Following the original Xenon and Speedball, British developers The Bitmap Brothers came out with what stands as one of the better "Euroshmups" of the Amiga era, Xenon 2: Megablast. It's tough, but manageable. It has shops where you can buy power-ups, a feature I usually hate in games like Fantasy Zone, yet they somehow made it work here. It's just an overall decent game. An acquired taste, perhaps, but don't write this off as a game that's all style over substance like Shadow of the Beast, as some are wont to do.
Of course, it would be disingenuous of me not to acknowledge that the style is probably what people remember most about Xenon 2, whether that's its detailed landscapes or its copious use of "Megablast" from Bomb the Bass. You'll be hearing that particular track throughout the game, over and over again. Maybe you'll learn to love it.
Xenon 2 made its way to various computer and console platforms, mostly in Europe, but there are also ports for the Japanese X68000 and PC-98 computers, which will be the focus of this post. These come courtesy of publisher Epic/Sony Records and developer System Sacom.
Western audiences only know of System Sacom from games like Mansion of Hidden Souls and Lunacy, two of the few games of theirs that made it outside of Japan. That's unfortunate, because they did a lot more than that. (This is where I would link to a write-up about their "Novel Ware" series of games, but nobody's written anything like that in English.)
I'm not sure how System Sacom got roped into doing ports of Xenon 2, but they seemed to have a close relationship with Epic/Sony at the time. Some employees were transferred to the Epic/Sony office, including the renowned programmer Mark Flint, and had their own room there, most likely to make games for the canned PlayStation/Super Famicom/Super NES CD-ROM.
The big new addition to the X68000 and PC-98 ports of Xenon 2 is the Special Mode, featuring (per the manual) new music and a new ending (nothing too exciting, I don't think). The new music is very good and is a nice alternative to listening to "Megablast" non-stop. It's credited in-game to Yuji Nomi and Manabu Saito, though only Nomi is credited in the manual. Yuji Nomi is the composer who later worked on Mega CD/Sega CD Mansion of Hidden Souls and several Studio Ghibli films. Manabu Saito is the System Sacom music composer who died much too young at the age of 22.
The X68000 version of Xenon 2 is very close to the Amiga version, but apparently someone did not take into account the difference between PAL and NTSC, so "Megablast" plays a little faster than it should. I also think the game is running a little faster, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
The PC-98 version has all the features and new music from the X68000 version, but the graphics and sound take a significant hit. The foreground graphics still look good, but a background layer is missing. The game also runs much slower and choppier.
X68000 soundtrack:
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