Having ran out of Star Wars ZZT games for the month, we take a look at MegaZeux, only to discover equally dire quality!
(2:35) Star Wars - Not a lot of positives to speak of here. I guess if you're a C3P0 hater, he accidentally dies in the introduction. Otherwise, a very ZZT looking game. Good PC speaker music for the main theme, and I kind of appreciate the use of MZX boulders as debris from Alderaan.
(15:32) Star Wars: Coruscant - A rather gory looking game! Start by really gibbing some storm troopers in a desperate attempt to save a rebel base. This one has come nice looking cinematics of space battles with large star destroyers blasting lasers as tiny ships like they were flies. Unfortunately, when it's your turn to blast lasers at tiny swarming ships, the odds are extremely against you.
(20:40) X-Wing Demo - A space combat sim that uses MZX's ice as a coating on everything to ensure the player slides around as needed. This has two styles of missions, linear trech-esque runs where you need to not crash and reach an exit as well as free roaming missions with large ships to be destroyed. Again the combat gets pretty overwhelming, and it's made more awkward here as some enemies that shoot fireballs will melt ice tiles leading to spots where your X-Wing automatically stops.
But it introduces us to everyone's favorite Star Wars character: Bart.
For a demo, there's a lot here. It's just not all that exciting to play. Great on-foot character graphics as well.
(38:55) Oh No! Not Another Star Wars Parody! - Definitely the star of everything here. At first it seems like it's going to be one of those games where the only humor is in words that sounds like others. You play as Fluke. After hiding under the couch to escape your enemies, you zip around in your landspeeder until you slam into a brick wall in the middle of the road. Thanks to MZX's greater capabilities for animation, Kev is able to make a funny scene out of this given how fast things scroll and how sudden they stop.
The game also looks nicer than most, putting some effort into it's character set, while still going for ZZT-style shading.
It ends with a way too difficult trench run that demands some incredibly precise moving and shooting to not crash constantly into walls of lasers until you die.
(58:30) - Zeuxepic Ep. 1 - Star Wars in a trench coat. Technically it has nothing to do with the series. But with the Jeri Empire and their planet destroying starbase the similarities are hard not to notice. This is a fairly broken demo where the player begins unarmed and has to run from enemies, then finds a sword which doesn't always work, with graphics sometimes not being cleared. If you like running between boards to safely approach enemies in order to not be overwhelmed, this is for you.
(1:08:16) Fluke Demo - Another demo that has what I can best describe as kawaii smiley faces with limbs. Not a whole lot in it, but the silly character portraits and animations give it some charm at least. "'Bout time you Spontaneously Combusted" is a line I won't soon forget.
♦ Originally streamed on May 31st, 2024 ♦
