X-Out: Resurfaced

[table][th] Review by [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34633003-Gaming-Masterpieces/lists/] Gaming Masterpieces [/url] - The greatest games of all time on Steam. [/th][/table] Is this game a masterpiece? A total of two floppy discs with about 1MB of data each were sufficient when Rainbow Arts released the game for the Commodore Amiga in 1990. The new PC version on my computer now requires just under 600MB of space - around 300 times as much. I grew up with the Amiga. I couldn't afford a C64 in junior school and my parents had no interest in any technical devices - so in 1988 I actually had to use the money from my first holiday job (and all my other savings) to buy my first (of eventually almost 20) Amigas. At the time, I was convinced that I owned the ideal gaming machine - which was probably true for my situation, because I wouldn't have been able to afford console games. It wasn't until many years later - thanks to emulation - that I realised that although the Amiga was a technically brilliant device, the really professional (action) game development was mainly done for consoles. The MegaDrive, SNES and PC Engine were no technical marvels, but the games were on average much more professionally made. Anyway, back then I thought that the Amiga was one of the best systems for shoot ‘em ups (shmups). There were many dozens of them for the Amiga. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty rubbish compared to the competition. Years ago, when I read articles by well-known shmups junkies in which the Amiga shooters were largely labelled as ‘irrelevant’, ‘of inferior quality’ or ‘poorly designed’ and disparagingly referred to as Euroshmups, I didn't believe those guys... but they were (mostly) right. Still, some of the Amiga shmups are quite playable (like R-Type, or Apidya, Z-Out, Blood Money, Project-X, Banshee, Battle Squadron, Xenon II or Disposable Hero), and of course X-Out. The first surprise right at the start. A trainer? In the style of the cracker intros of the time? All options in the trainer are initially locked and have to be unlocked first. The scrolling text in the intro is entertaining: This is not an illegal pirated copy! Please do not call the police or destroy the game! The game is completely legal... X-Out is a typical horizontal scrolling shooter that was extremely popular in the 80s and the first half of the 90s. This was before the Japanese bullet hell shooters from Cave took the genre in a new direction. In X-Out, as usual, we are humanity's last hope in the fight against parasitic aliens. The original was set in the future - in 2019. Fortunately, the real year 2019 wasn't quite as bad, as the Covid pandemic didn't hit until early 2020. In the game, we fly from left to right through the automatically scrolling playing field. We shoot at everything that moves or is simply in the way. At the end of each of the eight levels, a boss enemy awaits us. One special feature is that we are not flying through space, but the aliens have taken up residence under water. In fact, this doesn't matter at all - it plays like space and (apart from a few air bubbles) looks like space. However, the real special feature of the game lies elsewhere. In X-Out you basically have exactly one life - or rather submarine. If you get hit or touch an obstacle, your life bar is quickly empty and it is game over. You can only continue playing directly if you have another submarine in your fleet. And you have to buy one first. In total, you can increase your fleet to up to nine submarines. You can also equip each of your submarines (there are four basic types with different characteristics - some allow more extra weapons, for example) with different weapons. Cannons, torpedoes, satellites, upgrades - you can configure the ship according to your preferences. The only requirement is enough money. You get this when you survive a level and destroy the boss. Let's move on to the most important improvements in the new version. On the one hand, a local 2-player mode has been implemented. You can now fight through the eight levels at the same time, which is fun and almost turns the game into a bullet hell shooter. Then there is now a mirror mode. The graphics are displayed mirror-inverted and you now fight from right to left. Not bad for a bit of variety, which surprisingly plays completely differently. What is really relevant, however, is the overhaul of the store. Equipping your ships before the game was a little cumbersome in the original. This has been significantly improved and, above all, provided with help texts. You can buy two more submarines before the first level. In addition, the long loading times of the Amiga original, which slowed down the flow of the game after each death, have been removed. Especially because death comes very quickly in this game... even if you don't lose a life immediately with every hit. However, touching the landscape in particular kills in a flash. The screen is now a little larger than in the original - so you have more room to maneuver. Overall, this makes the game play smoother and easier - but that doesn't hurt either, because the original was damn difficult. The music comes from Chris Hülsbeck, who is considered one of the best-known musicians of the (German) 16-bit era. For the remaster, he has given his old tracks a new twist - but fans of the original will immediately feel musically transported back to the 90s. Incidentally, the game's graphics were created by Celâl Kandemiroğlu, who sadly passed away in 2022. The man was an absolute genius as a graphic designer - at least that's how I remember him. He not only drew around 800 title graphics for computer games, but was also responsible for various in-game graphics for games from studios such as Rainbow Arts, Thalion, Reline and Ascaron. His graphics were above average and always immediately caught my eye - as was the case with X-Out (although Biing! was my favorite). Incidentally, the technical requirements for X-Out on a PC are extremely low - I played the game on an old gaming laptop with an Nvidia GTX 850M GPU and had no problems whatsoever. The only thing you need is a gamepad. [u][b] Conclusion:[/b][/u] The new X-Out plays better than the original. It has become easier to dodge enemy bullets with the gamepad and continuous fire activated. The brutal difficulty level of the original has been toned down a little - but the game is still far from easy. All hell breaks loose from the second level onwards. If you lose all your lives, you won't have to wait as long as before and you'll be back in the game much faster. No long loading times, disk changes, cutscenes, no cumbersome store. Click, click and you can start the next attempt. For fans of the original, the game is a dream - it is nostalgia combined with gaming fun. But the new X-Out is also fun, even if you've never heard of the original. It's just a typical horizontal scrolling shooter, which unfortunately is hardly ever developed today. It's a shame - I'd like to enjoy technically up-to-date, new shmups on my TV more often... and throw the gamepad into the corner in frustration when I've lost all my lives on the same boss again.

I played the original game on the Amiga 500 back in the 90s and loved it. The new version is an awesome game as well. Just the right decent improvements (a bit more room for your ship in the levels, slightly upgraded pixel arts, a completely remastered soundtrack from Chris Hülsbeck himself), without loosing it‘s fantastic style and gameplay. Plus there‘s a cracktro with it‘s own typical sound and pixelart (colourful bouncing and scrolling text, you know what i mean :) ) including a trainer with cheatcodes. Oh and it runs perfect on a steam deck as well. Go get it!

The Amiga version of X-Out but in glorious full screen with just the right amount of graphical enhancements so it still looks close to the original game. Chris Huelsbeck has done fantastic remixes of all the level music which is a very nice addition but the original Amiga music will always be my preference (you can choose remix / Amiga/ C64 music), speaking of which its a shame you cant pick the original sound effects as well (i.e. explosions etc etc). X-Out plays just like you remember, smooth, fast paced, hard as nails just like it should be although you can unlock trainers (cheat codes) to make the game easier if you prefer. My only gripe is when you start the game you are thrown into a ship pre-loadout screen before you have chance to explore the shop, in my opinion it would be better if you went straight to the shop and use that screen for a button prompted user saved pre-loadout instead. Edit: - Would very much like to see the Turrican series remastered next.

Great remaster with a lot of attention to detail and out of this world music. Please give me more! And very nice that even an old cheat is working in the shop!

Great ! insta no brainer buy for every classic shmup fan Soundtrack from Chris Hülsbeck - Check C64, Classic and Remake - so 3 in one haha :) I love the style - really near the original but somehow also modern . It plays good with my Xbonecontroller

Love it! I just played both my original Amiga version and this one back to back - it's very faithful to the original with some nice quality of life improvements, like controller buttons mapped for secondary weapons and the ability to speed up / slow down the ship's movement. The option of pre-configured weapon / ship setups is useful if you want to speed up the shop section and just get right into the action. Audio and effects have had a hi-fi overhaul, the classic Huelsbeck tunes and the effects have a bit more of a thump to them with the use of more channels which feels great. You can tell this has been made with a lot of care and attention, and a real reverence for the original game. I really like that there's no smoothing out the pixel art or weird 3D sprites and such, this feels like just the right amount of tweaking to make it feel both modern and as though you could be playing on some kind of super-Amiga. The only thing I'd like to have seen is perhaps a little more control over the post-effects look in the visuals. It would be great to see a graphics entry in the options menu to be able to add scanlines and maybe tweak the glow effect to taste. These are small things though (maybe they can be added in an update, wink wink!) and the game is a wonderful new edition of an evergreen Amiga classic! I'd welcome more such ports for sure. Well done devs, keep up the great work.

Das is so toll! Aber ich will trotzdem das Diskettenlaufwerk und das Ladeknartzen und die Kickrom 1.3. Was toll, dass es da nen Crack und Trainer Intro gibt wie in den damals "besorgten" Versionen über X-Copy! Leute das ist herrlich DANKE! :-)

Got the physical special edition on Switch and now here on Steam. I played the ♥♥♥♥ out of this game back on the Amiga. The remastered soundtrack from Chris is just amazing and on par with his remade Turrican soundtrack. The game is as brutal as you remember but you will get some cheats (presented in a fake cracktro) if you die too often but then achievements won't work but it's good for memorizing the levels. It's as good as the original. You can switch between the new music, Amiga and C64. I actually had wished the og games would have been included as a bonus. Sure you can play them if you know how but having them here would've been nice. I hope this will sell enough (maybe not on Steam...we all now how hard it is on this store front) so we might get other old games from german studios like here Rainbow Arts or maybe some old Blue Byte games like Extreme Assault.

This game has 0 quality of life improvements. One hit = death. There's no continues, no lives, no difficulty selection, no nothing. Not worth it.

I ricordi vanno trattati con la massima delicatezza; pur essendo immateriali, sono estremamente fragili. È con questa riflessione che fisso la schermata di precaricamento di X-out Resurfaced, remake di uno sparatutto orizzontale del 1990, che mi ha catapultato in un vortice di ricordi talmente rapidi e ingombranti da risultare paralizzanti. Avete presente quella scena in Amélie in cui Nino Quincampoix apre la scatola che aveva nascosto e viene sommerso dai ricordi? L'Amiga 500, le schermate dei trainer, i floppy disk, generi videoludici ormai quasi scomparsi, i joystick a pulsante unico e mio padre che, con una certa insistenza, mi intimava di uscire perchè ero da troppo tempo davanti alla tv. Fornendo un po' di contesto, in un'epoca densa di vitalità per gli sparatutto a scorrimento, Crossout (è così che si pronuncia) si fece notare per una serie di peculiarità che ne segnano l'unicità, sgomitando tra R-Type, Gradius e Thunder force. L'ambientazione sottomarina, per esempio, fu una scelta decisamente originale, condivisa solo con In The Hunt e Submarine Attack, usciti un anno prima. A questo si aggiungeva l'innovativa officina di inizio livello, che permetteva una personalizzazione totale del nostro sottomarino. Si poteva infatti acquistare una varietà di mitragliatori, scegliere i satelliti da far orbitare attorno alla nave, determinare la tipologia di bombe e armi secondarie. Le musiche, composte dal leggendario Chris Hülsbeck in collaborazione con Ralph Doeppgen, diedero vita a una colonna sonora che divenne emblematica per l'epoca. In occasione del remake, il compositore è tornato per realizzare il remix, arricchendolo con sei tracce inedite, che si aggiungono all'eredità musicale del gioco. La struttura degli otto livelli originali è stata ricreata con meticolosa fedeltà, rifacendo tutto daccapo ma senza modifiche o aggiunte. Sono stati effettuati però alcuni sottili ritocchi, che pur nel loro rispetto per la struttura classica, arricchiscono l'esperienza: il negozio ora mostra chiaramente dove posizionare le armi, mentre la schermata iniziale del trainer, con trucchi come una somma iniziale maggiore e la disabilitazione delle collisioni mortali con il fonadale, suscita una dolce nostalgia, un vero tocco di classe.Bella anche la partecipazione di Ogan Kandemiroglu, che ha realizzato la copertina di Resurfaced in onore del fratello Celal, autore della copertina del gioco originale, purtroppo scomparso nel 2022, al quale è dedicato l'intero rifacimento. Conclusioni: In conclusione, X-Out: Resurfaced non è solo un gioco, ma una vera e propria capsula temporale, che ci permette di rivivere la magia di un'epoca passata. Il titolo di 1990 rimane un classico di un genere ormai (quasi) in via d'estinzione, ed una testimonianza di quanto il mondo dei videogames sia cambiato.