Zero Gunner 2

While I'm preparing my first DCJY-exclusive write-up, Father K suggested that I could repost stuff I had written for my personal blog, the badly titled NebachadnezzaR's Place of Awesomeness, which is a rather great idea since here my posts will have a much broader audience. So, what follows is a copypasta of my ramblings regarding Zero Gunner 2, exactly like you can read on my blog (no changes made). Enjoy:

"After the blast I had while playing Zero Gunner, I couldn't wait to try out its sequel, now on a real console instead of an emulator, so I popped the game in, turned on the Dreamcast, and...well, I liked some things but there's also some stuff that I really hate, so in the end I guess I have mixed feelings about this one.

To start with the good things, this game is beautiful. Really. Sometimes I end up forgetting just how powerful the Dreamcast is, and when I see it in action it blows me away. The textures are very detailed, the models have a great design to them, in that arcade fashion that only the Dreamcast seems to show, and the stages are really unique and impressive.

The gameplay is also very enjoyable for the most part, but the rotation system just fucks it all up. Unlike in the original ZG, where you would first lock onto an enemy and then rotate around him, here there's no lock-on system and you freely rotate your choopper. So far, so good. The problem is in the way this is done. To rotate you have to hold a button (thus stop firing) and then use the d-pad to rotate your ship. Now imagine doing this when all hell is broking loose around you! It's confusing, unintuitive and worse, it will most certainly make you loose lives, because you'll get so disoriented you'll loose any sense of direction and invariably run into enemy fire.



Unfortunately this is necessary, since enemies (and sometimes bosses) come from all directions, and sometimes the screen moves sideways or down instead of up. Shit... To make things worse, although this game offers many difficulty options, even the easiest setting is hard as hell. After two unsuccessful tries where I would always end up running out of credits in the last level, I thought "fuck it" and resorted to my life-saver, the Code Breaker cheat disc. With unlimited lives I eventually was able to beat the fucking game, but I immediately put it back in the shelter, since there's no extra modes to keep you busy, only a replay mode where you watch a previously saved game.

I may seem angry at this game for being so hard, but that's not the case. Hey, Under Defeat it fucking hard, I was never able to beat it, and I still love it. My problem with Zero Gunner 2 is that it's not only hard due to unforgiving enemies, but also due to a fucking control scheme that makes no sense! You don't loose because you suck, you loose because the control scheme to rotate the damn chopper is insanely unintuitive and impractical, and that's basically my major complaint about this game. Of course you can eventually get the hang of it you practice enough, but I doubt it's worth it when the Dreamcast as such an awesome library of shooters.

I would still recommend it to shmup fans, but be prepared for a challenge."

PS - As a bonus here's a picture of my (somewhat) customized Dreamcast. The picture is a little old, and right now the console looks a little different (I won't say exactly what I did to it because you would call me crazy...), so maybe I'll take another photo sometime, if you guys are interested of course.

Welcome Nebachadnezzar!

Lord knows that this site has benefitted from the contribuitions from Caleb, and now I'm inviting the awesome Nebachadnezzar to sew his Dreamcast seed all over the 'Junkyard. (ooer!)

Welcome Nebacha! May we bask in the glory of your Dreamcast knowledge! Oh and BTW, enjoy the video! I'm not sure it's been here before...

Arcade Goodness

This post has been written by Portugese Gaming Guru and Saturn Junkyard correspondent Nebachadnezzar over that his most excellent website Nebachadnezzar's Place of Awesomeness.

But being a diamond geezer, he's let me reproduce it here! Enjoy!

"Featuring several well-know characters from various Capcom titles (only one character was created exclusively for this game), this is pure arcade goodness that plays somewhat like the cult hit Smash TV. Using an overhead camera, you're put in levels that basically consists of just a small area filled with bad guys. After you wipe them out, the "semi-boss" comes and after him the real boss of the stage shows up. You beat the fucker and move on, simple as that.

The downside is that the game is painfully short, ending in (depending on your skills and difficulty level) 20 minutes/half an hour, if not less.Once you beat it for the first time, an artwork gallery shows up, but that's about it. There's no secret characters (actually there is, but they don't need to be unlocked, you just have to figure out how to play with them, and it's worth since we're talking about Megaman and Bulleta from the Darkstalkers series), secret stages or additional play modes.

There's a 2-player mode and nothing else, all you have left to do is beat records or play with all the characters (they play somewhat different, specially when it comes to the special attacks).But despite that this is a great game. The gameplay is solid and as fun as an arcade game gets. It would be better with a dual analog controller, but still the Dreamcast pad gets the job done. Also the graphics are really great, I wonder how this game looks when hooked up to an HDTV through a VGA cable...

Overall this is a great game that I recommend to all you arcade action fans out there.After beating this game (several times), I thought it was time for a more traditional shmup experience, and the first game that came to my mind (don't know exactly why) was Zero Gunner 2, also on the Dreamcast. But wait, that's 2, what about ZG1? The bad thing is, 1 was an arcade game only, there's no console port. The good thing is, it runs almost perfectly using the Model 2 emulator I talked about sometime ago in the Saturn Junkyard!It actually runs even better, since you can play it in full screen mode at a maximum resolution of 1280x1024. That's as much as my monitor can handle!

Talking about gameplay, it plays mostly like any other vertical smhup, the bullet hell variety, except for the fact that you can lock-on to enemies and then move freely around them, even to the point of turning your chooper 180º and shooting down instead of up!This really contributes to differentiate it from the countless other shmups we see and play everyday and it was probably the idea behind the most excellent Under Defeat, one of the last official Dreamcast releases. Other than that, the progression is also interesting. From the main menu you can choose to play every single level in a row, but you can also select from the Europe, Asia and USA "campaigns", each with their own set of 5 levels to beat.

This is great for an arcade game, since you can try the 3 different scenarios at your own will, without having to beat one to have access to the other.The downside is it's difficulty. Yes, it's an arcade game, and at least using an emulator you won't end up broke, but still it could be a little easier at times. Anyway, as long as you're patient and don't forget to add more credits, this is a pretty good shooter to spend an hour or so with. Not to mention you can get both the game and the emulator on the web for free! What are you waiting for? Go grab it now! As always, if anyone needs links or help configuring the emulator, just ask.PS: I just found out that both Cannon Spike and Zero Gunner were developed by the same company, Psikyo. Funny, uh?"