Xargon: The Mystery of the Blue Builders - Q/A session

[Ed Oscuro]

Okay gang! This here is an old Epic platformer with some good ideas (ability to aim your shots a bit, good graphics, a world map) and questionable playability. It's actually a pretty good idea for a game, just way too short and the collectathon gameplay doesn't take it as far as it could go.

There were three episodes - I think the first is the shareware, and the next two are "The Secret Chamber" and "Xargon's Fury."

What's odd is that (afaik) not only were the two later episodes sold individually (Ep. 3, which I have, doesn't come with the other episodes), there seem to have been at least three different packaging variations (cue audience "oohing" and "aahing").

So far:
Blue box with purple stone in the center - The Secret Chamber, which is episode 2.

Red box w/ pink dragon faces and a turquoise stone - Xargon's Fury (this is the copy I have, I think)
Same box but with a black stone - also Xargon's Fury

Anybody willing / caring enough to lend a hand on this one? It's a minor mystery, and you're invited!

[InsaneDavid]

A lot of these Epic Megagames titles / series were sold broken apart by secondary vendors. A good example is a lot of Blockbuster Video locations were selling boxed copies of Epic Pinball in the early / mid 1990's. But wait, we're not talking about the "pinball packs" that Epic sold directly (sets of four or so tables at a time), no - these were individual tables in the most basic retail packaging. You got a box with a cardboard insert that held the single floppy disk along with a small pamphlet of some of the other software the secondary vendor offered. Pay for a single table? Crazy one says? Well most of them were sold off at $0.99 each, which was well worth the price. I remember picking up the Enigma, Crash 'n Burn, and my favorite - Cyborgirl tables in these packages. Sure it was a fraction of the full package that could be purchased directly but they were dirt cheap and, well, right there.

Most of the games released like this were labeled with a little "It's Ready To Go!" full version seal on the front. Also a lot of them would have free mail-in offers in the box for another one of the games if you paid shipping and handling. I remember getting German Teacher One and Mice Men via that offer, I may have also gotten others. While software from many companies was offered, the Epic Megagames stuff was most popular - and sold the same way. For instance Jill of the Jungle was sold in three separate boxes for the three separate episodes (yeah, they also sold a boxed version of the shareware). I'm pretty sure Xargon was offered since Kiloblaster (also three episodes in three boxes), the original Duke Nukem games (three episodes in three boxes) and Traffic Department 2192 (I think both episodes were included together) were sold in the same way. I'm fairly sure pretty much every classic Epic Megagames title was sold like this, I think I was going to order the second episode of Solar Winds for the shipping cost thing before the mail-in deals expired.

I'm sure there were lots of other vendors that sold these titles in the direct retail channel, which is probably where your alternate packaging comes from. It's amazing to me that I still remember some of these titles that were sold as barebones, what the packaging looked like and everything. Target and Wal-Mart usually had them for $5.00, which is why we ate up the $0.99 Epic Pinball tables at Blockbuster. There were also a couple of decent games from other publishers, some of which still seem to be selling them.

About Xargon though, it's a great game series and was a nice unrelated sequel series to the Jill of the Jungle games, building on enhanced and larger graphics. They play nearly identical however, save for Xargon using the map screen setup from Jill Saves the Prince for all three games and being more action arcade oriented then the puzzle platforming Jill series.

[Ed Oscuro]

I nearly forgot about this thread - good thing I looked it up.

Yes, there are indeed "ready to go" stickers on front of all the packages I've seen for this game. Strange that I've never seen a "registered" regular release box for the game - that'd be nice to find.