1991 marked a games chart turning point, where for the first time more #1s had the more powerful Atari or Amiga as their lead format than the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum. In 1992, we’ve pretty much left the age of 8-bit for good. And as we’ve seen with Jimmy White’s Whirlwind Snooker and Formula One Grand Prix, the new age meant new possibilities, the power to create worlds in 3D of a new complexity, games that played in new ways. That was not the only option on offer, though. Not everything succeeds through revolution; old ways of playing hadn’t suddenly lost their appeal for good. There was a reason plain old Bubble Bobble could still be so popular so late.
Project-X is another delightful throwback, but of a different sort. Rather than literally being a game from years ago, it’s a new game as an enhanced version of the old, the earliest self-consciously retro game I’ve played. A space shoot-’em-up without even the twists of Uridium, it offers nothing in the way of gameplay that’s not recognisable from six years earlier or more. You move your ship around the screen while it slowly travels from left to right, and you avoid or shoot waves of enemy ships that come in. You collect power-ups that improve your weapons and let you deal more destruction in return, There’s doubtless a story to it all, but the game doesn’t particularly care to make you have anything to do with it.
Or maybe Project-X isn’t self-consciously retro at all. Maybe that feeling is just a product of the 2D space shoot-’em-up having fallen out of fashion and being pegged irreversibly to a moment in time. It does make very clear that it is not 1986 any more, and can only exist with the new technology of 1992. The backgrounds take any opportunity to show their colourful new level of detail.
The sound, meanwhile, is where the biggest difference comes in. First of all there are the glorious voice samples that constantly come in as you collect power-ups, a reminder to decide whether to trigger the upgrades or let them build up to ever more powerful ones. Then there is the music. Like the better versions of OutRun, Project-X lets you choose early what music you want, and that choice emphasises its importance. It’s there in the options screen – rave mode, or oldtimer mode. Expressed that way there’s really only one choice. The rave music couldn’t be more 1992, and couldn’t be more crucial to the experience of Project-X. Without it, it couldn’t reach the same feeling of hitting a groove amidst sensory overload that makes for its best moments. There is more than one way to move into the future.
MicroByte Amiga charts, The One, May 1992
