It is a vertical-scrolling shooting game released in 1983 for the arcades by Namco. The player controls the Salvalou starship and has to hit the Xevious forces before they terminate humankind. The starship consists of two weapons: a blaster bomb to destroy ground-stationed enemies and an air zapper to destroy the flying enemies. The game was critically successful, with praises for its challenge, addictive nature, originality, and graphics. It is considered as one of the first vertical-scrolling aircraft shoot-'em-up games. The player pilots a ship known as Solvalou over a scrolling landscape and wipe out enemies using the endless supply of bombs and bullets. If the player gets hit by a single shot, they lose the ship and start from a predetermined point. There are various secrets on the map which the player can reveal by bombs and bullets for extra points and lives.
It's one of the first games that featured a moving landscape with a mix of air and land. Solvalou consists of both air-to-air and air-to-ground missiles. If the player carefully aims at the ground-based target, they can destroy two adjacent targets with one rocket. The airborne enemies can take the form of geometric shapes that include spheres, cubes, rings and pyramids, and slow-moving fire bullets. Sixteen different levels feature a varied landscape that includes rivers, lakes, grassy plains, and woods. As the stage progresses, the number of enemies also increases along with flying ships and tanks. Various stages consist of large boss ships. There's also some level of depth to the game, with features like hidden towers that the player can only identify when their sight turns red as they pass over them; and also the ability to temporarily reduce the difficulty of the game by the destruction of specific ground targets. The game has no real ending, and after completing all the levels, the player can go back and fight for a high score.
To play this arcade game, you will need a MAME emulator. MAMA at present can emulate over 2600 unique classic arcade video games. One of the forerunners that come to mind when we think about the best MAME emulator is AdvanceMAME. It supports both Windows and Mac and runs smoothly. Defmame is another famous name in the MAME emulator and is one of the best emulators for Windows. There are not many names for the android emulator, but there's no need because MAME4Droid is enough. It allows the player to emulate the vintage arcade game on their android devices.
