The Wonder Years 07.03.08: Week 62 - Zool

Posted by Owain J. Brimfield on 07.03.2008

Anyone fancy a trip to the Nth dimension?

Welcome to the column where all gamers of a certain age come to wallow in 16-bit nostalgia. I'm your host, Owain J. Brimfield, and I'll be discussing some of the hidden gems and instant classics of gaming's golden era. Some of these games may crop up in downloadable form at some point, some may be consigned to the annals of history. Either way, they're worth tracking down if you missed them first time round, or replaying if you were lucky enough to catch them. Let's take a trip to:

ZOOL

(Gremlin, Genesis & Super NES, 1992)

So after last week's look at obscure Japan-o-shooter Pop'n Twinbee drew a largely apathetic reaction, I figured I'd better take a gander at a game whose appreciative audience might be slightly larger. Or at least, if nothing else, a game that people have heard of. But then I remembered that I don't really like to focus too much on the classics that just everybody knows and loves, so I went with a game that tried to cover as many bases as possible, in the form of Zool: Ninja of the Nth Dimension. Now, in order to understand Zool's appeal to gamers in the early 90s, there are a few things you do have to bear in mind if you're looking at the situation from the perspective of an outsider, because on first glance the game looks like any other mediocre 2D platform outing. Firstly, there's a law that has been in place since pretty much the start of time: ninjas are always cool. This is a thread that runs through gaming from Ninja Gaiden through Shinobi and Tenchu all the way to modern "classic" Ninjabread Man (a game that splits my opinion in two by being a) utterly crap, but b) owner of one of the greatest pun titles ever). Secondly, the platformer was the genre that defined the 16-bit consoles, in much the same way as the FPS has come to symbolize the past few years of gaming. And thirdly, with Sonic and Mario having proved so overwhelmingly popular in recent years, the race was on to cash in on their success, with every two-bit company worth their salt rushing out a "mascot"-based game.

Enter Gremlin with their addition to this cornucopia of twee characters, Zool. Zool was hyped and poised as a mascot for the slowly dying Amiga system, an attempt to recapture the system's earlier glories and thrust it into the limelight once more. A weird bug-like ninja, Zool received hugely positive reviews when he debuted on the Amiga, and for a short time it did seem like he might become the system's mascot in the same vein as Sega's Sonic and Ninty's Mario. Unfortunately, that was all undone in one minor piece of idiocy, as Commodore failed to retain exclusivity rights to the property, and Zool also saw release on Sega and Nintendo's consoles, where it received a lackluster reception due to its being viewed as another average addition to a swarm of similar titles. It's often quite amusing to go back and read reviews from the time comparing the game across the systems, as Amiga fanboys will proclaim the game as the second coming while Sonic fans will laugh derisively and fart in its general direction. However, there's no denying that as a standalone title, without the baggage attached, Zool is certainly a reasonable game, following the exploits of the titular black-clad ninja who has crash-landed on our planet and needs to find his way back home

In terms of structure, Zool borrows heavily from Sonic himself (I'm sure the developers would use the term 'homage' rather than 'rip-off', so we won't go there), with six themed zones being made up of a number of levels, the last in each capped off with a boss battle. The zones themselves, while betraying a certain lack of imagination when compared to the offbeat likes of Sonic 2's Casino Zone, range from the entertaining (the musical world with its playable pianos) to the ludicrous (the opening confectionery world, based largely around some egregious Chupa Chup product placement), but the sad fact is that due to a certain number of seemingly minor gameplay traits conspiring against you, it's pretty difficult for the average gamer to get too far. Those problems: a camera that's zoomed much too far in on Zool, Zool himself being unable to move at anything other than a sprint, and end-of-level gold tokens that can often be brutally tricky to locate. The satisfying half of the game's challenge lies in the number of individual bad guys, as well as the bosses, who are pretty esoteric and often loaded with weaponry, and there's also a pleasingly old-fashioned emphasis on scoring points for no reason other than to get a high score, with tons of collectibles littering the levels.

In terms of Zool's ninja-ness, it's clear that martial arts in the Nth dimension aren't up to the standards of Ryu Hayabusa, or even Mr. Miyagi. Enemies are dispatched via the time-honored method of stomping on their heads or shooting them with magic bullets, rather than any reliance on hand-to-hand combat. Zool himself can climb walls and do a sort of slidey-attack thing, but its clear that his status as a ninja is for appearances only. Still, what appearances there are are done pretty well - the color in Zool is intensely vibrant, even if the actual level elements themselves are rather bland, and both Zool and his enemies are animated smoothly. Unfortunately, the technical side of things is rather let down by the absurd sound effects, which actions seemingly assigned a random aural accompaniment such as glass breaking, or even left bereft of sonic [aha!] intervention altogether. It's all the more jarring in counterpart to the music, which is actually pretty admirable, although I seem to recall it did rip-off some of the tunes from the famous Lotus Challenge series on the Amiga.

I'll be honest and admit to not being the greatest fan of Zool you could find (that honor probably belongs to the guy down the street who still treats the Amiga Worms as that franchise's finest hour), but it's certainly a reasonably entertaining experience and it's undeniably reminiscent of a certain era of gaming, which after all is what this column is all about celebrating. Having never owned a copy of the game myself, being relegated to having second go whenever my mate Palmer got bored of it when I was round his house as a youngster, it's not the nostalgia trip for me that I'm sure it is for other gamers, but Zool still manages to be hugely evocative of early 90s gaming, and for that reason alone it may be worth tracking down a copy (although I haven't seen a home console copy of the game knocking around in a good few years). Even if the whole ninja thing has been pretty much done and dusted by now.

Zool trivia

• Among the other systems the game was ported to, it was perhaps a bad idea to make a coin-op out of the game, and unsurprisingly it didn't do well in arcades.
  
• A sequel, Zool 2, was notable only for its main bad guy, named Mental Block, whose fiendish plan was to stifle everyone's imagination causing boredom to take over the world. Intriguing, non?
  
• A port was also released on the Amiga's CD32, a console that not too many people seem to remember, but that predated gaming's premier 32-bit console (the Playstation) by a good couple of years.
  

The Videosphere

Let's take a look at this week's video highlight of Zool in action. Here's a look at some guy who is apparently pretty bad at the game making it through the game's opening level. Sample for yourself the ridiculous sound effects when contrasted with the awesome music, and gasp at the ostentatious lollipop product placement.




General indulgences

Every week in this section I'll endeavor to provide you, the faithful readers, with a fascinating insight into the various forms of entertainment currently dominating my spare time.

This week, I have been mostly enjoying:

Super Tennis on the SNES, one of the greatest "realistic" tennis games ever produced, and one I always find myself firing up for a spot of grass-court doubles around this time every year. And why is that, you ask? Because of...

Wimbledon on the BBC. This is the first year I've been able to take full advantage of the digital TV options to watch all the various split-screen matches, and it's quite exciting, although not as exciting as the awesome Murray vs. Gasquet match from a few days ago.

Time (The Revelator) by Gillian Welch, a low-key alt-country album lent to me by a friend. It loses its way in the middle, but the first and final tracks are simply outstanding.

and the girlfriend finally getting a job. Although that also means I have to be housewife on my days off. Hmmm, maybe that wasn't as good news as we originally thought.


And finally…

Thanks for reading folks; as always, reader feedback and suggestions are welcome. Next week in "The Wonder Years" - some bearded Scandinavians have lost their way, and it's up to us to help them. Until then - keep it real, keep it retro.