Xenon 2 Megablast Amiga 1989 The Assembly Line

Xenon 2 Megablast 1989

The Assembly Line and the Bitmap Brothers released Xenon 2: Megablast for the Atari ST and Amiga in September of 1989. Xenon 2 is a vertcially-scrolling shoot 'em up most notable for its prime pixel art, weapons system and Swop Shop.

Xenon 2 is the sequel to Xenon of 1988.

Xenon 2 is set one millennium after the Galactic Conflict of Xenon. In Xenon 2 the Xenites have set a time bomb in each of the epochs of evolutionary history. Only a squadron of Megablasters can wipe out the hostile waves of lifeforms that have been irradiated by the time bombs, and defuse the timb bombs by destroying their guardians.

Xenon 2 was programmed by Martin Day, drawn by Mark Coleman and composed by David Whittaker. Xenon 2 was coded on an IBM PC but its graphics were drawn using Degas Elite of 1986 on an ST.

During its intro Xenon 2 displays sprite-scaled logos and demo-quality text over a swirling starfield while playing Whittaker's sampled rendition of Megablast by Bomb the Bass.

Mark Coleman's Xenon 2 pixel art is stunning on ST, Amiga and MS-DOS. Xenon 2's levels range from pre-historic to metallic space-age themes.

Xenon 2 displays in 320x200 and has an active drawspace of 320x192.

Xenon 2 consists of five levels each of which represents an evolutionary epoch. Each level is packed with hostile waves of lifeforms and culminates in an end-level guardian. The scrolling playfield dimensions for each level are 320x4800 pixels.

Vanquished enemies leave behind cash that can be collected: at the end of each round players can refit their Megablaster via the Swop Shop buy/sell interface.

Xenon 2 does not run at full frames due to the number of sprites and the size of the sprites that it shifts around its five-layer parallax-scrolling playfield. Xenon 2 is one of the few shoot 'em ups in which players have (limited) reverse-scrolling control by pulling back on the joystick.

However, collision detection is off and some waves cheaply flank. You can also get stuck on walls (jittering); thus, the auto-scrolling can kill you.

Xenon 2 was advertised as having "coinop-quality action," but it only looks like a coinop in static screencaps. When you actually play Xenon 2, when you see it moving, you will realize that it does not play like a coinop because it lacks smooth scrolling and sprite-shifting. In fact, dating back to 1986 there are C64 shooters that play more like coinops than Xenon 2 does.

All the Assembly Line had to do was reduce the sprite-count and get rid of the parallax to put Xenon 2 on a whole other level. I'd even sacrifice in-game music in pursuit of that end.

Xenon 2 Weapons System for Megablaster ("Capsule" pick-ups):

• Front Shot, Side Shot, Rear Shot, Cannons, Lasers
• Super Nashwan Power, Electroball, Mines
• Dive, Zapper, Speed-up, Power-up, Heart

The Amiga version of Xenon 2 was distributed on 2x 3.5" 880kB DD diskettes. It was not installable to hard disk drive.

Xenon of 1988 is better than Xenon 2 because you can switch between Fighter Jet and Tank. I defeated both Xenon games when they came out and without an auto-fire joystick (you can buy an auto-fire upgrade in Xenon 2). Xenon is also much harder than Xenon 2.

Xenon 2 IBM PC 1990

The Assembly Line / Bitmap Brothers ported ST/Amiga Xenon 2: Megablast of 1989 to IBM PC MS-DOS in 1990. PC Xenon 2 displays in 256-color VGA 320x200, but its graphics were not redrawn to employ 256 colors. Indeed, PC Xenon 2 lacks the background layer.

PC Xenon 2 supports keyboard and joystick controls. PC Xenon 2 lacks the Megablast / Bomb the Bass intro of the ST/Amiga versions as well as the cool electrocuting white-strobe Zapper effect. However, the screen-scrolling is smoother than the ST/Amiga versions.

The PC version of Xenon 2 was distributed on 1x 3.5" 720 kB DD diskette. The hard disk drive install size is 836 kbytes (36 files).

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