AXELAY
KONAMI - SUPER FAMICOM

Reviewed by Malc
(Thanks to Roger Post for the screengrabs! - a fellow shmupper who knows his games)

Axelay came at a time when the good old SNES was king, in the summer of '92. It also came at a time when I was recovering from an operation and had a month to laze about. So I sat and played Axelay to death.

The level structure followed Salamander, in that the levels were alternately vertical, then horizontal, but the real graphical amazement came in the form of the vertical levels. Akin to Raystorm on the PSX, Axeley tilted the screen forward, using copious amounts of mode7 and scaled graphics - at the time a wonderful achievement. To be sure, Konami is still pushing out shooters on the new consoles, but they always seems to be variations on Parodius and Gradius, how about Axeley 2 or Xexex guys??

The game was a tad short (6 levels?) but was pure Konami - rousing music and intricately designed bosses, a special mention must go to the Ed209 lookalike at the end of level 2. It's still a game I pick up and play now, and once we get an emulator to play it 100% I'll do it all over again on my pc! SNES9x plays it pretty well, apart from some major corruption in level 2. I got round this by using a cheat to skip past it, which I can't find just now. Disorganised fool that I am.

Score 9/10

Weapon Select screen - as you progress through the levels, more weapons become available

The awesome spider robot boss, end of level one.

The Ed209 pretender - superbly animated and a bast to beat.

This boss starts off as a witch's hat, then morphs into this red thing. You can still see the pokey hat on its heid.

Very R-typish, underwater and shimmery. The final boss has an annoying attack which mixes up your weapons.

Bloody fab this bloke. Even better than the fiery wee man in Starfox 64 I think. Luckily for us, he flaunts his weak point, a metallic green heart. If I was him I'd hide it with an anorak or something next time. Probably melted all his anoraks anyway.

Last level, flying past lots of battleships. The last one is red for some reason, its not any harder or anything.

Yucky squishy last boss. Blow him up and cue escape sequence....

Nasty crack in your helmet there. Still, it could have been worse. Much worse.

Ooh, was it Simon who sent me this? My heid's like a sieve... And this is what you get to see if you complete it on well 'ard mode.