X was an ambitious tank-based FPS game on Game Boy that I reviewed last year. After stopping off at Argonaut’s successor studio Q-Games’s Starship Patrol, here’s their 18 years-later followup to X. It’s either known as X-Returns, X-Scape, or 3D Space Tank in a regrettable but common act of incoherence between Nintendo regional branches. Anyway, it’s pretty much the perfect sequel to X and highly enjoyable.

I was surprised by how much this sequel leans on the original X. The story is a direct follow-up with 20 years of in-universe time having passed, and there’s constant callbacks to things that happened back then. It’s strange given the niche and region-locked nature of the first game. But, I did appreciate having that continuity especially with all the other ways it was built on here.

Firstly, the graphics were impressive. Not because they’re technically sophisticated but because their intentional limitations make them evocative. Everything’s made of big polygons, just like the Game Boy game; they’re not wireframes, but just flat-textured, and it gives a nice cheesy Tron-like vibe. The colours too are striking, with one main colour dominating each planet, and only a couple of others to accent. This makes planets stand out from each other while bringing to mind the palettes that a GBC could apply to GB games (you know, like with X), only more much more arresting and bold.

The mechanics too are an evolution of X’s. Rather than one big plane surface to roam around, you hop between many planets each with their own surface structures and objectives. The planets are much smaller than Tetamus II was in X, but this might be a good thing to keep each chunk focused rather than the aimless wandering that could happen on the Game Boy. It’s still a game of search and destroy, but again your objectives are nicely varied, and aerial combat is mixed in too as your tank enters flight mode, or even becomes fixed for turret sections. Tunnel segments are retained, now as the mechanism to go between planets; unlocking warp gates is part of the core loop of exploration and solving simple environmental puzzles on each planet now.

I said that it’s the perfect sequel. It retains graphical choices that were necessary at the time due to technical limitations, but now make the game stand out in an interesting way. At the same time it improves on gameplay systems (doing away with fuel, for example) and fulfils what X was struggling ambitiously to achieve on hardware that can actually handle it smoothly. Speaking of hardware, the primary control scheme is informed by the DS’s touch screen gimmick and seemed clunky to me. Luckily there was an option for button-only control that works just fine.

Two final points: the bottom screen UI is cluttered in a way I found pleasing. And the robotic companion character VIX-529 is a fun and effective way to add some personality, exposition, and chatter to proceedings. The DSiWare store may have been shut down, but the entire catalogue, including this game, is still available on the 3DS eShop, and it’s well worth looking into for a sort of Star Fox-lite experience.