Xevious: Space Souls

I can see why this game is remembered.  I can see why it and its kind were influential.  It's a good thing I wasn't playing it in an actual arcade, because I can imagine losing a large number of quarters to its clutches.  It speaks of a time when those tiny purchases, or micro-transactions, made up a massive amount of the revenue a game could bring.  It uses the small iteration time, and tries to perfect the feeling of "Aw, I nearly had it."  Difficulty is low and the play simple but spikes suddenly around unique sprites and scheduled set piece moments.

The spikes of this kind remind me of Dark Souls.  It's obviously not quite the same kind of complexity and challenge, but it's got something of the boss encounters.  In Dark Souls, the game has little in the way of ambient music, and enemies all have specific aggro ranges that can be exploited carefully and slowly if the player is wishes.

But when the player enters a boss area, the music comes in loud and strong, a unique, usually large and imposing creature thunders down upon you, with attacks and strategies you've never encountered.  There is a fog door before the boss to obscure any kind of planning.  It all comes together to create a powerful sensory overload that adds to the difficulty and frantic feeling of facing down a massive demon.

Xevious attempts much the same.  The first sprites encountered are generally small, and leave the screen quickly through the sides, as if they're running away.  They can only hurt you by running into you, and you can't move high enough on the screen to crash into them.  But when a set piece appears, it's a flurry of glowing bullets, giant, ziggurat-like tanks, and ships flying in and darting away.  It's very difficult to get through, and beating one gives you a few moments of relief to savour your victory.  It's a recipe for money.

I think this kind of attention to sensory input.  In so few games is the music more than a texture.  And it's not like Xevious is some amazing historical artifact, or that it is as addicting as a game like Bejeweled.  But it was, once.  And its tactics and psychology are representative of many, many games that have come after, and probably a few that came before.  I'm happy to have played it, and I want to play a bit more.  I want to see when this has all come from.  I want to know where it's all going.