Booting up ZPF, the new game made by Mega Cat Studios, and I immediately had flashbacks to playing games as a kid.
The sound design and even some of the graphical hiccups when things got busy reminded me completely of the how games like Zero Wing and Thunder Force used to play back in the nineties. As I fought my way through each stage of the campaign, I was impressed by how they had replicated the sound chip from the ageing SEGA console.
Well, turns out, it was so well reproduced that they actually released a physical version for the Megadrive/Genesis.
“That’s nice AJ,” I can imagine you saying. “But, is it any good?”
The good news is that Mega Cat have done a great job of emulating the gameplay and sound of the 16 bit era, while bringing some extra bells and whistles.
At its core ZPF is a left-to-right horizontal shooter. At the beginning of each run, the player can pick one of three characters that each have a different ranged, a limited number of mega-bombs, and melee weapon. They then pick from one of three presets to playthrough.
Then it is down to them to fight through two stages shooting everything that comes onscreen, while dodging carpets of bullets, and collecting power ups for their weapon. One hit will cause the player to lose a life and also all upgrades.
At the start of the run the player visits a shop and can unlock certain things, all enemies drop coins that can then be spent in the shop after beating the boss.
Lose all lives and that is the end of the run and the player has to start again.
It is a straightforward premise, the first area is pretty hard but not insurmountable and the other two areas are much harder.
The limitations are that I cannot see the value in two of the three ships, and I was not clear when I was supposed to use the Melee attack at all, it seemed ineffectual at best, and a complete liability the rest of the time.
So, with the nostalgic feelings aside, ZPF didn’t really capture my imagination as I played it. As much as I would love to purchase a cartridge I am not sure I would play it and just have it as a nice thing to look at on my shelf.
Conclusion
ZPF is a fun little game that people with retro-nostalgia will find thing to enjoy in terms of its presentation. However, despite of the modernisation of some of the parts of the game the mechanics don’t reveal a lot of depth.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
