January:
February:
March:
April:
May:
June:
July:
August:
September:
October:
November:
144)
Castlevania (NES)
145)
Chip 'N' Dale's Rescue Rangers 2 (NES)
146)
Chip 'N' Dale's Rescue Rangers (NES)
147)
Gain Ground (GEN)
148)
ActRaiser 2 (legit) (SNES)
149)
The Rocketeer (NES)
150)
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom (NES)
151)
Kung Fu152)
Spartan X 2153)
Xexyz (NES)
Hey, look, it's the other adventure/shooter hybrid on NES! Whereas
The Guardian Legend apes
Zelda and some of the best vertically-scrolling shmups,
Xexyz (apparently pronounced zeks-zees?) copies more
Zelda II and horizontal scrollers. It's... well, it's certainly more than the sum of its parts, but it's not nearly as polished as
TGL.
The basic structure is roll through a platforming stage, finding a force star along the way by shooting star blocks a certain number of times to reveal a door and then beating a guardian for it. Then you get into the castle, find your way to the boss there, with some short shooter stages with branching paths that loop if you don't take the right one.
Finally, you'll reach a boss, take it down, and free a captured princess or whatever. Then you'll go through another pure shooter stage, take down another boss, and repeat. This is pretty much the structure until the end of the game.
The platforming is interesting enough, although the jumping can be a little tricky at times. You can obtain new weapons through the game, and by collecting "E" symbols, you gain currency to spend at shops. You can also "buy information", most of which is useless, upgrade said weapons, restore health, and so on. There are also rooms where you can wager money to get more, some where folks will just give you stuff, some where you take down an enemy to free a captured (and bathing?) fairy, and a room where you headbutt a ghost up to knock a treasure chest off the ceiling for money. Yeah, it's weird alright.
The shooting itself is also pretty average. I mean, it's not terrible, but it's not terribly interesting. You have two types of shooter stages, one where you're in a vehicle, and one where you remain standing on a platform and fly around. The latter lets you use your on-foot weapons, and is reserved for the final big bad of the area.
Anyway, I had a real fondness for this game growing up because of the light exploration and RPG elements, but it's a game that you only play
after The Guardian Legend. Because seriously, that game still rocks. This one's just a'ight.
For a more effusive take on the game, here's the
HG101 entry.
