Super XYX

As much as I like the game. The games bugs just destroyed my experience. It started with the fact that it wouldn't save the "Stage Clear Type". It would revert to "Long" upon booting the game. Had to toggle it every time. Other settings didn't have this problem. Tried going to the settings.ini in the directory. Couldn't figure out which one pertained to it. Went back into the game to investigate. I messed with a couple setting to see what they do (including screen rotation). I then find out that after messing with the tate option, my unlocks have been wiped. And this isn't even an unknown problem. The game crashes and occasionally soft-locks as well. Really disheartening. I know the game is mostly abandoned. Games is more stable on my PS4, yet there is a wild amount of slowdown on Super Arcade.

Horrible visibility. Bullets constantly blend into the background or my own shots. Some of them are really fast and would be hard to dodge even if they were visible. Since I can't even see what's killing me most of the time, the game is basically unplayable.

A few years after their first wave of games, Team Grybanser Fox came back with two titles, coming out mere weeks apart from each other. This one is not developed solely by them but mainly features Perry Sessions, aka G System, aka Gryzor, aka Rozyrg today (better not confuse him with Gryzor87), an artist and game designer who already made [b]Fire Arrow Plus[/b] with them. This one is a much bigger project and also a follow-up to [b]Neo XYX[/b], a game he developed with NGDEV and, like most of their catalogue, sadly confined to retro consoles. There is no way to ignore the visual quality here. While oddly many backgrounds are not as detailed as [b]Neo XYX[/b]'s, and several enemies are directly lifted from there or very similar, the sprite work is superb, and small details like the backgrounds of "level clear" and scoring screens stand out. Even the way medals are presented and counted at the end of a stage looks stylish. Character designs are cool, even though I can't shake off the impression that a couple of them were made by heavily referencing Jojo. The stage with lava, dragons, and biological oddities is the absolute highlight, even if it feels a bit out of place; apparently, …

It's super XYXy

I'll be honest, I bounced off this game pretty hard at first. Although the art style is super colorful, I had some issues adjusting to the bullet visibility and in general something about it just consistently kicked my ass. I finally came back to it after playing a bunch of other STG and it -still- kicked my ass, but I was determined to figure it out. Now I'm of the opinion that this is actually a really good game for leaning how to learn an STG -- although it is extremely punishing with how deaths affect your score, I went from not being able to clear the third stage to being able to 1cc the whole thing with about eight hours of practice, which feels great. Wven more impressive, I can feel how achievable a no-miss is. Granted, some of that is due to the extremely overpowered unlockable Cobra ship, but even without it I was able to get my first 1cc. The bosses are imposing at first, but the majority of them have safe spots that let you take them down with little to no threat, which means you're not having to rely super heavily on extremely difficult dodging. Learning routes is also not too challenging and I find the level length works really well. The main exception is the bonus ga…

After putting many hours into this game I can say I truly love SUPER XYX. Highly addictive SHMUP w/ very fun OTT gameplay, amazing music & exquisite pixel art. This would've been HUGE in mall arcades in '96.