TRS-80 CoCo

Zaxxon

Description

The Zaxxon defence system must be destroyed in this isometric-viewed shoot 'em up which originated in the arcades. The game has three stages, first taking you through Asteroid City, which is heavily protected by aircraft, guns and missiles. Many barriers are alarmed, leaving you with limited space to progress through, and fire must constantly be dodged.

Stage two is a space shoot out against hordes of enemy aircraft - those you failed to destroy in the first part of the task. Complete this and you reach the final battle with Zaxxon, the game looping with increased difficulty if you can survive the first time. There are three distinct skill levels, while controls involve using forward to dive and back to climb, in the manner of flight simulation.

Part of the Following Groups

• Genre: Scrolling shoot 'em up
• Video games turned into board / card games
• Zaxxon series
• Zaxxon variants

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Trivia

Commodore 64 versions

There are two different, official ports of Zaxxon for the Commodore 64. Sega/U.S. Gold released the game on cartridge and Synapse Software released it on disk and cassette. Of the two, most people tend to agree that the Synapse version is superior. While the cartridge version's graphics are somewhat more faithful to the arcade original, the gameplay and sound aren't as polished as the Synapse version.

Cancelled ports

• Advertisements by U.S. Gold for upcoming Amstrad CPC conversions also included Zaxxon, but no such port was released.
• The German magazine Telematch mentioned a Ti/994A version in their Zaxxon review in issue 04/1983. According to their own accord in issue 07/1983, they saw a prototype, but it was cancelled because of license issues between Datasoft and Texas Instruments.

Development

John Garcia was actually in management at Datasoft when Zaxxon was written.

Telematch charts

In issue 06/1983 of the German magazine Telematch, the non-existing Ti-99/4A version of Zaxxon reached number one of the Readers' Choice charts. The responsible employee was fired. More information about the Ti-99/4A version under "cancelled ports".

Awards

• TeleMatch
  • Issue 04/1984 – #2 Video Game of the Year 1983 (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by John Romero