Game Review

Zaxxon from SEGA was incredibly successful with the original arcade version being one of the highest grossing coin-op games of the time and the home ports nearing the top of many sales lists. Despite this, I've always been rather luke warm on the game. It's not bad; indeed the graphics and sound for the time were spectacular. But the gameplay doesn't work particularly great for me; I always had trouble with the psuedo 3D view for some reason. I often found myself crashing into enemies, walls, or something when I thought I was in the clear. This added an element of frustration to what otherwise is a fun scrolling shooter (a genre I'm particularly fond of). This one is worth taking a look at and playing from time to time, but isn't one that kept my attention as much as other games from the era. The arcade version here is definitely the best; the home ports can vary wildly in their quality. The 3D view was difficult on the home computer and console hardware to the point some ports didn't even bother getting the perspective right (the Atari 2600 and Intellivision versions are notably bad). Some of the ports are pretty decent, though.