Xenon Longplay (Amiga) [QHD]

Follow me on Twitter @ / al82_retro
Get Great Retro Scene News @ www.vintageisth...
Developed by The Bitmap Brothers and published by Melbourne House in 1988
The first ever game by legendary Britsoft studio The Bitmap Brothers is this seriously hard-boiled arcade shooter.
It might not be as famous as it's graphically superior sequel, but Xenon was polished enough to earn the Bitmaps attention from the gaming press, the start of a remarkable career in the video game industry.
Playing it in 2019, it still stands up quite well. It's ridiculously hard, and the 25 Hz internal refresh makes the movement twitchier than is ideal, but the mechanics are solid, and the alternation between ship and tank modes is a cool feature.
The game simply loops around after world 4; there's no high-score table or anything!
Time Codes
Level 01 - 00:46
Level 02 - 05:43
Level 03 - 10:56
Level 04 - 17:03
#amiga
#thebitmapbrothers
#retrogaming

[@asdfqwer9557]

Nice to see what the second level looks like 30 years after.

[@Zontar82]

@brobbus0 i think no one of us ever made past it :D

[@scwilliams386]

This game was hard 33 years ago🤣

[@davidjones637]

I thought the same :D

[@WikoLite3172]

nostalgia 🥰

[@LPetal86]

Would it be fair if I stated this game was ahead of its time? This doesn't look or sound like something from the 80s. I've grown quite fond of The Bitmap Brothers though these playthroughs and would love to try something like The Chaos Engine out sometime!

[@AL82RetrogamingLongplays]

Xenon was ahead of the curve for it's time.
Of all their games, Speedball 2 and The Chaos Engine are the best games they ever created, and are the ones I'd recommend to just about anyone.

[@CarozQH]

Honestly I like this more than the sequel

[@Zontar82]

same here, we are probably the minority

[@TimelordUK]

This music is far superior

[@giuseppelavecchia775]

A me piacciono entrambi

[@Nobody-df4is]

Thank you man. Thank you for the upload. Such an awesome soundtrack! I love this game. They don't make the anymore!

[@ssdivizion]

The main idea is taken from Jaleco's masterpiece Valtric which is way better game

[@AL82RetrogamingLongplays]

Not familiar with it - will check it out!

[@ejr98]

Fun fact is that they played this game on the game show segment Get Mucky from Get Fresh (a UK Saturday morning TV show) as a head to head to score most points in 60 seconds with the losing team getting gunged as the title suggests. "You're unlucky, so you're gonna get mucky!!"

[@ratius1979]

I loved this game ❤❤❤ and #2

[@TimelordUK]

This music is still SO COOL. I had this on my Atari ST I think, or maybe my first PC.

[@scwilliams386]

Had this on atari st. Oh the days lmao

[@mrg466]

Good graphics, and a great soundtrack,...just how a video game should be,...(no comment on gameplay, because I haven't played it yet)!

[@yeraysantanaaday6827]

and where is the end of the game, you are telling me that its starts again" After that level of difficulty?

[@jejese1503]

Great game, although like all Bitmap Brothers games, first developed on the ST and then ported to the Amiga without any improvement.

[@yeraysantanaaday6827]

Its not correct if you compare the music, st is like spectrum but amiga is awesome..specially the electric guitarr

[@raphaelbovey5676]

@@yeraysantanaaday6827 except the sound the Amiga versions of Bitmap Brothers game were simple ST ports

[@Ribbo]

The Atari ST soundchip definitely suited this music track more. The Amiga version wasn't nearly as good.

[@jejese1503]

@@Ribbo I agree with you. Xenon, like Airball or Return to Genesis, is one of the very few games where I preferred the music on the ST rather than the Amiga (I had both machines).

[@Ribbo]

@@jejese1503 Foundations Waste was another tune that sounded great on the ST

[@vapourmile]

Anybody know how to start the game? I'm looking at the screen you see on the first three seconds and I can't get past it. Pressed fire, return, space, left mouse, right mouse..... ?

[@Daz555Daz]

You just press fire.

[@TimelordUK]

I've tried to run this game on an emulator without success. I was unable to map the buttons to change from flying to ground combat

[@Zontar82]

still love the effects , the music and graphic, difficulty was atrocious though. shame that the 2nd one didn't have that much personality

[@raphaelbovey5676]

The sequel looked amazing but played slow and boring

[@alexhunter0815]

It's so long ago 🙈

[@raphaelbovey5676]

Such an iconic soundtrack by David Whittaker

[@Foebane72]

Why do parts of the music sound out-of-sync?

[@AL82RetrogamingLongplays]

Stylistic choice on the part of the musician - if there was a problem with audio sync you'd notice it with the timing of explosions and stuff like that.

[@belperite]

@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays More likely dropping a channel of the music for the SFX. Even the Amiga had a limit on the amount of samples being played simultaneously in hardware, and the 68000 wasn't powerful enough to mix them in software and run the game at the same time. Saying that, the demo scene did some pretty amazing things.

[@Starredmediasoft]

Where's the end?

[@AL82RetrogamingLongplays]

There isn't one - it just goes back to level 1

[@Starredmediasoft]

@@AL82RetrogamingLongplays a real shame for a cool game like this

[@saporob]

This game was simply horripilant. The soundtrack was terrible(probably some people are apparently deaf...), the graphics horrible, sound fx from 1970 and i don't understand how this game could get 9/10... The only serious magazine Power Play gave it 4.5/10. Battle Squadron released 1 year later compared to this sh1t looked like a 2024 game.