Zero Wing (Genesis) review on HonestGamers

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Review by Felix Arabia
January 12, 2008

It’s always a major bummer (I sound like a California surfer) when you get sick and miss out on the fun festivities that your mentally challenged friends get to partake in. After being on the verge of death for the past few days, I thought I had found a remedy to my ailments in the form of some good old video game playing. I mean, what else was there to do to pass the time? I played the hell out of Orange Box, but it didn’t do anything to lower my fever or soothe my aching muscles. I played plenty of Dark Castle, but that just made me feel worse. It occurred to me then, in my semi-delirious state, that I have never dedicated even a second of my time to Zero Wing. For as many shooters as I’ve played, never playing Zero Wing can be seen as a surprise. The only experience I had ever had with the game involved witnessing Internet nerds reciting all of those horribly clichéd Engrish lines the game has become infamous for.

You probably know which ones I’m referring to.

While they may be fine for a laugh or two, some poorly translated lines and a rather hackneyed story cinematic don’t exactly make for memorable gameplay. Memorable gameplay probably never was Zero Wing’s intention anyway. Toaplan, the developers of far better and more manic shooters, probably were deliberate in their abysmal storytelling because once you strip away all the Engrish, there isn’t a whole lot to distinguish this turkey from any other mediocre shmup.

Mediocre shmups can still provide a small glimmer of enjoyment, and I will not say that Zero Wing doesn’t have at least some redeeming qualities. Some portions of the game throw quite a few enemies your way, making dodging their plasma fire and bulky hulls a good challenge of the reflexes. The bosses are large and commanding, usually taking up at least half of the screen. Some of the levels have nice background graphics. Even the in-game music does a decent job of creating whatever sorts of visceral emotions you’d expect to feel in your typical shmup fare.

Of course I could easily offer rebuttals to all of my aforementioned claims. The enemies are not very creative in design since they look and behave like any other common enemy contraption. The bosses aren’t very imaginative, either, and they really don’t offer much in the way of challenge. While the game goes for a spacey ambiance (and it achieves it well enough), some levels, such as the asteroid belt level, look like a diarrhea-filled toilet bowl. And sadly, while most of the tunes in the game are cool, they constantly loop. These shortcomings, along with several more that I’ll be describing shortly, are good indicators as to why Zero Wing never gets mentioned for its gameplay. I could probably conclude this review right now and label it as pointless as fellow Toaplan creation Fire Shark. That wouldn’t be any fun, though.

I haven’t described Zig yet!

Zig, as you should be aware if you’ve ever heard the CATS Engrish classic, is the ship you’ll control. It’s an ugly, stubby fighter that looks like it’s made of Lego Blocks. Such a swift-sounding ship, and it looks like a bathtub toy. Outside of its looks, it’s just like any other fighter in the sense that it can gain options and has three different weapon selections, each which can get powered up to three different levels of destruction. The thing about Zig, though, is that this ship really had a chance to leave its mark in the shmup pantheon. I only speak of Zig’s vacuum cannon, a neat little device that allows you to suck up weaker enemies into the ship’s tractor beam so they may be used as either a one-hit shield or a weak projectile. It’s a cool idea, but Zig just doesn’t capitalize on the function.

I think that can be said toward a lot of the areas in Zero Wing. It has some good ideas, but none of them really come together to form anything new or memorable (in a good way).

Rating
4	Weak Though there may be a few bright spots, the overall product is fairly weak and does not come recommended.
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Game Profile & Content

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Staff Score (Avg): 4.0 User Score (Avg): 6.0 Press Score (Avg): N/A
Reviews: 3 Guides: 0 Cheats: 1 Ratings: 2	High Scores: 0 Screenshots: 6 Videos: 0

Title: Zero Wing
Genre: Shooter
Developer: Toaplan
ESRB: N/A
Save: N/A
Platforms: TGCD, GEN

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