It's Xevious! This game inspired like a trillion billion jillion different shmups and to be honest I'm not the biggest fan of Xevious-likes, but here we are. This game does a lot of interesting things with the shmup genre. There's obviously the main gimmick this game has with the dual-layer gameplay where enemies are both in front of the solvalou that must be shot with the main weapon whereas enemies on the floor below must be destroyed with carefully-aimed ground bombs. It do provide a level of depth not seen in other shmups of its ilk, but I think it can be a little overwhelming at times. This game also has its fair share of secrets, such as the mysterious Sol Citadels that can be destroyed by bombing specific ground tiles for extra points, as well as the S flags that show up on random tiles of a certain tile row on the map for extra lives. Those extra lives are also extremely necessary as this game does not pull its punches at times, throwing huge amounts of bullets at your large-hitboxed, slow moving ship.

I think what makes this game really stick for me despite me not being the biggest fan of the style of game it pioneered is its aesthetic. Things are just so.... sterile? The music is this very short bloopy 5-second loop that plays the whole time, enemies are usually very basic shapes in grey colors, the ground is a flat green for grass, brown for dirt, grey for road, blue for water, etc. It makes a game that just has a certain strange vibe to it. Not very worldly, but also not very otherworldly either.

All in all, it's a game that I respect and enjoy the vibe of for sure, but dual-plane shooters like this just aren't really my jam when it comes to the shmup genre.