Scoring in this game is relatively complicated due to all the different units.

AIR UNITS
Andor Genesis : 1000-4000 points
Brag Zakato : 500 points
Garu Zakato : 1000 points
Giddo Spario : 10 points
Jarra : 70-100 points
Kapi : 300 points
Terrazi : 700 points
Torkan : 50 points
Toroid : 30 points
Zakato : 50 points
Zoshi : 100 points

GROUND UNITS
Barra : 100 points
Boza Logram : 2000 points
Derota : 1000 points
Domogram : 800 points
Garu Barra : 300 points
Garu Derota : 2000 points
Grobda : 400 points
Logram : 300 points
Zolbak : 200 points

Specials (see Tips and Tricks below for how to get them)
Flag : 1000 points for uncovering it, bonus Solvalou for flying over it
Sol Citadel : 2000 points for making it surface - 2000 points for destroying it

When you start the game, your Solvalou will be at the bottom of the screen. Keep in mind, this is a scrolling game. This means you can go no faster then the top and no slower then the bottom of the screen. You can, however, vary your speed in-between by pushing the joystick up and down. The biggest key in getting through this game is learning how to use the joystick to speed up and slow down because you will sometimes be put into some very tight areas that will require precision joystick control.

* One interesting aspect of this game is the fact if you are too successful against a particular kind of enemy, the game will adjust itself to send different enemies until you have difficulty dealing with them.

* Make sure you know what you will be encountering in each area.

* If you hold down the fire and bomb buttons, you will constantly be doing both at a slower rate. This is great when you are in the thick of things with both air and ground targets swarming the area.

* Speaking of bombs, your Solvalou is equipped with smart bombs (so to speak). They are launch and forget weapons. When you 'paint' the target with your bomb-sight and launch your bomb, it will hit that target even when you have already flown over it. There are a couple of strategies to make your bombing runs more effective :
1) When you have targets close together (usually bomb batteries are arranged this way), put a bomb between them. You will have a very good chance of taking out both batteries with one hit since you can only have one bomb on the screen at a time.
2) For moving targets (such as Grobdas), anticipate the targets direction and 'lead' it a little. This basically means putting the bomb at the point where the target will run into it.
3) Your bomb-sight will turn red whenever any target is 'sighted', even if the target is hidden like Sol Citadels and flags.

* Keep away from the corners. These can become death traps real quickly if you are swamped by enemies.

* Since you have free reign of most of the screen to move around, make sure you use all that room for maneuvering. Enemy fighters have a nasty habit of either shooting from behind your fighter or re-entering the screen from random sides. It also is handy when you are dodging a heavy volume of enemy fire.

* Make sure when you are maneuvering around the Bacuras, you always leave yourself a clear 'out'. What I mean by this is there another direction to escape instead of having to move along with the Bacuras. An occasional enemy likes to put up shots at your fighter since it is very difficult to maneuver around the rolling plates.

* The Andor Genesis Motherships are pretty easy to destroy if you work quickly. Most of the time, Zakatos and Brag Zakatos precede the arrival of the Andor Genesis Mothership. Blast these out of the sky and avoid the shrapnel. When the Andor Genesis Mothership appears, lead the target a little and quickly move up and plant your bomb at the point the center of the ship will be. The less time you waste taking on this ship, the better.

* Secret Message : The designer of Xevious has included a trick for generating his name right at the beginning of the game. As soon as Solvalou appears, move to the far right edge of the screen and begin bombing constantly. Continue bombing until the first set of attacking rings is very close to you and then shoot the rings. The message 'Namco ORIGINAL Program by EVEZOO' will appear on the screen.

* THE FLAGS : There are four flags hidden throughout the game. These flags occur in areas 1, 3, 5, and 6. All flags are along a horizontal line across the terrain. The only way to uncover a flag is to bomb it so you will have to lay a string of bombs along the entire horizontal line. This basically means moving up quickly, dealing with enemies quickly, and dropping your bombs quickly. Once a flag is uncovered, you must fly over it to get the benefits from it.

FLAG 1 : The first flag is located in the first river you encounter after you start the game. Look for the three Grobdas in a row. Just above them is a river that cuts horizontally across the terrain. Just bomb the river from left to right and around the bank closest to you. The flag should appear.

FLAG 2 : After you get past the plates, look up and to the right. There is a little lake with a small river feeding into the ocean. Start in the middle of the lake and bomb toward the little river. The flag should appear around where the river dumps into the ocean.

FLAG 3 : When you cross the first ocean, you will eventually see a dock/harbor at the top. The flag is located around the horizontal line that the longest pier projecting out is part of. You will need to quickly bomb that entire length to find and get the flag before the bottom scrolls your Solvalou too far up.

FLAG 4 : You will see a big bird picture on the desert. At the lowest point of its tail-feathers (in the lower right corner), start to bomb horizontally from right to left. The flag will appear.

* Sol Citadels : These structures require you to bomb them once to cause them to surface. They look like large storage tanks or grain silos. You then need to bomb them again to destroy them. You have a potential to collect several hundred thousand points by taking out these structures. They come in groups of 1, 4, or 8. Unlike flags, these structures are always in the same place. There are six sets of Sol Citadels.

FIRST SET : One in area 2. When you see the three Grobdas in a row on the road, start laying bombs in the area around the cul-de-sac below the last tank in a right and diagonal-down point. The citadel will be even with the cul-de-sac.

SECOND SET : One in area 3. When you see the Garu Bara, go to the left of the Garu Bara and start bombing. This is also the area that the second flag can be found.

THIRD SET : Four in area 9. There is a clear area right before you tangle with the second Andor Genesis Mothership. Where the road splits around the woods, start to lay bombs a little below the bottom edge of the road that goes to the right. You should uncover four Sol Citadels.

FOURTH SET : Eight in area 13. At the point the desert ends, there is a little grass, then the air field starts. Use the birds leg as a reference and fly straight up. When the bomb-sight glows, start bombing. This will be the lower left Sol Citadel of the group which is arranged in two rows of four citadels. You will be hard pressed to get all eight citadels.

FIFTH SET : Four in area 14. After the plates roll by, look for where two roads merge into one road. At the top edge of the slanted right hand road, start dropping bombs to uncover some more citadels.

SIXTH SET : Four in area 15. Look for a forest on the left side. There will be a small clearing and then a river. Bomb the small clearing to bring the citadels up. There will be very intense ground fire in this location so be especially watchful.

0.33b7 [Mirko Buffoni, Tatsuyuki Satoh]
0.27 [Mirko Buffoni, Tatsuyuki Satoh]

Artwork available (xevious, xevios)

Bugs:
- Explosive pattern of Giddo Spario is different from the real one. Fujix (ID 00433)

WIP:
- 0.143u8: Kanikani fixed DIP locations in Xevious.
- 0.141u4: Changed description of clones 'Xevious (Atari set 1)' to 'Xevious (Atari, harder)' and 'Xevious (Atari set 2)' to 'Xevious (Atari)' and 'Xevious (Atari set 3)' to 'Xevious (Atari, Namco PCB)'.
- 0.139u1: Alex Jackson fixed Xevious from reboots or hangs.
- 21st July 2010: Tirino 73 dumped Xevios (alt) (1983). This rom file comes from a bootleg PCB.
- 22nd February 2010: Mr. Do - Some time ago, Zorg scanned and vectored a Xevious bezel. It's now time to share, so here you go.
- 0.133u2: Fixed rom names.
- 0.133u1: Brian Troha added DIP locations to Xevious.
- 0.132u1: Stephane Humbert fixed unable to locate input port 'IN0' in clone Battles.
- 0.131u3: Added MB8843 (1536000 Hz) CPU5. Changed MB8842 CPU4 and MB8844 CPU6 clock speed to 1536000 Hz.
- 0.131u1: TH60 added clone Super Xevious (Japan).
- 26th July 2008: Mr. Do - Funny story. Tormod sent me a BUNCH of instruction cards a long time ago. You've probably been seeing them added in every so often. Well, around July of last year, I had completed a whole bunch of them, but then had a computer crash, and they ended up on the "spare" hard drive by mistake. I found them again going through a cleanup. So thanks to Tormod, this week we have Xevios.
- 0.119u3: David Haywood added the rom loading for rom 51xx.bin, which are dumped but not yet hooked up.
- 0.118u5: Changed palettesize to 1152 colors.
- 0.118u4: Alex Jackson fixed the conditional extra lives dipswitch in Xevious.
- 0.114u1: Nicola Salmoria added actual emulation of the microcontroller used for the Namco 50xx chip as found in Bosconian and Xevious. Replaced MB88xx CPU4 with MB8844. Added MB8842 (256000 Hz) CPU4 and 50xx.bin cpu4 rom (Namco 50xx internal ROM - 2k).
- 0.112u2: Replaced 3x DAC sound with Discrete.
- 0.112u1: Replaced implementation of Namco 54xx sound chip with new MB8844 CPU core running the original embedded ROM code. Removed old sound core [Nicola Salmora, Ernesto Corvi, Guru]. Added MB88xx (256000 Hz) CPU4 with 1k rom 54xx.bin. Replaced Namco 54XX sound with 3x DAC sound.
- 0.111u6: Aaron Giles changed Xevious to use irq0_assert_line instead of irq0_pulse_line to prevent it from dropping interrupts.
- 0.109u3: Roberto Zandona increased the interleave in Xevious to fix synchronization issues.
- 0.103u4: MASH fixed number of credits in Xevious.
- 0.94u2: Derrick Renaud added proper watchdog to Xevious.
- 0.93: Derrick Renaud swapped Namco 54XX filters on Port A & C. Fixes Xevious sound.
- 0.90u3: Derrick Renaud added proper filters to the Namco52 sample player of Bosconian, Galaga, Pole Position and Xevious. Adjusted relative effect volumes per schematics.
- 0.90u2: Derrick Renaud updated the Namco 54XX noise sound and added the R/C values to Bosconian, Galaga, Pole Position and Xevious.
- 0.89u5: Jarek Burczynski improved the Namco 54XX Noise Generator (Type A and B emulated, type C algo still unknown). Removed Samples sound and explo1-4.wav samples.
- 0.79u1: Added Namco 54XX (1536000 Hz) sound. Fixed gfx3 rom loading.
- 0.78u5: Added clone Xevious (Atari set 3).
- 15th January 2004: Pierpaolo Prazzoli added another version of Xevious.
- 0.63: Added clone Xevious (Atari set 2).
- 25th November 2002: Satoshi Suzuki added another bootleg of Xevious.
- 0.61: Added clone Battles (bootleg 1982).
- 13th May 2002: S. Suzuki re-submitted the Xevious driver with Battles added and fixed coin inputs.
- 0.59: Changed description of clone 'Xevious (Atari)' to 'Xevious (Atari set 1)'. Removed 3rd coin slot.
- 1st April 2000: Guru - Dumped Xevios (Bootleg).
- 9th October 2001: William Kucharski submitted a fix for Xevious cocktail mode.
- 0.37b16: Added samples explo3.wav and explo4.wav. Changed the 3x Z80 clock speeds to 3072000 Hz.
- 0.37b12: Changed VSync to 60.606060Hz.
- 8th September 2001: Satoshi Suzuki added a Xevious bootleg called Battles to the Xevious driver.
- 0.37b16: New sampleset for Xevious.
- 2nd July 2001: Satoshi Suzuki updated the Xevious driver, adding two new samples and adjusting clock frequencies.
- 6th January 2000: Nicola Salmoria fixed Xevious reset bug.
- 10th December 1999: Vernon C. Brooks fixed a Xevious drawgfx bug.
- 0.36b6: Replaced 8k main/supcpu roms with 4k. Added new color and sound proms.
- 22nd September 1999: Nicola added a correct transparency PROM to Xevious.
- 0.36b1: Nicola Salmoria fixed sprite flipping in Xevious.
- 11th July 1999: Nicola fixed Xevious's colors when enemies used the zapper weapon, and also shortened CPS1 graphics drawing functions.
- 3rd May 1999: Aaron Giles sent in a HUGE Atari games update with better playfield/sprite priorities in Xybots.
- 19th March 1999: Phil Stroffolino fixed Xevious graphics when rotated.
- 13th March 1999: Nicola Salmoria fixed a sprite offset bug in Xevious and converted it to tilemap system.
- 0.34b3: Added clone Xevios (bootleg 1983).
- 0.34b1: Added sound and color proms ($0, 100, 200, 300, 500). These are probably not the original PROMs. The transparency information (bit 7) is missing.
- 0.33b7: Changed 'Xevious (Atari/Namco copyright)' to clone '(Atari)' and '(Namco copyright)' to parent 'Xevious (Namco)'. Renamed (xevious) to (xeviousa) and (xeviousn) to (xevious).
- 0.29: Valerio Verrando added high score saving to Xevious. Known issues: Sometimes explosion sprites appear at the top of the screen.
- 0.28: Tatsuyuki Satoh made several fixes to the Xevious driver. Dipswitches now work in Xevious [Nicola Salmoria]. Also fixed a bug in the targeting cursor colors (black corners while firing). Super Xevious works. Explosions are emulated with samples, thanks to Andrew Scott.
- 0.27: Mirko Buffoni and Tatsuyuki Satoh provided a preliminary driver for Xevious (Atari/Namco copyright) (Atari 1982), Xevious (Namco copyright) and Super Xevious, not working yet. To start the game, press ALT (sorry - will be fixed in a future release). Control: Arrows = Move around, CTRL = Fire and ALT = Bomb. To start the game, press ALT (sorry - will be fixed in a future release). Known issues: The sound works, but at the beginning it plays and endless sequence of "coin inserted" sounds. That's because it believes you have inserted 80 coins. After playing for a while, it becomes normal.
- 0.23: Nicola Salmoria and Mirko Buffoni added a very preliminary driver for Xevious.

ARCADE RELEASE: Xevious (Namco) - 1983/Jan/29

LEVELS: 1 (endless)

Other Emulators:
* HiVE

Romset: 88 kb / 26 files / 41.4 zip