drive. The main difference is Mega Drive players knew better and had better options to play.
@Demo Lition Megadrive is full of top games, Amiga libraries is inferior regarding shoot em up. Only some examples: musha aleste; verytex; eliminate down; undeadline; elemental master; zero wing; aero blaster;. gynoug; troubleshooter I and 2; twin hawk.........and mani many others It's obvious that port are with much probabilities inferior, but bitmap bros haven't done a good work on megadrive
Amazing
Whan i was young i have one credit this game on pc version .
After first lvl you buy electro ball and side shoot but you can't have side shoot and the back shoot or ather weapon like the electro ball in same time so you do better to first sell them before to gain more credit after this part of the game .
Myself kid time game during early 1990s
Played hours on Atari 520 STE ;)
As I recall it was possible to accumulate enough cash to add 4 lasers to the ship. The rear-most power up used by the player in this video was basically useless. Slow fire rate. The straight rear-shooting gun was super fast but lacked any angles other than straight back.
I think the first thing anyone does is sell the rear shot at the store ;)
I haven't played this game in about 25 yrs but do know the power up with the little pellets used in this vid was useless.
So starting at 3:15 it sounds exactly like John Carpenters theme from Assault on Precinct 13.
The music is the soundtrack of movie district 13
Yep remixed by Bomb the Bass
assault on precinct 13
@@earthwolf82 The B side of 'Don't Make Me Wait'
Epic ending! xD
I've been playing this on Antstream on my xbox and was wondering why the beat vanishes whenever you fire a weapon. Apparently that's just the way it is. Oh well...
Because the Amiga only had 4 channels for sound, 2 left speaker and 2 right speaker. If you didn't fire then all the instruments could play, as soon as you fired your weapons then the game had to sacrifice instrument channels to be used as weapon channels.
It's why retro gaming is on a whole different level to current games. We have all the resources and power we could hope for, compared to back then, but in the 80's and 90's the programmers had to be extremely clever in how they made games. Optimisation was key and it's why a lot of programmers are laughed at these days when new games get released on new systems with all the power they could need but they release an unoptimised, buggy, resource hungry mess a lot of time!
What is creating the massive rate of fire? Is the player using a joystick with autofire?
Most definitely.
I had this game around 1990 on the Amiga and had a joystick with autofire.
I also had this game '89 onward and you had to use an autofire joystick to get that amount of repeating. Was impossible to do that by hand.
Finalmente pude ver el final de este juego de pesadilla.
I think the SNES could have done a pretty great version of this. Although, if I'm being honest, I actually find much of the visuals here slightly fugly due to the obvious low colour, so I might not actually want it on the SNES ultimately anyway since it really does look like an Amiga game through and through--not ideally suited to SNES. Mind you, I'd take a port of it now, since there's not a lot else coming to SNES these days, and something is definitely better than nothing. Maybe if there were a port the artist could add in just a bit more colour variation.
LMAO, the end of the game. Wasn't able to finish it as a kid, got pretty close it seems.
Amazing game
9:44
My version of the game didn't have that "scratch" sound effect as the shutters opened. Any idea what that's about? Is it because it was pirated?
Huh. BF was the voice actor of that intro (this is a joke)
I love this game, but the Music and FX volume issues make it sound horrible; programming or hardware limitation? Saying that, it would have been interesting to see an STE version of this game as the STE had 5 channels of audio, and better volume control options than the Amiga did.
Yes, only 4 channels, 1 Fx cut drums and others thinks
@@Luis45ccs In fact, there are 4x 8 bit DMA pannable channels and of course the YM2149 from the ST is present as well so that makes 7 channels in total.
GIVE ME THE CASH
i love that alien
Hehe, 50 FPS recording of a 17 FPS game :P I liked the graphics but it was annoying to play because the framerate caused bad hit detection, which is pretty important in a shooter...
If I'm honest, I was never a huge fan of this game - the graphics and sound were great, but as you say, it's too sluggish 😉
Amiga should have one more channel -- now while shooting it lacks a channel in the music. This is a bit annoying. Cheers from Finland!
Can we get a #housemarque remake? 🍻