Axelay

[Wayler]

There has been a grievous oversight that will be now corrected. Let us explore the art of Axelay for a few posts. Yes, yes, we have the box art thread for this but we are going deeper, much deeper here. But we’ll start with the boxes. It might come as a shocking surprise that I think Axelay has the greatest box art for the whole system:

Another magnificent masterpiece by Tom duBois. The use of different colors is superb and it was an excellent choice to use the lava boss as an eye-catcher, as he is the most impressive looking boss in the game. But by far the most striking feature is that the title isn’t just slapped on afterward but is integrated straight into the painting. Just beautiful.

 

The SFC cover is good too, if rather generic. And it’s a bit too of a close-up, I would have liked to see something more than our stratofighter. But at least the back cover has a different depiction of the titular machine.

[Wayler]

Next up is something often overlooked, the manual. Now, there’s nothing really special about the US/PAL manual. Goes over the game, a few screenshots, a little bit of additional info about the story and enemies etc. Standard stuff.

But the SFC manual is something else. Let’s take a closer look. First it goes over the story, controls and setup, nothing special there. After that though, we come to the stuff that puts other manuals to shame:

We get some nice numeric data of the ship and two technical drawings. This is the kind of extra information that really shows how much care was put to this product on every level. It then continues to meticulously go over every weapon system with descriptions and additional technical drawings:

It’s not over yet. Next we have the breakdown of every stage with a few enemies getting highlighted. If I’m allowed to nitpick here, they really should have gone through every enemy like this.

And then we even have the map of the star system and distances between the planets/stages. There’s a little bit of contradiction here though. Remember, the OST labeled Stage 3 as Mother.  But this map shows the mother planet being the one that is attacked in the intro. So which one is it? And is his family dead already when we start the game? Ooh, such mystery.

And finally, after all this awesomeness, we have a surprise english cameo at the back of the booklet. I have no idea what was the thought process of including this wonderful peace of prose but it is the cherry on top of a wonderful product. Why couldn’t we have this manual Konami, why?

The manual scan can be found here, if anyone is interested: http://www.videogameden.com/sfc.htm?axe

 

[Wayler]

So that was the official portion of this art exhibition. I would now like to turn our attention to a fellow finn, Tomi Väisänen, who decided to re-create the game in breathtaking CG renders. Remember this example from the graphics section at the beginning?

How does it look “slighty” upgraded?

 

This is the colony on level 2

 

This is the colony on steroids

 

Just epic stuff. The sense of scale in these is stunning. I think my favorite among them is the level 3 binocular mid-boss here in all his epic ridiculousness.

 

Don’t know if it is just a coincidence or does this game have some weird effect on us Finns, like a full moon to a werewolf, we go crazy. Whatever it is, I want an artbook of this, now. A remake wouldn’t hurt either. Here is a link to all these masterpieces: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v1rGGA

[Wayler]

Let’s end things on a more personal note. I like my game music on a CD with pretty pictures on the cover. If there isn’t one officially available (or they are too expensive), I’ll make my own version. With Axelay, I decided to combine it with another great Konami shooter, as both their OSTs were around 30min, perfect for a split album release. I went for a duality approach for the front and back cover (the Axelay cover is intentionally mirrored) and then for some pixel art inside. I’m pretty happy with the panorama shots I put together sprite by sprite. And the circle of bosses under the CD turned out great, with added mode 7 rotation to boot!

 

 

And finally, I have a daughter who is a budding artist. She is always drawing or painting something. Don’t know where she gets it because I can’t draw anything even if my life depended on it. One time she asked me for theme suggestions. I knew she liked space stuff at the time (and fairies, but my expertise wasn’t in that field to give any hints). On a whim, I gave her the Axelay manual, which had the Tom duBois cover on it. “Here, try re-creating this one”. She did and it turned out great. This was a few years ago when she was 11.

Maybe I should ask her if she would be willing to do it again on canvas?

[Austin]

On 1/13/2024 at 7:22 PM, Wayler said:

Maybe I should ask her if she would be willing to do it again on canvas?

Do it!!!!!!

[NE146]

Axelay is kind of a funny one for me. I bought the game as soon as it hit the store shelves and this was a time when I would get one game at a time, then spend a lot of time on it until I finished it. But, I never got to finish Axelay.. I'm not exactly sure why.. I don't remember if it was too hard (?) or did I lose interest in it. I will say the weird warping effect I actually did not like at all when I first saw it.. it didn't seem to me that it was giving the effect it was trying to give and it just looked like distortion/warping. But whatever.. maybe I should try and really finish it today all these decades later

[Kirk_Johnston]

7 hours ago, NE146 said:

Axelay is kind of a funny one for me. I bought the game as soon as it hit the store shelves and this was a time when I would get one game at a time, then spend a lot of time on it until I finished it. But, I never got to finish Axelay.. I'm not exactly sure why.. I don't remember if it was too hard (?) or did I lose interest in it. I will say the weird warping effect I actually did not like at all when I first saw it.. it didn't seem to me that it was giving the effect it was trying to give and it just looked like distortion/warping. But whatever.. maybe I should try and really finish it today all these decades later

I'm in the same boat as you there with the warping effect, but I've at least come to appreciate it on a technical level now. What I do think with those overhead levels is there's probably a way to make the effect a bit more subtle near the bottom of the screen so it's not so pronounced there, and then I think it might look more convincing.

 

I'd say it looks a bit better in this NES version of the same effect below, because it doesn't appear to distort as much near the bottom of the screen (although the faux downward scrolling lava kinda exaggerates it unintentionally there too):

 

A wee tweak like that on SNES, maybe making it even more subtle still near the bottom, and I think it could work as properly intended.

Edited January 15 by Kirk_Johnston
Sentence tweak

[Kirk_Johnston]

You could of course just do this kind of thing on SNES using Mode 7 and have an even more convincing sense of perspective on that single background layer. But I like the fact you can have multiple layers of properly overlapping parallax in the standard SNES background modes, potentially even up to four full-screen fully-overlapping layers with an effect like this using Mode 0, so I still see the value in this novel approach.

 

Regardless, seeing the original effect in Axelay back in the day was certainly impressive to behold as a graphical feat on SNES.

Edited January 15 by Kirk_Johnston
Removed the quote as it was following right after my last comment anyway, so should be clear it's following on from that prior point

[Wayler]

The SNES noise generator, aka Kirk Johnston

[turboxray]

On 1/13/2024 at 5:19 PM, Wayler said:

So that was the official portion of this art exhibition. I would now like to turn our attention to a fellow finn, Tomi Väisänen, who decided to re-create the game in breathtaking CG renders. Remember this example from the graphics section at the beginning?

How does it look “slighty” upgraded?

 

 

Now that is something I'd be interested in. As long as it had high production values, I think these stages would definitely benefit from modern realtime 3D/Raytracing. 

[+Black_Tiger]

I've never heard anyone say that the SNES/SFC doesn't have good shooters.

 

Only that there are more good shooters for Genesis/Mega Drive or for PC Engine than the SNES has shooters altogether.

 

The SFC launched so late that shooters were no longer as popular as other genres.

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, Wayler said:

The SNES noise generator, aka Kirk Johnston

Wow that NES play demo on Axelay was amazing now wasn't it?  That said, since he went there, would on that hardware he be more of the 'SQUARE' channel?  Nah, DPCM generator, most definitely.  You know, the Denial Pretending Conniving and Manipulation generator.

[Wayler]

I have a dream. If I ever happen to win the lottery or perhaps rob a bank, I'm going to allocate some of the funds towards a cover/remix album for the soundtrack. Most likely I would hire one talented musician to do it, so that the end result would have a uniform mood. BMC Warmachine would be high on my list as he already did this sublime cover of Colony and previously made a tribute album to Super Castlevania IV.

 

 

And he isn't just a talented with instruments as he is responsible for the excellent Simon's Quest remake (and is apparently doing the same treatment to CV III).

 

[turboxray]

9 hours ago, Wayler said:

I have a dream. If I ever happen to win the lottery or perhaps rob a bank, I'm going to allocate some of the funds towards a cover/remix album for the soundtrack. Most likely I would hire one talented musician to do it, so that the end result would have a uniform mood. BMC Warmachine would be high on my list as he already did this sublime cover of Colony and previously made a tribute album to Super Castlevania IV.

 Okay, if you won said millions from said lottery... and you put together a top tier AAA team to do the sequel.. how would you design it? What story line? Etc. And this would be a retro-dev release for the SNES too (cause why not hahah).

 

9 hours ago, Wayler said:

 

And he isn't just a talented with instruments as he is responsible for the excellent Simon's Quest remake (and is apparently doing the same treatment to CV III).

 

Ohh I had forgot about this! 

[Wayler]

51 minutes ago, turboxray said:

Okay, if you won said millions from said lottery... and you put together a top tier AAA team to do the sequel.. how would you design it? What story line? Etc. And this would be a retro-dev release for the SNES too (cause why not hahah).

Oh no no no, that would be a bottomless money pit. And a sequal would ultimately be a disappointment anyway. I doubt you can catch lightning in a bottle twice. 

 

An HD remake sort of approach would be a much preferable option. Or a Director's Cut that adds few more weapon slots and a couple of levels at max. 

[Wayler]

On 1/19/2024 at 8:49 PM, turboxray said:

the sequel.. how would you design it? What story line? Etc.

Dammit. Regardless of what I said earlier, you made me think about it and waste my time writing nonsense for an awesome game that will never be. Fine then. 

 

So the sequel begins straight after the first game.

The intro: After your victorious comeback, there's news that the farthest planet of the Illis solar system has developed a powerful weapon for your stratofighter that will ensure the safety of all from any future thread (everyone of course knows that there is 1 vacant weapon slot after the first game). So off you go to space again. However, it's a trap set up by the remnants of the Armada of Annihilation, because just as the planet is in sight, the Axelay is sucked into a wormhole and comes out the other side to a completely unknown star system. And it also appears that all your weapons are gone as the ship slowly glides towards an incoming asteroid belt. End intro. Title screen for Axelay II.

 

So the sequel will have the same dual gameplay of side scrolling and overhead rolling cylinder stages, because that is the Axelay formula. It'll have seven stages this time with the last stage divided into two parts for both orientations. You will again collect a new weapon after every stage. A new feature this time is a momentary shield pulse that can be used bump objects and enemies away (but not bullets). The ability was installed to the craft before the wormhole mayhem. This powerful shield boost takes a lot of energy and requires about 5 seconds to recharge after every use. A gauge at the top of the screen will keep track of this. Otherwise it's the same old Axelay. 

 

Stage 1 - The Asteroid Belt - overhead rolling cylinder

So you start the game without any special weapons having only your pea shooter and side missiles, evading incoming rocks and mechanical critters that inhabit this corner of space. This means at start you are always one hit away from death but luckily threats here are light. But your shield boost is intact and you will be thrust into situations were using it is advantageous. You will however gain back your 3 main weapons as the stage progresses (the initial weapons in the first game), finding them floating amidst the sea of meteors. 

 

Stage 1 Boss - Rock Replicator XZ-5

The source of all these flying pieces of rock reveals itself at the end of the stage. This four-armed robot seems to produce asteroids out of his replicator unit located in his mid-section and hurls them at you constantly. Shoot at the replicator unit to make it go boom. You can also try to use the shield pulse to propel asteroids back at him for extra damage but this is optional, as we don't want to turn this into a gimmicky Zelda boss. 

 

Stage 2 - Viridis, the Jungle Planet - side scrolling

A lush green jungle inhabited with all kinds organic creatures, similar to the original game's stage 4. Lots of foliage to shoot at that block your way, with a couple of branching paths thrown in. Nearing the end of the stage, the green lushness is sharply turned into burnt and twisted vegetation. 

 

Stage 2 Boss - Abidda

A giant plantlike creature that has a malformed long twisting neck with a head resembling a flytrap. Also wields two vine hands at you. And breathes fire, hence all the burnt things surrounding it. Track the head to take it down. Use the pulse shield to repel the vines back if in a pinch. 

 

Stage 3 - Noxium, the Ore Refinery Planet - overhead rolling cylinder

This planet's surface is inundated with factories pumping out toxic fumes and pollution, refining raw materials for the Armada of Annihilation. The metallic grey-brown landscape throws all kinds of industrial machines at you. Watch out for moving cranes and flying cargoships as you make your way towards a military complex. 

 

Stage 3 Boss - Experimental Weapon System POC type 4

A huge hulking battleship with all kinds of different weapons. It takes up the entire upper part of the screen, but you only see a part of it at a time. Shooting the exhaust ports causes the weapons overheat and causes it to turn another side to you. There are four sides in total, so it's a battle in four phases. The last phase exposes the neural computer brain of the thing. Give it a mercy shot to move on. 

 

Stage 4 - The Depths of Sargisso - side scrolling

The surface of this planet is covered in 95% of water and the stage starts deep in the dark ocean floor. This means your shield is put in survival mode to keep the crushing weight from crumbling you to a raisin and the normal boost is unavailable. Lamprays, anglerfish and other deep sea creatures inhabit this hostile place and consider you their prey. After traversing for a while, we come across a vertically rising cliff-face with an airlock. Now begins the second part of the stage inside a bio-research facility with powerful automated defense systems. The shield pulse is back online inside this facility. The progress comes to a halt when we come to a cylindrical chamber guarded by... 

 

Stage 4 Boss - Idolon

Numerous veinous eyes are fused in the walls and ceilings of this Mode 7 rotating chamber. You are also greeted with smaller floating eyes shooting plasma beams at you. Idolon is taken down eye by eye until the chamber rotation ends to reveal a giant main eye that tracks your ships movements. Blast it to hell before it destroys you with its plasma wave.

 

Stage 5 - Sector 2 Ice Planet - overhead rolling cylinder

Yes, we are shamelessly stealing everything from the original's stage 5 starting from the name, only this time the theme is ice and cold instead of lava. Gigantic ice shards protrude from the snow covered surface as you weave your path carefully, fighting against all the obvious cold themed machinations. The action ceases for a moment when we come to clearing centered around a giant hole.

 

Stage 5 Boss - Galer

Of course, it's the ice themed cousin of the lava boss, what else. Being big and mean must run in the family. Watch out for the hands and icy breath. Shoot the chest to reveal its cold dead heart and send him to the fishes.

 

Stage 6 - Space Station Core - side scrolling

This circular, hollowed out space station holds the key to get out of this star system. But you need to get to the core to make use of it. The action starts in outer space with you screeming towards the station. The defenses of the Armada are in high alert and they are throwing everything at you. Blast your way through the outer rim of the station to reach the core corridor.

 

Stage 6 Boss - Sentroid

The last line of defense is an octagonal sentry robot with four limbs as rails attached to the edges of the corridor. It speeds away while firing it's main machine gun and sending missiles at your way. After an intense speedy battle, the corridor suddenly ends and you are now floating inside the core with the Sentroid shedding its limbs and morphing into a battleship, the centerpoint being the weak spot. If victorious, the Sentroid will slowly break away to a million pieces as you burst through it and into the wormhole located at the center of this core.

 

Stage 7A - Wormhole - overhead, inside a rolling cylinder.

The last stage begins with an intense overhead section inside a wormhole, the space twisting around your ship. Various enemies and objects from past stages come rushing at you, just try to stay alive. At the end of this section is a mini-boss called Anomaly, an enormous maligned mass incorporating parts of the previous bosses you have encountered. Are we getting lazy or cleverly reusing assets to save space? Clever me thinks. The Anomaly will burst open with a satisfying bloargh and you finally come out to the other side on:

 

Stage 7B - Mother - side scrolling

Back home but something is amiss. Flying through a cityscape, you get a hostile greeting by your own defense forces! What is going on? Begrudgingly you have to take them down in order to survive. This section will loop endlessly if the player doesn't realize there are 5 generators humming in the background on particular spots. Use the pulse shield to make them inoperable. When the last generator is taken down, the scene flickers and changes to reality. It was yet another trick by the Armada, thinking you have been betrayed by your own kind. You were fighting against the enemy forces all along. You will now slowly glide into a Giger -esque fortress made of metal and organic material to face against...

 

Final Boss - Veinion

Yes, the slimy grimy bastard survived your last encounter somehow. It will once again generate enemies and projections at will out of thin air. Just hope you have enough reflexes and fire power to survive this predicament. If you manage to finally get a kill shot, with it's final last gasp Veinion will create a wormhole behind it and starts to sucking you in, disabling all your weapons at the process. The only choice for you is to use the shield pulse when you are just about to be pulled in. This will...

 

Bad Ending - Easy and Normal

...result in a final sacrifice. The shield pulse collapses the wormhole and an implosion destroys the both of you. You have saved the world but died in the process. A somber ending. Roll credits.

 

Good Ending - Hard

...take you both inside a wormhole for a final conflict. Veinion has a recharging plasma beam and you have no weapons. Deflect the plasma beam with the shield pulse to finally take him down and send him hurtling to a black hole. You come out of the wormhole with a familiar planet not far away. Time to go home. Roll credits.

 

************

 

Well then, the game is practically done. Let's see some hands, who's going to code? 

[Tanooki]

6 hours ago, Wayler said:

 

Well then, the game is practically done. Let's see some hands, who's going to code? 

You should PM Kirk he should be able to get that done in ...oh yeah, banned.

[Don John]

On 1/5/2024 at 6:42 PM, Wayler said:

Oh hello. This will be a thread where I gush about every aspect of Axelay, the greatest shoot ‘em up on the SNES. First I thought about just making an entry to the “what have you been up to” -thread but I think it deserves its own thread. I picked this up again seriously after trying out a fast-ROM patch that someone had made. (Found here if someone is interested: https://github.com/VitorVilela7/fastrom). Any comments, opinions etc about the game are appreciated, even if “it’s not for you”™. So what is about this game that is so special? I hadn’t thought of this seriously as the game just seemed to click for me. Having now played it again after all these years, I went into this time with analytical mind. Let’s start dissecting from the beginning:

 

1.  The Intro

For most shooters, the story is a nothing-burger, go out there and shoot stuff. Heck, most of the times there is no story to a game, only a title screen and the motivations for your murderous shooting spree are in the manual. Or you wait in the title screen in the hopes of some opening scene to appear. Not here. After the familiar Konami logo, the screen goes black and then a picture of a family emerges, in total silence. Then a cityscape, the roar of a huge machine and that ominous thumping rhythm. You know that shit is about to hit the fan. What is this mysterious force that threatens a whole planet? The game doesn’t tell you but if you have the manual, the threat is named as the Armada of Annihilation! Can’t stress how cool of a name that is. These guys are clearly not kidding around.

So the stakes become clear. After months of attacks, only one ship has survived. Your ship, the Axelay. You keep that locket of your family close to your heart and get ready to save the whole solar system. The intro ends as you fire up your stratafighter (also in the manual) and blast off to confront the enemy as the the roar of your engine engulfs the whole soundscape. And then the title screen. What a way to start a game.

 

And there’s also another reason why I love this intro. The first few frames of the city reminds me of the best PC game of all time, UFO: Enemy Unknown

I'll split the rest of my ramblings into a few posts

 

On 1/5/2024 at 6:48 PM, Wayler said:

4. The Alternating Stages

 

I’m sure this is by far the area that Axelay is most known for, the alternating perspective of horizontal and vertical. The neat rolling cylinder used in the horizontal stages visually works great, even today. And both orientations offer a different playing experience.

 

The horizontal stages have less obstacles for the player to worry but the ship’s movements are more restricted as the top part of the screen is off limits. There’s also this excellent drift effect that pushes your ship constantly to the center if you don’t move. It very much feels like battling against windshear at high speeds. The sprites are also bigger, so even though the enemies come in fever numbers, the play area feels more cramped.

 

The vertical stages offer free movement for your vessel but also more stuff to avoid and the stage design feels more focused and varied. I like them a bit more, but they wouldn’t be that special if the horizontal part was missing. It’s the alternation that keeps the player on its toes.

 

5. The Graphics

 

Hands down some of the best that SNES has to offer. Enemies come in all forms, big and small and some of them are quite unique, with multiple animation frames. Every stage has a clear identity and even though the amphibian creatures of Level 4 have nothing in common with the robots and droids of Level 2, it still feels like they belong to the same universe. Every stage has some form of eye candy on disposal and neat graphical tricks, starting with the level 1 mini-boss that is a part of the rolling landscape and intermittently disappears into the clouds.

 

But it’s the bosses that really stand out. From a hulking giant mechanical spider to the Level 5 lava monster (which I have a weird affection for), every one of them is a spectacle. Perhaps if you really twist my wrist, the biological blobby mass that acts as the final boss is a bit of a let down after everything that comes before it.

Nice article, I see that you love the game the way I do. I never accomplish to achieve a playthrough on hord Mode or higher, so this is my contribute to this game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPuGsP90oHA

[SlidellMan]

Wayler, I think Konami should put you in charge of an Axelay sequel.

[Wayler]

6 hours ago, SlidellMan said:

Wayler, I think Konami should put you in charge of an Axelay sequel.

Well to be honest, given the how they nowadays treat their employees, how they have effectively killed all their major IPs into non-existence and basically switched to cheap cash-grabs and pachinko games, I would have to say no if they asked.

[Wayler]

Just wanted to share an update that things are happening on the art front. I asked my daughter if she was willing to another Axelay piece for me and kindly accepted the request. It'll be slightly different this time because I didn't want her to just re-create the same original cover again. I wanted to have a gaggle of bosses in the center of the piece inside a fire ring (the one from the intro) with the lava boss towering over everything. The spaceship would in the lower part, as well as the final boss. I provided here with the spritesheets of the bosses and also some screenshots in-game. I also made a laughably awkward mock-up using the sprites:

And also an equally crude pencil sketch with notes using my limited drawing capabilities:

 

 

But out of those cumbersome origins something epic is forming:

It's black magic to me how she manages to make the colors so vibrant and the create depth with shadows. I only know that it's meticulous work and takes time to master. Taught by Youtube mostly is my understanding. She does have other projects also, so it will be quite awhile before this one's finished but I'll definitely frame it then.