Development
Xevious was designed by Masanobu Endō, who joined Namco in April 1981 as a planner. He and a small team were assigned by Namco's marketing department to create a two-button scrolling shooter that could rival the success of Konami's arcade game Scramble (1981). Early versions of the game were named Cheyenne and took place during the Vietnam War, with the player controlling a helicopter to shoot down enemies. (The original name may refer to the Vietnam-era Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne advanced attack helicopter project.) After the development team was reshuffled and the project planner quit altogether, Endō became the head designer for the game. He learned programming on the job during production.[17]
Endō wanted the game to have a consistent, detailed world with a story that didn't feel like a "tacked-on extra", instead being an integral part of the game.[17] The goal of the project was for the game to be inviting for newer players, and to become gradually more difficult as they became better at the game.[17] Influenced by ray-tracing, Endō wanted the game's sprites to be high-quality and detailed, while also making sure they fit the limitations of the arcade board it ran on.[17] The team used a method that involved giving each sprite different shades of gray, allowing sprites to display additional colors.[17] Many of the sprites were designed by Endō himself, although some were done by Hiroshi "Mr. Dotman" Ono, including the player and the background designs.
Many of the game's characters and structures were designed and refined by Shigeki Toyama, who previously worked on many of Namco's robotics for their amusement centers in the early 1980s.[18] The player's ship, the Solvalou, is based on the Nostromo space tug from Alien, while several of the enemies are homages to starships from popular science fiction works, including Star Wars, UFO and Battlestar Galactica.[18]
Concept art for the Andor Genesis mothership depicted it with a more circular design, nicknamed "Gofuru" due to it bearing resemblance to gofuru cookies.[18] The design was changed to instead be the shape of an octagon as the hardware had difficulty displaying round objects, while still keeping much of its key features such as the central core and blaster receptacles.[18] Endō created a fictional language during development called "Xevian" that he used to name each of the enemies.[17]
The blaster target for the Solvalou, which flashes red when over an enemy to signal the player to fire a bomb at it, was added to make it easier to destroy ground targets.[17] While programming it, Endō thought it would be interesting to have the blaster target flash over a blank space where an enemy wasn't present, leading to the addition of the Sol citadels.[17] Namco executives expressed displeasure towards the idea, with Endō instead claiming they were simply a bug in the program and leaving them in the code.[17]
The Special Flag icons from Rally-X were added due to Endō being a fan of the game.[17] The game was originally named Zevious, the "X" being added to make it sound more exotic and mysterious, with the metallic logo paying homage to the pinball table Xenon.[17] Location testing for Xevious was conducted in December 1982, and the game was released in Japan in January 1983.[19][20] In the months following, Atari, Inc. acquired the rights to manufacture and distribute it in North America, advertising it as "the Atari game you can't play at home".[15]
