Namco's classic shoot 'em up Super Xevious will be heading to Nintendo Switch and PS4 this week, as part of Arcade Archives, it's been announced.
Released in 1984, Super Xevious was developed to be an expanded version of the 1982 vertical scroller Xevious and came about thanks to the incredible success of the initial arcade release.
As the story goes, Namco discovered that players were already achieving staggeringly high scores on the original hardware, which led to some fears internally about the game's longevity. As a result, the company decided to create a more challenging version of the game to keep experienced players engaged and offer them a greater challenge.
It was sold as a conversion kit for the original title and features a much higher difficulty level, some tweaks to scoring, and the introduction of several new enemies such as tanks, helicopters, and Phantom Jets that will occasionally ambush the player.
It is not to be confused with the 1986 title VS. Super Xevious: Mystery Of Gump (or VS. Super Xevious Gamp no Nazo as the game is known in Japan), which arrived on Arcade Archives last year and was a VS. System port of the original game, with some light puzzle-solving mechanics thrown in, developed without the involvement of Masanobu Endō.
Super Xevious will be the first game released as part of this year's Namco Month, which is scheduled to take place next month and was announced last week. Here's a description of the game from the website:
"SUPER XEVIOUS" is a shooter released by NAMCO (Bandai Namco Entertainment) in 1984. Players pilot the SOLVALOU and face off with the XEVIOUS forces. Defeat airborne enemies with the zapper, and terrestrial enemies with the blaster. This work has various changes from the previous work, including additional characters and different placement of hidden items."
The game will land on Nintendo Switch and PS4 on May 1st, and will cost $7.99.
Here's a video of it in action: