Developer - Toaplan   Catalogue No. - T-40023

Type - Horizontal Shooting

Zero Wing is one of the most legendary games ever made but why is that?  Is it a fantastic game to play?  Hmm, well, it's not too bad to play and it does have a wonderful music score but that's not why it's one of the most legendary games ever made.  The reason why is thanks to the amazingly bad translation of the Japanese intro.  Not only is the English pathetic but it was the birth of the phrase "All your base belong to us".  You can find out a whole lot more about this at Wikipedia if you are interested.

Now back on to the game.  One of the main gripes I have with Zero Wing is that it's just far too long.  For a start the levels really do drag on far longer than they need to.  The fact the the backgrounds are all unanimated with only 1 layer of parallax scrolling does help either.  Then you've the insult of not getting a real ending after completing it for the first time.  You do get a pretty funny scene though that I won't spoil for you by writing it here.  Another thing that doesn't help the game is the lack of interesting power ups.  There's only 3 which can only be powered up to a maximum of 3 times.  After that there's not much else apart from looking out for the lucky 10 up option.

Game play wise you have the ability to capture enemies and either use them as a shield or fire them back off in to the on-coming craft.  This is quite a nice addition that actually does come in handy at times.  There are also smart bombs dotted around the levels that can be used in the same way as capturing the enemy craft.

Over all Zero Wing isn't a disaster of a game but when you've got so many better shooter out there on the Mega Drive it really is hard to recommend Zero Wing.