♦ Livestream of 4 ZZT worlds. ♦
♦ Stream Contents ♦
• (2:10) "Justice League International" by Steven Lyons (1996) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/jli/]
• (46:34) "Booster Gold" by Steven Lyons (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/boosterg/]
• (1:02:49) "Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch" by Steven Lyons (1997) [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/quicscar/]
• (1:20:37) "Captain Shrunkenhead: The Game" by Pinklight [https://museumofzzt.com/file/view/shrunken/]
A trilogy of comic book games, by a yet unseen author, and then a literal ZZT comic book! Alas, file dates led us astray here and the three games ended up being played out of order.
"Justice League" begins with Batman learned the various members have been captured, and scattered around the globe to isolate them. This begins a chain of traveling to different destinations, rescuing a captive, and then playing as them while they search out the next hero.
The action is very much lines of monsters drawn across yellow bordered screens, though there are some moments of creativity on display. Plus the novelty of "NOTE: YOU ARE BATMAN" being on screen while gazing at the leaning tower of Pisa.
Author Steven Lyons also stabs me in the heart with a dagger by coming up with the idea of "What if I made a maze and played the Barney theme song while players wandered it". Powerful stuff.
Watch for split passages where one leads to death (the Vatican) and one leads to success (Pisa) throughout the game!
"Booster Gold" is Mr. Lyons' real first release, leaning much more on the piles of monsters and lacking much in the way of story development. It (along with Justice League) features some intersting boss fights where you win merely by surviving, which feels unintuitive and led to editor crawling to figure out how to defeat them. Once you understand the way game operates though, it seems like a reasonable enough idea.
Then "Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch". More of the same. Mostly getting by thanks to its list of upcoming adventures with some choice lines.
Simplicity aside, they were fun enough to be enjoyable thanks to their short length and interesting boss ideas.
Lastly, "Captain Shrunkenhead" is part comic, part game. A very cool idea that perhaps could be best compared to the Sega Genesis game "Comix Zone"? The boards are divided up into a number of panels that create small spaces with strategically placed breakables placed for the player to navigate them, shooting the enemies just as depicted in the comic they're reading. It's a very cute idea, and one I hadn't seen before.
While the list of games to add to the Museum is running short, even these games that had been low priority to play are turning out to not be half bad! Good work all around.
♦ Play these worlds directly in your browser ♦
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/jli/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/boosterg/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/quicscar/
• https://museumofzzt.com/file/play/shrunken/
♦ Originally streamed on August 18th, 2024 ♦
