This isn’t a game I had played much before I attempted this Retro Games Forever High Score Challenge, but I found I have been missing out on a really rather good game. Released in 1987 by Hewson Consultants it shows what the ZX Spectrum could do with it’s limited capabilities. Exolon is a flip screen scrolling game with huge sprites and lots of colour, but also quite challenging.
In the game you are the spaceman, on a mission, blasting enemies and collecting things to make it to somewhere else. The big colourful sprites are well animated and move quite fluidly, making the game look amazing on the Sinclair 8 bit machine. Sound is a little sparse, but the graphical explosions make up for that in some ways, as you blast the alien scum out of existence and scatter their atoms far and wide. You don’t have it all your own way, obviously, as the aliens have their own death dealing weapons, and creatures looking to end your reign of terrorism on their planet.
Your character can dodge the aliens firepower by ducking or jumping as he makes his way to the right of each screen to get to the next one, sometimes telepods can be used to transport you from one place to another on the screen, and helping to avoid the lasers and bullets. All in all Exolon is a really great game to look at and to play, with learnable patterns so you can get further each time you use up all your lives by being killed in various ways by a variety of alien tech and cannon fodder.
As always with these challenges there is a video, and an invite for you to watch and comment to let us know your thoughts and memories of the game.
