AL82 Retrogaming Longplays | A-jax Longplay (Arcade) [QHD] @AL82RetrogamingLongplays | Uploaded 3 weeks ago | Updated 5 hours ago
Game Info
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Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Year of Release: 1987

Game Review & Impressions
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Not to be confused with a popular brand of bleach, A-Jax is yet another late 80s coin-op I'd never heard of before. Having played through the game, I reckon it's something of a hidden gem from around that time; the game demonstrates the capabilities of Konami's arcade hardware, featuring some really cool sprite scaling and rotation effects.

The bulk of the game is your typical top-down vertical shoot 'em up, with the player blasting air and ground targets with an assortment of weapons. You shoot down targets with your primary weapon, or take out tanks, turrets and buildings with your bombs; the floating reticule on-screen indicates where your bombs will land and, something of a neat touch, updates to indicate targets which the bombs can actually hit. I have to say, this is the most visually appealing and engaging of all the shooters of this particular era I've played - it looks and feels several years ahead of its time. In fact. my only real complaint is that only a couple of the weapons on offer, namely the "Vulcan" and "Triple" are of any real use, and you'll struggle to complete most of the levels unscathed if you use anything else.

Following the destruction of an end-of-level boss, the game's perspective shifts to a third-person, pseudo-3D section. Here, you're flying a fighter jet "into the screen" while waves of planes and other hostiles try to take you down. It's not quite up to the sheet spectacle of Sega's After Burner (which I suspect Konami must have been trying to outdo here), but it's still an impressive effect, nonetheless. In one section, an alien fortress begins to loom on the horizon, scaling and rotating to give the impression of you getting closer; it's an effect as clever as it is convincing, and it still manages to look really quite impressive.

For 1987, A-Jax seems to me to be a technical tour de force in the overcrowded shooter genre. It looks and sounds great, plays really well, and is easy to recommend. While I might not have heard of this game before, it's definitely made my list of favourite shoot'em ups - go play it.

Chapters
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00:00 Attract mode
00:23 Stage 1
03:18 Stage 2
04:17 Stage 3
08:07 Stage 4
11:20 Stage 5
12:11 Stage 6
16:44 Stage 7
19:54 Stage 8