Axelay puts players in the seat of a fighter ship and asks them to fight through six stages that switch between levels scrolling upward and levels scrolling from side to side. The change between these two formats is the game’s central trick, and it still works.
The Ship and Its Guns
Players choose a set of three guns before each stage, and can switch among them during play. That setup rewards planning. A player who picks wrong at the start can still change course once the level begins to move against them.
Level Design
The levels that scroll upward push the ship against waves of small ships. The levels that scroll from side to side ease the pace and rely on scale, with boss ships that fill the screen. Moving between the two formats level to level keeps the game from settling into one rhythm. The scenery moves from open ground to space stations, and the game uses layered scrolling to sell a sense of depth that few shooters of its time matched.
Difficulty
The game does not hand out extra lives freely. Losing the ship once often means losing the set of guns a player has built up over a level, which raises the stakes of every hit taken. Boss fights ask players to learn enemy movements. Dying late in a level means starting over from a checkpoint rather than the very top.
Sound and Feel
The music draws on the strengths of the machine’s sound hardware, with tracks that change mood between levels without repeating themselves too often. The scaling and rotation effects used in several stages hold up well, and the game rarely loses pace even when the screen fills with enemy fire.
Short levels mean the whole game moves fast from one set piece to the next.
A player who picks wrong at the start can still change course once the level begins to move against them.
The Numbers
- Platform: the Super Nintendo system, made by Nintendo
- Levels: 6, switching between scrolling upward and scrolling from side to side
- Gun system: a set of three guns, which can be changed during play
- Score: 7.5 of 10
Axelay does not remake the shooting genre from the ground up, but it carries out its ideas well. The switching formats, the ability to change guns during play, and the effects add up to a tight, solid game that rewards repeat play. It earns a 7.5 of 10.
