ZPF (Steam/Mega Drive)

ZPF is a new title by Mega Cat Studios designed for the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis). Leaning into the console’s heritage of classic Shmups, ZPF hopes to blend Sci-Fi with Fantasy, sprinkled with attitude and laced with Blast Processing. With huge thanks to Mega Cat Studios, we got the chance to spend some time with a demo build of the game to give our impressions from our resident Shmup enthusiast.

About ZPF

Initially brought to life through Kickstarter, where 2,108 backers pledged $204,670, smashing its goal of $15,000, the game is the brainchild of Mikael Tillander, famous for the absolutely fantastic and deceptively challenging Tanzer. Much like that title, ZPF has been developed as a Megadrive/Genesis title first and foremost, with ports to other consoles following.

The team behind ZPF is a literal Shmup dream team, outside of the insanely talented Mikael you also have GRYZOR the mastermind behind the crushingly difficult and amazing Super XYZ and Gunlord by NGDevTeam, alongside these two retro demons you also have JgVex who’s got soundtrack credits for Smackdown vs Raw 06’ and Call of Duty 2.

ZPF in our hands 

The first thing you notice when you start ZPF is that it just oozes that 90s ‘tude, it has the visuals of a heavy metal album cover, if Dio and Megadeth ever collaborated this is exactly what would be staring at you from the shelf of HMV, this should be your indicator as to if this title is for you, this ain’t yo’ momma’s cute ‘em up that’s for damn sure!. 

ZPF allows you to take control of 1 of 3 ships, Gladius and Gold are your traditional “spaceship” crafts that should feel immediately familiar to fans of Darius, Thunderforce, or R-Type, each of the ships has different main shots and secondary shot, the third ship is Knight which is a flying suit of armor that has a close range secondary and sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the other two ships, no matter what you choose they all feel fantastic with full 8-way movement and snappy movement speed, thankfully no inertia here! 

Controls are pick up and play as is the gameplay, unlike Shmups that try and reinvent the wheel with gimmicks for example Triggerheart Excella or Darius Gaiden, ZPF plays it nice and simple with a Main Shot, Secondary, and a Bomb button, it’s a traditional screen clearer and the goal is to shoot down everything you see using those options, sometimes simple is better. 

Future Metal Fantasy Oh My! 

The demo of ZPF featured three playable levels out of the promised 6+ stages, one of the stages is a mythical forest heavily based on fantasy, and one is a Cyberpunk cityscape as you fly down a highway taking on more futuristic troops compared to the latter more fantasy-themed foes, finally the third stage is a homage to Alien and other space Sci-Fi tropes, the stage wouldn’t look amiss in R-Type, with another 3 stages to be unveiled I cannot wait to see what’s hidden and what themes they take on, yes the game’s tone is all over the place but it feels so original and I absolutely adore it. 

The graphics are draining every ounce of power they can out of the blast processing yet maintaining a consistent framerate with little to no slowdown, certainly isn’t an R-Type 3 situation over here. The ship sprites are well animated and designed and the stages look great, occasionally bullets tend to blend into the background and the stages are a little stationary in terms of animations but that is very easy to overlook when you consider the hardware this game has been designed for. 

But wait, there’s more! 

Outside of mixing genres, ZPF also sets itself apart from its kin with the shop system, the points you get for killing ships produce Medals, and you can use these at the in-game shop to give yourself score multipliers, extra lives or continues, or buff/debuff, helping you get through the game easier or you can completely ignore the store and do it vanilla style. 

The demo also allows you to give yourself more lives and medals, I would imagine this will continue into the main game, always a good option to allow people to “Credit dump” your Shmup, either to get the flavor for it or allow less invested players to see the credits. 

While the game isn’t getting any extra playable ships (to my knowledge) there are three more stages at least to unveil that will hopefully balance the themes between Sci-Fi and Fantasy, there are also going to be secrets, hidden stages, and even multiple endings, how these come about aren’t apparent as of yet but I wouldn’t be surprised with the number of bosses in the demo if the full game doesn’t have a hellacious true last boss. 

Hands off Captain. 

I have really enjoyed my time with ZPF, it gave me flashbacks to when I first really noticed the genre with titles like Gynoug. My only real gripe is that it leans too heavily into Sci-Fi but I have faith some mindblowing stages are awaiting the final release of the game.

Thankfully the Kickstarter funded the Steam version so I won’t have to track down a Megadrive when the time comes, instead, I’ll be dropping medals in the in-game store in an addictive loop of trying to find out everything the game has to offer and genuinely enjoying an old school Shmup that isn’t a remake or a “danmaku”, retro enthusiasts need to pay attention to ZPF trust me on this.