Fixeight is a run-and-gun arcade game made by Toaplan in 1992. It is the Spiritual Sequel to Out Zone.
The plot is rather simple: Your character is sent to the alien planet Fortune to destroy it, and with it the Gozzu invasion of our universe.
As a follow-up to Out Zone, Fixeight fixes many of the problems that its predecessor had. The main gimmick of the game are the eight unique characters, each of which have different weapons in their arsenal. It allows Co-Op Multiplayer for up to three players, the most of any Toaplan game.
This game provides the following examples:
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: The third boss is what appears to be some kind of ship...which, once it suffers enough damage, gets shot into two by the real boss's laser cannon.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- Howard's ending has him pass away after the battle via a Soap Opera Disease.
- Agatha's ending has her getting married and having five children, but her life is tragically cut short when she's killed by a slum boy via a gunshot wound, being 29 years old at the time of her death.
- R-Langelo's ending has him dying during a rebellion attack against enemy forces.
- Boss Arena Urgency: The fourth boss. The floor will crumble apart in a sequence, and you have to avoid falling into the pits. The good news is that the floor will reappear again shortly.
- Boxed Crook: The player-characters were all imprisoned for various reasons (space piracy, desolating entire planets, wrong side of a political upheaval, etc.). Their jailers, however, decided that the Gozzu were a much worse threat, and released the prisoners on them.
- Breath Weapon: Vistario's weapon of choice, spewing acid out of his mouth.
- Charged Attack: One of Vistario's moves. It takes about a second to for him to inhale and charge, and it does a crazy amount of damage when released.
- Divergent Character Evolution: And how! From one type of player in Out Zone, to eight different selectable characters in this game. Even if two of them are just sprite swaps of each other.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Ziguragi has this as his special weapon, which creates three ninja clones that follow him. They aim at enemies and fires rapid shuriken.
- Energy Weapon: R-Langelo uses these for his attacks. One of them is a Reflecting Laser.
- Heel–Face Turn: Vistario's ending shows that he was originally a Space Pirate who went around ransacking the galaxy.
- Lizard Folk: Vistario is an alien lizard, resembling an iguana.
- Macross Missile Massacre: One of GX-026's attacks, as well as one of Agatha's attacks.
- Moveset Clone: Both Howard Young and Lucy Pamela share the same attacks. The differences are mostly cosmetic.
- Ninja: Hayate Ziguragi, a purple ninja armed with shurikens and ninjitsu which creates numerous clones.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: The portraits of Agatha Bordeaux, Cull Horn, and Lucy Pamela respectively resemble Sharon Stone, Mike Tyson, and Vanessa Paradis.
- Recursive Ammo: Agatha's forward shot. She shoots out large rockets that split into a swarm of homing missiles. Problem is that she can't fire very rapidly, and the split won't occur if the initial attack hits a wall before splitting.
- Stalked by the Bell: Take too long to complete a level and two spikeballs will come up from the bottom of the screen. They can be destroyed, but they will get you unless you are near the top.
- Taking You with Me: Some enemies explode into deadly shots when defeated. On the second loop onwards, ALL enemies explode into suicide bullets if destroyed from afar.
- Token Minority: Cull Horn is the only black human among the playable characters.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: You have to ride a hoverbike to fight two of the bosses. Not exactly unexpected, as the game already resembles a Shoot 'Em Up.
- Wolfpack Boss: The first boss has you fight against three flying machines, each with one shared-among-them-all attack and one unique attack.
