Zaxxon | Code Like It's 198x

In August 1982 Computer & Video Games described a new arcade game in which “the deep blue fortress of Zaxxon floats in space at the frontier of a third dimension in arcade games”. Sega’s Zaxxon was a scrolling shooter, much like Scramble, but it looked down on its fortress from above one corner. Walls had height, so the player’s ship had height too, and a pilot who misjudged it flew straight into the brickwork. Looking back in 1990, ACE called it “the first of the ‘gasp look at those graphics’ games”.

Fast facts

Developer: Sega; American cabinets of the time carried the Sega/Gremlin name.
Released: 1982 in the arcades (ACE later dated the launch to March 1982).
View: a diagonal, three-quarter view from above, drawn with no perspective (see isometric projection).
Home versions: ColecoVision, Atari 2600 and Intellivision (all by Coleco); Atari 8-bit and Apple II (Datasoft); Commodore 64 (Synapse); ZX Spectrum (US Gold).
CRASH: 58% for the Spectrum version, issue 14, March 1985.
Follow-ups: Super Zaxxon, Zaxxon 3-D for the Sega Master System, and Zaxxon’s Motherbase 2000 for the 32X.

Flying by the shadow

On a flat screen, height is hard to show. Zaxxon gave the player two clues. An altimeter at the left of the playfield showed the ship’s height, and the ship cast a shadow on the ground below it. Electronic Fun with Computers & Games counted the shadow among the ways a flat screen could give “the illusion of 3-D”. C&VG added that the ship itself looked larger or smaller with height.

It mattered because the fortress was built to catch the careless. The ship had to climb over walls and slip through “the tiny gaps between the walls and the electronic barrier”, as C&VG put it, but the fuel tanks that kept it flying sat low on the ground, and the enemy planes could only be hit at the right altitude. The controls were set like an aircraft’s: pushing the joystick forward dived, and pulling it back climbed. Video Games warned its readers in October 1982 to “remember up is down and vice versa”, and to expect “a lot of rough landings into walls. (Yes, Virginia, there are bricks in space!)”

A mission had three parts. The ship flew over the first fortress, shooting gun emplacements, missiles and fuel tanks and strafing planes on their runways. It then crossed open space in a dogfight with the enemy fleet, and reached a second, better-defended fortress. At the end waited the robot Zaxxon and its homing missile, which needed six hits to destroy. Beat it, and the mission started again, harder.

Not everyone was convinced by the design. Electronic Games thought the only problem with the game was “the difficulty of piloting the player’s ship”, and ACE in 1990 thought “its gameplay was pretty limited – but it looked fantastic”.

“The game that couldn’t be brought home”

That was what people called Zaxxon, Charles Ardai wrote in Electronic Fun in December 1983, before it was brought home in many versions.

Coleco made the console versions. The ColecoVision cartridge was one of the machine’s first games in 1982, and in September 1983 Video Games Player named it Coleco’s best-selling cartridge. Coleco also promised versions for the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision, which appeared later. The 2600 had no hope of the arcade picture: looking back in 2000, Classic Gamer Magazine found that it “didn’t even duplicate the diagonally scrolling graphics that made the arcade version so unique”, which left “just another vertical shooter”.

The home computers came closer. Datasoft converted the game to the Atari 8-bit computers and the Apple II. Ardai reviewed the Apple version and thought it “certainly the best version of this arcade classic that I’ve ever seen”, down to “the bricks in the walls, your bubble shaped cockpit, even the artwork on the floor of the fortress”. Synapse Software adapted it for the Commodore 64, and in July 1984 Ahoy! listed it at number 13 in a chart of the best-selling entertainment software.

On the Spectrum

The official Spectrum version came late. Several Spectrum games had already borrowed the idea: CRASH named Zaxxan by Starzone and Havoc by Dynavision as earlier attempts, and called Havoc “a Zaxxon game” when it reviewed it in February 1985. The next month it reviewed US Gold’s official Zaxxon, at £7.95, and was disappointed. To keep colour clash down, the Spectrum game left out the fortress floor and back wall, so that “everything seems to hang in empty blackness”, and the reviewers found the controls sluggish. One suggested the old trick for judging height: fire at a wall until the shots pass over it. The verdict was “a grave disappointment”, and the overall score was 58%.

Sequels

Sega followed the game with Super Zaxxon, which HesWare sold for the Commodore 64 with “tighter passageways”, a tunnel and “a fire-breathing dragon that makes Zaxxon’s robot look like a wimp”. ACE thought Sega was still “failing to innovate in the game design department” with it. Zaxxon 3-D for the Master System used Sega’s 3-D glasses. Computer Gaming World called it “the most amazing experience in depth-of-field gaming ever produced for the mass market” in 1988. Zaxxon’s Motherbase 2000 came to the 32X in the mid-1990s. The fanzine Digital Press thought it “missed the mark”.

Was it the first?

Zaxxon is often described as the first isometric arcade game. The magazine Wireframe said so in 2019: “The first isometric game to hit arcades was Sega’s pseudo-3D shooter, Zaxxon”, adding that Q*bert came out the same year. The period press was more careful. Video Games called it “another of Sega’s clever pseudo-3-D designs”, after Sega’s racing game Turbo, and C&VG placed it at “the frontier” of a third dimension rather than claiming it had crossed first. What the sources agree on is that it made the diagonal view famous. When Sandy White showed his Ant Attack to Sinclair User in 1983, the 3D game he compared it with was Zaxxon.

Sources

Computer & Video Games, issue 10, August 1982, p. 25: the fortress, altitude, the ship’s size and shadow, fuel tanks, the space battle and the robot’s six hits.
Electronic Games, vol. 1 no. 6, August 1982, p. 50: the altimeter and shadow, the three-part mission, “the difficulty of piloting”.
Video Games, vol. 1 no. 2, October 1982: “another of Sega’s clever pseudo-3-D designs”, the altimeter gauge, Scramble, “up is down”.
Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, vol. 1 no. 2, December 1982: shadows and “the illusion of 3-D”.
Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, March 1983, p. 22: Coleco’s plans for 2600 and Intellivision versions.
Video Games Player, September 1983: Coleco’s best-sellers.
Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, vol. 2 no. 2, December 1983, p. 66: Charles Ardai’s review of Datasoft’s Apple II version.
ANALOG Computing, issue 13, September 1983: Datasoft’s Atari version.
Ahoy!, issue 2, February 1984: Synapse’s Commodore 64 version. Ahoy!, issue 7, July 1984: best-seller chart.
CRASH, issue 13, February 1985: Havoc review. CRASH, issue 14, March 1985, pp. 30–31: US Gold’s Zaxxon review, 58%.
Ahoy!, issue 22, October 1985: HesWare advertisement for Super Zaxxon (Commodore 64).
Computer Gaming World, issue 49, July 1988: Zaxxon 3-D review by Arnie Katz.
ACE, issue 30, March 1990: history of the shoot-’em-up (March 1982 launch, “gasp look at those graphics”, Super Zaxxon).
Digital Press, issue 33, September 1997: the home versions and Motherbase 2000.
Classic Gamer Magazine, vol. 1 no. 5, September 2000: the Atari 2600 version.
Mark Vanstone, “Make an isometric game map”, Wireframe, issue 15, May 2019, p. 38.
Sinclair User, issue 21, December 1983, p. 88: Sandy White on Zaxxon.