Project X

Project X was Team 17′s follow up to the immensely successful Alien Breed and provided Amiga gamers with their very own shooter.  Released in 1992 and loosely based on Japanese games such as Gradius (in particular the power-up system), Project X squeezed every last graphical drop out of the Amiga.  The backgrounds were breathtaking and the special FX fantastic. The music from Team 17′s soundsmith, Alistair Brimble was superb. A cool, hip techno soundtrack that really sets the scene for one of the hardest shooters since Viewpoint. Most games these days have a difficulty setting but Project X had only one setting and that was hard, damn hard.  Team 17 corrected this in their update a year later, titled Project X ’93,  released at a budget price and many things were fixed. The game was only three disks instead of four and included two difficulty settings – Rookie and Pro (both of which were easier than the original.)

Project X was one of the first shooters to feature physics, placing the ship under the laws of inertia.  Once you came to grips with this (it’s a bit weird at first) the game throws some seriously difficult enemies at you, not least of which are the giant bosses. The lava stage is a mite tricky as the heat plays a part in the weapons you should choose.  What good are heat-seekers when you are surrounded by lava?

I used to run this game on the in-store monitor, since it looked so good and the music kept everybody entertained.  Eventually though the Age of the Amiga had to pass and Team 17′s next iteration in this series came on the Playstation in the form of X2, which was vertical instead of horizontal and didn’t play anywhere near as well.