Really great graphics, presentation and music, a leap at the time. The game is hard and has a poor difficulty curve. With a little more adjustments on the level design it could have been so much better.
One of the first H-S shooters I'd bought for my c64 and needless to say I was blown away by the loader music. Not so keen on the title screen page music though..
Got into it a fair bit but did find it a challenge and frustrating after a few levels. Bonus rounds were different I guess, but a bit pointless perhaps. Looked good with great colours but I think it's a shame about the split screen and reduced playing area. Having purchased a c64 again recently I have re-purchased Sanxion again though. Perhaps it's nostalgia though and in hindsight I'm wondering if it will last very long!
The music and graphics are great, and if I remember correctly the scrolling is brilliant. However, I never enjoyed playing it, probably partly because I sucked at it. I found it a bit samey and stupidly difficult.
Sanxion was a game that I had never seen the likes of before it offered a unique split screen view that showed the game from a top down and horizontal view. Amazing sound and playability that pushed the C64's hardware to its limits. There were games that came out years after this that weren't nearly the same quality. Which is lazy and shameful when you think about it.
An awful unplayable game, an example of presentation over content. I always got the impression at the time of the Zzap!64 review that the rating it received was kind of a "golden handshake" for GL when he left to start Thalamus although later titles from them definitely fared better.
I had a crack without the loading music so it took a while to sort that out.
The game itself was great for 1986, especially because at that time the concept of a "great presentation, not-so-great gameplay" was totally unheard of, yet! Had this not been done by Thalamus, never had the stonking Rob Hubbard tracks and never had the good gfx would it have been received so well? After all, it's a very linear shooter with very little variety! It never ended either which was a bit of a cop out! Very disappointing.
Great music, super title screen and then the game??? What happened? I have tried 1000s of time to try get into this game (stretching over 25 years) so no one can say I'm not willing to try things and give it a chance. I m not sure what the hype and good reviews were about??? Maybe there is another game out there somewhere with the same title but a fun game attached.
C&VG
9/10 Dec 86 p17
Commodore Force
72% Mar 93 p20
Commodore User
7/10 Nov 86 p49
9/10 Oct 88 p81
Your Commodore
8/10 Jan 87 p43
Zzap!
93% Nov 86 p122
88% Oct 88 p113
84% Nov 88 p106
Score 83.38
Good graphics, interesting dual point of view. I found the much loved music to be really grating.
Quite good fun, but by comparison with, say, Armalyte, it looks a little tired. The secret of course is not to compare it to Armalyte...
Precursor of armalyte?
Raved about at the time, but I never saw what the big deal was with this. It's tough to control (annoying might be another way of putting it), repetitive but it does hold some challenge. Even at the time 93% was very generous
Sanxion is not as bad as Lockett claims, and it certainly is not the best shoot-'em-up ever, BUT: It's probably the fastest. The action that sets in a second after starting is hilarious, accompanied by great graphics and sound effects. Sure the difficulty level is high and sometimes you crash hopelessely, but that's not the point: Rather, it's the definition of action.
This is by no means the best C64 horizontal shoot-em-up. I will not give my opinion on which one is, but I can assure you that Sanxion isn't it.
Why? The "gravity" is a nuisance, the enemy patterns are boring and repetetive, and the adjustable scrolling is a pain. The "radar" is one of those ideas that probably seemed good on paper, but it merely detracts from the game by constricting the play area. Thalamus took what could have been a decent, simple horizontal shoot-em-up, and gussied it up with superfluous and annoying "features".
The only good things about this game are the graphics and the sound, and, with SIDPlay, the latter is no reason to get it.
I doubt that anyone would even care about it any more, without the Rob Hubbard loader.
Best horizontal shooter for the C64 ever. The attention to detail is stunning and it hasn´t lost an ounce of playability even today.
I never liked Stavros Fasoulas´ later games, but this one is pure gold.
*cut from the Delta comments page:*
Just read this over at c64hq.. under the thalamus history page - and I'm quite stunned. I knew that Stavros Fasoulus left to do military service for 2 years, but after that he never programmed again. He now lives in San Francisco, surfs the net maybe once a week and doesn't have email.
Arguabley the creator of the most professionally polished C64 games... and then.. Nothing.
A technically stunning shoot em
up,marred by some flaws in the gameplay.
Unfair gameplay...
The game was a great achievement at the time, split-screen scrolling was not an easy thing to do with C64! With 3D sprites, scoring and a killer soundtrack, this is truly a great game.
A few people have commented on the split screen aspect to this game. The top screen DID have a purpose. Because it was at a different scale to the main screen you could see the baddies coming at you earlier than on the main screen below. That was the point to it. But the problem was that it didn't really work that well in practise. Personally I would have much rather had a larger main playing screen, it always felt too restrictive and confined.
The best thing about this game is Thalamus' usual very slick and impressive presentation. The loading music is awesome, some of the best music i've ever heard on the 64 (it makes me go all goose-pimply!)
Definitely worth a look as it is still a pretty good shoot-'em-up, despite the split screen balls-up 7/10
Stunning loading music, but everyone knows that don't they. Didn't like the game much. Looks great but it's fast, unforgiving, and difficult to control. Not a good combination. The split screen experiment is a failure. It's pointless (unless I'm missing something) and distracting.
Fantastic music. Probably the second best tune ever for the SID chip (Knucklebusters being #1).
This is such a great game, with good graphics and the music is fantastic. Unfortunate for myself I cannot play it because I'm having trouble loading up this game, I'm still trying though. As I said great game, 10/10.
I like the speed of this shoot em up. Push the joystick forward and the ship goes really fast, faster than any other shoot em up I can think of. Sometimes you need that speed to escape being blown up and sometimes you need to check back and rapidly slow down to escape being blow up. It's a game which requires great dexterity and skill. I'm not too keen on the double screen. It may look nice but it's completely useless and actually slightly spoils the game in my opinion because it reduces the playing area. However, still a good game with fab music.
I too tired of this game very quickly, due to its difficulty. However the loading music and the Prokofiev title tune were fantastic. Some state that the loading music was revolutionary for its time.
I found this game difficult to the point of being virtually unplayable.
Blimey this game is TOUGH!!!, level 7 is virtually impossible without cheating. If anyone has finished this game without infinate live I'll be very impressed.
Average sh'm'up with quite nice GFX and very good music. Possibly the worst Thalamus game. Not worth playing. 5/10
The music is awesome but the game is extremely overrated. This single shooter is currently scoring higher than Salamander, Armalyte, R-Type, Katakis and Delta. Sanxion is crap compared to those games, in fact it isn't even as good as Uridium or Zynaps (and Znaps is extremely mediocre).
I only loaded this to listen to the music. The gameplay was boring.
Amazing LOADING screen (...with amzing LOADING music!!!)... In game presentation is top notch (...with a top notch tune to boot)... In game grpahics are very cool and the parallex effect is really great looking too... As for playability, it`s not playable, it`s not much fun at all really... Stavros`s Delta was much better, go play that instead!
The loader music is, of course, what Sanxion will be remembered for. The game itself is a bit too simple - no power-up's, and the split-screen is next to useless... Seems like more of a test of programming skills than a full-blown game. Graphics are fine, and the sound effects had some nice touches. I liked the fast pace, but there was not simply enough variation to make it adictive. After this Stavros made Delta, which is waaaaay better...
Frenetic shooter, smooth, fast and with innovative "split screen". A great start for Stavros.
Average game with one of Hubbard's finest musical pieces I've heard. I did admire Thalamus and their ability to ensure if the game was ok/average that the game's music would be much better!
Couldn't care less about the game, but the loading music just blew me away. It's still unique today, and STILL no one has managed to a studio cover worth of it.
The game was OK, the music was EXCELLENT..
it was the music that kept me coming back for this game, the game itself was OK but nothing special, the splitscreen was something new but didn't make the game any better.
Thanks Goran and Riggz - I was really wondering what the title of that Prokofiev composition might be, although I'm far from a fan of classical music. Anyway, Sanxion, despite its now simplistic gameplay, is a classic that should never be forgotten. I most certainly will not, I played it to the point of exhaustion. I own a CD compilation with C64 game music, but sadly, Sanxion's loading tune is not included, even though it's Hubbard's best. 10 points for both Hubbard and Fasoulas!!!
What can you say! Its a challenging shoot'em up for starters and Rob Hubbard gave it possibly the best tune on the 64. The Romeo and Juliet on the high score chart is great too. I still have my original of this and saw it was going for £16 on ebay recently. I think i'll hold on to it for now,
SUPERB!Absolutly fantastic. Superb graphics, double screen makes it look extremly nice. The music is also super ultra great. Gameplay is addictive and very very fun (& hard!!!) A great game that can't be afforded to be missed !!! GET IT !!!
Stavros Fasoulas first C64 game, a real masterpiece. Pity it was created just before the new trend of shootemups with "powerups". The music soundtrack is the work of a real genius!
Agree... The soundtrack alone did this game. BTW, did you know it's based on Prokofiev's Montagues and Capulets?
Fiddly - and thus slightly annoying - shooter that has two planes of play to keep your eye on with side-on and top-down views. Awesome classic(al) soundtrack.
The 64 is full of shootemups - this one had a few innovative features but not enough to rise it above average - its saving grace id the Rob Hubbard Soundtrack - Just about a classic because of this - but it really is its only plus point - by 1997 Bas relief graphics had been seen and done to death - Play on a wet Sunday Afternoon only
Sooo overrated this one is. Fantastic soundtrack but very, very average gameplay.