Zoop

The Good
The action is fast-paced in this unique puzzle game. Half of the game's difficult comes from the approaching shapes poised to do away with your poor cursor. The other half of the game comes from the puzzle itself which feels a lot like a hectic version of (insert name of other color matching puzzle game here).

The music is quite good for a Super NES which isn't surprising with how late this game was released for the system. There are only a few tracks in the game, but all of them are reasonably well-written. The sound effects, however, leave something to be desired.

The Bad
Where is the multiplayer? Even cooperative play would've been a welcome change from the two modes offered by the game - continuous and level. With only two game modes, you have to REALLY love Zoop for it to stay in your system more than an hour. Even a tournament mode with players trading off turns would've been more fun than mindlessly meandering through the repetitiveness of the game's single player modes.

Another minor gripe I have with the game is the graphics. The colors are bright and pleasant, but whoever designed the shapes you clear was obviously getting off easy for this title. Any kind of general theme could've saved this game. In fact, why didn't they have a few "tile-sets" to choose from?

The Bottom Line
For puzzle gamers, this is a fun game that will keep you challenged. I'm afraid, though, that had this title been produced a mere four or five years later we'd simply see it as some flash game on the internet. It's bare pickings and it's sad - Zoop could've really been an amazing puzzle game.

The Good
Zoop is one of those puzzle games that were so popular mostly during the early 90s and somehow disappeared on the new decade until the indie scene gave them a new life. Viacom invested quite a lot in marketing (the campaign, with catchphrases and admirable design, was something that I still can remember) for a kind of game that was just about to go out of fashion, just because everyone still wanted to have the next Tetris.

I love the aesthetics of this game. The DOS version used the rare hi resolution VGA with 16 colours (only used by Maxis games, some Windows 3.1 experiments, A-Train and not much more) and a jazzy soundtrack that sticks in your brain for hours. And the game itself is fun, not extremely original, but fun in the way you control a ship that must eliminate rows of somethings that approaches you. If you want to know the exact mechanics, I think a video does it better than my prose.

The Bad
But the released game had a few problems. Some other reviewers mention the lack of multiplayer, but the single player has a problem with the pacing: it has none. You start the game, you are getting familiarised with it, and soon everything is going too fast. Why? Because it is the only way to dress up the actual lack of ideas: you can remove the pieces on the table, you can use three power ups, aaaand that's it. With Tetris this worked mostly when the dress-up was Russian dancers or other backgrounds, with Lumines this works with other songs, colours and backgrounds, with Zoop the only change is in the colour palette of the background which consist of something very basic.

They had an idea, they did not develop it. It is way too much of a basic game for such a luxury package.

The Bottom Line
I consider Zoop a very interesting failure, because it shows that doing a game like Tetris, Zuma, Klax, Breakthru!, etc is way more complicated than it seems, as you must involve the player for a long amount of time giving they rewards that can be appreciated. Zoop does not give rewards for playing more: it punishes you with speed at the second minute you are playing. It seems it did not sell bad back then, but no wonder why it is barely remembered right now.

The Good
I love a good puzzle game, and I could almost love Zoop. ALMOST. The concept is original and fun, and you can't ask for too much more in a puzzle game. On top of that, the music is top quality for an SNES game! It also gives you the option to begin on any level up to 9 (which is about where I lose anyways :).

The Bad
Well, the true weakness of this game may be the colors. I've only seen up through level 11, and I can honestly say that most of the background boards are insanely ugly! Also, the options menu is pretty ugly too.

The Bottom Line
This is a very good action puzzle game for $3! If you can get past the horribly ugly backgrounds, then you'll probably have lots of fun with this.