[img width=480 height=640]http://i.imgur.com/xDHxbl.jpg[/img]
This month's Together Retro game club pick over at
http://Racketboy.com was
Zoop. Now let me guess -- you've
heard of
Zoop, but never played it. You vaguely remember a magazine ad for it, but aren't really sure what it is. Am I right? Probably. That's generally how it went.
Zoop was a puzzle game released in 1995 and it was ported to just about every platform available at the time. It made its way to SNES, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, PC, Mac, Saturn, Atari Jaguar and the PlayStation in an honest-to-goodness attempt at being the next
Tetris. Indeed it was even marketing as "America's Largest Killer of Time!"
Perhaps what's more interesting about the game's place in history is that it was designed by a team called Hookstone. Though that name may not ring a bell, most of the members of Hookstone went on to form Mobius Entertainment, who you probably know better as Rockstar Leeds. That's right, the same team responsible for bringing
Manhunt and the
Grand Theft Auto series to the PSP had its humble beginnings in a simple puzzle game.
[img width=300 height=300]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/2/586002_70514_front.jpg[/img]
[img width=200 height=200]http://ui23.gamefaqs.com/1366/gfs_70514_1_1.jpg[/img] [img width=200 height=200]http://ui05.gamefaqs.com/1892/gfs_70514_2_1.jpg[/img]
Originally my plan was to play the Game Boy version, but I found it to be a bad idea. You see
Zoop is all about a little triangle that's inside a big square. And all these multi-colored shapes are attempting to get in the square. But the triangle can turn into each color, and then take out like colored rows. Maybe you see where I'm going with this? Yeah, a game where color is important just isn't going to work so well on a monochrome system. So I soon decided that I'd pick up the PlayStation port instead. Some of my fellow Racketboy forum members actually played and enjoyed the GB port. Well, more power to them. Personally it just confused my eyes.
[img width=300 height=400]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/1/573801_46087_front.jpg[/img]
[img width=300 height=200]http://i.imgur.com/lG136l.jpg[/img] [img width=300 height=200]http://i.imgur.com/SYlK9.png[/img]
The PlayStation version was very good. At least I assume it would be just as good as any of the other console ports at the time (Jaguar, Saturn, etc.). The controls were responsive, the colors were vibrant and thanks to the newly implemented CD technology, the music was really great. I personally wasn't great at the game. In fact that's my high score in the picture up above there. But what was really nice about playing this month is that so many members got really into the game. It's really fun to go back and play a game with a bunch of people even though it's not handing out achievements or syncing trophies.
Truthfully, I lost interest in the game about halfway into the month. But in fairness, it was my birthday this month which means I got a lot of new games and all of them were begging for my attention. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't come back to this one. In fact
Zoop certainly has a certain appeal to it. That kind of timeless replayability that makes games like
Dr. Mario or
Tetris so addicting. If you haven't played
Zoop yet, you've really got no excuse. I guarantee you own one of the systems it's available for.
