Exerion is a vertical shoot-em-up released in 1983 by Jaleco. Initially released in arcades, it was also ported to the MSX, SG-1000 and Famicom.
Gameplay[]
The most noticeable aspect of Exerion is its pseudo-3D environment, which features an early instance of parallax scrolling. The player's ship has some inertia, though not as much as contemporary games such as Asteroids. Enemies appear in groups. If the player destroys all enemies in a group, they are awarded bonus points. The ship has two methods of attack: a slow-firing double shot and a rapid-fire single shot. The latter has limited ammo that can be replenished by destroying enemies with the double shot.
Ports and Re-Releases[]
Despite its relative popularity in Japan, Exerion rarely sees any official re-release outside of Japan. The North American arcade version, which is mostly identical to the Japanese version, was published by Taito. The Arcade version has also been released as part of Hamster Corporation's Arcade Archives on PlayStation 4.
The first port of Exerion was for the SG-1000 in late 1983. Programmed by Sega, this version features some drastic changes. The double shot moves as fast as the rapid shot, whereas it is slower in the arcade version. The range of the double shot is also slightly wider than in the arcade version. The enemies move much slower, which leads to the SG-1000 version being significantly easier than the arcade version. However, it lacks the bonuses that are awarded when clearing a group of enemies, as well as the badge system.
The MSX version was released in April 1984 and is a direct port of the SG-1000 version, programmed by Dempa Shimbunsha.
The most well-known port of Exerion is the Famicom version, programmed by infamous "phantom developer" TOSE and released in 1985. This version introduces a short theme song for the game at the title screen. This version has again lacks the badges and has the improved double shot, but unlike the SG-1000 and MSX versions, also retains the bonuses. This is the most widely available version of Exerion, having been released on the Japanese Wii and Wii U Virtual Console, Project EGG, Jaleco Collection Vol. 1 for the PlayStation, JaJaMaru Jr. Denshoki Jaleco Memorial for Game Boy Advance and on the Retro-Bit Generations console, the latter of which marking its first official North American release. Due to the small file size of the game (24KB,) the game is also frequently featured on bootleg "Famiclone" machines.