Namco Xevious code, notes, and maps

coinopper

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I finally got around to adding these to an interview I did with Atari's Jim Huether, who was working on making a 5200 home version of the game. The interview can be found on my site at: https://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/jim_huether/interview_jim_huether.html

From Jim Huether:

Xevious (5200): This game was the first where I used a graphic artist, Alan Murphy, during much of the development time - since this game was very rich in graphics, I needed a real graphic artist. It turned out beautiful. Also, Tod Frye and myself went to Tokyo to visit Namco. While there, we were given the source code to the Xevious arcade game and we actually sat with the designers of the game, and by pointing to tables and other code in printout, and by using common programming terms of the time such as "jump table", we were able to understand the basic design and graphics of the game. From there, we worked on our games pretty much separately.
 
I'll have to read the interview. Always wondered by Xevious wasn't available on the 5200, but was for the 7800.

Scott C.
 
Very cool, thanks for this!
 
I'll have to read the interview. Always wondered by Xevious wasn't available on the 5200, but was for the 7800.

Scott C.
Bad timing. The 2600 and 5200 / 8-bit computer ports were done but shelved due to the '83 crash / Atari home games mismanagement (Tramiel). The 7800 and NES ports were worlds better than both so there wasn't much point in retroactively releasing either of them.
 
Jesus.

My ultimate dream job: Atari game designer / programmer between 1979 and 1985. :love:
 
Bad timing. The 2600 and 5200 / 8-bit computer ports were done but shelved due to the '83 crash / Atari home games mismanagement (Tramiel). The 7800 and NES ports were worlds better than both so there wasn't much point in retroactively releasing either of them.

Huether worked on it until at late as early 1984 (https://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/prototypes/5200/xevious.html). He said the game was ready for release but held up. A copy of the finished version has yet to be recovered. From Huether:

Jim Huether: It was ready for release, but it got held up when Atari started going through some real internal turmoil. Then at one point, they asked me to change it to Dune. That was ridiculous, and by that time, I was fed up with the way Atari was changing, so I asked to be laid off, and they finally agreed in June of 1984, just before Jack Tramiel bought the company. At the time, the coin-op Xevious was being touted as the game you'll never be able to play on a home system.

It's quite possible it was being intentially held up because Atari was planning on releasing the 7800 that year, and Xevious was one of the original games that was done for it. The 5200 was discontinued in May 1984, so by the time the game was completed, it would have made no sense for them to release anything else for it, as the 5200 wasn't going to save Atari at that point. As for Atari's bizarre request to Huether to turn it into a Dune game, perhaps they were hoping to salvage some of the code instead of throwing it all away.

The VCS/2600 version was also nearly done at the same time, and a nearly complete version was found in 2015. I'm not certain why that never got released, as Atari was still releasing new VCS games in 1984.
 
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