X2 Development

X-2 uses an object-oriented time-shared multi-tasking system developed over a period of six years. Its true-colour stream-loaded parallax graphics, mean more objects on screen than any other Next-Gen shoot-em-up. The advanced artificial intelligence system boasts sublime sophistication. X-2 can legitimately, technically, and modesty-intact, claim to be the ultimate arcade shoot-em-up of any home games-system on the planet.

But you've probably heard that about every other shoot-em-up on the planet. Right?

So how about some justification from Team 17 for making such outlandish claims?

There are a multitude of credible reasons. Try the following. The original Project X was a smash no.1 Gallup hit on the Amiga platform in 1993. The game pushed the Amiga to its technical limits and set a standard beside which other games wilted. The team behind the project felt that more could be done with the genre. The only problem. There wasn't a powerful enough platform around to do justice to their ambitions.

Then the Playstation arrived. This machine allows a creative, technical and experimental freedom that wouldn't have been possible with any sixteen-bit system.

Andreas Tadic, chief coder of the original Project X expanded on his object-oriented system to provide a parent/child link allowing every enemy, weapon, and hero ship, to communicate with each other.

Due to this synchronicity the player can never predict how intelligent the enemy being faced is. This leads to gameplay that taxes the user's reactive shooting skills, rather than merely leading them down the tired old path of attack pattern recognition.

When questioned on the feasability of a shoot-em-up's chances against the current trend for 3D extravaganzas, Martyn Brown, Development Director of the project was bullish; "With X-2 we felt that the PSX was the machine to really make it the dogs-bollocks and get back the energy we all felt shoot-em-ups lack on the PSX/Saturn. Too many PSX games are merely novel but just don't feel good."

  • 15-bit, 32000 color, 3+ parallax layer scroll.
  • Continous backgrounds - streamloaded from CD
  • Each enemy has it's own 256 color palette.
  • Player logic 50 hz, Enemy logic 25 hz
  • No in-game slowdown
  • Simultaneous 2-player mode
  • 11 different levels including a stunning 3D-CGI level
  • Sprites are Scaled, Rotated, Depth shaded and use Transparency for maximum visual effect.
  • Texture mapped Polygon graphics used for visual effects.
  • Enemies are Raytraced AND handpainted.
  • Bossmonsters take up over 700k of animation
  • Taxes players reactive shooting skills to the hilt

Gameplay. Attention to detail. Variety. Pedigree. History. Playability. Success.

All of the above apply to the reincarnation of 16-bit No.1 Gallup smash-hit

© Team17 Software.