Game of the Day 1/31/2016: Xardion

[celerystalker]

Xardion for SNES is a game I first saw in the back of an issue of Nintendo Power a long, long time ago. The eponymous robot character looked really cool to me, and it seemed like it might be a cool platformer. It took me about ten years to get around to picking up a copy, and several more to take it out and play it.

What I found was pretty neat! The animation was stiff, and the initial difficulty seemed rough. So, I took a few minutes to grind out a few levels, and all of a sudden everything started to fall into place.

You control three different giant robots/pilots from three different planets, and you can change on the fly a la TMNT for NES. Each robot has unique attacks, upgrades, and abilities, and they gain levels independently of one another, which makes changing it up a must. The game is separated into stages, but after completing each, you return to the map screen (usually), and you can return to levels to find new areas or upgrades after gaining new abilities.

The characters have ongoing dialogue displayed on the bottom of the screen, which adds a lot of personality while fleshing out the story nicely. The game is quite brief, but with its action RPG flavor, intriguing presentation, and good level design, it's still rather fun in my mind, and I'd liken it in length and structure to Ys III.

Just do yourself a favor and level up early, or the bosses will take about a billion hits.

Played it? Hated it? Liked it?

[goldenband]

I played through Xardion 4-5 years ago. It's so short that I didn't even realize it had a savegame system -- I just played straight through in one sitting.

I thought it was OK if a bit bland, though (to liven things up) one of the characters looks like he's wearing pink high heels. I also remember the second level had nice music (though for some reason the copies on YouTube don't sound as good as I remember -- maybe they're missing some filtering or effects?).

[celerystalker]

I played through Xardion 4-5 years ago. It's so short that I didn't even realize it had a savegame system -- I just played straight through in one sitting.

I thought it was OK if a bit bland, though (to liven things up) one of the characters looks like he's wearing pink high heels. I also remember the second level had nice music (though for some reason the copies on YouTube don't sound as good as I remember -- maybe they're missing some filtering or effects?).

Yes, it's very short. I did the same thing, finishing it in an afternoon. Alcedes does look a bit like he's in heels... The music sounds pretty good on a real system. I'd imagine a lot of YouTube footage uses emulation that's either a tad off or has screwy settings. The atmosphere of the game reminds me of Super Metroid a bit.

[Tanooki]

Can't say I ever owned it, but the progression of your NP reading then wanting is something I've driven through on that game, just never popped for the cart. I don't think it's worth much of anything still for whatever reason, maybe I'll find it in flea market season or something online that's NOT ebay as I refuse to buy any NES/SNES stuff on there with all the filching going on.