 Ssss bay. That's drunk! I love NES games that really went out on a limb to try something different. I'm talking about stuff like Vice Project Doom, which combines action platforming with gallery shooter and driving stages. Or Guardian Legend, which is an action-adventure shoot-'em-up hybrid. Or Blastermaster, which has side-scrolling stages where you play as a tank, and top-down shooter levels. Another game in the same boat is... x x x... or... x yer's? six.......... Alright... hold on a second here. Let's check the commercial. Alright, that's good enough for me. Zexus really shoots for the stars. There is a LOT to this game, for better or for worse. It's a bit convoluted, but it's also kinda cool. The game starts out with regular old action platforming levels and later alternates with horizontal shoot-'em-up stages through 12 total areas that are all split up into at least 3 different levels. You wander around and go into each of these rooms that each contain something like a shop, a random treasure, a gambling game, a weapon upgrade, or a mini boss to name a few things. What's nice is that you can enter each room at least twice as a cheap way to upgrade your weapon for instance, or just to get some free money. The e-ball in the upper right is your currency, and you collect e-icons as you defeat enemies. You explore each level until you find these blocks that you can shoot, and they make a small door that appears above them, and that leads to a room with a boss that, when defeated, will grant you what's called a force star, and that allows you to enter a fortress where the game will flip to the shoot-'em-up mode. Make it to the end of the section, and you have to pick between two doors. Pick the correct one to move on, pick the wrong one, and you have to repeat the same section you just did, a little bit like Super Mario Bros. Eventually, you get to a boss fight, where the game kinda sorta combines the two game modes as you stand on a platform shooting with your platforming shot instead of the shoot-'em-up weapon. And there's 5 different weapons you can obtain in the platforming sections, including a 45 degree ball, a wave ball, a moon ball, which acts as kind of a shield, and a laser, which is the most powerful weapon. The 45 degree ball is nice because it bounces off of surfaces, but you can only fire two projectiles at a time, and similarly, with the wave ball, you can only fire one projectile at a time. What sucks here is that you can't switch between each weapon, you're just stuck with whatever it is you have until you find a shop, and you gotta spend money to make a change. Although, I will say, I didn't find money to be much of an issue with this game, and the shops do let you buy each weapon twice, so you get an easy upgrade every time. There's also magic items as well. For instance, Footwang allows you to float and jump higher, and Mirror gives you a second character that's just kind of stacked on top of you. Okay, that's kind of goofy, but hey, it's effective. Geez, Louise, that's a lot of stuff crammed into one little NES game, and some of it works, and some of it doesn't. The platforming sections are pretty cool, the sheer amount of stuff available to you is nice, and everything appears to be open-ended, but ultimately, Zexus only gives off the impression that it's non-linear. A lot of this stuff is merely optional, and you still have to go from point A to point B in every case. What falls flat to me are the shoot-em-up levels. They're just very, very ordinary. Press B to shoot, and A fires off bombs, and it's just blah. I appreciate the gameplay variety, but it's not exactly gradius or life force here. I mean, there's Game Boy shoot-em-ups that are more interesting to me. I do love the little touches here and there, like zipping from room to room once you get to the fortresses, or having to actually climb into your ship before blasting off to the next part of the level. That's really cool. And I do enjoy a good boss fight, and Zexus is chock-full of boss fights, one after another. And the final boss fight in particular is really cool and definitely feels like a reward for getting that far. I should also mention that there is a password system here, and there's unlimited continues as well, which help make this game player-friendly in terms of difficulty. So yeah, while on the surface, Zexus seems like this really cool hybrid of styles, it's just okay-ish. It can definitely be a frustrating play-through at times, since occasionally you'll be stuck with a weapon that's ill-suited for a certain part of the game, but it's also a fun and rewarding game that you can romp through when you've got that moon shield thing equipped, for instance. Personally, I dig this kind of game, but even I have to admit the shoot-'em-up stages are kind of a letdown. Still, this is an interesting one that's worth checking out, and it's a reasonably priced cartridge that's around $10 to $12. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.