#xevious

Compared to the fixed patterns of its contemporary shooters, including Namco’s own catalog, Xevious’ enemies were dynamic and would attempt to dodge you, while firing aimed shots directly at you. This would force you to move in response to them, being careful to herd bullets in a way that created gaps for you to escape between. 

On top of that, you had to contend with both air and ground targets, each requiring different weapons to take down. Air targets moved faster and could dodge, but your bullets were fast enough that firing directly at them would generally catch them. 

Ground targets were slow moving or stationary, but unlike your lasers, bombs needed to be precisely targeted, as they’d only damage the area directly around where they landed. Moving targets required you to lead the target, timing your attack so it’d land right as the enemy moved into your targeting reticle, something easy to mistime under pressure. 

Every four stages would culminate in a fight with the Andor Genesis, a huge battleship that could be dodged until it retreated, taken down part by part, or destroyed in a single shot by boldly weaving through gunfire to approach its core and drop a bomb into it. 

Under the hood, Xevious had some sophisticated systems governing its enemy behaviors. For instance, certain enemies wouldn’t fire when the player is within a certain distance, to prevent cheap shots where you’re destroyed by bullets that you had no time to dodge. This property would be intentionally exploited by proactive players who would close the distance to limited the amount of on screen bullets, a technique known in the modern shooter community as bullet sealing. 

Xevious also features one of the earliest examples of a rank system, which would dynamically adjust the difficulty depending on the player’s performance. Enemies would move more erratically, bullets could get faster, or entire sets of enemies might change. Similar systems are still used in modern games, even outside the shoot-em-up genre, and deciphering and exploiting the rank system has become a high level skill for serious players. 

Xevious even features hidden enemies and score items, discoverable by observant players who notice the targeting reticle changing as it rolls over an enemy. 

Xevious’ mysterious world building, dynamic systems and hidden secrets made it hugely popular, becoming cited by many creators as a favorite, or as a direct influence on their own work. You can see its influence in games like Gradius, whose designers directly cite Xevious’ use of Nazca Lines as the inspiration for the now iconic inclusion of Moai heads, and the recurring Core boss draws a direct line to the Andor Genesis. Gradius itself is often positioned as a follow up to Scramble, creating a design conversation within the genre, and going on to influence a huge number of titles in its own right. 

Taito, the company behind Space Invaders, put out their own vision of Xevious’ ideas with Ray Force, which pushed the split between the two planes even farther. Ray Force extended the vertical plane, having enemies move in and out of an absurd number of visual layers, using sprite scaling to sell the depth. The contiguous play field extended not only forward, but from space into the Earth’s core itself, seamlessly transitioning through several different settings along the way. 

Outside of shooters, the emphasis on mystery and secrets would continue into Endo’s next game, The Tower of Druaga, which would require arcade players to collaborate in finding secrets in order to decipher the obtuse requirements to complete the game. Druaga would inspire a culture of arcade notebooks where players could leave messages for each other, to warn future players and equip them with the knowledge they needed to progress. 

It’s a cultural artifact that you can see as the predecessor to the Dark Souls player messages, the design trend toward meta progression, which are built in intentionally obtuse ways, designed to be revealed by the collaborative efforts of many players. That mysterious style of action RPG would directly influence other early action RPGs like Hydlide, Xanadu and the Legend of Zelda, with Druraga often cited as inspiration.