you too can have fun with the zapper, bomber, the things you destroy, the bullets you dodge and even the bacura and shooting at them too. lost my shit when some terrazi started coming. do not use autofire, and use at least 2 fingers. it's a rhythm game, but you get to to dictate the rhythm. and simultaneously its a quasi puzzle game, with one of the earliest obvious examples of "rank", aside from a mere aggression increase, having the player's performance influence the experience. spawning different little beautiful, abstract and cute little aircraft based on how well you're doing and how far along you've come. four checkpoints a "stage", always scrolling. best advice is always dodging. you can loop the game by just dodging too, with a score of zero to show for it.

it really was the last of the boomer shooters, the bridge between the scrollers and the often but not always single screen/board/stage whatever you wanna call 'em, there are a some exceptions like bosconian, defender and, scramble and probably more. xevious feels a bit more abstract, along the lines of many of shooting games of the invader era, but feels leagues apart with the use of an 8-way lever. xevious takes place in thankfully a thoughtfully designed world with documented details of which are never, ever said to the player. i love the grobda, bacura, toroid, zoshi, domogram, and stuff like the sheonite are just bizarre. may they live on as the names of the cars in the ridge racers, but they're living on forever as long as xevious exists. one day, before my time is up, i hope to see the 2002 animated feature film "Xevious". the arcade game from 1982 was absolutely peerless in its time, and would irrevocably change the course of shooting game history for a handful of years, until toaplan brought out their tigers and sharks.

it still is the only rhythm game i've ever loved