Zero Wing Reviews

Old School Taoplan shooters are well know for the unforgiving difficulty like Truxton. And Zero Wing isn't an exception. Fortunately, this version of the game offers a number of 'assists' to allow players to practice or see further into the game than they otherwise might not. The core gimmick with Zero Wing is that the player's ship has a tractor beam that allows them to pull an enemy ship in front of them. This enemy ship can then be used as shield to protect the player's ship or hurled as a projectile. Even the medium sized enemy ship can be pulled in, though; it affects the movement of the player's ship. Zero Wing also has a super bomb pick-up that takes forward spot of a tractor beamed enemy and speed ups. Though, I find the game practically unplayable with more than 1 or 2 speed ups. The graphics, music and sound design are all top notch for the era it came out. And I think it all holds up. Zero Wing is definitely my favorite presentation of shoot 'em ups of colorful pixel graphics and rockin' chip tunes. The raw difficultly of this game isn't for the squeamish. Fortunately, it offers an autofire assist. As well as save states and even a rewind feature. However, only the autofire assist will allow the player to unlock certain achievements. Personally, I find these assists invaluable. As much as I enjoy playing Toaplan shooters, I can't make it much further than the third or so boss in most of them without tons of practice. Unlike Truxton, Zero Wing doesn't seem to have as deep of a power up system. Which is good and bad. The good is that's much easier to recover if the player fails. The bad is, the player can't get a crazy powered up ship that makes the game far easier if they can collect enough power ups. I'm on the fence about recommending Zero Wing. I really like it, even if I'm trash at it. But I can easily see someone getting frustrated with it. Even with the assists. Still, I think it is a solid game that looks and plays superbly. I don't recommend this for anyone dipping their toes into shmups. However, if you know you like the genre and aren't bothered by classic brutal difficulty, I think it's worth a look. In addition to this, the play can grab an upgrade that places satellites above and below the player's ship. These satellites for both more fire power and enemy projectile blockers. Once that upgrade is obtained, the play can further upgrade their ship with a spread shot, a powerful laser or homing missiles.

your hands will bleed almost as much as your ears! Green shot recommended. Tractor beam is for deleting certain high HP enemies. Your option/helper ships that appear after powerup block enemy projectiles. Very slow speed with no speedups, even compared to its contemporaries, and your ship is large. Probably Toaplan's worst shooter in the arcade this is probably not the version of the game you are thinking of - the MegaDrive/Genesis has highly superior music and sfx, in addition to the infamous intro

It is that game with that meme. https://youtu.be/qItugh-fFgg This is an arcade pay 2 win horizontal scroll shooter coin muncher. There are three types of weapons with three power levels each. And in this one the side guns are immortal. You can use them to block incoming projectiles. But at the same time because of them it is harder to estimate your hitbox or track it. There's also a beam button to grab an enemy and hurl it forward for fun. It can't grab projectiles, so it's just a gimmick distraction. The game starts noisy, then the second level has a noisy background, then there's a level with several noisy foregrounds parallaxing around, and then the levels where enemies shoot projectiles almost indistinguishable from the noisy background. The levels have a lot of narrow passages you are supposed to navigate. And it sends enemies from behind while you can't shoot backwards. Sometimes it even sends enemies from behind while you are already in a tight passage. The story starts as if you are supposed to know who all these people are. And then during the final fight the final boss just flees, leaving you with nothing. This is a good release. It offers rewinding, notquick saves, and saving to file. But i suspect the achievements are busted and do not unlock.

Personally, my favorite side-scrolling shmup, partly due to its intro. Glad to see the intro come back after the update, but people would like an option to switch between the Genesis-style soundtrack and the arcade version, let alone an OST for purchase.

A great port of the arcade version for a good price. Zero Wing has always been one of my favorite genesis games. Only complaint is that there’s no content from the genesis version but there are some neat extra features in this port. Definitely worth investing if you are interested.

Would be nice if they was a option to use the Megrdrive/Genesis sound track but good version of a good game better than arcade original.

I haven't been able to go through the whole game yet, but I really want to commend the developers involved in this port for taking native Linux development seriously. I have kind of a weird configuration on my Arch Linux installation that's a hybrid between a normie user which sticks to the standards and some l33t h4x0r that configures a lot of things manually. Part of that involves using PipeWire as a drop-in replacement for the PulseAudio audio driver, the latter being a staple of major distributions for over a decade. When this game was first released here, I couldn't get any audio output, but this issue has since been addressed in a patch from March. It really means a lot that Bitwave is willing to go the extra mile to ensure this port will work on as many Linux installations as possible, because one thing's for sure - Proton can't fix everything, and I cannot understate the importance of supporting Linux as a desktop platform. Sure, this instance of native support may be minuscule in comparison to the rest of the vast library of Steam games, but every effort helps bigtime.

There are not many negative things to say about this release. I was only really mainly hoping that this would also include the Mega Drive version as I vastly prefer that soundtrack. Other than that, this is solid. Low latency as far as I can tell, no screen tearing issues, and there are a fair amount of options including auto-fire. Though what I would like to see more of is: * More sound options. Allow us to change the frequency rate to more closely gimmick older game systems (22KHz for an example, with different audio-filter options). * Add different CRT filters or let us customize it more. They can look good if done right. * Maybe change the way the info menu looks? Not a big fan of how big the text options are, but that's just me being nit-picky.

Memes aside, [i]Zero Wing[/i] has long been a favorite of mine, and this is a solid, if slightly bare-bones presentation of it. Some may decry that it's "just a rom in an emulator" but Arcade games can be a pain to deal with so having something nicely configured for you with steam implementation is a plus and this does offer some features such as practice mode you can't get from simply running the game in MAME. DIP Switches are easily accessible and there's a respectable variety of display options, though I actually love the CRT Filter they use by default, it looks much better than the hacky bilinear filter a lot of low-end retro-rereleases smear all over the screen. That said, this is the [i]arcade[/i] version of [i]Zero Wing[/i], which is frankly the least interesting version of the game. If you come in expecting the iconic "All your Base" scene, you'll be disappointed for a second before realizing the game is still pretty awesome. The developers have stated they're looking into adding the scene and if they do I think it would also be cool if they added the completely different Anime intro from the PC Engine CD version as well. The arcade version also has frankly the worst soundtrack, with none of the hard-hitting bass of the Genesis version or the epic orchestration of the CD version. The arcade instruments just sound a bit... [i]farty[/i]? If they add an option to choose which soundtrack or even just add the other versions of the game I think that would go a long way and make a truly comprehensive edition of Zero Wing, though I understand that likely takes additional licensing and may be too costly to be practical. That said, this is a good presenation of the arcade version and will no doubt become a mainstay of my Steam Deck experience. I'm a huge advocate for retro collections and rereleases with nice Steam-friendly launchers and achievements, so this is a win in my book.

How are you gentlemen!! I was so happy when my main screen turn on to see that I can finally take off every 'ZIG' on my PC. Alas, this seems to be the arcade version so it won't include the badly translated cutscene from the console version. The emulation is really solid though - with barely any input delay and a variety of good looking filters to choose from. Also lets you remap keys and access dipswitches from the menu (press escape!). This game is hard as hell though, so you have no chance to survive make your time. Move 'ZIG'. For great justice! Update: They added the intro now. All is well with the world.