''Lethal Xcess'', also known as ''Lethal Xcess: Wings of Death II'' or just ''Wings of Death II'', is a

shoot 'em up Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs ) are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of chara ...

game developed by two members of demo crew X-Troll and published by Eclipse Software in

1991 File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the Phil ...

for the

Atari ST The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...

and

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

. It is a sequel to 1990's '' Wings of Death'', in which its wizard hero goes into the far future to fight the descendants of the evil witch that he had defeated in the first game. Despite having been acclaimed by critics, the game was a commercial failure.

Gameplay

Plot

The great magician Sagyr has won over his nemesis, the wicked witch Xandrilia, and regained the human shape of his former self. But Xandrilia's curse sends him 3,000 years in the future. There he finds out that the witch's posterity, known as the Xandrilians, plan to rule the universe with an army of monsters and machines. Determined to stop the forces of darkness, Sagyr pilots a small combat spacecraft on a desperate mission to destroy the planet where the Xandrilians live.

Development

''Lethal Xcess'' was originally it was planned to be an independent release, but in the end it became the sequel to '' Wings of Death'' where its original story was about Sagyr having been again turned into a gryphon and fighting a restored Xandrilia in fantasy setting, to be titled ''Xandrilia's Revenge'', before it was decided it would a be a science fiction game. ''Lethal Xcess'' has been the first commercial project of Heinz Rudolf and Claus Frein, although they had some offers before; due to the disappointing sales, both quit the gaming industry and became IT consultants. While it is a rather standard shooter on the Amiga platform, the game is one of the technically most impressive titles for the Atari ST. Besides many technically impressive features, such as digital sound, sync-scrolling,

overscan Overscan is a behaviour in certain television sets, in which part of the input picture is shown outside of the visible bounds of the screen. It exists because cathode-ray tube (CRT) television sets from the 1930s through to the early 2000s were h ...

, and full two-player support, all original copies of ''Lethal Xcess'' featured

dual format Dual format is a technique used to allow software for two systems which would normally require different disk formats to be recorded on the same floppy disk. In the late 1980s, the term was used to refer to disks that could be used to boot eithe ...

, which allowed the Amiga and Atari versions to boot from the very same disk.''Retro Gamer'' 123, page 68. An abortive

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

version was also under development by a different team.

Reception

The Amiga version of the game was well received, including the review scores of 84% from ''

Amiga Action ''Amiga Action'' was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Europress (later IDG Media) and ran for 89 full issues, from October 1989 to December 1996. After its closure, it was merged into sister pu ...

'', 83% from ''

Amiga Computing ''Amiga Computing'' was a monthly computer magazine of a serious nature, published by Europress and IDG in both the UK and USA. A total of 117 issues came out. The games section was called Gamer, although later ''Amiga Action'' was incorporated i ...

'', 70% from ''

Amiga Power ''Amiga Power'' (''AP'') was a monthly magazine about Amiga video games. It was published in the United Kingdom by Future plc, and ran for 65 issues, from May 1991 to September 1996. Philosophy ''Amiga Power'' had several principles which com ...

'', 87% from ''Génération 4'', and 86% from ''Joystick''. It received an overall rating of 9 out of 10 from both ''ST News'' and ST Graveyard, while ''Play Time'' gave 77% for the Amiga and 74% for the Atari ST.''Play Time'' 4/1992 p.54.

References

{{reflist, 30em

External links

Official website

''Lethal Xcess''
at

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Lethal Xcess: Wings Of Death II Amiga - HOL database
1991 video games Amiga games Atari ST games Cancelled Commodore 64 games Cooperative video games Demoscene software Eclipse Software Design games Multiplayer and single-player video games Science fiction video games Scrolling shooters Video games about time travel Video games developed in Germany Video games scored by Jochen Hippel Video game sequels Video games about witchcraft Video games about curses