January 9th 2014
Air Zonk is the game of the day. Because it is a shoot'em up game, there won't be a lot of thing to say here, even if I haven't beat all of its stages yet. So, this entry might be shorter than an average entry of mine.
This Turbographx-16 classic distinguishs itself quite a lot among many other games ever made. Not only the presentation is wacky, but it also features parallax scrolling, which is rarely seen on most TG16 games. It's impressive to see how many sprites the original system can hold on the vicinity. And the music is awesome. Just listen to the title theme. It utilises the sound chip very well!
Regarding the controls, there's the typical holding a button to continually shoot and directional pad to move Zonk. But, the controller have more buttons, so what's about those unused buttons? Well, they are all used. Hold a certain button, and Zonk will charge up. Once he charged for long enough, he can unleash devastating attacks to his foes. The type of the attacks depends on how long the charge is held. The most powerful is a large missile that he pop out from his butts, which can damage to everything on the screen. I recommend doing that in case non-charged projectiles aren't doing enough damage to my tastes. There's also another button that manually fire up the boots behind Zonk. To me, it's pointless because it is spotted on the Select button of my Classic Controller Pro, and he automatically does that if anything gets next to his shoes.
The gameplay is just like most shmups, but with an emphasis to hilarious power-ups and the very helpful friend system. The former not only gives Zonk an extra hit point (except the one that shrinks him), but also bestow him a different and more powerful firepower. The latter involves getting enough smiley faces obtained from defeating the mobs, for the larger one with sunglasses to appear. Pick that up, and a chosen friend will join to the party. Not only it doesn't ever get hit, but they fire when Zonk does too. Collect another large smiley and they'll fuse with Zonk, temporairly giving invincibility, adding an extra hit point, and get a much more powerful firepower that varies depending on the friend. To easily survive without losing too much lives, try getting as many things as possible, focusing on dodging/reflecting projectiles, and having confidence all make a big difference. It's proven with my very first playthrough, which had me nearly getting a Game Over on the first stage because I wasn't bothered grabbing enough things and lacked confidence. Tonight, I played the game again and I seem to perform much better than before due of collecting everything that appears on the screen. And that's on the easiest difficulty that gives me 4 lives to begin with. If the harder ones only adjust the lives, then the game is pretty easy to get through, even the last stage. Dying only costs a life and put Zonk back to where he was. And we do have unlimited continues.
According to my progression, I arrived on the fourth stage in only 15 minutes, in which the next one will be the last. And the latter is much longer than 5 minutes. Even that, one could be experienced enough to beat the game around 30 minutes. Sounds like a very short game, but I'm fully engrossed in the game because there is a lot going on at every second. Can't wait to finish this game! Until then, see you next time for my entry about Pilotwings.
Air Zonk is the game of the day. Because it is a shoot'em up game, there won't be a lot of thing to say here, even if I haven't beat all of its stages yet. So, this entry might be shorter than an average entry of mine.
This Turbographx-16 classic distinguishs itself quite a lot among many other games ever made. Not only the presentation is wacky, but it also features parallax scrolling, which is rarely seen on most TG16 games. It's impressive to see how many sprites the original system can hold on the vicinity. And the music is awesome. Just listen to the title theme. It utilises the sound chip very well!
Regarding the controls, there's the typical holding a button to continually shoot and directional pad to move Zonk. But, the controller have more buttons, so what's about those unused buttons? Well, they are all used. Hold a certain button, and Zonk will charge up. Once he charged for long enough, he can unleash devastating attacks to his foes. The type of the attacks depends on how long the charge is held. The most powerful is a large missile that he pop out from his butts, which can damage to everything on the screen. I recommend doing that in case non-charged projectiles aren't doing enough damage to my tastes. There's also another button that manually fire up the boots behind Zonk. To me, it's pointless because it is spotted on the Select button of my Classic Controller Pro, and he automatically does that if anything gets next to his shoes.
The gameplay is just like most shmups, but with an emphasis to hilarious power-ups and the very helpful friend system. The former not only gives Zonk an extra hit point (except the one that shrinks him), but also bestow him a different and more powerful firepower. The latter involves getting enough smiley faces obtained from defeating the mobs, for the larger one with sunglasses to appear. Pick that up, and a chosen friend will join to the party. Not only it doesn't ever get hit, but they fire when Zonk does too. Collect another large smiley and they'll fuse with Zonk, temporairly giving invincibility, adding an extra hit point, and get a much more powerful firepower that varies depending on the friend. To easily survive without losing too much lives, try getting as many things as possible, focusing on dodging/reflecting projectiles, and having confidence all make a big difference. It's proven with my very first playthrough, which had me nearly getting a Game Over on the first stage because I wasn't bothered grabbing enough things and lacked confidence. Tonight, I played the game again and I seem to perform much better than before due of collecting everything that appears on the screen. And that's on the easiest difficulty that gives me 4 lives to begin with. If the harder ones only adjust the lives, then the game is pretty easy to get through, even the last stage. Dying only costs a life and put Zonk back to where he was. And we do have unlimited continues.
According to my progression, I arrived on the fourth stage in only 15 minutes, in which the next one will be the last. And the latter is much longer than 5 minutes. Even that, one could be experienced enough to beat the game around 30 minutes. Sounds like a very short game, but I'm fully engrossed in the game because there is a lot going on at every second. Can't wait to finish this game! Until then, see you next time for my entry about Pilotwings.
