to battle insects,
chance a marvel suggestion?
insect repellent
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Exed Exes? What the hell is Exed Exes? Well, from the best that I can make out, it refers to a minimal variety of extra-terrestrial arthropods - well, that and the obvious: an arcade port for the Nintendo Family Computer. Huzzah! After picking up a classic red & white Famicom, I naturally had to get my hands on some games as fast as I could. I found a couple CIB games for cheap, one of which, Exed Exes, caught my eye purely for its primitive STG style.
Ever since the Touhou series educated me to the brilliance of the shooter genre as an instant classic, I've gone bananas over any STG I can get my hands on. Still to this day I can't understand why I begrudged them so much over the years. They're just loaded with mindless excitement. Well, that is except for those titles that just somehow miss the target. And unfortunately, Exed Exes is one of those titles.
First off, there's a lot of issues with the game, however a good chunk of it can be written off thanks to its 1985 release date - we're talking the very beginnings of the NES here. Flat, boring graphics? So what? Mediocre enemy patterns with minimal count? It's to be expected. If this came out in 1990, then I'd question the standards, but for '85, it's looking pretty good. Ok, maybe it's not as beautifully rendered as the original arcade: Savage Bees, but again, it's to be expected. Did we seriously expect to see a pixel-perfect port? The problem is that the game tries to replicate the original arcade with all the wrong reasons in mind - much like Alien Syndrome. Then again, it's a fault of early gaming, relying far too much on high scores. In the arcade, the concept works wonderfully. In fact, it seems strange to give an arcade game an ending. But on a console, it comes off as vacuous; tedious even.
This is the single biggest culprit of Exed Exes' downfall: tedium. For the first few levels, it's passable as a mediocre shooter; even with the sluggish control, lack of weaponry, and constant feeling of déjà vu. Of course, any shooter can fall victim to constant repetition, but it's never felt as apparent as here. If the game at least offered some variety of weapons, or hell, even backgrounds, I could probably tolerate the fact that every level is basically the same thing over and over - the same variety of insects in the same boring patterns. And despite what some might call a difficulty increase as the game progresses, it's hard to claim as such. Sure there's added insectoids fluttering about, or more bullets slowly ambling across the screen, but with history consistently repeating itself from level to level, the supposed increase is negated by total predictability. Within the levels, most of my deaths were a fault of laziness more than anything. When you have infinite continues that resurrect you right at the moment of death, or even a little later on down the road if you let the timer ride for a bit, why not? The game promotes sloth. Maybe I'm just taking advantage of the situation and I should actually try for those high scores - see if I can produce some of those absurd scores that would have won me a special label back in the day. But considering that every level is pretty much identical and there's no end in sight - fuck it.
Endless games on consoles are just...bleagh. While I can tolerate the idea on the earliest of systems, it's hard to swallow on the third generation of games and beyond. There's no sense of fulfillment, and Exed Exes is a prime example. While popular opinion places the end of the game, from a definitive sense, at Round 16, it seems to be one of those situations where aggravation likely gets the better of the player and saps the will to continue on. Placing the end at Round 16 does make sense though since it's just boss after boss after boss and starting with Round 17, the levels start repeating - as if they haven't done so already. I played up to level 25 (I think it was) out of curiosity, at which point I ran through another gauntlet of bosses. "That's enough for me," I groaned in exasperation. In Savage Bees, the game ends when the player reaches ten million points. Seems like an odd way to end a game if you ask me. So what, our insect overlords decided enough is enough and pulled out? But Exed Exes doesn't appear to even allow for ten million points considering the maxed offering referenced in various locales is 9,999,900. Well, that's a ripoff. Can't even win via the arcade's nutty high score method. Oh, but I could have won a special Royal member sticker...in 1985. Bah!
One of the other biggest factors to Exed Exes' miserable drowning in sub-mediocrity is the total lack of upgrades and additional weaponry. From personal experience, I only ever came across two types of weapons besides the default solitary bullet: a dual "spray" and a triple "spray." I use the word spray lightly as they weren't sprays at all - just a simple trick of appearance to make you think you're firing a spray when all you're really doing is just firing an improved shot. Unfortunately, I only saw the triple spray once, and it's very possible I was imagining it, and if that's the case then I only ever saw a single upgrade type. Pathetic. In addition to the nearly, non-existent upgrades, the chance to score an upgrade is even more remote. The chance for a weapon upgrade seemed to only show every second or third round, and only once in a given round at that. However, weapon downgrades seems to be all the more plentiful. What fresh bullshit is this? It's Fester's Quest all over again! First off, the game is incredibly stingy with weaponized gifts, and most of the time they're floating within a plethora of bullets and nearly invincible dragonflies - well, nearly invincible against the plane's default bullet. As a result, I pretty much lost any upgrade immediately. And if I didn't I was guaranteed I'd snatch up one of those god forsaken downgrades by accident. If the game's going to be such a dick regarding additional weaponry, why bother?
It's funny, this feeling of disregard and raging apathy seems to be a common theme in this game. It's like the developers didn't even try. I haven't played Savage Bees myself, but based on what I've read, it's far superior to this. And if that's the case, how could they have fucked it up so bad? It's one thing for an arcade port to feel lackluster thanks to hardware limitations, but again, much like Alien Syndrome, hardware limitations cannot possibly be at fault here. Exed Exes is a disgrace to the shooter genre in general. It plays slow and clunky and is run amok with exhaustive level design. I could possibly see some merit in the two player mode...maybe - not much, but a slightly improved experience over single player, and that's about it. Even the music becomes this abrasive entity drilling away at your ears. Actually, it's not that intolerable. There's a certain enjoyable quirkiness to some of it, but after hearing the same three pieces ad infinitum it become incredibly grating. Overall, it's a bland game that added absolutely nothing to the genre.
Rating: 1.5 member stickers out of 5
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