To celebrate last month's Retro Gamer piece on the shmup classic, for the benefit of all readers with a DS and some sort of flashcart, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy: Super Xevious Puzzle!



Super Xevious Puzzle is actually just the fanciful name I've given to the Xevious "skin" found in Namco's recent Lumines-alike action puzzler Trioncube. Playing the game earns you coins with which you can unlock graphical skins and special sound effects, and a typical one will cost you 2000-5000 coins. The two parts of the Xevious livery, however, will set you back a breathtaking combined 600,000 coins.

Heroically, however, I've put in the 10 hours of play so you don't have to, and the downloadable save file below will put you straight into the Xeviousy action, free to challenge for high scores, try to reach Dimension 99 in "Endless" mode, or unlock the dozens of other skins. The save file is formatted for the M3 Simply flashcart, but can be easily converted for almost any other DS storage device using these conversion tools:

M3-to-G6 Lite save converter
http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=26252&

M3-to-Supercard / R4 / DSLink / EZFlash IV save converter
http://forums.maxconsole.net/showthread.php?t=50438&

Just copy the file over to your flashcart, renaming it if necessary to have the same filename as your Trioncube ROM. If you don't like Xevious obviously it's worthless, but for Xevious lovers it's a really cute little novelty, without having to go through the gruelling hours of unlocking that Trioncube itself can't justify. So without further ado, here's the file. Have fun.

http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/sxp.zip

Sweet.

I have really got into Xevious since your article in RG. Once I get a flash card for my DS I'll be checking this out.

Holy cow. Been playing this a little more just to enjoy the Xevious skin, and have noticed that while all the other extras cost a maximum of 30,000 coins, there's also a two-part "Captain" skin that's the last thing you can buy. The two parts cost a combined TWO MILLION coins. Now, given that it took about 10 hours to amass the 600,000 necessary to get the Xevious skin, it appears that Namco are expecting people to put in another 33 HOURS on this rather dull puzzle game, long after completing all the modes, just in order to see a new backdrop and hear about two new sound effects. I'm almost tempted to do it, because if the new skin isn't better than God, I think I'd be legally justified in stabbing them to death in the name of unlocking-weary gamers everywhere.

Speaking of annoying unlockables, I decided to 'trial' a game called GTI Racing, as it's the only computer game I've ever found that has my own car in (VW Golf Mk2 GTI 16v), but get this: you only get the Beetle and the Mk1 Golf when you first start the game. You have to go through tedious races against shit opposition for about two hours before you unlock a single car (which wasn't mine either).

I give up - I just wanted to drive my own car in a video game, no matter how sad that sounds.

Nah, I know the feeling - one of the many things that made me give up on Gran Turismo was realising that while I could drive my own car in it, right down to the colour, it simply wasn't possible to upgrade it to a level where you could win anything but the first couple of races. I was very dispirited by that, and it's just another example of the game's pointless and schizophrenic attitude towards "realism".

Which would have been solved with a custom race option.

Unless you're suggesting they let you upgrade your presumably Astraish level car to beat LeMans racers?

Stu drives an MX-5, and the MX-5 is noticeably much shittier than it should be in all the Gran Turismo games.

Yes. And why not? It's a videogame. At the end of the day, if you've got the money you could attach a rocket engine to a Trabant, after all.

Also, as Craster says, the sluggish, lumbering MX-5 in Gran Turismo bears no resemblance to the light, responsive car that I drive. I've had my MX up to 140mph, and at that speed breathing on the steering wheel will flip you across two lanes faster than you can blink. Gran Turismo's version is like piloting an oil tanker through heavy seas while doped up on Temazepam. People who buy GT games because they say they want to know what it feels like to drive a Nissan Skyline or whatever earn nothing but my sneery contempt and a place on the list for when the revolution comes, because if the other cars in the game are anything like their interpretation of the MX-5, then it's not even within a million miles of true on the nerdy mathematical level, far less the white-knuckle reality.

Well I've found a savegame that unlocks everything - how ridiculous is it that I've had to stoop to that level?

hehe that's a bit "look what you made me do!". you'll be donning a tatty white vest next! ;)

GT4 was the least fun I've had in a game since Renegade 3.

Our client would like to point out that the above feat was performed on a test track, under controlled conditions and with experienced professionals.

Albert Flicknife
Lawyers for Mr S. Campbell.

Naturally. TOTALLY not in a school playground in the snow.