(Above)
US release published by FCI - box front cover.
(Below)
The blurb from the box back cover.. ;)
GAMEPLAY:
Operate your AFX-6502-ZANAC and
destroy the enemy. Your main cannon begins
as a single-shot pea shooter, which can be
upgraded by picking up orbs
into a dual-shot and finally a triple shot. You
also have a secondary weapon system which can use
any of eight different kinds of weapons, which
are activated by picking up icons numbered
0 through 7.
You start the game equipped with Fire 0,
a large fireball that can be fired in any of
eight directions. Picking up another
Fire 0 icon makes it a dual-fireball
cannon. Other options are Fire 1,
which sends a fireball slowly up the screen
taking out anything in its path, Fire
2 is a shield that lasts for a limited
time, Fire 3 creates a
fireball that orbits your ship, Fire 4 is
some vibrating doodad that I can't remember
exactly how it works, Fire 5 is
a fireball that drifts slowly up the screen
and then falls back down, Fire 6
is a very powerful weapon that eliminates
all onscreen objects when it hits something,
and Fire 7 is
a rapid-fire cannon.
No big deal so far, right? Well, here's
where ZANAC gets interesting. The placements
and frequency of airborne objects such as most
enemies and the Boxes that
contain cannon powerups are not set in stone,
but rather depend on your performance.
Start firing like a madman at nothing in
particular, and the difficulty goes up.
When a powerup appears, the difficulty goes up.
Take out a reconnaissance plane, and the
difficulty
goes down.
Your major objective is to try and take out the
various Fortresses scattered
throughout the game's 12 levels. When you reach a
Fortress, you have a limited amount of time
to destroy it. If you do, the difficulty goes
down. If you don't, the difficulty goes up. There
are also a lot of neat secrets, most of which are
just as unpredictible as the enemy formations
you'll face. Sometimes you can ram into a
Box that contains a cannon powerup and have your
cannon completely powered-up. Other times you can
do that and just plain die. I once managed to
find a stage warp once, but have no idea how and
have never done it since. If your first shot
in a level is destroying a Sart recon plane with Fire
0, it'll turn into a 1-Up.
(Sometimes.)
(Above) Stage Three is
where things begin to hot up -
with 4 nasty fortresses to defeat, culminating in
this big bad
mutha here.. If you haven't powered up enough by
this
point you could be in trouble..
Cheers
Zach! Yep.. Zanac is a good'un alright,
and the unintentionally hilarious manual
is a hoot also. Don't take my word for
it, take a look at a scanned copy of the
whole thing at the Zanac page here.
I must admit that while I was a fan of
Compile's Super Aleste (aka Space
Megaforce) on the SNES I'd never heard of
this game till recently discovering it
through emulation, and similarities
between the two games are very clear,
which is no bad thing at all. Do yourself
a favour and track it down if you still
have a NES, or failing that get hold of Nesticle,
download the Zanac rom here
and enjoy! (And if you like this game be
sure and check out Gunnac
also..)
Mike |
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Compile's
first of many classic shooters,
and one of the NES's finest, Zanac is still
a damn fine blast in anyone's book.. Long before Final
Fantasy 2 US set the standard
for horrible translations, there was ZANAC.
More specifically, ZANAC's instruction
manual. While still more
or less readable, whoever wrote it obviously
never heard of a spellchecker, with such
beauties as "a long time
agp"(sic), "Automativ"(sic), "Rclocate
the NES with respect to the receiver"
(sic..and I bet you never read those FCC
Regulation pages. :) Fortunately, ZANAC is not an
RPG, so it can get away with all the
mis-spellings and awkward translations it
wants...
STORY: "The
System", whatever the heck that is,
was created by an organic intelligence body
a long
time agp.. It started
out very small, then grew enough to take up
the entire universe, and remained active
after the "organic intelligence body"
perished. Of course, after some
"System" takes up the entire universe,
I can't imagine anything would be still
alive. Its purpose.. to give wisdom to those who
"opened the icon
properly" and wreak havoc on those
who "opened the icon
improperly." (Don't look at me, I
didn't write this manual.) Naturally, some git
opened the icon improperly, causing mass
destruction until someone opened the icon
properly. However, "the System"
ignored this fact and went on killing
people anyway. So, after a large
human offensive force gets zapped, the humans
determine in their infinite wisdom that one
ship could succeed against "the
System" where an entire fleet had
failed.
(Opening icons causing mass destruction? How
could the folks at Compile possibly have
known about Microsoft Windows?)
PLAYERS: Unfortunately,
only one player can fight
the System.
 
(Above)
The first couple of stages of Zanac aren't too
hard, at least until you reach this fortress at
the end of level 2. Remember Commando, where you
stopped at the enemy base at the end of a stage
only to be accosted by scores of viscious bad
guys?..
well it's a little bit like that..
DEATH
PENALTY: Your next ship begins with
single-shot main cannon and a low power Fire
0.
CHALLENGE: This game is
hard. Not cheap hard like RayStorm for the most part,
but the unpredictability of the enemies causes
quite a bit of a challenge. Not to mention
the fact that the Fortress love filling up
the screen with bullets, or launching these
buggers that are difficult to destroy and
make it difficult to hit the weak points
of the fortress. You're given (I believe)
unlimited continues, but continuing at
level 11 or 12 takes you back to level 10. Ouch.
GRAPHICS: Simple, but
there's little slowdown or breakdown, both
of which have plagued far lesser NES games
than this. There is not too much varience
in the backgrounds (at least not in the stages
I've been to), as you seem to spend a lot
of time in a desert-like level, with a
forest or ocean or ice-land every once in a while
to break up the monotony. (There's a space
level or two later on, though.)
However, you'll be far too busy dodging to
notice.
MUSIC: Quite good for an
NES game. It won't get stuck in your head
like Radiant Silvergun's first level music does
(to me, anyway), and it won't make you wish
you could pop it in your CD player like
Darius Gaiden does (to me, anyway). But it
sure beats the hell out of 1942's constant
whistle" music". :)
CONTROL: No problems
here. Your ship moves fairly quickly compared to
some other shooters, but not to the point of
being uncontrollable.
OVERALL: 9/10. The
ever-changing difficulty is quite innovative
for the time, and keeps this game
interesting, if not difficult. This game is
to the NES like The
Raiden Project is to the PSX, IMO. If you're
a shooter fan and you own an NES, get this
game goshdarnit! And try to get a copy with
the manual intact. You definitely don't want to
miss out on that. :)
Score
out of Five:
 
Zach Keene
Zach is the
author of many FAQs including G-Darius,
Gradius III, Einhänder,CSOTN, and the AGVS FAQ
ftp://members.aol.com/fnlfanatic/arcanelore/
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