Exolon (1987)

Exolon was released in 1987 by Hewson Consultants. Raffaele Cecco handled the code and in-game graphics, Nick Jones composed the music, and Nigel Brownjohn contributed to the character design.

This side-view 2D arcade shoot-em-up is designed for a single player. It features support for AY sound and offers flexible control options, including Kempston joystick, Interface 2, and user-definable keys. The game also includes in-game mini-games.

The original cassette price was £7.95. The game was also released on Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST.

Exolon received an average magazine score of 89.50%. It earned prestigious accolades including a Crash Smash from Crash magazine, the Sinclair User Classic award, and the Your Sinclair Megagame title.

In the USSR and Russia, Exolon became a benchmark for the genre, frequently used as a standard to compare other action games. It saw dozens of TR-DOS adaptations and numerous amateur translations. Local magazines often featured POKE codes, while cracked cassette versions were widely distributed by groups like Jansoft and Mednonogov.