Zero Wing

Even if that meme of an intro is planned to be added in the future, I really can only recommend you dive into this one if you buy the other three in the bundle: good weaponry, music and QOL still can’t do much to save an otherwise average shooter from developers who could do so much more.

I wish I could say otherwise, but at least for me there simply wasn’t. There’s little about Zero Wing that stands out in its genre and the few things Toaplan tried to do a bit differently largely either aren’t useful or actively hinder the experience. Zero Wing is certainly playable, but there are far better options for SHMUP players to explore.

The original Zero Wing was a groundbreaking game back in the day and this remaster perfectly encapsulates that experience. Old school gamers and fans of retro games will enjoy playing this classic (regardless if they are familiar with the iconic meme).

I feel like this particular version of Zero Wing isn’t the one that should have been preserved. Or, at the very least, the folks at Bitwave Games should have added the option for us to change between the arcade port (the better one, mechanically speaking) and the Mega Drive port (the one with the meme that made it famous) via a menu option. It’s not a bad game, far from it, and Bitwave did a good job at porting and remastering it, but this was a missed opportunity. Vanilla Zero Wing just doesn’t have that many interesting elements that make it stand out from the ten billion other space shooters released in the early 90s.