Exolon
Exolon, Original Spectrum game developed by Raffaele Cecco. C64 Conversion by Nick Jones and published by Hewson in 1987.
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Player's Review
"As a heavily armed humanoid, you blast, battle, bound and blunder your way over more than a hundred screens of blood curdling action. Release a deadly grenade to devastate a birth pod and shoot the hordes of aliens that slither and scramble to overwhelm you. Rocket a gun emplacement and pneumatic hammers hurl you end over end back across the screen. And in a new twist, some of the screens can be played as a vulnerable but athletic Vitorc or as Exolon, a lumbering but powerful exoskeleton."
Fairly simple yet frustrating action game. Walk across 125 screens over five stages blasting everything in your path. Bullets will deal with the enemies that fly onto the screen but you will need rockets to destroy structures in your way. Both ammo is limited but there is more to find.
The game really encourages you to stay on the move. Enemies that appear on screen do follow a pattern but it adapts to where you are on screen and homes in which can lead to frustration. They need to be dealt with quickly as if you hang around they will fill up available space making it difficult to move forward and it's all too easy to accidently jump into them as they move on three levels. If you hang around too long a super ship flies in and insta kills you. You get plenty of lives to start with but they do have to last the whole game.
The longplay shows playing through all levels and there are a few deaths as it doesnt always go my way. There is a game option that the back of the box eludes to where half way through a stage you can mount the Exolon suit for double firepower and indestructible to mines and those green pop up things. If you stick with the basic Vitorc suit there will be a bravery bonus waiting for you at the end of the stage. I show this in stage three but it costs me some lives to make it through. At the end of the game you can enter a highscore but there is no high score table, at least on the tape version played here.
Overall this is one of my favourite games from the time and enjoyed the Spectrum and C64 versions equally. There does appear to be a second,later or disk release of the game with a more colourful info bar at the bottom of the screen. I've never tried the Amiga game that changes the look so much, it just looked unappealing to even try.
00:00:00 Title Music
00:01:53 Stage 1
00:06:47 Stage 2
00:12:36 Stage 3
00:19:52 Stage 4
00:25:05 Stage 5
00:30:45 Ending - Back to Stage 1
Fairly simple yet frustrating action game. Walk across 125 screens over five stages blasting everything in your path. Bullets will deal with the enemies that fly onto the screen but you will need rockets to destroy structures in your way. Both ammo is limited but there is more to find.
The game really encourages you to stay on the move. Enemies that appear on screen do follow a pattern but it adapts to where you are on screen and homes in which can lead to frustration. They need to be dealt with quickly as if you hang around they will fill up available space making it difficult to move forward and it's all too easy to accidently jump into them as they move on three levels. If you hang around too long a super ship flies in and insta kills you. You get plenty of lives to start with but they do have to last the whole game.
The longplay shows playing through all levels and there are a few deaths as it doesnt always go my way. There is a game option that the back of the box eludes to where half way through a stage you can mount the Exolon suit for double firepower and indestructible to mines and those green pop up things. If you stick with the basic Vitorc suit there will be a bravery bonus waiting for you at the end of the stage. I show this in stage three but it costs me some lives to make it through. At the end of the game you can enter a highscore but there is no high score table, at least on the tape version played here.
Overall this is one of my favourite games from the time and enjoyed the Spectrum and C64 versions equally. There does appear to be a second,later or disk release of the game with a more colourful info bar at the bottom of the screen. I've never tried the Amiga game that changes the look so much, it just looked unappealing to even try.
00:00:00 Title Music
00:01:53 Stage 1
00:06:47 Stage 2
00:12:36 Stage 3
00:19:52 Stage 4
00:25:05 Stage 5
00:30:45 Ending - Back to Stage 1
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