Xenophobe
System: NES
Release Date: December 1988
Developer: Sunsoft
Publisher: Sunsoft
Genre: Action
Xenophobe is the next game bringing up the rear of 1988. I started playing it and thought to myself, if this isn’t some port of a crappy Amiga game, I’ll eat my hat. Seeing that Xenophobe started off in the arcades, I’ll have you know a little BBQ sauce was all that was needed to make my head gear palatable.
You are an exterminator specializing in alien scum. Your goal is to exterminate hostile alien forces from the levels. These take place on abandoned space stations and moon bases. You’re armed with a gun and you shoot it with the B Button. You can’t fire very rapidly and the enemies take a bunch of hits to kill. You move left and right through the levels. You can jump with the A Button in order to hit enemies and avoid others. If you get hit, you drop down to your butt and need to stand up before you can move again.
As you defeat your opponents, they may drop some items. Some of these items are good for points only. Others will heal some health. Still others will give you a weapon upgrade, which is necessary to make short work of your enemies, or an unfortunate downgrade… The goal is to kill as many enemies as fast as you can. This will award you with bonus points as the level ends. If you don’t kill enough enemies, the level still ends, but you get no bonus points. The novelty of Xenophobe comes from its split screen play, but as I had no one to play with, I was unable to experience it.
Graphics: 1.0
The arcade game looks really nice. This, does not.
Sound: 1.0
During gameplay, you get sound effects only. They aren’t particularly pleasant.
Gameplay: 1.0
The gun play is bad. The jumping and moving is clunky.
Difficulty: 1.0
A lot of times, you phase into existence and an enemy is waiting to give you unavoidable damage, which is pretty inexcusable.
Fun Factor: 0.5
Nah, this game sucks. It should have stayed in the arcades where it looked competent.
Overall Grade: 0.9
Xenophobe earns a D. Another crappy arcade port on the NES. Stay away.