Zaxxon! A Necessary and nearly forgotten Classic!

I remember walking into a loud, busy, noisy arcade in the Altoona, PA shopping mall -- and hearing all the loud beeps and blips from early arcade machines that gave me that carnival feeling. One sound would send shivers down me timbers -- the sweeping sound of cold, merciless, barren space, accompanied by the typical sounds of lasers and explosions from the Zaxxon machine.

Zaxxon, released in 1982 by Sega/Gremlin (with a sequel Super Zaxxon released the next year), is a unique shooting game -- it simulates 3D by using an isometric three-quarters perspective. Your ship has a shadow to help you judge altitude, and there are three parts to each "level" -- the Zaxxon fortress, then Free Space (no shadow here), then the 2nd Zaxxon fortress.



At first, the game seems nearly impossible to play. Newbie Zaxxon players often don't make it intact past the first 2 walls! But eventually you learn to use your shadow and constant steram of laser shots to judge your height and position, and to successfully squeeze through the narrow windows that exist in the brick walls. Zaxxon has a fixed scroll speed, so you have to be alert for barriers, flying above & below them, yet still shooting enough fuel tanks, radar dishes, and rockets as necessary.






At the end of the first fortress, you fly up and over the wall, and enter Free Space. This sequence is a shadow-less dogfight stage where most people unsuccessfully attempt to shoot planes that are above or below their altitude plane. Without that shadow, you have to use the altimeter and the size of your ship to judge your height, and you are additionally aided by a crosshairs "X" in front of targets that exist at the same height -- it's pretty simple after a few plays, actually. Once again, you must continually blast fuel satellites to maintain your jet's fuel supply.






The 2nd Zaxxon fortress is much tougher than the first one, with narrow windows to squeeze through and more force fields. At the end of the second fortress comes a real treat -- the Zaxxon robot, one of the first bosses I'd ever seen! This clunky robot looks like a throwback to the 1950's sci-fi flicks, but it is quite deadly. You must shoot the rocket attached to its side before the rocket is launched and destroys your ship! I always thought it to be very cool how, if you destroyed the rocket after it had been launched, the robot simply retreats! However, you can blow up the robot by quickly destroying the rocket pre-launch. This makes the game more fair for newbies yet gives that extra challenge for experienced Zaxxon players.


Once you defeat the Zaxxon robot, the game starts to loop through the same 3 sequences again, but at a heightened difficulty level.




A sequel called Super Zaxxon was also released about a year later. Super Zaxxon featured far faster scrolling than the original, and as a result the game was just too difficult and not as much fun. It did feature a cool looking dragon as the end boss, and changed the free space battles to be inside the fortress itself (this was done so that the shadow could remain during these sequences).




More Details about Zaxxon

Zaxxon, released in 1982, was the first 3D game to use raster graphics, as opposed to vector graphics games (like in Battlezone). I do not know who exactly made the game Zaxxon. Zaxxon was a Sega/Gremlin game -- Gremlin, Inc was a US company acquired by Sega. Many games such as Congo Bongo, Pengo, and Zaxxon were by Sega/Gremlin and created in the United States (FYI -- Frogger, however, was a Konami game published under the Sega/Gremlin label). Did the Zaxxon team include Larry Clague, who is credited with Pulsar and Eliminator? Or Gary Shannon, who is also credited with Eliminator, as well as Astro Blaster? I'm not sure. These two fellows worked at Gremlin during 1980-1983, so it seems they may have had something to do with Zaxxon as well.

Home Console versions of Zaxxon














Zaxxon, being the arcade smash that it was, was ported to many home consoles and computers. The weakest of these was the Atari 2600 and Intellivision (see above right) versions, which turned the isometric perspective game into a vertically scrolling shooter. (Sigh). Still, we took what we could get back then and we still tried to enjoy the game. There were also better versions on the Colecovision (see above left), and Atari/Commodore computers.

In this day and age of emulation, you'd think that SEGA would release a CD contain its early 1980's hits, such as Zaxxon, Pengo, and Congo Bongo. I have never seen nor played an arcade-perfect version of Zaxxon -- even the Atari computer version just wasn't quite as fun as the arcade original.




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