Zoop by Viacom and Electric Spectacle
 Zoop is a nice little puzzle game that’s available on almost every platform out there. I haven’t played any other versions, so I can’t comment on any differences there might be in the Jaguar version. I can tell you that this is a very nice puzzler that you can spend quite a bit of time with. You are a triangle in the center of the screen. Differently colored objects will come towards you from 4 directions. Your task is to blast these guys before they get to the center. In a sense, it’s a little bit like Tempest....until you figure in the colors exchanging. Let’s say you’re blue. You can only take out blue objects. If you shoot a non-blue object, you’ll exchange colors with that object. So, say I’m blue and I shoot an orange...I’ll become orange, and it will take my blue. This can be a bit tricky to grasp in the beginning, but it provides some very interesting gameplay. Fortunately for us, there are some power-ups in the game. There is one that allows you to wipe out an entire row, now matter what colors are in it. There is one that lets you take out the color of your choice in a section. There is a special laser blast that has a bigger blasting radius, and springs....get 5 of these springs and annihilate everything on the level. The visual aspects of the game aren’t flashy, polygonal or texture mapped. Just simple old stuff that’s suitable for a puzzler. Action is smooth, explosions are good and the backgrounds are pretty cool too. There’s really not much more to comment on here... There are some pretty cool tunes in the game. I’m not sure, but I think there are like 8 tracks of music in the game. They’re really jazzy-type tunes that flow along with the game nicely. Some cool piano stuff going on as well as some nifty bass. I think they put in some mellow tunes for a reason. I mean, if there was some hard rock playing while you were getting wasted, people might get killed! hehehe... Sound effects are nice and basic, but lack anything really cool. Some voice would’ve gone over well... The control is pretty straightforward, move your ship around your 4 X 4 grid and shoot bad dudes. It’s pretty dependable, but at times I find it a bit unresponsive when I’m rushing to flip around and shoot guys. It’s really nothing too major, but it could’ve used just a bit more tweaking for responsiveness. There are (I hear) 100 levels in the game, and if anyone makes it that far, E-mail me! I’ve only managed to make it to level 13, and it’s HARD AS HELL! Overall, it’s a very cool puzzler that you can pop in every once in a while and see if you can get a little bit further. It is not a game that you can play 40 times in one night...you are probably going to get mad at the game and play something else. It’s a nice addition to the Jag’s library, it lacks these kinds of titles.
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