Exed Exes is an early era Famicom shooter from magazine publisher and occasional game developer Tokuma Shoten. It's based on an arcade game by Capcom, that was licensed by ... some company (Mylar? Myanmar?) (I think you mean Memetron -ed) - all right then - and releaesd in US joints as Savage Bees, although obviously not for very long as I don't remember it at all. You can try it out on MAME. It's got a rocking intro tune.

The heart of the shooter was obviously inspired by Xevious. Your ship flies over a metallic honeycomb landscape shooting at bugs, bees, mantiseseses, gun turrets and incongruously enough, skulls. Lots of skulls. Especially when you are suddenly thrown into the HI SCORE AREA - the game goes gothic as 500-point skulls float by leisurely. Grab the POW that also floats by and they all turn into high scoring fruit in another odd Bubble Bobble-like twist.

If you took my advice and tried this out on MAME, then loaded up your Famicom cartridge, I apologize. The home port is more wacked-out than Kriss Kross ever was, due to its incredibly slow pace and washed out graphics and sound. The pause sound effect is the same as the one in Ikari Warriors, which should arouse suspicion in anyone who's played that alleged port. I wonder if there was some rogue group of coders who hated Japanese children so much that they deliberately made their arcade ports this bad.

Which should bring up the subject - why am I bothering introducing this game? Scroll back up to the scan on top and feast thine eyes on the Silver Members Sticker label placed on top of the original, yellow one. If you attain a certain score in Exed Exes (a million if I remember correctly) you receive a special password upon Game Over. If you took a photo of this and sent it to Tokuma, you recived the above sticker to put on your cart.

Tokuma didn't give stickers to everyone who wrote in with a picture, however, giving carts with this new label a fair value in today's Famicom world (nearing $100 in Akihabara circles last I checked). I've heard rumors of a Gold Members Sticker given to winners of some Tokuma-sponsored contest... time to go questing again...

Thx: Mania-X

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