This story begins in a poorly lit independent video store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The era of the NES has largely ended, replaced by 16 bits of SNES and Genesis goodness. On the shelves of an establishment called Front Row Seat lay a variety of videogames in mediocre to poor condition, littered with labels betraying their status as former rentals. As the majority of patrons browse through the new movie releases, one boy shuffles through cartridge after cartridge looking for something. What that something is, however, he does not know.

Suddenly, five space-faring capital letters stand out to him: XEXYZ. What is it? he thinks. Is it a word? Only God and the Japanese know. Yet there is something compelling about this box, including the fact that it’s one of the only games that actually comes with a box and manual. The fact that it was insanely cheap may have also been a factor. So the boy picks the game up, pays for it with money that is not his, and departs the store, which would close its doors forever in just a few short weeks, making this a memorable and meaningful final purchase.

What followed can only be described as utter insanity.

So step with me into the world of Xexyz: a world of frog kings, naked hot springs fairies, and flying lobster rocket surfboards.



The chances that you’ve already played this game, or even heard of it, are fairly slim. Basically, Xexyz (which is apparently pronounced zeks'-zees. WORDS.) is a combination of a side-scrolling platformer action game and a shmup. Basically, you alternate between play styles after each level: the game begins in action mode, switches to shmup, and goes back and forth through the game’s 12 stages.

Now, I’m going to be honest with you. I forgot entirely that this game had platformer levels until I began researching for this post. This may have something to do with the fact that I was fairly young when I picked the game up, but it may also have a connection to the fact that these levels weren’t any fun. However, they were rather strange.



The oddest thing about the platforming sections is the fact that they’re obsessed with balls (which, strangely, I’ve been writing about a lot lately). First off, the game’s currency is balls. Technically, they’re energy balls, but still. Balls. Yeah, if you want to upgrade your weapon, you’d better show up with your pants full of balls. And what upgrades, you ask, can you purchase for your weapon? Balls. Whether it’s a wave ball or a moon ball, you’ll have your enemies tripping balls in no time.

Other than virtually drowning in all of the balls, much of your time is spent running, jumping, entering buildings, and fighting some weird ass shit. Flying beetle things soar overhead and, to the best of my perception, attempt to rain their feces down upon you. Spaceships drop manic robots at your feet. Ghosts inhabit treasure rooms where, for some batshit-insane reason, the chests are glued to the ceiling, and to access them you have to headbutt a ghost and send it careening into one of the four chests. My god. There are also a lot of fairies in the game, including one that bathes naked. Your reward for rescuing this naked fairy is, of course, balls.

Most bosses are just as weird. Minibosses in the game are these ridiculous, angry monk statues that fire (of course) balls of fire out of their mouths. The first real boss you encounter is some sort of green, horned floating head that makes mad dashes at you as an attack pattern. Its weakness is, naturally, the forehead, so your balls should be applied directly to the forehead.



Things only get weirder during the shmup stages. As a shooter game, there’s not a whole lot of impressive stuff going on here. The enemies don’t really move all that fast, and they’re not going to banish you to bullet hell. You can’t move your character that quickly, so it doesn’t have the frantic pace of many later shmups. What it does have, though, is crazy animal ships.

The first craft you get is actually a bit of a letdown: you stand upon a red platform. You’re not even riding in a damn spaceship, and you have to fight standing up. Seriously, that’s just mean. Luckily, things quickly change in the later stages, at least giving you the opportunity to sit down.

What you sit down on, however, is questionable at best. The first of the animal ships looks a bit like a pink catfish. It fires balls, as if you didn’t already expect that. Later, you’ll come across some sort of blue thing with a horn that appears to be a cross between a triceratops, a dolphin, and a unicorn. Then you’ve got this badass lobster and this even more badass flying turtle. And the last, most badass ship of them all? It’s this smarmy mother fucker with a bad case of snaggletooth. Seriously, why does this thing have eyes?



And where will your balls end up? In the face of one of the many boss robot ships, which are equally as crazy as the player character’s ships, but way, way more awesome. Take, for instance, this mean-looking bastard of a shark right here. Paging Hamza. Seriously – no shark in the universe could match up to this mechanized menace. How about a dual-wielding dragon with a jetpack and a big-ass rifle for a tail? Yeah, that’s in there. Cycloptic samurai spaceship? Absolutely. Lobster that pukes bubbles at you? Why not! Needle-shooting thing that is little more than a disgusting-looking eyeball and brain? Check. Frankly, I’m surprised that I didn’t find a floating testicle with a flaming sword.

In all of this insanity, how is one supposed to find a story? It beats the hell out of me, but there was indeed a narrative of some sort going on. Xexyz is, apparently, the poorly chosen name of a new federation of island nations that popped up after the rest of the world got totally trashed in a nuclear war.

As if that’s not bad enough, invaders from outer space decide to colonize the remaining islands and build mechanical castles. For no apparent reason, the leader of the aliens, Goruza, decides to kill the king and kidnap his only daughter, which sends the main character, Apollo, over the edge. He vows to do battle and rescue the dead king’s daughter. Bro knows what’s important in life, apparently. Along the way, he rescues a lot of other princesses, but, like Mario, he doesn’t give a shit about them. Personally, I’d much rather give my balls to the naked fairy in the bathtub.



Xexyz isn’t really a great game, but it’s just the right kind of ridiculous. It’s hard, even many years later, to forget riding around on a lobstercraft and firing at ridiculous boss things.

But, to me, Xexyz is also a relic of a time that is long gone – a time where the used game market wasn’t driven entirely by Gamestop and its questionable prices and policies. This little local store, Front Row Seat, offered me an opportunity to find gems like this at unbelievably reasonable prices. Perhaps it’s a different topic entirely, but I really miss that store, and I really miss that era. So, as much as this game will always remind me of flying balls and cycloptic samurai spaceships, it will also remind me of a time when people could wander through the aisles of a small, local store and come out with something like Xexyz.

Credit goes to http://www.nesplayer.com/xexyz/main.htm for those character sprites.

I apologize that I talked about balls so much. Also, balls.