Xenophobe

Xenophobe is a 1987 arcade game published by Bally Midway. Starbases, moons, ships, and space cities are infested with aliens, and the players have to kill the aliens before each is completely overrun.

Description
This game was unusual in that it split the single monitor into three separate horizontal sections, one for each player. This allowed the players to cooperate, but also allowed the separate players to wander around freely, a feature not found on most co-operative multi-player games. With most games that allowed multiple players at once, all players were bound by the edges of the screen (that is, all the players had to be in the same general area on the screen, so it could contain them all). Because the game featured such high resolution for its time, the split screen didn't detract from the game's graphic appeal.

Characters
There are nine characters to choose from in Xenophobe, three for each joystick. The leftmost controller (red) offers Mr. M.Brace, Dr. Kwack, and Col. Poupon. The middle controller (yellow) offers Mr. Fogg, Col F. Truth, and Dr. Udderbay. The right controller (blue) offers Mr. Eeez, Dr. Zordiz, and Col. Schickn. Humans and aliens alike make up the playable characters—for instance, Dr. Kwack has a duck's head. Players were also color-coded. For instance, the left player's choices wore red shirts, middle player's yellow, and right player's blue.

Weapons
The weapons a player collects are fairly diverse. In order of damage, the weapons are: punch (unarmed), phazer (the starting weapon), laser pistol, lightning rifle, gas gun, and grenades. The guns tend to trade power for range. The one exception to this is the phaser, which has medium range and very low damage. Great care has to be taken with the grenades, as they bounce off walls and doors and can hit the player who threw it, or even other players. None of the guns can hurt other players, but punching can, and makes the punched player fall down, and drop the gun he was carrying, which the attacker is then free to pick up. Whenever a player's gun is lost and destroyed (such as by dropping it in a doorway), a small robot wheels into his room and dispenses a random gun for him to use.

The laser pistol lends itself to a conservative play style, keeping opponents at range and moving through levels slowly (often crouched) while the gas gun encourages faster moving play since the player must close quickly to eliminate foes.

Gameplay
The Arcade Game can be played by up to 3 players, and the goal of each level is to defeat all the aliens before time runs out. Levels may contain more than one floor, and players use elevators (and sometimes holes in the floor) to move between floors to defeat all of the aliens. Players can also pick up more powerful weapons and other items to help in their eradication of the aliens.

The hostile aliens (known as "Xenos") come in different forms. There are eggs (similar to the eggs in Alien). If an egg hatches, it creates a "Critter" which can attach itself to the player and drain health. If a Critter is not killed, it eventually matures into a "Roller" (a cross between a lizard, caterpillar, and armadillo). Rollers are one of the tougher enemies, as they can ball themselves up and roll around while impervious to the players' guns. Rollers sometimes grow into the "Warrior" Xeno form, which attacks by leaping and requires multiple hits to kill from most weapons. Warriors are able to spit damaging acid across rooms (and sometimes into adjacent rooms). They also have a devastating leap attack that will knock down and disarm. One of the more insidious attacks in a Warrior's arsenal is its ability to disarm a player. Simply walking past a Warrior can cause the player's gun to drop to the floor (destroying it if still in a doorway). Other Xenos include Tentacles that randomly appear from the deck or from overhead, and trap or strangle the player respectively, and the arguably toughest enemy is a Xeno "Queen" which appears either at doors or behind certain backgrounds and throws proto-eggs at the players and shoots hypnotic eye beams which trap players and drain their health. If the proto-egg lands on a screen with a player, it grows into an egg, and eventually hatches into a critter as usual.

As players go through the various maps (Rocket ship, Moon Base, Space City, etc.), they encounter various items to be picked up. Some (human skulls, lab vials, fire extinguishers, etc.) are only for bonus points at the end of the board. Others (grenades, knives, food) are immediately useful to the players (food replenishes the players' health). Still other items (disks, tools, codes, etc.) are useful in the right room. For example, the tools fix the always-malfunctioning grenade dispenser, the disk allows the player with it to use a teleportation device, and the code enables a player to set a self-destruct sequence to destroy a base instead of letting the xenos take it over. In this case, the players receive a reduced reward compared with a victory, but if the xenos take over, there is no reward. Items collected are counted, and bonus points awarded for each collected. Grenades carry over from level to level.

Each credit gives the player a certain amount of health, which counts down even without combat. Food and some rooms replenish a player's health. The game cycles through levels, increasing the difficulty each cycle, until all players died and no one continued. It is entirely possible to do well enough to continue playing without adding more credits.

Ports
Like many games of this era, Xenophobe was ported to many home systems. Beginning in 1988, it was ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Lynx, Amstrad CPC, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Nintendo Entertainment System. (An Atari 800/XL/XE conversion exists in prototype form ).

Atari published the versions Xenophobe for its systems (the 7800 and XE versions were developed by BlueSky software, and the Lynx version was developed by Epyx) while Sunsoft ported it to the NES. The Commodore 64 port was done by Microplay. In 2004 Xenophobe was included in Midway Arcade Treasures 2 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube.