Solvalou

It runs on the Namco System 21 arcade board. Advertised as a "hyper-entertainment machine" for its sit-down cabinet design and 3D shooting gameplay. The game is named after the starship the player controls in the series. Although it proved to be a commercial failure, Solvalou was well received by critics for its realism, 3D graphics and impressive hardware capabilities, with some finding it to be better than Namco's previous 3D arcade titles. It was digitally re-released for the Japanese Wii Virtual Console in 2009 as one of the first titles under the Virtual Console Arcade brand. A home port for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was announced in 1994 but never released.

• Title — Solvalou • Developer — Namco • Publisher — Namco • Composer — Hiroyuki Kawada • Release — December 1991 • Genre — First-person rail shooter • Series — Xevious • Modes — Single-player • Arcade System — Namco System 21 • Platforms — Arcade

• Illustration — In-game screenshot Solvalou is a first-person shooter video game set in the Xevious universe. Its plot takes place in the year 2015, following a war between humans and androids named the GAMP. The humans launch the titular starship to destroy the GAMP and its mothership before they wipe out the rest of humanity. The Solvalou is restricted to a pre-determined flight path, though players can move it around to avoid projectiles and obstacles that approach it. The game is divided into six levels that gradually increase in difficulty. In each of these, the Solvalou must make it to the end while destroying moving formations of enemies. The Solvalou has two weapons at its disposal: an "air zapper" that is used for destroying aerial enemies, and a "blaster bomb" that is used for destroying ground-stationed enemies. A maximum of five bombs can be launched at once, and the player needs to wait for them to regenerate before firing again. The top of the screen displays the player's health bar, or "shield", which depletes by one when inflicted by an enemy projectile. When the meter is drained, the game is over. At the end of each stage, players are scored based on how many enemies they defeated. Some levels end in a boss fight, usually with a mothership named the Andor Genesis.

Solvalou was released for arcades by Namco in Japan in December 1991. It was the fifth title from them to run on the Namco System 21 arcade board, previously used in titles such as Starblade and Galaxian3: Project Dragoon. Much like those games, it was advertised as a "Hyper-Entertainment Machine" by Namco for its cabinet design and 3D shooting gameplay. The game is named after the ship the player controls in the Xevious franchise. A home conversion for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was announced by Gamefan magazine in June 1994, however such a port was never released. It was digitally re-released for the Japanese Wii Virtual Console in Japan on March 26, 2009, which supported the Wii Remote's pointer to recreate the original arcade controls.

The music and sound effects in Solvalou were composed by Hiroyuki Kawada, a Namco veteran that worked primarily on established franchises such as Galaxian and Valkyrie. Kawada was enamored by Xeviouss simplistic sine wave music cues, and wanted to incorporate this into the music for Solvalou. His familiarity with various forms of techno allowed him to further build on the kinds of sound effects in Xevious and "give them new colors". Kawada composed a hypnotic, minimal techno soundtrack that features remixes of Xevious music in addition to original pieces inspired by the original's world and aesthetic. Kawada used Namco's recently acquired Apple and Digidesign sound tools to create the music, sampling music and sound effects from the sample editor program Alchemy and then programming it on a Macintosh computer. He produced hand-made sound effects with Turbosynth, a modular sequencer program, and created custom sound driver functions that could produce techno-inspired beats. These tools allowed Kawada to easily create music and sounds through single-line commands; Kawada said that "it was truly invaluable to be able to get a danceable groove with only a single command".