Zaxxon remembered....

It was one of the strangest looking and trickier games of the 1980s, but Zaxxon is still recalled with a smile on the face.  The game was one of the first to use an 'isometric' view point in an arcade game, a sort of cutaway 3D view later seen in some of the Ultimate games on the Spectrum and the Commodore 64.

The game was first released in 1982 on the Arcades and the basic principle was to fly through enemy territory without being shot down, run out of fuel or bash into the various obstacles that littered the environment, including rather bizzarely some walls.  The game was ported from the arcades onto various home machines including the C64 and Amstrad and there was also a handheld option.  It was also one of the few games given it's own board game.  You can usually pick up a copy of any of the verions on ebay...

Comments

[Andreas]

I was too young to have played this in the arcade when it was released, but I loved it on my Commodore 64. I've gotten rid of most of my once rather large C64 game collection and have only held on to the masterpieces - and Zaxxon's one of the games left.

I was never really any good at though. :)

[The Retro Brothers]

Zaxxon was great - but nothing came close to the arcade original! Still, on the Atari it wasn't bad....