It also became a personal favorite for a lot of Nintendo's Japanese executives in their childhood years, so it's easy to understand while it was selected to take up one of the half-dozen 3D Classics spots.
The core gameplay idea fueling Xevious is that you're playing across two planes at once. You're flying the Solvalou fighter jet up in the sky and zapping airborne enemies assaulting you there, but you also have to pay attention to what's happening on the ground below you too – there, you've got an always-on targeting reticule that helps you line up bomb shots that you can drop to destroy land-based tanks and turrets.
I appreciate how complex a two-plane game must have been back in '82, but I've never really thought Xevious was all that sensational to revisit through its last several re-releases. This one, though, is changing my mind. 3D Classics: Xevious has clearly been given a lot of extra time and attention, and the extra polish applied to this upgrade's presentation have inspired me to enjoy the game itself more than I ever have before.
The 3D is superb, as the Solvalou truly looks like it's floating up and off the game screen while the ground scrolls by "down" in the distance below. You can adjust the intensity of the effect with the system's depth slider, as usual, but an extra options menu lets you further fine-tune the look to achieve a very subtle (or incredibly bold) effect.
The gameplay has gotten a couple of modern tweaks, too, like an expanded dodging zone to the left and right of the game screen (where new layers of cloud appear to help preserve the arcade original's taller-than-wide aspect ratio). You can also take advantage of a built-in Quick Save, which is a godsend for a game like this – individual rounds of Xevious played by true veterans can last nearly forever, so the option to save a session in-progress (especially on portable hardware) makes shooting for high scores more convenient than ever.
