Fake Fakes Or As I Like To Call Them: Walls
587 Squadron is not at all an easy game, demanding some very precise timing with limited ammunition with equally tight evasive maneuvers required to not be overwhelmed by enemy gunfire. However with the easy mode to slow things down and only ten missions to complete, those challenges are ones that many will still find appealing even if it's not for everyone.
What's more worrying to me is the game's readability, and I'm not just talking about the GBA port's squished resolution.
Crashing into things that planes would simply fly over is the cost of doing business with ZZT. What isn't though, are the times when tiles are inconsistent about whether or not you can fly over them. As you fly over a (visually) solid gray wall to bomb a target, it's annoying to then crash into an actual solid gray wall from the next structure over.
While I understand that having to dodge things an actual plane wouldn't, are one of the only ways to create obstacles for players to deal with, I really wish there were different colors used to better communicate to players. Looking at still screenshots, it's not that hard to pick out wall from floor, but when fifty bullets are whizzing around the screen, it's a lot harder to take a moment to notice shadows or other hints that might indicate when a wall is a wall.
At times, this can even get you the opposite way, where what seems like you're going to crash sees you continuing to move forward. Highlighting the fake walls here shows a weird sort of pocket area your plane can wind up in.
For ZZTer's, we've long been trained to understand what colors and characters can be potentially be walked on. For those jumping in the first time, I feel like this would be a major annoyance. Cross your fingers and hope that the surroundings of a target will let you approach.
The diagonal shooting guns can get awkward as well, though at least with them you want to keep you distance regardless. In order to fire diagonally, the object in question needs to be walking diagonally, and in order for it to not move, that means that at least one adjacent tile has to be solid in order to support the gun.
You kind of get a feel for it as you go, but it's an initial hurdle to overcome for sure. I was still getting got even in the final mission where I'd run into gray on black water thinking it was a black on gray fake making for a very bumpy escape.
Advanced Warfare
Even if not originally designed with the hardware in mind, the fact that 587 Squadron has a port for the Game Boy Advance cannot be ignored. Running it outside of an emulator means having some method of flashing a rom to a cartridge, something I don't own, so sadly I was unable to play it on the GBA I got for my 13th birthday that I'm still lugging around.
Luckily, as you may have heard, it's easy to hack your 3DS. Thanks to the power of rom injectors, it's possible to use the 3DS's "Ambassador" exclusive GBA emulator to play the game on a 3DS.
The GBA has a resolution of 240x160. That's half as wide as a ZZT board (excluding sidebar) and 2/3 as tall. Needless to say, some compromises have to be made visually for the format.
I did this some time ago when the game was first released and remembered my thoughts being that GBA ZZT is kinda-viable, but not not ideal for a game like this. A lot of squinting is necessary given how tiny individual tiles have to bit to fit 25 rows and an extra for the HUD on such a small screen.
This time, I was on a New 3DS XL and the larger screen really made a difference. While it's still smaller than anyone my age should be dealing with, it was actually pretty fun and quite cool to give it a serious try. My expectation was to take a silly photo or two, get two maybe three missions deep, and then get annihilated. Instead, I wound up 1CCing the game!
The two versions of the game are nigh-indistinguishable, with very small tweaks to an object or two on easy mode, and a typo in the GBA version that refers to mission 5 as mission "55" instead. Otherwise, it's the same experience, with all the same highlights and all the same issues. Though there is one major difference in that the OpenZoo engine used to run on GBA hardware doesn't support saving your game (though it does offer a faux sleep mode a number of later GBA games featured). You have just one chance to complete the entire game, which I assumed was going to be an extremely difficult challenge not worth going for until I managed to do it.
Playing the game on a GBA without knowing what ZZT really is, probably wouldn't wouldn't be the best first impression. The grid, tiny "sprites", and lack of sound won't make a great first impression even if the gameplay isn't all that bad. For those with a history of ZZT however, it's going to be engaging. Knowing why everything is the way it is, makes it a lot easier to appreciate ZZT on the GBA. Not every world out there would make for a pleasant experience on a tiny screen, and yet afterwards I found myself wondering what other ZZT games might be a lot of fun to play on the system.
The tech setup for this was not ideal.
Fast-paced action games aren't as rough as you might think. The GBA is powerful enough to run ZZT games like this with a steady frame rate and crisp enough screen that if you don't mind the squashed character set graphics, portable ZZT becomes a real option compared to the GBC port that feels more "look this is technically possible".
Squished visuals and no saves aside, it manages to feel responsive and plays smoothly, with no sense that the hardware is struggling to make it happen. While it may not look like a GBA game, it does feel right at home on a console. A cute little war game with ten levels, one life, a lot of button mashing that feels great to pick up and play. It feels a bit like a proof of concept for a more traditional GBA game with larger sprites and more detailed graphics. If I could have played this on the GBA in 2002, I'd have loved it. But then, I was the one those weird ZZT kids that used to play Yenrab's Dogfight just as often as Star Fox 64. I bet with a proper GBA coat of paint though, you'd be able to find plenty of kids that would have enjoyed a game like this.
Final Thoughts
Overall, 587 Squadron is a great way to relive the shoot 'em up era of ZZT, and possibly do so in a form factor that still feels rather novel. It's fast, it's tough, it's definitely ZZT, but it's a lovely title that's a great choice for folks looking for something quick with little downtime. In 587 Squadron you're pretty much always in the middle of the action, celebrating your little victories as you land multiple bombs in a row right on target or get out of a scrape unscathed when your plane should be swiss cheese.
Agent Orange takes a simple idea and executes it rather nicely. Finding ways to to take #PUT OPP FLOW and get an entire game out of it is no small task. The gameplay is engaging, and at no point did I find myself getting bored with the engine, a big step up from replaying earlier games in the genre. The difficulty might be a tad much for some, though I imagine easy mode should be winnable for the vast majority of players. A few missions took several attempts, and there's a definite learning curve to timing your bomb drops, but it usually feels fair.
When it doesn't, it's not ideal. The desyncing of the player and the controls is a real rough thing for a game to have, but it's spared from being judged too harshly as it's rather rare that it actually happens. But if it happens early enough, then those who came to the game from the jams it was submitted to will likely have harsher words. This is especially true if you're playing the GBA version and have no way to save. A mission can definitely go south if you don't immediately notice the desync and continue to press buttons that either do nothing as the player touches a wall, or worse, make you fly in a different direction than the one you pressed.
But on the ZZT side, this is a nice little coffee break game where failing a mission is quick to retry. And hey, nobody can stop you from saving mid-mission if you really need to.
I would be excited for more games like this. Nostalgia is certainly a component of that, but the game stands on its own merits. It looks cool, it's fun to fly in, and you can't win without putting in some effort. 587 Squadron is an admirable take on an old style of game, able to be enjoyed whether you've played one too many ZZT implementations of Space Invaders or if you're more familiar with the more carefully designed works of the modern age. Give this one a try!
