General Analysis
X-Multiply game flyer
X-Multiply is a side-scrolling shooter or scrolling shoot 'em up, a genre which started with Spacewar!, one of the earliest computer games, developed in 1962 and eventually released in amusement arcades in the early 1970s. This genre normally involves controlling a spaceship, shooting projectiles to the enemies and dodging the many obstacles thrown by your opponents.
Spacewar! Gameplay
In this genre the usage of power-ups is pretty common, and it helps the game achieve a nice feeling of subtle change that prevents the player from getting tired of the game. In some cases, the game enters the so called "Bullet Hell" in which the screen becomes flooded with enemy projectiles as well as yours, so the perception becomes a little blurry.
Bullet Hell example, screenshot of DoDonPachi Resurrection
This kind of games had their peak of popularity during the 80s and 90s, but it started out with Space Invaders and Asteroids, which popularized the genre during the 70s. During that time, X-Multiply was released,as well as other similar games like R-Type II, Dragon Breed, Air Duel, and Saigo No Nindou. the particularity of X-Multiply was the tentacles that you could control using your positioning and that they were your only defense mechanism, regarding the fact you only had one life.
Irem's company logo
X-Multiply was first releasd in September of 1989, by the japanese company Irem, creator of R-Type and Image Fight. It used the Irem M-72 System hardware, which allowed two player playing, but only one simoultaneously with a 8-way joystick and 4 buttons, so they would have to alternate. The specifics of the hardware are:
-Main CPU : V30 (@ 8 Mhz).
-Sound CPU : Zilog Z80 (@ 3.579545 Mhz).
-Sound Chips : Yamaha YM2151 (@ 3.579545 Mhz), DAC.
And a Standard raster resolution.
During the year 1998, Xing released a compilation of two games for PlayStation and Sega Saturn containing X-Multiply and Image Fight. It was released as art of Xing's "Arcade Gears" range exclusively in Japan.
Image Fight & X Multiply: Arcade Gears covers for PlayStation and Sega Saturn
https://archive.org/details/arcade_xmultipl
https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=10495
https://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=1518
http://www.mobygames.com/game/arcade/x-multiply
https://www.arcade-history.com/?n=x-multiply&page=detail&id=3213
https://segaretro.org/ImageFight_%26_XMultiply:_Arcade_Gears