As featured in Retrogaming Times Monthly issue #42, November 2007.

In this return to my favorite independent NES developer we take a look at a lost Tengen arcade conversion.  While all the commercially released Tengen NES cartridges have been reviewed in this column over the years, there are still a handful of games that never made it into final production.  These are of course prototypes, preliminary builds of games in varying stages development used for testing and promotion.  Prototypes are hard to come by but Tengen prototypes seem to be impossibly rare with only two publicly acknowledged to have been found to my knowledge - Airball and Xybots.  Thanks to the dedicated hobbyists over at Lost Levels, Xybots was finally released to the public in the Summer of 2007.  Of all the known unreleased Tengen games, Xybots was the single title I was most interested in as I have always enjoyed the arcade original and Atari Lynx version.

Please keep in mind prototypes are in a development stage and as such usually are not complete or ready for commercial release.  It's still common practice to give games their final polish toward the end of development and the prototype of Xybots is no different.  It is absolutely playable and all the core parts of the game are in place however it lacks the above mentioned polish.  Due to this the eventual retail release could have appeared different if the game had progressed further.  I am reviewing the game as it is in this prerelease state, not as it could have been.  By my estimate, which by no means is to be taken as fact, I'd say that development is at around 90% completion in the prototype.  The prototype is also being reviewed via emulation as I do not own nor claim to own a physical prototype or reproduction of this game.

Released into arcades in 1987, Xybots was a 3D over-the-shoulder sci-fi maze based run and gun game.  The Xybots have invaded a once peaceful planet and Major Rock Hardy and Captain Ace Gunn are dispatched to remove the mechanical menace.  Destruction of the Master Xybots will liberate the planet however their underground multilevel fortress is infested with lower level Xybots under the control of the Master Xybots themselves.  Fight your way through the mass of metal, descending deeper and deeper into the fortress depths.  What is unique about Xybots is the way the perspective is presented.

The levels are laid out like large grids, each square can contain four walls.  Although the game is in 3D is it incremented one square at a time.  Moving the joystick in any of the standard eight directions moves your player relative to the direction they are facing.  For instance continuously holding up on the joystick will cause your player to run forward, once they reach the edge of a square they will move to the next one unless there is a wall.  The next square will scroll down, giving a primitive sense of 3D.  Twisting the joystick a quarter turn clockwise will rotate the perspective 90 degrees to the right.   Likewise twisting the joystick a quarter turn counter-clockwise will rotate the perspective 90 degrees to the left.  If left or right is pressed without twisting the joystick the player will run to the left or right, causing the screen to move to the next square in the respective direction when the end of the current one is reached.  In this way strafing is possible, making running attacks at enemies from the sides.  There are two fire buttons which both cause your player to shoot and the Start button doubles as a super zapper.  The super zapper stuns all enemies in close proximity and destroys all plasma shots currently sailing through the air however it drains 10% off your energy meter for each use.  The energy meter constantly drains away slowly and your energy level is reduced each time you are hit.  Picking up energy pods replenishes the meter but it will continue to slowly drain.  Once the meter is at zero it's game over.

Throughout the mazes there are coins, keys, and weapon powerups in addition to enemies and energy pods.  Coins can be spent at the end of each level on upgrades such as faster shots, slower energy drain, radar enhancements and more.  Keys open panels that contain keyholes, many of these have special bonuses or warps behind them.  Opening locked panels is often the only way to completely clear a level of Xybots, netting a hefty amount of bonus points.  The objective of each level is to find and then reach the exit, which will allow you to descend further in the Xybots base.  Some levels feature alternate exits which act as warps and allow the player to skip levels.  Every few levels there will be a confrontation with a Master Xybot which is an exercise in strafing and avoiding shots.

3D isn't something the NES is known for at any stretch so bringing over a game such as Xybots sounds like a daunting task.  However once broken down to its core, that of levels composed of interconnected squares, it seems much more feasible.  Games like Golgo 13 Top Secret Episode and The Lone Ranger had maze based 3D stages however they were shown from a first person perspective and thereby didn't scroll fluidly.  While Xybots doesn't scroll dynamically, it does have a fluid sense of moving in a 3D space and since the player is shown on screen it plays much faster.  Tengen did all they could to keep the action moving at a rapid pace.  This is an action arcade shooter after all, so fluidity of gameplay is important.  The directional pad moves your player as it did in the arcade, respective to the direction they are facing.  Instead of rotating a joystick, holding down the B button and pressing left or right on the directional pad rotates the perspective in that corresponding direction.  This works great and would eventually be duplicated on the Atari Lynx version.  You have complete control the entire time.  The A button fires your blaster and the Select button fires the super zapper.

All the powerups and features of the arcade version make it into the home release.  Locked doors, coins, weapon upgrades, the radar system, warp exits, teleport pads, it's all here.  Graphics are very low resolution, especially in the case of the Master Xybots which are nearly unidentifiable due to the way the screen is laid out.  Standard Xybots are decent representations of their arcade counterparts and they behave as they did originally however there are far fewer of them around than in the arcade.  The reason the stages aren't overflowing with enemies becomes apparent the first time a situation filled with them arises - it causes the game to flicker horribly.  With all the enemies being drawn in different scale, moving freely in the distance and up close, the player running around and changing the scale of the maze, and laser bolts being shot constantly the NES hardware just can't keep up.  Granted the game keeps from choking and slowing down but it becomes nearly impossible to hit targets that keep disappearing and reappearing.  The intermission screen is not present so rather than showing the elevator stop at a computer console and the player running over to purchase upgrades, the upgrade selection screen is displayed immediately after a level is completed.  One would hope that Tengen intended to eventually add the intermission sequence in a later build since finishing a level feels empty without it.  At least the title screen is a very nice representation of the original and there's a well done text tutorial that plays during the attract sequence that explains the controls.

Aside from the attract music playing at the title screen and during the tutorial there is no music in the Tengen version.  One would assume that it had yet to be inserted but considering how much flicker there is in the game already it could have been omitted to help with game speed.  Either way, the game feels empty without music pulsing away in the background as it did in the arcade, it removes a lot of intensity.  Sound effects are good but of course none of the digitized speech and sound effects from the arcade are present on the NES.  The effects that are there are quite passable however.

The more I play the prototype the more I realize why the game was never released.  It's a nice effort, it plays okay, but it is obviously running on under powered hardware for the game it's trying to be.  Xybots is simply a different kind of game than what the NES was designed to handle and too many sacrifices have to be made to get it to play anywhere close to how the original did.  The end result is an extremely barebones version of a great arcade game that was more than likely abandoned because it hit a refinement hurdle.  I can't see this game being further improved without sacrificing even more stability, four sprites on screen at once is all it takes for this game to stop being fun real fast as it is.  Sometimes games aren't released for a reason and the technical challenges of fast paced real 3D on the NES seems to be why Xybots never showed up on store shelves.  It's still a nice little oddity and an important chapter in Tengen NES development.  Thanks again to Lost Levels for releasing the dump of the prototype, it is greatly appreciated.
 

"InsaneDavid" also runs a slowly growing gaming site at http://www.classicplastic.net/dvgi

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