Xevious
Platform: Atari 2600
Region: Prototype (USA)
Media: Cartridge
Controller: Joystick
Gametype: Prototype
Release Year: 1983
Developer: Atari
Publisher: Unreleased
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It's dangerous, it's devious, it's Xevious.  Atari was planning on porting the popular arcade shooter Xevious to the 2600, despite the great difficulty involved.  But sadly like so many 2600 arcade conversions before it, Xevious was not be. Another victim of the management shake up at Atari. 

When Ray Kassar was fired as CEO of Atari in 1983, James Morgan was hired to take his place.  Jim put all projects on hold for 30 days while he reviewed what had been going on during Ray's "reign of terror".  Since the 7800 was deemed high priority, most 2600 and 5200 projects were put on hold or outsourced to GCC.  Promising arcade conversions such as Tempest, Sinistar, Elevator Action, and Xevious were scrapped in favor of the new 7800 system.  Although they didn't know it at the time, Atari was slowly driving the nails into its own coffin.

While it may not be complete, the 2600 version of Xevious is pretty impressive (especially for the 2600) and was turning into a great arcade conversion.  Programmer Tod Frye had somehow managed to implement a scrolling background as was seen in the arcade version.  While this background wasn't as detailed as it's arcade cousin, it was still a major accomplishment for the 2600.  Not only was Tod able to get the scrolling background implemented, but he was able to have multiple enemies appear on the screen at once with little or no flicker.  In fact the only thing that flickers in the entire game is your ship (more on that later).

While the gameplay in this early prototype is amazingly accurate, some corners still had to be cut.  One of the 2600's biggest problem was that it only had one fire button, making many arcade conversions difficult.  Tod got around this problem by having the fire button serve double duty as your fire and bomb button.  Pressing the fire will shoot a shot and drop a bomb that slowly arcs to where the targeting sight is.  Originally it was thought that the buildings were cut from this version (making tanks the only things you can bomb),  although after examination of the game code it now appears that the buildings are there, but the data for their positions on the map are missing.  Also missing from this version are the large variety of enemies and the super fortresses, but since this is a work in progress they may have been planned but just not implemented. 

While the gameplay may have been dead on, the graphics were a bit on the strange side.  The disc shaped enemies and mirrors looked right, but your ship and the tanks look like an exercise in modern art.  The strangest thing is that your ship is apparently made out of two gray bars that cross in the middle.  Why Tod decided to make your ship this way is unknown, but to get it to work right he had to make them flicker like mad.  This odd design also makes your ship almost twice as large as it was in the arcade (making it harder to dodge enemy shots).  Rounding out this graphical freak show are the tanks which just happen to look like limping lowercase n's as they hump their way across the ground.  I have no explanation for this other than Tod may have been fooling around with the graphics a bit (or maybe the rumors about the drug influence are true?) .  I can't believe they would actually be left like this in the final version.

Even though there is no Super Fortress to destroy, Xevious is still a pretty fun game.  For an early work in progress this version is very impressive and showed that Tod knew his stuff (so what happened with Pac-Man?).  Had it been finished Xevious probably would have been a mainstay in most 2600 libraries and a big hit for Atari.  While the 2600, 5200, and 400/800 versions may never have seen the light of day, Xevious was finally released for the 7800.  Well I guess one out of four ain't bad... 

http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/xevious/xevious.htm
