Exolon

Exolon is an action platformer by Raffaele Cecco, released in 1987 by Hewson Consultants for the Commodore 64. Playing a mercenary named Chubby, the player fights through six planets full of alien enemies, robots, and traps, armed with a flamethrower with unlimited ammo and a limited supply of grenades that must be carefully saved for tougher opponents, locked doors, and obstacles blocking the way forward across the hostile landscape. Crates scattered around also hide additional weapons and ammo pickups, so part of the game involves systematically searching for them.

The game is a typical example of the British style of 1980s action platformers - fast, unforgiving, and built around memorizing enemy and trap placement, where a single mistake often means instant death and a return to the start of the level. Despite the C64's technical limitations, the graphics offered detailed backdrops for each planet with its own atmosphere and color palette, while smooth scrolling gave the game a sense of dynamism and real progress across enemy territory. Sound effects and music rounded out the tense atmosphere of constant danger, typical of Hewson's output as a whole.

Exolon was both a commercial and critical success for Hewson and cemented the studio's reputation as one of Europe's leading developers of action games for 8-bit machines. The game is still valued today for its balanced yet demanding design and is often mentioned alongside Cecco's other work, such as Cybernoid or Stormlord, as an example of how sophisticated British programmers could get with the C64's limited hardware to squeeze the maximum graphical and gameplay impact out of it. The game also got a sequel, Latex, and is still regularly mentioned among the best action platformers on the whole platform, mainly thanks to its unforgiving yet fair difficulty.

Why play it: For an unforgiving but fairly tuned action platformer by Raffaele Cecco that still ranks among the highlights of the C64 catalog and rewards patience with precise controls.