Super God Trooper Zeroigar (Tyoushin Heiki Zeroigar)

Added 2.8.02 | Review by Starbuck

Super Star Soldier, Soldier Blade, Gunhed, the Rayxanber series, to name a few, were pure shooting bliss ( they still are ). These games have contributed in defining and refining the standard for vertically and horizontally scrolling shmups. Milestones, classics. And they all came out on the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine.

That being said, these games had me expecting an awful lot from this first and last shooter effort from NEC on their 32-bit full-color monster, the PC Engine’s continuator, namely the PC-FX.

I’ll start by saying that I was not disappointed with Zeroigar. Zeroigar offers rock solid gameplay, music ranging from good to great, and great graphics. The anime found in this game easily matches in execution and quality ( I’m not talking about the compression rate here ) some of the newer anime released on DVD. Remarkable coming from a game released in 1997.

GRAPHICS

Here, Zeroigar shines. They are crisp, and brightly coloured. The player sprite ( Zeroigar, or one of the two alternate robots ) is especially well done. Some of the larger enemy sprites ( bosses and sub-bosses ) look as they are in 3D. The backgrounds, though some of them would have needed some more work, scroll smoothly, and have a nice amount of detail put in them.

Zeroigar features perfect scaling, rotation, transparencies and parallax. The game gives us a small taste of the (still) untapped power of the PC-FX. When I think of what could have been done on this oh-so-underrated machine…!

Two things you’ll notice up front if you manage to get your hands on this marvel of a game : the speed, and the number of sprites on-screen. I’ve never seen a shooter run so fast. I’ll go as far as to say that it’s faster than Soldier Blade. Furthermore, there is no slowdown. It’s an impressive sight, considering the high number of enemy sprites going around in capricious patterns littering the screen with their bullets. The game gets quite hectic at times, but I’ve never seen it slow down like it does when there’s too much going on in Radiant Silvergun.

The anime sequences are the best I’ve seen yet on this console. They’re brilliant. Two words spring immediately to mind, no three : very high budget. The colours used throughout and the voice acting is especially worth mentioning. Old-school ( I mean old-school ! ) anime fans might enjoy the character and mecha designs more than others, because it’s very reminiscent of 70’s and early 80’s anime ( Getter robo G, Mazinger, Great Mazinger, Grandizer ). I’ve made converts out of my friends showing some of the movies sprinkled around in the game.

SOUND

The music featured in most shmups of the late 80’s / early 90’s was dubbed techno-rock by fans and music producers alike. You’ll find good examples of techno-rock in Super Star Soldier and Gunhed. Techno-rock’s finest moments : Gate of Thunder, Sidearms Special CD, Space Megaforce, in my humble opinion. Zeroigar’s soundtrack is techno-rock crafted in the purest tradition. Blazing guitars, thumping snares, soothing synths, it never gets boring, it highlights the action perfectly. The instruments used have a quality to them that you would be hard-pressed to find in other games on this system.

The PC-FX is famous for it’s awful, ear-splitting sound effects ( think Langrisser 3 ). Zeroigar is a welcome change. The sound of bullets firing, of power-up boxes breaking, etc., everything is rendered nicely using the machine’s ADPCM facility.

GAMEPLAY

Solid through and through. The power-up scheme, made up of your main and secondary weapon systems, is simple but effective.

Main weapon system : you start the game with a single shot, which can be powered up to a large spread-shot.

Secondary weapon system : as you advance through the stages and collect more points ( which you cannot avoid ), you will gain access to a pretty large array of secondary weapons. On the first stage you only have a tornado-like secondary weapon. But on later stages, you have missiles, bombs, lasers at your disposal. Mastering the use of these weapons is vital to completing the game.

Every time you use your secondary weapon, your secondary weapon gauge goes down a notch. The more powerful the weapon, the more it eats up your special-weapon reserve. Zeroigar can be called a “ smart “ shooter, because the aforementioned feature adds a strategic element not found in many shooters. For example, some bosses are nearly unbeatable if you don’t use a specific weapon against them ; but that means you’ll have to save weapon-energy on the path leading to these bosses, which is not always an easy task…

There are four main types of power-ups : those that upgrade your main weapon ; those that upgrade your life-meter ; those that refill your secondary-weapon-gauge ; and, finally, what I guess are bonus points ( they look like medals ). Beware : this is one of those games where power-ups have a bad habit of appearing right under the enemy’s fire…

IS THIS GAME ANY FUN?

You will be delighted. You will be pleased beyond any expectations you had. Fun ? It is. The high fun-factor certainly has to do with the fact that this game oozes atmosphere. Well, Zeroigar had better be fun, because after shelling out 100 + bucks to get it on e-pay, you would not expect less.

ALL IN ALL...

This is my favourite game on the FX. This game is way up there, in my library, with Radiant Silvergun, Soukyugurentai, Gate of Thunder and Thunder Force 5. It’s that good! Everytime I fire it up, I have a blast going through it. Sure, it doesn’t boast 3D accelerated graphics, and, oh my god, it does not play online. But what’s there is rock solid : the music, the graphics, the superlative robot designs. Recommended to any shooter fan.


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