Zed Blade

The Good
The game's graphics and presentation are stunningly good, you have that great impression that you're travelling and fighting in space and on different planets and moons. Many of the music tracks rock with the futuristic and sci-fi themes.

It's cool that you have a variety of firepower to choose from for your front, rear and missile attacks. Sometimes you'll sacrifice shot strength for spread or vice versa. Even better, both players can choose the same firepower types if they so desire. It comes as a surprise that the speed you choose for your ship also alters the difficulty of the game to match.

The gameplay itself is fairly straightforward with gradually increasing challenges as you travel across the galaxy. Variety of enemies does not disappoint as you fight robotic ships to alien slimes that do binary fission. There's plenty of opportunity to put your front, missile and rear attacks to the test. And when you max your power, there's virtually no stopping you. Obstacles and walls pose little in problems. The funny thing is how much you can boost your score by shooting walls. Both bosses and mini-bosses are relatively easy to destroy - just hit the glowing red orb.

The Bad
While the graphics are impressive, I cannot say that backgrounds look their best in some stages. It's either staying still or moving at a crawl's pace, which doesn't seem quite right. Only looks more fluid if the movement is sped up. Another problem is that the orange projectiles from your intertwining shots can be hard to tell apart from enemy projectiles, leading to some embarrassing deaths.

Not every soundtrack is pleasing to the ears. The boss tune has that annoying maniacal yelling going on and the Valkyrie's non-stop chanting makes your teeth grit; it becomes a relief when you kill her and permanently shut her up.

And the only complaint about the gameplay is that once you choose one type of firepower, you're stuck with it. You can't even change it when you use a continue, which would have been nice.

The Bottom Line
This game has succeeded in differentiating itself from any other shooters that came before. It's not a Gradius, R-Type or Darius clone, no, it's one of a kind. It is such a shame that this title never made it to the home AES Neo-Geo console. It's a largely forgotten and obscured Neo-Geo classic that has to be recognised in order to be played a good extent. It's both satisfying to play and finish. Since it is now virtually available for multiple consoles, you won't miss out on it. Find it, download and give a shot or two.