X-Multiply (Arcade) review "X Rated"

R-Type is scrolling shooter royalty -- you either agree with that sentiment or you’re just plain wrong. Debuting in arcades in 1987 and then ported to every available home console ever made, it cultivated a very delicate balance between being difficult and being unfair. It delighted in your numerous deaths, not entirely because it meant you had to keep pumping money into the arcade cabinet, but because that death was completely avoidable and was therefore all your fault. It displayed a lot of shooter staples that were present both before and after, but celebrated making the level structures themselves sometimes the greatest threat you had to face. Squeezing through cracks and gaps that barely housed your R1 fighter, all the while trying to dodge swarms of projectiles and enemy ships with precious little room to manoeuvre in. It could so easily had become just another scrolling collection of cheap deaths and rage quits, relegating it to the annals as just another forgotten shooter. But it didn’t so much as find that fine line to walk as it outright invented it. Developers Irem had achieved international recognition, and manufactured a blueprint to success.

In the years that have followed, they’ve ridden that wave for a far as it will go, pumping out sequels and remakes and one bizarre RTS game all bearing R-Type’s name. This isn’t going to be one of those tales where we all get together and lament a huge quality drop; for the most part, Irem spat out serial winners. But they weren’t immediately happy just to coast on their new superstar IP; after R-Type’s initial success, they would get to work on three new games. A direct follow-up (but we do not talk about R-Type II in this household…), a fantasy take staring a warrior riding a dragon called Dragon Breed and X Multiply.

Rather than recycle the one-craft-vs.-an-alien-fleet motif, X Multiply takes the Fantastic Voyage route of shrinking a ship down and then placing it inside someone’s body. Only, said body is under attack from an alien virus, so it becomes a one-craft-vs.-an-alien-fleet scenario anyway. It does mean that there’s a fleshy backdrop presence throughout the seven levels of X Multiply which Irem routinely makes the most of. Meaty pink chunks rise and fall in time with a steady breathing pattern, ready to squash lackadaisical exploring crafts. Throbbing purple veins feed bulbous tumours complete with gnashing teeth or pus-coloured sphincters that spit out roving gut worms. Moist sinews bar your way; limpet-headed appendages grab sections of the scenery and drag them into your path. Parasites line rotting mounds of flesh, spitting projectiles or flinging themselves at you.



Squid-like viruses or phlegmy blobs routinely chase you around the screen, but they can be seen off tidily by a fighter armed with the right equipment. X’s biggest department from the tried and true R-Type archetype is to do away with the satellite helper orb and overcharged laser attacks, and attach twin lasers to a pair of mechanical tentacles that move inversely to the direction of the craft. It means the tentacles will close over your nose if you reverse backwards, offering a focused stream of plasma directly ahead. Or, by creeping forward, they will open up and splay out to your sides, coating more of the screen in whatever flavour of destruction you’ve been cultivating with the game’s numerous power ups. It means that by making calculated and precise micro-movements, you can position your weaponry advantageously. Good luck doing that while creeping through the hollowed remains of an artery or while trying to surge into a little pocket of safety as the ceiling starts to come down on you.

In an effort that even manages to eclipse R-Type at times, the levels themselves carry both the greatest sense of danger and character that X Multiply can muster. But that admittance comes with some degree and back-handedness; it more or less carries that boast because the rouge gallery of monsters and angry beasties aren’t particularly memorable. Some make more of an impression that others; the entire second stage is a boss fight against a huge foe stretching out over several screens that you must navigate your ship around, carefully chipping away at it as you go. By contrast, the next boss fights traps you in an enclosed chamber while quad turtle heads poke themselves out of each corner and fire rebounding lasers at you. It’s ridiculously easy to work out a pocket of safety, sit there comfortably, and wail on the targets unanswered.

To compare, the highlight of the game is level five. Not for the cannon fodder that flocks towards you or the end of level boss fight you work towards, but the level itself. It immediately tries to grind you into dust with constantly shifting landscapes that roves up and down, back and forth. You need to make timed, precise dashes to surge through tiny gaps that only appear momentarily before closing off again, crushing whatever’s left lurking behind. You need to destroy diseased muscle so obstacles once solidly held in place fall slightly away, giving you scant room to carefully navigate through. Once the stage finally opens up, you find yourself in what’s probably the stomach, due to the corrosive acid dripping lazily from the ceiling. It would be bad enough if you just had to navigate through that alone, but each drop that falls descends into a waiting pool of acid, and kicks up splashback you have to hug the ceiling to avoid. But fly too high and your chances of dodging the cascading droplets are significantly decreased.



Survive all that, and the level boss surges up from the acidic depths. It’s just a brown snake thing. Shoot it in its big dumb face a few times until it dies.

Other bosses include E.T if he was made out of paper bags and tumours as well as a spiny mantis-turtle thing that employs one solitary attack of spitting out a single floating orb that explodes into a starburst of bullets. You can avoid this by parking right at the rear of the screen and just firing mindlessly until explosions happen and you win. It’s a shame that X Multiply has so little in the way of enemy threat considering the spiteful architecture that fully deserves a better villain’s gallery and the adventuresome weapons system that would later find new life in the likes of Xexex and Bio Hazard Battle. X needed a dose of either extreme; to give Team Alien Virus a significant steroid shot to promote them above the roles of humdrum, or to banish them entirely and extend faith in the weird but affable player-vs-environment vibe they managed to bottle.

But they’ve managed neither. In doing so, they’ve developed a decent deviation from their well-celebrated R-Type schematic, and that’s okay. It just could have been something that might have been more celebrated by itself.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (September 22, 2018) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.