Horizontally scrolling shoot 'em up by Toaplan for the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis.

"Sombody set up us the bomb" indeed. After you've spent half an hour laughing at the terribly translated into sequence, you can get into a quite enjoyable though for the most part, unoriginal flying spaceship thingy. Power-ups consist of a series of increasingly powerful options, and your ship has the handy ability to snag the smaller enemies in a tractor beam to be used as a shield or thrown at othe baddies. The tractor beam also lets you carry a handy smartbomb.

The graphics are nice and chunky, with bosses generally filling the screen. Music, and use of colour are just avarage.

I believe there is also a version for the PC Engine CDROM2 and an arcade PCB.

A derivative of Gradius and R-Type, only less fun.

The intro sequence appeared on the Genesis / MD version, and may have appeared on the Turbo CD / PC Engine version. The arcade version featured very little in terms of story; however, it was not without its own misspellings. In the demo scenes, vulcan was misspelled as valcan. Unfortunately, I know of nobody who's played through any version to get see the ending sequence, which I'm sure contains just as many hilarities as the intro.

The intro has to be seen to be believed, and there is an animated GIF roaming around the internet. Just in case you don't want to find it yourself, here's the full text:


IN A.D. 2101

WAR WAS BEGINNING.

CAPTAIN: WHAT HAPPEN ?

MECHANIC: SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB.

OPERATOR: WE GET SIGNAL.

CAPTAIN: WHAT !

OPERATOR: MAIN SCREEN TURN ON.

CAPTAIN: IT'S YOU !!

CATS: HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN !!

CATS: ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US.

CATS: YOU ARE ON THE WAY TO DESTRUCTION.

CAPTAIN: WHAT YOU SAY !!

CATS: YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO SURVIVE MAKE YOUR TIME.

CATS: HA HA HA HA ....

OPERATOR: CAPTAIN !!

CAPTAIN: TAKE OFF EVERY 'ZIG'!!

CAPTAIN: YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DOING.

CAPTAIN: MOVE 'ZIG'.

CAPTAIN: FOR GREAT JUSTICE.

end.


Note: I've now seen the ending. Unfortunately, there's no dialogue to describe 'WHAT HAPPEN !!' after the final boss was defeated. Instead, you get 14 or 16 California Raisin lookalikes that dance around the screen for about 20 seconds. Figures.

The ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US retouchings are the biggest reason for this side-scrolling shooter's continued popularity. I haven't played very far into it, but I've discovered a few tactics that should help.

You have three different ways to attack:

The game becomes quite a bit more manageable after you master "grab and throw."

In the intro scenes, the Zig's windows are green. In the game, the windows change color depending on what weapon you have. Naturally, the green weapon (homing missiles) is the most versatile, clearing away hordes of enemies quickly and making boss battles merely a matter of dodging their bullets without worrying about aiming. FOR GREAT JUSTICE TAKE ON RED, GREEN, GREEN, GREEN.

YOU CAN'T DIE! If you're not playing for points (which are reset every third time your Zig is blown up), there is no difference between dying and continuing, thanks in part to unlimited credits ("FREE PLAY"). Or just use DGen's save feature after you beat each mini-boss. (You may have to pause and resume the game to clear up an incompatibility between Zero Wing's music engine and DGen's save support.)

I will REMOVE your "All Your Radical Touching Base Are Already Occurred to The Lesbian Monkey Puppy" Philosophy on me if you don't eat my soy google balls, hatt-baby. Real or Malarky?

© 2001 Damian Yerrick. Verbatim copying and redistribution are permitted.
Well, I played both the Genesis and the arcade versions of this game. The arcade version had better graphics, but no funny intro, and no rapid fire. This meant that after about 30 minutes of playing this game I realized it would only lead to the early onset of carpal tunnel syndrome, so I went over to the Genesis version.

When you start off you are in your Zig which can shoot one puny red bullet. You will soon want to pick up a powerup.

The powerups are dispensed from these slow moving ships which the enemy apparently has left around the bases so that they can get destroyed and give you a powerup. There are five kinds of powerup, and all of them have three levels except the last. Having any of the weapon powerups will give you these two floating, indestructible gun platforms above and below you. The weapon powerups also change the color of your Zig's window.

  • Red Bullet Powerups - your Zig and gun platforms will shoot increasing numbers of red bullets as you gain these powerups, but they still suck.
  • Blue Laser Powerups - your Zig and gun platforms shoot one blue laser each, which quickly travels in a straight line across the screen, and increasing in strength as you pick up more powerups.
  • Green Missile Powerups - your Zig and gun platforms shoot a lot of homing missiles. The more enemies on the screen, the more you shoot. They increase in power as you gain more powerups. They also do heavy amounts of damage, making this the best weapon.
  • Speed Powerups - your Zig goes faster as you pick up more.
  • Super Bomb - it is held like you would hold a ship with the tractor beam, and when you release it, or when it is hit, it makes a nice big deadly explosion.

After I got the strongest missile powerup, I never stopped using it due to my Genesis emulator's save and restore functions.

Your Zig also had the aforementioned tractor beam. You could grab powerups with it, hold super bombs, and most importantly hold enemy ships captive. You could then use these ships as a shield or shoot them at other enemy ships. After you take a ship captive, it can never threaten you again, so with a few enemies it was easier to run up and capture them than destroy them. You could carry small enemy ships with no speed penalty, and some larger ships, but the larger ships would drag you down and make you slow.

Your gun platforms, being entirely invulnerable, could also be used as shields or to destroy enemy ships.

I spent the game constantly shooting my missiles while evading enemy fire and sometimes grabbing an enemy ship to shield me. At the end, I was rewarded with "CONGRATULATIONS!" and some purple jelly bean things dancing.

The levels have absolutely nothing to do with the intro, except that you are flying a Zig. You never again see this "Cats" character. The levels range from some water planet, an asteroid base, a tunnel, and an alien hive. My favorite part was the alien hive, where one of the mini bosses was two alien creatures who would MATE right in front of you and then spawn tons of small alien flying things.

However, you are supposed to beat the game six times over, and if I ever get around to this, maybe there is a better ending.
Manufacturer: Toaplan
Year: 1989
Class: Wide Release
Genre: Scrolling Shooter
Type: Video Arcade
Monitor:
  • Orientation: Horizontal
  • Type: Raster: Standard Resolution
  • CRT: Color
Conversion Class: JAMMA
Number of Simultaneous Players: 1
Maximum number of Players: 2
Gameplay: Alternating
Control Panel Layout: Single Player
Controls:
  • Joystick: 8-way
  • Buttons: 2 - Shoot, Seizer

Sound: Amplified Mono (one channel)

The Rest has been said, it just needed technical specs


Tech Specs: klov.com
back to MAME Games: Z

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