Metal Saviour Bia v1.2
You know the deal. You dabble in retro video games (why else would you be interested in ZZT?), so your Youtube algo starts force feeding you 8-bit Nintendo content. Top-10 lists with the same games on them just in a different order, "Hidden Gems" videos that showcase games that any kid who lives through '80s Nintendo-mania knows like the back of their hand, etc. Occasionally, something a touch more interesting pops up - deep dives into the library, sometimes, but not always, in chronological order. You click on one of these, and you're presented with a game released right smack dab in the middle of the initial Japanese Famicom fervor. The mech designs are fairly captivating, you're thinking it could be based on some forgotten manga, the 8-bit chiptune hook is catchy enough. You move from being a passive observer, to being actively engaged, but then, the cracks start showing. Slowdown, flicker, clunky controls, repetitive level designs, what the kids nowadays like to call "jank"... even if it wasn't tied to some obscure anime license and locked up in layers of legal rights, its mediocrity ensures it would still be passed over for European and North American release.
Metal Savior Bia is the ZZT equivalent of that said game. While its not tied to any sort of obscure anime license (or at least none that I know of), it wears its 80s space sci-fi anime influence on its sleeve, with snazzy mech and spaceship designs, breezy characterization and dialogue, and a tried-and-true "us against them" premise. You are a member of a human space defense force, who recently made contact with an alien hivemind. These aliens most assuredly did not come in peace, so a long war of attrition has slowly whittled down humankind. As a last-ditch effort, a spaceship called Bia was developed by the earthlings, in order to attack the hive core and hopefully save humanity.
After a brief scene where you meet your crew and board the spaceship, the game begins, and here is where the parallels to those mediocre NES releases really make themselves apparent. First up, you're placed in a cock pit and have to gun down 3 distinct waves of enemies. You use the directional keys to "control" the craft, and the space bar to fire. You have to line up the crosshair to shoot the enemy. Sounds fine in practice, but in order to overcome the inherent limitations of ZZT, pressing the arrow keys will "move" the enemies relative to your cock pit. However, the enemies also have a mind of their own, so whatever direction you press makes it feel hopeless and randomized. Enemies also don't seem to damage you, so this scenario quickly devolves into frantically tapping the directional keys until each enemy lands on the white fake tile that represents the center of your crosshairs.
Next up, another frustrating minigame where you control an arrow that will consistently move in a straight line until you tap another directional key (not unlike the Snake game). You will have to move over several red beacons, and then quickly change direction in order to "bomb" them. It feels slightly (key word, slightly) more intuitive than the cock pit, and thankfully doesn't take nearly as long. The third "act" presents you with an inertia-based ship that once again consigns a disconnect between your key presses and the actual movement of the ship. I'm not sure if your ship is weighed down by gravity, and that's why you move up and to the west when you just press to go up? Confusing and awkward.
Then, a relief as we've moved away from the dodgy minigames to traditional ZZT game territory. A boss battle against an alien with a target randomly moving back and forth that you have to shoot down, while bears and tigers consistently spawn. Nothing special but the orthodoxy offers a nice respite. Almost down now, a few cinemas here and there and then a final battle where you spam shoot a core as a giant one-hit-kill beam erupts from below.
Towards the end of the game, it's revealed that your character is in an estranged lesbian relationship. Which, while unique to a game of this vintage, feels little more than base-level "heh, I'm in high school and lesbians are cool" type writing. If the game expounded on the intricacies of the relationship and charted just how it all unraveled, it would have made dealing with the frustrating gameplay a tad more bearable. Hell, I'd even have welcomed some additional interactions with your crew.
THE GOOD: Cool animations in the opening and ending cinema. Some nostalgia-triggering art that serves as a throwback to the early days of STK usage. A variety of gameplay styles that are unique for ZZT.
THE BAD: Unintuitive controls that seem to have a mind of their own. Lack of character/NPC depth.
OVERALL: Depends on your tolerance for jank. If you can hold your nose and bear with the arcane controls and mechanics, at least you'll be rewarded with some novel (for ZZT) retro sci-fi artwork.
As the description indicates, this is an homage both of 90s ZZT games and 90s anime. The engines are solid--sort of like that era, there are shooter engines and controllable robot engines, etc. But the presentation shines, and PogeSoft's excellent art-style has lots of opportunity to shine as well. It's short, but if you have 30 minutes to kill it is worth the time.
