A beautiful variation, recreated, modified, and superior to all that came before: Zanac & Zanac.
User Rating: 9 | Zanac X Zanac PS
To start off, I should mention that Compile was a great company that brought some of the most amazing games into the market during the mid to late 80's and the 90's. Perhaps many will remember them for the Puyo Puyo series, but many know that they also worked on many shooters as well (shmups or shoot 'em ups as they are now called) that usually turned out very different than the normal fare of space shooters at the time. In the fact that they were great unique shooters that brought more to the table for the average player. Now for those that don't know, the original "Zanac" was released in 1986 and featured an actual artificial intelligence system that adjusted the in-game difficulty based on how well you were playing. For 1986- that was pretty cool stuff guys. Anyhow fast forward to 2001. The Playstation is on its last legs and Playstation 2 is just on the horizon and this game gets released out of the blue. When I finally played it, it was like someone had dropped a carpet bomb of nostalgia on me and my forgotten Turbografx 16 days of yore that I remembered so fondly. Why so nostalgic you ask? Fans of the series will instantly recognize the gameplay since its a grab-bag of many of the popular Compile shooters including: Zanac, Blazing Lazers, Powerstrike II, and Robo Aleste (to name a few). Zanac & Zanac does have its own trademark of gameplay, but it also draws from compiles' older works in a very positive way as well. So at least you can tell by now that this is not some simple rehash or a simple updated graphics port of the original game. This is an overhaul featuring some of the best music, the best 2-D sprite design and some of the most enjoyable shmup mechanics ever programmed by humanity (and a rom of the original Zanac on the disc to play as well hooray!). Theirs not enough to say about how much attention was put into this game. Even now it still looks fantastic, has absolutely no slowdown whatsoever and mixes old with new like never before. If you're an old-school shmup fan or a shmups fan in general- pick up this game. You won't regret it.
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