Lethal Xcess
| Lethal Xcess: Wings of Death II | |
|---|---|
|
Cover art by Celal Kandemiroglu | |
| Developer(s) | X-Troll |
| Publisher(s) | Eclipse Software |
| Producer(s) | Marc Rosocha |
| Designer(s) |
Heinz Rudolf Claus Frein Marc Rosocha |
| Programmer(s) | Claus Frein |
| Artist(s) | Heinz Rudolf |
| Writer(s) | Richard Karsmakers |
| Composer(s) | Jochen Hippel |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari ST |
| Release date(s) | 1991 |
| Genre(s) | Shoot 'em up |
| Mode(s) | 1 or 2 players |
Lethal Xcess is a shoot 'em up game developed by two members of demo crew X-Troll and published by Eclipse Software in 1991 for the Atari ST and Amiga. It is a sequel to 1990's Wings of Death, in which its wizard hero goes into far future to fight the descentants of the evil witch that he has conquered in the first game. Despite having been acclaimed by critics, the game was a commercial failure.
Plot
The great magician Sagyr has succeeded in defeating his nemesis, the wicked witch Xandrilia, and regained the human shape of his former self. However, he is cursed again and teleported 3,000 years in the future. There he finds out that the witch's posterity, the Xandrilians, have already conquered most of the universe. Determined to stop the forces of darkness from succeeding, Sagyr pilots a small combat spacecraft on a desperate mission to attack and destroy their home planet Methallycha.
Development
Lethal Xcess was coded by Claus Frein and Heinz Rudolf. Originally it was planned to be an independent release, but in the end it became the sequel to Wings of Death and features music by Jochen Hippel and the cover picture was created by Celal Kandemiroglu. Lethal Xcess has been the first commercial project of Frein and Rudolf, although they had some offers before. Due to the disappointing sales, both coders quit the gaming industry and became IT consultants later. While it's a rather average shooter on the Amiga platform, the game is one of the technically most impressive titles for the Atari ST. Besides many technically impressive features, such as digital sound, sync-scrolling, overscan, and full 2-player support, all original copies of Lethal Xcess featured dual format, which allowed the Amiga and Atari versions to boot from the very same disk.[1]
Reception
The Amiga version of the game was well received, including the review scores of 84% from Amiga Action[2] and 83% from Amiga Computing.[3] According to Kieren Hawken, writing in Retro Gamer, "there are very few games on the Atari ST that impress as much as Lethal Xcess does. It ticks all the boxes as both a game and a tech demo. For quite a few years now there have been rumblings of a sequel/remake being made for modern machines and we really do hope that it happens."[1]
References
- 1 2 Retro Gamer 123, page 68.
- ↑ http://amr.abime.net/review_40631
- ↑ http://amr.abime.net/review_8274