Getting Started

Prologue

The year is 3002.

In 2999, the Earth came under attack from a powerful alien force: The Imperial Alliance. The Earth's defence forces were unable to resist the onslaught and only the prototype space battleship: X-Bomber stood in the way of Earth's annihilation. The Alliance was temporarily repelled and X-Bomber left Earth in search of F Zero One; a legendary power capable of destroying the Alliance for good.

F Zero One was finally found and the Alliance's space fortress destroyed, but not before terrible damage was inflicted on the Earth.

This is where our story begins ...

The Alliance's retreat from Earth and its surrounding sectors liberated several of Earth's neighbouring solar systems. In the two years following the war, Earth restored peaceful relations with Simetra: a former Earth colony that was subjected to countless years of Alliance tyranny.

The process of rebuilding what the Alliance destroyed is underway.

6 hours ago, Earth's newly established Alpha Proxima Base reported an approaching Alliance Fleet then contact was lost. The Alliance has returned for revenge. X-Bomber, fully overhauled after its year-long mission, escorting 3 transport cruisers to Simetra, is the only warship within range to deal with the threat.

X-Bomber the Game follows on where the TV series left off as X-Bomber's refit is completed and her crew are brought back together after their early 'retirement' to deal with the resurging Alliance threat. Your job is to pilot X-Bomber, destroying waves of enemy ships, on a frantic quest to save the Galaxy once more, grabbing power-ups, dishing out excessive firepower and, of course, making lots and lots of things explode.

System Requirements

Windows 2000, XP or later (64 or 32-bit) operating system
DirectX 9 (9.0c is already included in XP SP2 onwards)
2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 equivalent CPU or faster
1 GB RAM
DirectX 9-capable graphics system; ATI Radeon 9800 XT equivalent or faster
500 MB hard disk space

The game should run on DirectX 8 so it will theoretically work on Windows 95, 98 and ME.
If neither DirectX 8 or 9 are available, it runs in 'software mode' using only the CPU. In this case, the game will only run very slowly.
The lower-left corner of the game's menu displays a message if anything other than DirectX 9 hardware acceleration is being used.

Installation

X-Bomber is a portable application.
To run X-Bomber, download the latest version and extract all the contents of the zip file. Then, run the "xb2-*.exe" application.

X-Bomber stores all of its configuration and save files within the directory where the program is located.
The only exception is the "hiscores.ini", which, prior to v0.84h is located in the "%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming" directory (Vista onwards) or "%USERPROFILE%\Application Data" (XP and earlier).

Troubleshooting

If you have trouble running X-Bomber, please don't hesitate to get in touch with me either by email or on the forum.

In the meantime, I recommend the following:

Download, unpack and run the latest version of X-Bomber, in case the most recent release has a fix, or the game files have been damaged.
Run X-Bomber in full-screen (change resolution) mode.
This should give better performance and still preserves the aspect ratio if the graphics card driver settings are set to allow it.
The game launches in this mode by default but you can toggle between full-screen and windowed mode using Alt + Enter.
Check that your machine is on mains power, if it's a portable, and that the power plan is "High performance" (Windows Vista onwards) or "Home Office/Desk" (Windows XP).
Check that your drivers (especially graphics drivers) are up-to-date.
Update Windows fully. Some extensions used in X-Bomber might need Microsoft .NET Framework.
Scan for viruses and spyware.
Close any other programs and background processes; especially any that are shown to be using substantial amounts of CPU time and RAM in Task Manager.
Make sure any torrent clients are minimised to the system tray and not open in a window, if you're running one in the background. uTorrent and other file-sharing programs can give X-Bomber a substantial performance hit when their windows are open.

Main Menu

The Main Menu has seven options and can be navigated with mouse interaction, the arrow keys, Enter and Esc.

Start

Displays the Missions menu, from which you can start the game from the beginning or start any level. You can also select which ship(s) to fly during the mission.

When you return to the main menu while playing a level, the Start option is replaced with Resume, which returns you to the current level at the point where you left off.

Options

Here, you can adjust the sound and music volume and configure controls and game settings (including the game's difficulty).

Missions

When you return to the menu while playing a level, this option displays the Missions menu, allowing you start any mission from scratch.

Instructions

... displays this help documentation in the default internet browser.

Scores

... allows you to save your current score, view your previous scores and upload any score to the Online High-Score Table.

Credits

... displays information about the game's production.

Exit

... prompts for confirmation before closing the game. You can close the game at any time without a confirmation prompt by pressing Alt + F4.

Briefing Screen

Page through the mission briefing by pressing the left and right arrow keys.
The fourth (and last) page of the briefing displays an animated map of the mission environment.

Clicking the image thumbnails on the right displays the image in the main window on the left.

Press Fire 1 (Z, by default) or Enter to start the level.

Press Esc or click the red area in the upper-right corner to return to the Main Menu.

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