Zoids

1987The plot of the game goes roughly like this: For a long time Zoidstar had belonged to the blue Zoids, until the red Zoids arrived from the neighbouring moon and conquered the planet. The blue Zoids were unable to fight back. That is where you step into the picture: a human from a shipwrecked spacecraft, a born fighter.

You are given Zoidzilla, the mightiest Zoid ever built, and orders to destroy Redhorn, the leader of the red Zoids. Your landing craft, however, gets shot out from under you, and Zoidzilla is taken apart and hidden in six cities. You manage to rescue a Spiderzoid, and now all you have to do is find the parts of Zoidzilla, fit them onto your Zoid and carry on with the original mission.

It's as easy as that. And you try, time after time, until the Sandman starts flinging his sleeping sand and the joystick slips out of your limp little hands.

And now to the game. In the middle of the screen there is a map showing not only your own Zoid but also the nearby red Zoids and their cities, mines and so on. When you move the crosshair-like cursor over this area and press the button, a window pops up containing at least your Zoid and possibly other things visible on the map.

If you move the cursor onto your own Zoid and press the button, a new window pops up where you can choose a direction of travel for your Zoid or stop. If you move the cursor onto, say, an enemy Zoid, what happens next depends on which weapon systems are switched on.

If, for example, you want to let a cargo Zoid have it with a missile, things go as follows. Windows appear on the screen showing a picture of the Zoid, its type, destination and cargo. The cursor sits on top of the control icon. If you press the button, you go over to the attack.

First you tank the missile up with a suitable amount of fuel and then you launch it. The next windows show the target's position seen from above and from the side, plus the view from the nose of the missile.

The missile has to be steered all the way to the target by hand, dodging any anti-aircraft fire along the way. It isn't easy, but it is tremendously interesting. And if the missile hits, the Zoid is damaged but not destroyed.

The disgustingly tough cargo Zoids take two or three missiles before the scrap metal starts flying. There are other weapons too: a magnetic bazooka that fires lumps of metal (handy for finishing things off), my favourites the spy mines, which report in when an enemy is right on top of them and give you the chance to set them off, and radio jamming equipment, which is well worth learning to use.

Next to the map you can see not only the weapon selection icons but also the activation icons for the sensors and the database, a shield/status icon, an object pickup/mine drop icon and a status icon. After only a very little practice you quickly learn to use these, because the aim was not to make the game look exotic but to make it playable.

And then there's the setting! A fully working little world! Cargo Zoids ferry raw materials from the mines to the city, Spinebacks patrol, and the extremely nasty Serpents doze in their bases in case an alarm goes off. Attack a city and its radio station sends out an SOS, and soon you're fleeing hell for leather from the enemy reinforcements.

Take out the radio station first and the city sends Hellrunners, fast courier Zoids, off to fetch help. (A couple of tactically well-placed mines will cut off at least a couple of roads!) Attack a power station and an interceptor missile is launched right away. Of course the Spiderzoid has an anti-missile system, but, but...

Zoids is a game where nothing is easy at first, but oh my, the joy when the first city comes crashing down. The instructions that come with it tell you everything you need to know, and language skills aren't a barrier either, because the game comes with instructions in Finnish.