Game 9: Exed Exes (1985)

Exed Exes, also released under the name of Savage Bees, is the first of many Shoot 'Em Ups we'll be playing over the course of this project, and man does it leave a lot to be desired. The game is extremely rudimentary, and almost crude in it's simpleness. It's not just the graphics; Exed Exes is missing what I have come to consider as basic concept: things like like bullet and enemy patterns, sweet power ups, bombs and massive bosses with glowing weak spots, etc.That being said, this game has some of these elements, just without any of the later sophisiciation and refinement. As a result, it's barely recognizable. For what it's worth, I am in love with Mars Matrix, and generally prefer "bullet hell" over other genres, but grew up playing plenty of Gradius and having exposure to Treasure games and various other classics. We're looking forward to getting to these games, and this served more to whet our appetite than to satiate our hunger.

Something is happening that is not happening.

The gameplay and graphics reminded me a lot of Xevious, albeit without the ground targeting, and with more variation in gameplay. I mean this in the sense that there were discrete levels, and the backgrounds and graphics had a generic kind of "future/sci-fi kind of feel." There are a lot of elements that we'll see in later games, but we still are lacking things like "endings." After reading through various pieces online, I found out you can "end" the game by getting 10 million points. We got nowhere near that, and I really don't find this game enjoyable enough to want to plug away at if for that long.

Projectiles, power-ups, and explosions. We have a SHMUP here, boys.

The setting for this game was exciting: after the first four games we played, this felt the most like a modern game. There are discrete and separate terrains, and you get to scroll over them and encounter a variety of enemies. The enemies have a general "insectoid" theme, and that's great. It is more logical and consistent than the crabs and flies of Mario Bros, and less abstract than the knights of Joust. Graphically, the game isn't stunning, but it's not offensive, and shows significant effort. The insectoid theme is echoed in both the enemy designs, and the terrain and background art. This would also explain why this game was released in the US under the name of Savage Bees, a vastly more appropriate name.

So much geometry.

All of this being said, this game really didn't do it for us. All of the basics of what we crave in Shoot 'Em Ups is there, but the rudimentary feel of the game combined with a lack of real goal or feeling of progression made this game grow tiresome. The basics of cooperative gameplay were there, like many other Shoot 'Em Ups in the future, but we mostly spent the time playing this talking about all the games we'll be playing down the road.

My favorite kind of area.

To be completely honest, I would have never played this game if not for this project. I have not learned anything significant about the growth of the genre or cooperative gameplay. The best I can say about it is that is not offensive and stands as a base to compare later games to. We're still in the category of games before we were born (1985 for me, 1990 for Samchez), and it's frankly a little weird to be in such unfamiliar territory. Looking ahead, we're going to be covering quite a few unfamiliar arcade games, but will soon move into familiar NES territory.